27 Feb
2010
27 Feb
'10
6:21 p.m.
Speaking of which I snagged a CH Products F16 flight
stick and the matching
throttle today at a thrift store. Do you need a special dual joystick card
to use them both at the same time? The throttle looks like you might need to
loop it into the keyboard port as well.
The IBM PC games controller interface card allowed for 4 variable
resistor inputs (conventionally a pair of 2 axis joysticks and 4 buttons.
THe variable resistors controlled the times of the 4 sections of a 558
(think of a quad 555 timer chip, but the secions are internally wired as
monostables). Writing to the port address triggered all the monostables,
rhey could be read back, along with the 4 button inputs at the same
address. There was a single DA15 connector carring the 8 input signals,
+5V and ground.
Many clone cards had a pair of DA15 connectors. One had the IBM pinout,
the other carried the same signals, but with the pin for variable
resistor 0 swapped with that for VR2, VR1 swapped with VR3, and similarly
for the buttons. Te idea was that you could plug in a pair of joysticks,
each wired to the VR0 and VR1 pins and have them appear as a dual
joystick plugged into the IBM card. Alternatively, there were Y cables
available which did the same thing if you just had a single DA15 socket
on the card.
Were there joystick interfaces that allowed for more inputs? I've not
seen one, but I am not well-up in games.
-tony