Cleaning the contacts is what I was going to suggest. Drift is very typical behavior thanks to oxidation and grime in those old pots.

Apologies, but which contacts would that be? I took off the bottom "cover" metal sheet and can see the potentiometers, and where they are connecter to the wires... Or are you referring to the gameport connector?

Inside the potentiometers. Many of them have an opening where you can spray contact cleaner.

Yes. Use DeOxit.

So I cleaned as much as I could without removing the potentiometers (with WD-40 Contact Cleaner) and after trying several times this did not seem to change anything. I actually took off the stick completely and with just the two potentiometer lines and ground connected to the port the results were the same: in joy2key I could see reading fluctuate by 10-100 for both axis when using it for joystick testing (with /j).

It's funny that in game this leads to different behavior: I can play Tie Fighter with very little noticeable impact, but in Wing Commander 3 there is aways drift, or sporadic jumps in one direction. In Descent I have noticed that switching off l2 cache (coincidence?) the "jumps" are gone and drift can become barely noticeable. Windows 9x calibration applet shows slight jitter and Fury 3 is in principle playable, but again slight drift kicks in sometimes, but then suddlenly diappears. It's as if either different games have different "dead zones" or similar filtering coded, or the whole operation is very speed sensitive, or both...

Sticking with the joystick itself, hook a multimeter up to the pots on the axes giving you trouble and move the joystick. See if your resistance reading on the pot stays smooth or is jittery. if it jitters, the pot still needs servicing. If it is smooth, the problem is elsewhere.

I am not familiar with when your particular joystick came out, but I will say that I had some issues with the move from ISA to PCI for gameports as I want to say they moved from 5v to 3.3v signaling. Some time after that, I switched from 15-pin joystick ports to USB.

Thanks for the advice so far, yet I am actually giving up on this device, sice what I have noticed was that after stick movement the readings did not go back to the same range they were showing before the move. Looking at what was hapenning inside the case, stick movements were repositioning potentiometers slightly, changing the "measurement zone" similar to how the dials by the side were meant to do, and my amateurish guess was that stiff necks were to blame. Moreover, I now have a "theory" that because I started using the joystick after a very long period of rest without first servicing the potentiometers, the torque from usage which went to the potentiometer case instead of the brush due to the stiff necks has made the plastic housing which connects them to the dials too wiggly to hold still.

I have taken the joystick apart further and did another round of cleanup, paying attention to the necks as well this time and (nonsurprisingly) it did not help at this stage.

So, I guess, will look for an alternative one, and not a Logitech this time.

I eventually got a new stick, an InterAct this time to compliment the throttle I got some time ago. Nothing facny, a 5 button (no idea really) analog stick; no POV hat, as InterAct have (rather reasonably?) moved that to the throttle and made "digital" from the beginning. As with the Wingman Extreme in the OP has likely not been used for about 30 years, and this time even sold as "new". And the result is...

...oh, well, I think the issue is with trying to get these sticks work with a much more recent machine (and a PCI sound card) more than anything else. Still major drift in Wing Commander 3 and 4, which gets a bit less noticeable in VGA. Descent and Descent II are all over the place: drift, random "jumps".

In Tie Fighter CD with hi res there's noticeable jitter, but game can be played; X-Wing CD is totally fine. Rebel Assault is playable. Terminal Velocity also seems ok, although there seems to be a slight drift before the stick is pushed for the first time in a map. Some irregular drift in Slipstream 5000, but the games feels playable still.

Yet to check Archimedean Dynasty and Sub Wars 2055.

Have no clue how to open this one for maintenance, but likely not taking chances, as I feel might just ruin it in the end.

ludicrous_peridot wrote on 2025-08-31, 20:48:

I eventually got a new stick, an InterAct this time to compliment the throttle I got some time ago. Nothing facny, a 5 button (n […]
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I eventually got a new stick, an InterAct this time to compliment the throttle I got some time ago. Nothing facny, a 5 button (no idea really) analog stick; no POV hat, as InterAct have (rather reasonably?) moved that to the throttle and made "digital" from the beginning. As with the Wingman Extreme in the OP has likely not been used for about 30 years, and this time even sold as "new". And the result is...

...oh, well, I think the issue is with trying to get these sticks work with a much more recent machine (and a PCI sound card) more than anything else. Still major drift in Wing Commander 3 and 4, which gets a bit less noticeable in VGA. Descent and Descent II are all over the place: drift, random "jumps".

In Tie Fighter CD with hi res there's noticeable jitter, but game can be played; X-Wing CD is totally fine. Rebel Assault is playable. Terminal Velocity also seems ok, although there seems to be a slight drift before the stick is pushed for the first time in a map. Some irregular drift in Slipstream 5000, but the games feels playable still.

Yet to check Archimedean Dynasty and Sub Wars 2055.

Have no clue how to open this one for maintenance, but likely not taking chances, as I feel might just ruin it in the end.

How is this other controller in any windows based games? Is it better then the last? Or does it still misbehave too much?

I only ask because I have a cheap old analog gamepad connected to a vortex2 based sound card in my P3 machine that I use for Need For Speed Porsche (and similar). It works flawlessly with any windows based games...BUT if I try to use it in any dos games (under windows) guess what - it works but it DRIFTS LIKE CRAZY (specifically up/down). This is a little perplexing to me as there is obviously no potentiometer involved with a d-pad AND it works great in windows so I'm thinking it unlikely to be a physical issue with the controller (ie current leakage from one contact to another due to grime etc). It seems to me that there is more at play here, perhaps a specific driver is needed for these to work in dos.

Sorry, have not replied, but not in a position to test at the moment. However, I suspect this is very much my case, because before I "broke" my Wingman, I could see it worked ok in Windows 98 joystick capplet, but not with DOS games. By the time I got to test with Fury3 it started to have issues with flimsy potentiometer positioning.

In Windows majority of the gameport joysticks will "drift" (jitter is a better term) because other stuff the OS does will affect the timing sensitive measurement process of these gameport connected joysticks. I recall there is a checkbox called "poll with interrupts enabled", you do not want it checked. The cost is lower performance but less jittery readings.

Some soundcards have an actual ADC in them that allows to sidestep normal gameport polling mechanism with the correct Windows driver and provide much more stable readings but I don't know any names off hand right now.

He-he... the feeling I am getting is that one is either sticking with period correct builds for playing with analog joysticks, or no analog joysticks at all. 😀
At the moment the only DOS game I can actually enjoy with the throttle (myself being very far from hard core flight sims, and this throttle not having digital mode) is Terminal Velocity.
This is on it's own already great, but I was somehow expecting more - e.g., I am not a big fan of Descent, but certainly wanted to try it HOTAS way, and I have been eyeing finishing WC3 and 4 eventually. 😀
With just the stick I am eyeing Slipstream 5000, Archimedean Dynasty and Subwar 2050 which seem to work.
But it's difficult for me to picture playing a jump and run game with a stick, so I am mostly trying arcade sim type games.

In fact Sub Wars 2050 turned out to be an amazing game. Not only did it pick up the throttle for the controll of, well, (u-boat's) throttle, despite no information given in the manual about support for that (and by the way, after carefully calibrating I am able to play the game without drifting; only to figure out the amount of slowdown to apply, with which joystick velocity is already agreable, but the game is still playable, as on fast machines joystick is too "sensitive"). It also seems to be using OPL3 for BOTH music and sound effects; at least it has both on a PCI soundcard even without DMA emulation enabled. I am intrigued now, and will be on the lookout for the mission pack.