Logitech F310 wired and F710 wireless. F710 has a hardware dinput/xinput toggle. Just turn it to dinput and win98 games should work fine. 8bitdo has some nice gamepads as well.

As far as dos games are concerned, I do not remember what happens when you run them through windows, but in pure dos, usb gamepads do not work. But the same can be true for many advanced late models gameport gamepads.

Johnylyr wrote on 2026-07-26, 09:24:

As far as dos games are concerned, I do not remember what happens when you run them through windows, but in pure dos, usb gamepads do not work. But the same can be true for many advanced late models gameport gamepads.

Including the Gravis Gamepad Pro. DOS games only 'natively' recognize up to 4 gamepad buttons. Anything fancy like the 10-button Gravis Gamepad Pro requires custom support in the game (or some generic driver). This particular pad has a compatibility switch in the back to make games recognize it as a standard pad, but then the buttons don't work.

Still, it might be a good pad for a mix of DOS and Windows gaming. You can frequently find them on eBay. The D-Pad sucks, IIRC. Not as bad as on the original Gravis Gamepad, but still. But then again, D-Pads almost always suck. I never could stand gamepads for anything other than analog stick precision (which, of course, does not apply to a gamepad such as this that doesn't have analog controls).

dr_st wrote on 2026-07-26, 09:55:

Including the Gravis Gamepad Pro. DOS games only 'natively' recognize up to 4 gamepad buttons. Anything fancy like the 10-button Gravis Gamepad Pro requires custom support in the game (or some generic driver). This particular pad has a compatibility switch in the back to make games recognize it as a standard pad, but then the buttons don't work.

This is one reason I used the Suncom controllers (gamepad and joystick) back in the day. They had keyboard passthrough connectors so you could map keyboard buttons to them.

I ended up buying that Microsoft Sidewinder gamepad. It's not ideal but it has enough buttons to mimick a dualshock experience I guess. One thing I don't understand is what Mode buttons is for? If I press it my Windows just stops recognizing it. I cannot find manual for microsoft sidewinder, I always find one for a joystick instead. It's a gameport version.

Caesum wrote on 2026-08-01, 16:44:

I ended up buying that Microsoft Sidewinder gamepad. It's not ideal but it has enough buttons to mimick a dualshock experience I guess. One thing I don't understand is what Mode buttons is for? If I press it my Windows just stops recognizing it. I cannot find manual for microsoft sidewinder, I always find one for a joystick instead. It's a gameport version.

It's passthrough mode for compatibility to other joysticks/gamepads that don't speak the sidewinder protocol. So it basically switches it off and becomes a gameport extender. The sidewinder really wasn't meant for boot to DOS-only mode of Windows 95. If you want to play DOS games, you'd do it inside Windows 95. There is a third party driver now if you want to run DOS-only, which I haven't tried. So having an old analog controller hooked up to easily switch to was a decent idea in the product. But the port on the back of the controller also lets up to four sidewinders be connected when in sidewinder-on mode. Amazing option at the time.

I use the gameport CH Flightstick for DOS flight games. For Windows I have a CH Flightstick Pro USB and Logitech Wingman Rumblepad USB. I've never really desired a gamepad for any DOS games but I did once have a Interact PC Propad.

I'm left handed. A lot of sticks are designed for right handed use.

I've been meaning to try some alternative USB gamepads for DirectInput such as old Xbox and Xbox 360 gamepads with 3rd party drivers.