I'd go for the gameport to usb things. They are around at least on ebay (just search gameport usb). I have no clue whether these are good or not, though.

Some motherboards have a gameport/midi header.

Check your motherboard manual.

If you're lucky, then you can get by with something like this:

Nifty. I bet you'd end up paying as much for one of those as you would for a USB-to-gameport adapter, though.

I suppose I could check the motherboard, but this was a Compaq PC bought on clearance a couple of months ago, and I doubt it has something like that - or is such a header a common feature of AC97-compatible chipsets?

the problem with usb to gameport adaptors is they a picky

such a header is fairly common, almost every motherboard with onboard sound i bought had this. Check the manual of the machine. Probably dell has it around for download.

I have a Manhattan (Rockfire clone) Gameport to USB adapter and it only supports analog joysticks. No digital things.

I didn't get around to looking at this until now.

The motherboard is one of these (see also here). Lots of solder points, but not really any unusual headers.

Now, there is that little four-pin doodad at the bottom of the board labelled "AUX IN1", but surely that's the Line Input connector listed under "internal connectors", no? It certainly doesn't look anything like Mr. Salminen's connector.

thats usually for audio from the cdrom drive

So, since USB-to-gameport adapters are picky and this motherboard has no gameport header, what would be the best way to go? I notice that Creative's more recent PCI cards don't even have gameports anymore. Is there a particularly good model that is still useful for lots of other things but also has a gameport?

All Sound Blaster Live! had a gameport. Look ebay.

Audigy2ZS , you can plug a gameport header on it

X-Fi don't have gameport

I have heard that gameport and mpu401 are not supported anymore with vista