Well as long as your host sees the Joystick then DosBox will see it. Check the DosBox console window and see if DosBox detects it.

Also DosBox will perform slowly with gameport joysticks....so I don't know how good the performance will be with a non-USB joystick.

How do I check if dosbox can see the joystick?

Look at the second window that opens when starting dosbox. It contains some diagnostic messages, and if dosbox detects any Joysticks, you will see a message there.

How about a Microsoft Widewinder Presicion Pro -joystick? It has a gameport connector, but it came with an USB-adapter. Dosbox recognizes it as a USB joystick, but it simply kills the performance, makes sound chopppy, etc.

Win Xp SP2
Athlon XP 2800+
512 MB RAM
Onboard sound (AC97)
Geforce 4 FX 5600 (128 MB)

Hi,

I have a Microsoft Precision Pro joystick connected with the bundled USB adapter to my PC. My system is similar to yours (Athlon XP 2500+, 512 MiB of RAM), but I don't notice any slowdowns. I also use the Joy2Key program (the version that has been translated to English) to map joystick buttons.

I'm using Gulikoza's build:
http://home.amis.net/lkslavi/dosbox.html#Download

And I've modified these parameters in dosbox.conf:
core=dynamic
cycles=90000
timesynched=true

Cheers.

Hmm. cycles=90000 seems too much for your processor speed. Just my 0.02€ cents.

timesynch compensates for that.