There are drivers for some older game controllers here in the Vogons drivers area.

Also, appropriate drivers can often be located by simply doing a bit of research on Google.

You could also specify what controllers you are trying to use and get more specific help.

And finally, you could simply try and see what happens when XP detects the new hardware- it may have drivers already since XP is not that far removed from at least the late nineties- being released itself in 2001 after all.

You should also just take a peek in device manager to be certain that the game port is correctly recognized to start with, else it won't much matter what you plug in to it.

I'd love the opposite. A way for modern USB joysticks to work in DOS games 😀

I'd love for my 95 machine to just recognize a USB port! 🤣

JoeCorrado wrote:

Also, appropriate drivers can often be located by simply doing a bit of research on Google. […]
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Also, appropriate drivers can often be located by simply doing a bit of research on Google.

You could also specify what controllers you are trying to use and get more specific help.

And finally, you could simply try and see what happens when XP detects the new hardware- it may have drivers already since XP is not that far removed from at least the late nineties- being released itself in 2001 after all.

You should also just take a peek in device manager to be certain that the game port is correctly recognized to start with, else it won't much matter what you plug in to it.

I think the controllers in question are standard gameport devices that rely on "drivers" to transform digital signals (which otherwise show up as semi-random button presses) into usable input, like the old Gravis pads in GRiP mode. There's no reason XP or anything else would recognize them as something special on their own, I would think.

I have a Thrustmaster 3D Rage that I'd love to keep using, but I don't think there are any XP drivers for that, and certainly trying to use it with a Gameport-to-USB adapter seems wholly unfeasible.

I think Joystick connected to the Game-port are Not Autodetected, or maybe only in XP.

Try to manually add them im System settings.

Windows XP has full gameport support. I was actually just using my Sidewinder to play Steam games! 😎 Windows Vista and later however... have NONE! At all. Since Windows XP runs on fairly modern hardware (I think I heard up to Ivy Bridge?) you could say yes, it will work, as long as the game you want to play is compatible with XP. A word of advice: XP's libraries are very out of date. Sit down for a while and install the latest .NET, Visual C++, and DirectX runtimes! As for getting the gameport, older motherboards will often have a gameport header, but I've never seen one built into anything newer than a Pentium 4. If you want something faster, I think I'd suggest an old sound card, or perhaps a USB adapter.

As for using USB controllers in DOS, what's DOSBox? 😁

georgeqgreg wrote:

I was actually just using my Sidewinder to play Steam games!

But you did have to install drivers for it, right?

Windows Vista and later however... have NONE! At all.

I managed to persuade a gameport on an old SB Live card to work in Vista once, but I forget the details. The instructions are out there somewhere.

I also tried my gameport-to-USB adapter in Windows 7 just now and it worked fine – except only four buttons on my old gamepad (plus the cross pad) were recognized.

Since Windows XP runs on fairly modern hardware (I think I heard up to Ivy Bridge?)

I wasn't aware there was hardware that wouldn't run XP for some reason.

Well, I guess technically I installed a driver. I went into game options, clicked "add" and selected it from a list. Fun fact: I installed Windows 7 on my Pentium 4 board the other day, it amazingly worked, but the gameport didn't. I think I did hear something about a hack... but it's a hack. That works in certain situations. And it will only recognize basic gameport joysticks I guess. Alternatively, the USB adapter could've been converting it to a USB HID with some kind of internal logic. As for Windows XP not working on modern boards, I guess outside of unsupported onboard hardware (no drivers?) it's a largely theoretical problem. Time will tell anyway, but I have noticed XP struggles with modern SATA drives.

If you're asking for native gameport support on Vista or later, you're pretty screwed if you're using a 64-bit OS. 32-bit driver workarounds exist, but I've never tried them since I don't see a point in running post-Vista Windows on non-64-bit machines.

As for gameport-to-USB adapters, the ones I've used just plain suck. Low axis resolution, won't hold calibration, jitter, only work with analog gameport sticks (so forget about Microsoft SideWinder or Logitech ADI hardware) etc. You're much better off breaking out the soldering iron and learning how to solder all your pots, buttons and switches to a new USB controller board.

There's a reason you need a 3DP-Vert adapter for proper SideWinder 3D Pro and 3D Pro Plus/first-revision Precision Pro support (before the second-revision Precision Pro added a native USB interface and a pin adapter). You won't get all four axes and the extra four base buttons without it. (On the flip side, the 3D Pro's TM FCS/CH Flightstick Pro emulation is what makes it actually usable in DOS.)

You have additional complications if it's keyboard port-programmed gear like the TM F-16 FLCS/F-22 Pro, because that stuff can't be programmed through XP or later. Gotta boot up DOS or Win9x and do your programming there.

Personally, unless your gameport-era gear's a really elaborate HOTAS setup, I don't even see the point in trying to convert it for modern computer usage. You can buy new TM T.16000-M sticks for $25 these days with far better precision and a modern USB interface compared to most gameport-era gear, and if you're looking to step up to HOTAS, second hand Saitek X-45s are cheap!

Not sure if I made it clear above, but I knew about the 64 bit thing, so I tried 32 bit 7 to see if I'd actually get somewhere... I was not impressed.

Personally, I find the sidewinder damn comfortable and it has a very nice layout. 6 face buttons and shoulder buttons! Very solid too. Microsoft really took a step backwards with the Xbox controller.

