For the ISA card you may need to change it from 4-button to 2-button.

Do you have any other controllers that work in the ISA card in DOS?

JustRob wrote on 2021-12-13, 22:20:

So I have one of those Gravis Gamepad, the standard one that kinda looks like an SNES controller and shouldn't require any drivers. I have an ISA sound card I use for dos games in pure dos mode and a PCI sound card for games in Windows 98 SE. The gamepad doesn't work in pure dos mode when hooked up to the ISA card or the PCI card, and in Windows, it only works when hooked up to the PCI card.

Could the gameport on my ISA card be busted, or am I doing something wrong?

In debugging my own Gravis Gamepad issues in DOS, I found that most DOS games always use port 201 for Joystick, even 2-player games. So make sure the gameport on the ISA card is assigned port 201.
Another thing that helped was some really nice joystick debugging tools that can be found here: Re: Good DOS joystick test program?

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-12-13, 22:54:

For the ISA card you may need to change it from 4-button to 2-button.

Do you have any other controllers that work in the ISA card in DOS?

Uh, probably a stupid question... But how do I do that?

enaiel wrote on 2021-12-14, 03:30:

JustRob wrote on 2021-12-13, 22:20:

So I have one of those Gravis Gamepad, the standard one that kinda looks like an SNES controller and shouldn't require any drivers. I have an ISA sound card I use for dos games in pure dos mode and a PCI sound card for games in Windows 98 SE. The gamepad doesn't work in pure dos mode when hooked up to the ISA card or the PCI card, and in Windows, it only works when hooked up to the PCI card.

Could the gameport on my ISA card be busted, or am I doing something wrong?

In debugging my own Gravis Gamepad issues in DOS, I found that most DOS games always use port 201 for Joystick, even 2-player games. So make sure the gameport on the ISA card is assigned port 201.
Another thing that helped was some really nice joystick debugging tools that can be found here: Re: Good DOS joystick test program?

Since my PCI card is a Sound Blaster Live!, and my ISA is a Sound Blaster as well, I have two gameport things in device manager, one simply says "Gameport" and the other says "Creative Gameport". One of them was on 200-208, but the other wasn't. I changed it, but got a warning saying there'd be a conflict. However, I can't change the other one to another address even if I uncheck the automatic settings box. Anyway, it didn't work.

I'll check out those tools later, thanks.

Well, I tried disabling the gameport on my PCI soundcard outright in device manager. Now the controller works on my ISA card when I play dos games in Windows, but in pure dos, still nothing.

Is there something you need to put in autoexec.bat to initialize it, or something?

JustRob wrote on 2021-12-14, 18:58:

Well, I tried disabling the gameport on my PCI soundcard outright in device manager. Now the controller works on my ISA card when I play dos games in Windows, but in pure dos, still nothing.

Is there something you need to put in autoexec.bat to initialize it, or something?

Cool, that confirms that it is a port assignment issue - the ISA card was not able to use port 201 till you disabled the gameport on the PCI SBLive!. What model exactly is the ISA Sound Blaster? You should be able to force it to use port 201 in pure DOS as well.

It's an AWE64 Gold, CT4390 I think.

JustRob wrote on 2021-12-16, 22:05:

It's an AWE64 Gold, CT4390 I think.

You can use CTCU to configure the card (including the Joystick port) in DOS. CTCM is probably needed to initialize the card after every reboot. Can be downloaded from here: https://cloakedthargoid.wordpress.com/ctpnp-dos7/

JustRob wrote on 2021-12-14, 05:38:

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-12-13, 22:54:

For the ISA card you may need to change it from 4-button to 2-button.

Do you have any other controllers that work in the ISA card in DOS?

Uh, probably a stupid question... But how do I do that?

There should be a switch on the gravis gamepad to switch between 4-button and 2-button + turbo.

enaiel wrote on 2021-12-16, 22:58:

JustRob wrote on 2021-12-16, 22:05:

It's an AWE64 Gold, CT4390 I think.

You can use CTCU to configure the card (including the Joystick port) in DOS. CTCM is probably needed to initialize the card after every reboot. Can be downloaded from here: https://cloakedthargoid.wordpress.com/ctpnp-dos7/

Well, after changing my CTCM and CTCU with the ones on this website, and running them again through dos, it finally works now.

And it actually recognizes both configuration, 4 button and 2 button.

Thanks a ton guys.