Contrary to belief System Shock does support a joystick.

I bought this game back in the DOS Days and had hours of fun playing it- with a joystick, a CH Flightstick Pro.
Later I got the enhanced CD version & played it again.
Now in my nostalgia & my new Linux System I am trying to play it in DOSBox.

PROBLEM: NO JOYSTICK!

I have an Serial AxisPad in the USB port. It came with a Serial to USB adapter.
Ah, those were the days... 25/9 pin serial ports, game/midi ports, numerous configuration issues, ...
But 'Today' isn't bad, the systems today SCREAM compared to what was.

OK

The gamepad works fine in Linux Land.
I have 'jstest-gtk' & 'QjoyPad' and the device is working as it should.
Though some of the button numbers don't match with the actual #'s on the button.
Though one of the utilities starts #'s at 0 while the other starts at 1 which doesn't matter.

In DOSBox I found the Gravis utility & tested it and for the most the gamepad is working.
Fire up System Shock & NO JOYSTICK!
I have turned off timing in DOSBox & tried several joystick types to no avail.

What did work is using 'QjoyPad' and mapping keys to sticks & buttons.
But that defeats the purpose of an analog joystick.

SOLUTION

I have an old Win98 PC with those old serial & game ports.
I'll just fire it up & play on it.
But alas the HD is going bad.
Installed a new one but only the first 134G is usable.

But I have this nice NEW laptop with all the memory & disk space...
I WANT TO PLAY ON IT!
Not some old dinosaur.

Is this going to happen every time I try to play an old game in DOSBox?