ludicrous_peridot wrote on 2026-03-17, 22:39:

So, Bret Johnson's driver TSR already offers good customization options for game controllers for relatively modern MoBo-s. It only works with EMM386 however. For old games to have sound with those relatively modern MoBo-s JEMM + HDPMI combination is likely required (in conjunction with e.g. VSBHDA). But, as written just above, joystick drivers are unable to take advantage of port virtualization that JEMM and HDPMI offer, since the latter is not compatible with EMM386.

So Bret and Japheth are both active on the BttR forum. Bret is also active on the FreeDOS mailing lists. Maybe ask at one of those forums. Bret's work is pretty stable at this point. Japheth is more frequently taking patches on GitHub these days. There's a chance one or both could be interested in helping.

A sound advice, although I somehow doubt that Bret Johnson would want to change the port virtualization code of his TSRs "after all these years", or that Baron-von-Riedesel will be keen to pull USB stack into his sound driver. So I am trying to solve this in a non-intrusive way, by effectively marrying the two, but keeping them largely stand-alone. I also think a fork is generally a better place for this type of thing, than a well established product, each of the two offerings are.

Anyway, I tested actual USBUHCIL/USBJSTIK combination with this approach using my old trusty Rumble Pad and got some very promissing results:

- Bret Johnson's own THRUST worked in port access mode
- Keen 4 picked up the joystick and allowed me to calibrate; in the menus there was a lot of drift, but ingame everything felt playable, no drift
- Wacky Wheels setup picked up the joysticks, allowed me to calibrate and successfully test
- Wacky Wheels had joystick controls operational post the setup, as well as digitized sound

Now Wacky Wheels did crash after a few minutes, with me actually pressing joystick button at the time, so some debugging is due, but overall SB emulation with VSBHDA fork in real and protected mode, can coexist with USB stack TSR, and VSBHDA can "offer port virtualization services" to the latter.

Once I try more games more systemically, and make sure they dont crash more often than they should, will be happy to post binaries for testing.

Okaaay... so things are much better than I anticipated. I played a few games, including Wacky Wheels again, and could not reproduce crashes anymore.
In fact I am quite excited that with the combination of VSBCMI and USBJSTIK, I am getting a whole array of amusing options for the controllers I have lying around...

Despite the experiment note being over yet, I have published the source code and "alpha-grade" binary in the VSBCMI repo.

Will be doing more rounds of testing, including on more than one machine and with actual HDA audio chip, and updating this post with the results.
One problem I am seeing is axis jitter, which also seems to result in "drift" that makes the solution hard to use in some games.
I am very surprised to see jitter and drift in a "fully digital" solution, and yet it's there.
It is also observed with USBJSTIK on its own (i.e. without JEMM+VSBCMI) and the degree seems to change depending on CPU speed settings.
I have not studied USBJSTIK source code just yet and, guess will be reaching out to Bret Johnson for advice on this eventually.

UPD: after having studied USBJSTIK for some time (and banging the head on the wall for some time), I have finally made some progress, albeit in a somewhat "hacky" way. I ended up dropping original USBJSTIK port 201 routines altogether, and am providing replacement for those right in VSBCMI, which use 32-bit math and scrap PIT, resorting to TSC instead. This has allowed to fix the jitter making Gods playable and Super Street Fighter 2 works now too, with 6-button Capcom gamepad fully emulated. For me this is a moment of big joy, as I was pursuing this type of setup for quite long, even though I appreciate many will not find that useful, as only UHCI type controllers are supported by Bret Johnson's drivers. Somehow I found one (!) port connected to such controller on my motherboard, but, e.g. for an i5 laptop the I have there were none. I am yet to get a USB hub to test out multiple joysticks support (it's a shame one can't have two Capcom gamepads in DOS, so it'll probably be a boxing match).

On the new VSBCMI an "alpha to beta" update will be pushed during the weekend or early next week, but 16-bit protected mode support is not yet there, as crashes still need to be investigated.

UPD2: 16-bit PM issues have been resolved and joystick support confirmed for Tyrian 2000. Also tested Wing Commander III and observed no axes drift - something that has been getting in my way of enjoying the game in DOS for so long. Buying a new joystick now becomes simply unresistably tempting...

Slowly and steadily moving this towards a release, with the following games tried:

- Gods
- Speedball II (incl. 2 player mode)
- Wipeout
- Aladdin
- Wacky wheels (incl. 2 player mode)
- Tyrian (requires patch for VSBHDA16 compatibility)
- Subwar 2050 (incl. with throttle)
- Wing Commander III (also with Thrustmaster patch for POV hat support)
- Super Street Fighter II The New Challengers (incl. with Capcom 6-button gamepad emulation and 2 player mode with this patch)
- Whizz (patched for USBDOS compatibility)

Allegro 3 setup also works. Planning to try SSF2T and Terminal Velocity if those work ok then it's done.

On Whizz - the game is hijacking PIT interrupt handler shutting off USBDOS, and is a bit speed sensitive when it comes to using joystick on modern machines.
I have patched it to successfully resolve the issue. Unfortunately, as the game consists of more than a dozen executable files, each having a copy of basic routines, I haven't got around to test it from the beginning to the end, to see if all occurrences were fixed, nor have I prepared a proper patch.

If there is interest, I can, of course, share the patch in the future.