VOGONS


First post, by Soupdragon

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I just picked up a cheap Space Orb 360 controller, as they always interested me and I thought it would make a nice edition to my late 90's system.

Unfortunately it doesn’t have software or a manual. Windows detects it on bootup but there are no built in drivers. Dos games seem to require some thing extra also. I tried to run the setup for Duke and Quake but there arnt any options for it.

Looking for drivers online is a nightmare now; every site seems to tell me I need to download driver detective. In the past I have always found drivers from other places but this time nothing. Is it safe? do you have to pay for the service?

If anyone has drivers or could point me in the right direction it would be very helpful. I am running Win98 SE.

Thanks

Reply 1 of 9, by hifidelitygaming

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USB or serial based?

A site called Birdman's Lair used to be THE site for like a decade, but it seems to be gone, even if there's stuff in archive.org it wont have files. 🙁 No clue whether anyone archived the site at the time or not, i'd love to see a mirror of it if one existed.

There's also some hardware project using an arduiono controller turning a serial version into a USB recognized windows 7 device with no additional drivers needed that I saw.

Reply 2 of 9, by Ailicec

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I'd avoid the driver detectives like the plague. If they do nothing, you'd be lucky; more likely they malware. At best, they've just scraped up most of the same drivers you can find yourself. Same with BIOS update services. Nobody is developing 3rd party BIOSes and very very few are doing third party drivers (certainly not the clowns selling these "detectives").

I have a similar situation with a Spaceball 4000-FLX (rs-232); works fine with demo apps, but driver support is non-existent and the company long ago abandoned it. Its irritating since the serial protocol is fairly simple. I looked at what it would take to do a driver - there's a linux one thats a few pages of source, but a windows equivalent looked like an enormous mess.

Reply 4 of 9, by Soupdragon

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Thanks for help guys. Its a serial one. I just bought another cheap one from ebay this time sold as new and in the box. So I guess it will have drivers with it this time. If it doesnt I'll pay for the $3 and try the download from driverguide.com.

Reply 5 of 9, by NamelessPlayer

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Whoa, how'd I miss this?

I still have a driver CD I can image for you, but it's probably an outdated version. If you're willing to grab it off DriverGuide (can't believe they're charging people for driver downloads, ugh!), could you do us all a favor and mirror it somewhere, like a file uploading site? Ever since planethardware.com/spaceorb went down, so did most of the files.

Reply 6 of 9, by Soupdragon

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The 2nd boxed one arrived and it did come with software. But it doesn’t seem to work well with windows 98 I loaded the software but windows still asks me to install drivers when I start it up. The Orb does work under 98 but only in the user guide program. The launcher software fails so I cant run it with games under windows.

Playing games in DOS works but I found it very hard to use, after 10 + years of mouse and keyboard. Also both controllers seem to not to strafe to the left very well. I think I will just stick to keyboard and mouse. Thanks for help everyone.

Reply 7 of 9, by hifidelitygaming

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Just out of curiosity how cheaply did you get the spaceorb controllers? 😜 There was a 'craze' for awhile where people asked nutty prices for them.

The controller's killer app is Descent - try that before you give up totally on it. It's DOS so it should work with the controller properly. In everything else it was hit and miss.

Try compatibility modes on the launcher if there is some option.. it was designed for 95 I thought, it's strange if it doesnt work. 😒 Any other PC to try it on?

There is that arduiono based hardware hack that turns it into a fully supported USB controller in modern OS'es out there as well.

How bad is the strafe to left problem? Wondering whether it was like analog joysticks that drifted and you could adjust something to compensate or if it's like a 'dead' spot in them.

If the dead left strafe problem is fixable and the price is right I might buy it off you because i've always wanted to try one in Descent myself.

Reply 8 of 9, by Soupdragon

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I do intend to try it again some time. But at the moment the PC I was using is packed away due to lack of space. The first one I bought was £14 and the second one was £16 including postage.

Reply 9 of 9, by NamelessPlayer

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Now that my interest in Win9x has been rekindled, I've brought out the ol' SpaceOrb again. My driver CD is the final version (4.81), thankfully, though it may still be missing some game profiles. (I'm such an idiot for not checking the version several months ago and uploading it back then.)

I've uploaded the CD image to Dropbox. I'll probably upload it to the VOGONS Drivers site too, once I figure out the uploading process there.