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DOS Gameport Woe

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First post, by original_meusli

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Hello

I have a 486 DX setup that for the life of me I can't get to accept a joystick on the gameport properly. It has worked intermittently but always falls over and I have tried two separate soundblaster cards that both have the same issue.

Cards used are thew AWE64 Gold and a SB16, everything else on the cards work and I have had a successful diagnose run on them( I did run into the high DMA error which crashed my PC, so I have used a setting in CTSU? app that allows only low DMA and it reports no conflict on the gameport) . Sound is also being received on my SC-88 through the AWE gold so that suggests the port works. I have toyed with buying just a gameport isa slot but will hold off until I am sure I can't fix this

Please help as I am desperate to play Aces of the Pacific!

Also I have several joysticks to test with one of them being an early CH Flightstick.

Reply 1 of 7, by Jorpho

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Are you only using this with DOS games?

If all your joysticks are digital then I would not expect them to work. (But then, I wouldn't expect them to work at all, not to work intermittently.)

Reply 2 of 7, by original_meusli

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Its an old analogue that I used back in the day and several others I have topgun,thrustmaster el cheapos all act in a similar fashion. I know this CH stick is DOS compatible from using one like it back in the day with this game. It just that most times when you click "joystick on" in the settings nothing happens. Apart from a couple of times where it accepted it let me calibrate then stop working when in game, bastard. The weird thing was the times it did this to me I could still press the buttons to fire the guns, just no plane control.

It has all the hallmarks of a weird conflict that I can't see, bios on this machine is pretty crap.

Reply 6 of 7, by Shreddoc

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original_meusli wrote on 2021-02-17, 23:40:

Yes, I do. Can this cause issues?

I have had issues with it before. I don't know if that's typical. I suspect it depends upon several factors working together e.g. the card, the wiring of the splitter, and the type/complexity of joystick.

In my scenario, DOS 7 and Tie Fighter with an SC55MkII and MS Sidewinder 3D stick coming off the same YMF719 ISA card's gameport, the stick was really weird and inconsistent in it's behaviour and detectability. Had to do the chicken dance and macarena simultaneously while plugging and unplugging the joystick exactly 3.623462462 times, and this would give a 10% chance of it temporarily working. Quite inconvenient.

To solve it, I ended up using 2 ISA sound cards in the same system. One's gameport dedicated as MIDI out, and the other's gameport as Joystick in. All 100% good since then.

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