Have you tried the official forum at https://bretjohnson.us/forum/ ? It seems like it's not always possible to connect but it's working for me right now. Also there's a note at the bottom of the home page at https://bretjohnson.us/ with some information about "If your computer locks up", perhaps it's worth checking if you haven't already.

ludicrous_peridot wrote on 2024-08-18, 14:19:

I am about to try and see if a later version of EMM386 would work, as opposed to using the one shipped with my version of DOS, but am honestly expecting it to say something about "Incorrect DOS version instead..."

That seems quite likely to me!

Good luck!

Hi, yes, thanks. It actually worked with 4.95 version of EMM386. Having the controller operate fine in games though seems like a whole different topic with some axis and buttons remmapping required (of which it seems the driver is very much capable of, but which I have postponed for now). I hope I'll eventually get it configured right, especially since I've had success earlier with the same games and controllers but with Windows 98 joystick port drivers.

EDIT: in fact, probably, ignore the above. It works perfectly fine in Tie Fighter but misbehaves in other games, and probably doesn't work in PM games at all - at least no luck in Rebel Assault 2 and Cirill Cyberpunk . There's some jitter in Gods, but I guess this could be toned down with driver settings.

ludicrous_peridot wrote on 2024-08-20, 17:51:

probably doesn't work in PM games at all

I assume you're referring to Protected Mode? That's kind of what I imagined. Glad you're having some success with it though!

Hey, thanks for encouraging me. I had to stop my experiments with this driver, however, after:
- I have figured out the fighting game I wanted to use it with in the first place is a protected mode program and would not respect it
- and that my second onboard UHCI has IRQ conflict with ISA PNP sound card, which BIOS would not let me solve (oh well, at least I know the conflict is merely with a USB port and not anything "vital" :-p ); I don't know if a USB hub would be of any help here, but I don't have any 1.1 compatible hubs lying around to check sadly.

Thus no second joystick for me and since I discovered that legacy USB support in that same capricous BIOS is after all compatible with the "keyboard part" of IINE keyboard and mouse controller... that kind of defeated the purpose of spending memory to load a driver.

But on the bright side, after looking attentively enough at the shockingly prodound manuals Bret has written, I have learned some new tricks. For example, that combination of USBJSTIK and JOYKEYS can in principle get you an awesome number of configurations beynd the classic 1 4-button joystick or 2 2-button joysticks.
You can have full Thrustmaster emulation, which I imagine is good for compatible older sim games, or a 4-button joystick with 6 additional keys mapped to keyboard (did this with my Logitech Rumblepad 2), or have 1 normal 2- or 4-button joystick and map the second joystick to keyboard altogether (didn't do this due to the bummer above). That last configuration would be interesting to try in StarControl or Archon, or with fighting games.

His forums are down at the moment, but from Wayback machine I could see Bret has also published a "beta" utility that allows USB keyboard to be mapped to an analog Joystick for even more possible shinanegans.

ludicrous_peridot wrote on 2024-08-25, 21:17:

- and that my second onboard UHCI has IRQ conflict with ISA PNP sound card, which BIOS would not let me solve

Have you tried something like the Intel ISA Configuration Utility? It might let you change the sound card's IRQ. I had to do this recently to avoid an IRQ conflict with something else, unfortunately there were lots of IRQs I could set the sound card to but not many of them were ones that DOS games would like to use 😁

But on the bright side, after looking attentively enough at the shockingly prodound manuals Bret has written, I have learned some new tricks. For example, that combination of USBJSTIK and JOYKEYS can in principle get you an awesome number of configurations beynd the classic 1 4-button joystick or 2 2-button joysticks.
You can have full Thrustmaster emulation, which I imagine is good for compatible older sim games, or a 4-button joystick with 6 additional keys mapped to keyboard (did this with my Logitech Rumblepad 2), or have 1 normal 2- or 4-button joystick and map the second joystick to keyboard altogether (didn't do this due to the bummer above). That last configuration would be interesting to try in StarControl or Archon, or with fighting games.

His forums are down at the moment, but from Wayback machine I could see Bret has also published a "beta" utility that allows USB keyboard to be mapped to an analog Joystick for even more possible shinanegans.

Cool!

Hi, trying ICU was an interesting idea, but it got me nowhere, the DOS CM driver just configuring the soundcard in an absolutely absurd manner with regards to port and IRQ assignment, ant the tool itself only ouputting a "Cannot read PnP configuration" error message box.