There is a solution for this problem for some of the sidewinder sticks and pads. A clever bloke on the descentBB forums has reverse engineered the digital protocol microsoft used and programmed a PIC to interface these to a usb port and present itself to the computer as a standard HID device.

http://www.descentbb.net/viewtopic.php?t=15526

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

I'd love the opposite. A way for modern USB joysticks to work in DOS games 😀

Can't you do that with Windows 9x, as long as the joystick is recognized by Windows and the game is happy to be run from Windows?

I don't think any of the Windows DOS boxes have any such capability. VDMSound though, maybe. That'd be only for XP users I reckon.

georgeqgreg wrote:

I don't think any of the Windows DOS boxes have any such capability. VDMSound though, maybe. That'd be only for XP users I reckon.

OK, somehow I remembered this wrong. When I used Windows 98 I had a gameport joystick.
According to a quick search VDMSound should indeed be able to do this.
Other options would be DOSBox (obviously), maybe some virtualization software, or if you only need gamepad support (no analog signals) you could use a key mapper like this one in Windows.

But I suppose Maulwurf is well aware of these options

After some more searching I found this page with some interesting stuff. A part of this is indeed a DOS driver for USB joysticks.
From the manual:

"USBJSTIK is a Device/Interface Driver program for up to eight USB joysticks or gamepads. USBJSTIK emulates a "regular" joystick (attached to a game port) at the BIOS (software) level. Unfortunately, most DOS programs that use a joystick do not interact with the joysticks at the BIOS level (even though they should at least have that as an option). Rather, most DOS programs interact with the joysticks directly at the hardware level.

USBJSTIK can also emulate joysticks at the hardware level, rather than the BIOS (software) level, using a process called I/O Virtualization. Emulating a joystick at the hardware level allows you to use a USB joystick with almost any DOS program you can imagine. However, USBJSTIK cannot perform I/O Virtualization on its own. In order Virtualize I/O, you must have an appropriate memory manager installed via your CONFIG.SYS file. Appropriate memory managers include Microsoft's EMM386 version 4.46 or later, and 386MAX. As far as I know, other memory managers (such as QEMM or the EMM386 program that comes with FreeDOS) do not support I/O Virtualization, and cannot be used with USBJSTIK if you want to emulate joysticks at the hardware level."

Anyone here ever tried this?

Sounds like those Sidewinder-DOS emulators. Unfortunately I've never gotten to try one as each time I would a part of the computer I intended to try it on would break. (Latest the PSU!) Didn't know about JoystickCursorTool, looks interesting, might to see if I can make use of it.

I also want to praise the old Sidewinder. I have 3D Pro which is still the most comfortable joystick I've tried. I use it for flight sims with Windows 7 via a USB/gameport adaptor. Unfortunately the base buttons and throttle are non-functional though.

Edit: apparently USB/gameport adaptors are variable in quality. The one I'm using is the green "RockFire" model. It works well but is limited to 3 axes and 4 buttons.

A tangent, but there are small pcb joystick boards that can convert switches to usb keyboard input, usually used to connect arcade controls to the computer for Mame, etc. One of my favorites is the I-Pac line from Ultimarc.com. I haven't used it for analog pc joysticks, but I've used it to connect Atari/Commodore joysticks to the computer and it works great. I've had much worse luck with cheap dedicated "commodore -> usb" converters. Depending on your budget and joystick, that might be an option worth investigating.

I've also had great luck with arcade console (PS1/PS2/Nintendo/N64) to USB converters, but as I said, terrible luck with Atari/Commodore to USB and PC Joystick to USB converters. For some old joystick styles, (the UltraRacer!) I never got the pc version + converter working but the console version + converter worked the first time.

And there are some (Space Orb!) that were very custom controllers and I'm still trying to find a way to get working. (3rd party projects show promise but not trivial and I'm not up to it yet. Sadly I missed the 'buy a completed kit' window; if anyone is looking to get sell one or two converters, I'm interested!)

2fort5r wrote:

I also want to praise the old Sidewinder. I have 3D Pro which is still the most comfortable joystick I've tried. I use it for flight sims with Windows 7 via a USB/gameport adaptor. Unfortunately the base buttons and throttle are non-functional though.

Edit: apparently USB/gameport adaptors are variable in quality. The one I'm using is the green "RockFire" model. It works well but is limited to 3 axes and 4 buttons.

You need a 3DP-Vert if you want full functionality out of that 3D Pro.

http://descentbb.net/viewtopic.php?t=15526

Quadko wrote:

And there are some (Space Orb!) that were very custom controllers and I'm still trying to find a way to get working. (3rd party projects show promise but not trivial and I'm not up to it yet. Sadly I missed the 'buy a completed kit' window; if anyone is looking to get sell one or two converters, I'm interested!)

Heh, the SpaceOrb 360...frankly, I opted for the "buy a used 3Dconnexion SpacePilot instead" approach when it came down to getting a USB equivalent supported by modern OSes. Freed up my right hand for other things, too.

Only problem is that the SpacePilot and modern Descent source ports don't permit the turn speeds I'm used to in the original DOS releases with SpaceWare. Apparently, it's cheating because it bypasses the game's original turn rate limits, but it's hard to go back.