So.... have you got in the habit of running Jazz first to check functionality then going to something else, because if might be the state that Jazz is leaving them in is the problem, so reboot and try stuff.

No unfortunately it happens without Jazz being run, or even installed for that matter 🙁

If nobody else has any better debugging suggestions, one thing that comes to mind is that since it's an ISA card, I assume the game port is standard (maybe there are nonstandard game ports on ISA cards and I just don't know enough about this stuff to be aware of them though) and it should be possible to use the joystick without your soundcard drivers being installed. Of course it might affect your ability to get audio, but it could help to rule out another conflict.

Also I seem to recall that JOYSDK11.ZIP from http://files.mpoli.fi/software/PROGRAMM/GENERAL/ ("Gravis: Joystick software developers kit v1.1") has a simple joystick testing utility in it (or something like that) which I've used before to test game ports.

Hopefully someone more knowledgeable has some better suggestions though, save these for if you get desperate! 😀

mickloaf wrote on 2022-02-02, 02:08:

No unfortunately it happens without Jazz being run, or even installed for that matter 🙁

Ah okay, just Jazz has a rep for being difficult on random other hardware so it was giving me a thought it might be screwing with system timers.

However, it might be hitting hardware direct, whereas other stuff is going through some BIOS or OS layer that is causing problems.

Some more joystick debugging tools can be found here: Re: Good DOS joystick test program?

Found something about a different card that might be worth checking into...
Re: Sound Blaster 16 Clones

The gameport on your sound card might honestly just be faulty. Do you have another card you can try?

keenmaster486 wrote on 2022-02-02, 18:39:

The gameport on your sound card might honestly just be faulty. Do you have another card you can try?

Unfortunately this is my only “working” ISA sound card 🙁

None of the tools posted above in here even detect a joystick yet it’s fully working in Jazz and partially working in other games.

Looks like I’m only going to narrow this down by buying another sound card.

Many thanks for all the help folks.

Mick.

Keep an eye out for dedicated ISA gameport cards too. In my experience browsing in Australia at least, they don't seem to have a lot of appeal, so tend to be cheaper than sound cards. Can be harder to find though.

I think it's one of those things that would be easier to find if they were worth more. Might see them in bunches/lots of nothing cards, modem, modem, modem, NIC, modem, game card, modem, modem.

Come to think of, most of the time "back in the day" my joystick went to the multi-io card gameport, I think at the time io cards were $20 and soundcards $50 up so I figured I'd wear out the i/o card first.

Pierre32 wrote on 2022-02-03, 12:40:

Keep an eye out for dedicated ISA gameport cards too. In my experience browsing in Australia at least, they don't seem to have a lot of appeal, so tend to be cheaper than sound cards. Can be harder to find though.

Added advantage: they tend to have two ports, so you can do multi-player games too 😀

can you pull out the overdrive cpu?
joystricks are speed sensitive, I dont remember when, but Pentiums definitely had some trouble, there were even later sound cards with special modified gameports able to work with fast CPU (different capacitor values maybe?)

I bought an AWE64 with a completely non-functional gameport. Turns out it was corroded internally and joystick pins were not making an electrical connection. Contact cleaner didn't work. I ended up having to soak it in vinegar & stick a pipe cleaner in every hole to remove the corrosion.

Speed sensitivity of the joystick port makes no sense since it is working in Jazz.

You can always test by lowering the fsb to 25Mhz from 33Mhz and see if it makes any difference. That is if the motherboard had adjustable fsb.

Are there any ISA bus speed settings in the BIOS?

mickloaf wrote on 2022-02-03, 12:13:

Unfortunately this is my only “working” ISA sound card 🙁 Looks like I’m only going to narrow this down by buying another sound c […]
Show full quote

Unfortunately this is my only “working” ISA sound card 🙁
Looks like I’m only going to narrow this down by buying another sound card.

Many thanks for all the help folks.

Mick.

You do not need another sound card to test if truly the Game Port. Many ISA HD/Floppy/I-O cards have them too. DO you have any Multi I/O ISA cards ?
All you do is disable Game port on the sound card then on the Multi I/O card disable the HD/Floppy/Coms/LPT thru jumpers and use just the Game Port.
Have done it a few times my self testing Sound cards with erratic Game ports....and erratic onboard floppy, com, etc ports...
My fav card for that is a small Holtek EIO-2A / LCMSIO-2A, they have clear labeled jumpers for enable/disable everything on it (you can Google and see the Image of it) 😀

In addition to the user's own testing, even the fact we have a working game (Jazz) suggests that electrical continuity is not the key issue.

I think Jazz is also anecdotally known for inventive hardware access methods. For example, I have encountered the inverse scenario to yours before, where Jazz was the only one of my main games that wouldn't recognise a certain joystick. It is interesting that Epic's less-common (more direct, I assume) hardware access methods are getting through here, but not the standard joystick calls of other games.

I think the weirdest one is Dogfight. It must be able to read the joystick register, with the correct timing, to get the X/Y position to move the cursor. But it doesn't get the button status (found in the same register), when Jazz can? How can that go wrong? Missing ground on the gameport connector?

[edit: no, can't be that, otherwise Jazz doesn't work]

cyclone3d wrote on 2022-02-04, 00:11:

Speed sensitivity of the joystick port makes no sense since it is working in Jazz.

it makes perfect sense since reading joystick is performed by
- writing to joystick port (0x2xx something)
- pooling 0x2xx something port in a tight loop until values change
- calculating the time it took for XY axis bits to flip back

depending on the age of the game you get into situations where programmers didnt anticipate timing loop taking so long = overflowing/breaking code
Other option might be non standard gameport IO port and Jazz being aggressive about probing more possible locations?

Shreddoc wrote on 2022-02-04, 00:55:

I think Jazz is also anecdotally known for inventive hardware access methods. For example, I have encountered the inverse scenario to yours before, where Jazz was the only one of my main games that wouldn't recognise a certain joystick.

Yep, I've experienced that with Jazz.