Drivers are not necessary, I can tell you that much. But as for the difference between digital and analog, I'm not quite clear on that myself 😊 just never had reason to look into it... Although I can tell you that my analog flightstick works on pretty much anything.

And yes, mostly they do automatically detect joysticks.

Edit: welcome to VOGONS! You're at the right place. And we probably want to see pics of your 486 in action 😎

Can you give examples of "newer digital gamepads"?

AFAIK the good old gameport in DOS is analogue. I remember buying an ISA card that allowed you to use C64 / Amiga sticks. But because of the missing second button, it wasn't that useful.

The old analogue gamepads consist of two or more potentiometers and some switches.
The decoding is done on the gameport card. This card consists of an simple adress logic and several timer ICs, like the NE555.
Because of this, back in the day people were able to built awesome stuff with the gameport!
The gameport is way more than just a games port, it's a simple to use ADC!
For example you can measure temperature with just an analagoue temperature sensor wired up to that port.
You need little to none additional parts for such projects!
Evenmore you can connect the switches directly to the pins of the port.
If you ever wanted to build a computer controlled alarm system, this was the easiest method.
And the best of all: That port was almost ever at the same port adress.

As for the digital thing..
Some gamepads used the pins of the four joysticks button for data communications.
They sent out an 4bit, multiplexed code which was decoded in software.
That's the reason you need drivers or in-game support for them.

motley6 wrote:

I was wondering if someone could set me straight on a few things regarding joysticks. I recently started getting back into vint […]
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I was wondering if someone could set me straight on a few things regarding joysticks. I recently started getting back into vintage gaming and just bought a 486 of eBay. It has a standard 15 pin joystick port and I'll be running only pure DOS 6.23.

1) What is the protocol for using analog, digital, or both? Do newer digital gamepads work with older PC games? For example, I want use a gamepad in mid-80s games like Activision's Portal and old Sierra AGI adventure games, but some games like these don't specify which kind they use.

2) Do DOS games automatically detect Gamepads/Joysticks or are drivers necessary?

3) Are there Gamepads which switch between digital and analog for DOS games?

4) If not, can get some kind of 15 pin splitter and hook one digital and one analog device at once instead of rehooking one up every time?

Thanks

1. The protocol is analog using a quad 558 timer driven by a resistor-capacitor network. "Digital" gamepads do not work with games unless they specifically support the gamepad in question. This is usually only found in late games. It is not something that Sierra's AGI games are going to support.

2. If the game supports a joystick, then it will automatically detect it or ask you to select the joystick function through an install or setup program or configuration menu or key. You will likely have to calibrate it.

3. The Gravis Gamepad is a gamepad that acts like a gamepad but looks like a joystick to games. It essentially reports three resistance value for each axis : minimal resistance, mid-point resistance and maximum resistance. This corresponds to pressing the game pad in one direction, not pressing it and pressing it in the opposite direction. If your game does not care about analog control, all it will see and all it needs are the three resistance values. Usually only flight and racing simulators really care for true analog control.

4. A PC joystick splitter is not going to work, it will give you an analog joystick for one player and a digital joystick for the second player. What you need is a DA-15 switchbox, if such a thing exists.

By "newer digital gamepads" I meant something like the Microsoft Sidewinder Gamepad with the 15 pin connector as opposed to something like the old Gravis Analog Joystick or those Kraft Analog Joysticks (both with 15 pin connectors) similar to the Tandy/PCjr ones. The former came out in the mid 90s, the latter ones came out in the mid to late 80s.

So all IBM PC Gameport devices are actualyl analog, and that means I can just plug in the Sidewinder and any game from 1985 to 1995 that has joystick support, period?

This should be in Marvin.

motley6 wrote:

By "newer digital gamepads" I meant something like the Microsoft Sidewinder Gamepad with the 15 pin connector as opposed to something like the old Gravis Analog Joystick or those Kraft Analog Joysticks (both with 15 pin connectors) similar to the Tandy/PCjr ones. The former came out in the mid 90s, the latter ones came out in the mid to late 80s.

So all IBM PC Gameport devices are actualyl analog, and that means I can just plug in the Sidewinder and any game from 1985 to 1995 that has joystick support, period?

Yes, that's essentially correct. And if you set the switch to analogue they should behave like a regular IBM joystick.
But beware, some of those late joysticks from the Win98 era are dual mode. Eventhough they have a 15pin plug,
they also support the USB protocol and require a mechanical adapter to work in USB mode.

@Phil
Btw, C64/Atari sticks were supported in a neat way!
The Atari or C64 joysticks were indeed digital, albeit in a primitve form.
There was no fancy electronics inside or any kind of nifty mechanism. They only had a few switches.
In fact, sometimes not even that. Just some metal contacts.
So to made those joysticks compatible with the IBM PC, some adapters or gameport cards just used a simple but neat trick:
they just added some resistors between the gameport circuit and the joystick!
They basically replaced the potentiometer's functionality (variable resistors) with something compatible (fixed resistors).
So every time you moved the Atari joystick, the resistor values were mixed in a specific way.
This way, the digital Atari joystick essentially became analogoue.

Edit: Several corrections, sorry. Quote added.

Ok, I think I understand now. Coming from a console background, I assumed gamepad=digital/joystick=analog, but I see now with IBM PC's that the directional device is irrelevant because it all gets decoded as analog through the gameport card. Thanks for everyone's help. I've got that MS Sidewinder gamepad already so I'll just stick with that once I get the 486 in. Thanks.

Moved to Marvin (though I accidentally left a shadow thread in DOS, whoops)

Speaking under correction, but I think that, apart from the Sidewinder 3D Pro, all of Microsoft's joysticks and gamepads were digital only (the 3D Pro was a digital joystick, but had an analog emulation mode that it could fall back on).

This means that they won't function under real mode DOS, unless the game specifically supports the joystick/gamepad.