DOS joysticks used DB15 connectors, which carried 4 analog axes and 4 buttons (originally intended for use with two 2-axis, 2-button analog joysticks). The most fancy of DOS joysticks, which used special encodings to add more buttons, top hats, etc. required specific game support rather than using drivers.

DOS versions of X-Wing and TIE Fighter have native support for some of those fancy DOS joysticks with top hats and such. It can also make basic use of up to all 4 standard buttons. I'm not sure what (if anything) X-Wing/Tie Fighter do with the second standard joystick X/Y axis - maybe throttle control?

If you're using a retro machine, you'll probably have a DB15 joystick port on your sound card (which often also doubles as a MIDI port for external synths), so you can plug a joystick in and use it immediately with DOS games.

If you're using DOSBox on a modern PC with no joystick port, you'll probably be stuck with having to use USB joysticks/gamepads with varying results.

Edit: I believe with X-Wing/Tie Fighter the breakdown of joystick features is as follows:
- 2 buttons allows roll and fire
- 4 buttons adds targeting/weapon controls maybe?
- top hat adds ability to switch views (otherwise controlled by the numeric keypad)

Back in the day I used to play with a basic 2-button flightstick whose stick had broken. All that was left was a 1-2 inch stub, and I jerry-rigged some buttons on a wire-wrap board that jutted off the side of the joystick's base. The buttons sucked but I preferred the stick stub to the full stick because it had higher resistance (cheap DOS flightsticks tend to have terribly low resistance!).

I bought a joystick a couple of weeks ago, but it hasn't arrived yet. No comms from the seller either. Oh well. Here's a list of 9 new and different vintage joysticks being sold by one ebay seller. Any ideas which is a good one please people? I intend to play games such as TIE Fighter. Thanks.

http://shop.ebay.co.uk/theatticbug/m.html?_nk … 4&_sop=15&_sc=1

Mach 1! We had that one...

I remember that the stick broke off, so we put in a huge screw and wrapped some tape around it 🤣

Good joystick, I played the DOS version of Elite (The EGA version)

retro: Avoid the QuickShot one. My old DOS flightstick was QuickShot and almost the same as that one (base was more square shaped) and even though I used it for a long time, it had poor resistance and I eventually took the stick down to a nub after the buttons stopped working.

retro games 100 wrote:

Thanks a lot. Do joysticks need a driver for "pure DOS", or do they just work?

As previously mentioned, there are some fancy 15-pin joypads that won't, in fact, "just work". This is where I usually mention SDWRGMPD, a program originally intented for digital MS SideWinder gamepads.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

h-a-l-9000 wrote:

Ehum the Amiga/C64 joysticks are not for the serial port.

No but they are 9 pin and have the same port. Can be easily confused...

Actually, they're the wrong gender.

As for a serial port joystick, well I have never seen one. Doesn't make a lot of sense to be honest as joysticks are analogue (using analogue resistors) on the PC and have use a parallel connection (even on C64 and Amiga)...

I did happen to see one, once. It was intended for use with laptops (and evidently was produced before USB became widespread).

Atari 2600 joysticks used female DB9 connectors and supported multiple input devices:
- one joystick with up, left, down, right, fire
- two analog paddles, each with one knob and one fire button (fire buttons used joystick left/right signal lines, if I remember correctly)
- one 12-key numeric keypad

Despite having the same type of connector as PC serial ports, they are not at all related nor compatible.

Thanks very much for all comments. In order to replace the joystick which never arrived, I decided to get a Thrustmaster Topgun. There's a review of one here. They seem to like it. It was only £10 including delivery, and I think it's new because the seller seems to have dozens of them, and it even comes with a game called "Tomb Raider" (never heard of it).

retro games 100 wrote:

Thanks very much for all comments. In order to replace the joystick which never arrived, I decided to get a Thrustmaster Topgun. There's a review of one here. They seem to like it. It was only £10 including delivery, and I think it's new because the seller seems to have dozens of them, and it even comes with a game called "Tomb Raider" (never heard of it).

I'm receiveing a TopGun too myself next week. Not new, but includes the paperworks that came with it. No box, I think.

Hmmm...why Tomb Raider with TopGun? Did the TopGun come with Tomb Raider originally? How to control Lara with a TopGun joystick? Maybe pair it with a WCS (Weapon Control System) too? Maybe we need to throttle her forward and backward? Maybe we'll also need the Pedals, then? 🤣

🤣

So the TopGun is just a (re)branded FCS?

It's arrived. I'll hook it up to a SB, and play TIE fighter...

Nice! Very Nice! (No, I'm not talking about Lara 🤣). I'll post up a picture of mine too when it arrives.

*Lord Malik still mumbles to himself" ...why? ...why lara?.... why not a Microprose's flight sim? ...why ...now i've seen everything ...bla ...bla .....mumble...mumble...."*

Since we're in this thread, just would like to know if there's any reason to get one of those Gamecards,.. any reason to use that rather than the sound card's joystick port? (Other than the availability of dual separate gameports?)

Any advantages per se?

Hehe, yes it is a bit strange. The CD-ROM itself has "Tomb Raider limited edition to be sold with ThrustMaster hardware only" written on it. I will install this game, and test out the joystick with it. Perhaps the buttons all do something useful in the game?

BTW, I tried TIE fighter, and movement was OK if not a bit "laboured", and only one of the other buttons did something: it toggled between seeing the cockpit and not seeing the cockpit. All other buttons including hatswitch did not do anything.

Edit: I used the joystick with Tomb Raider. You can assign all the buttons to various actions. The only thing you can't do is use the hatswitch for 4 actions. You can only use the hatswitch for one action.

Generally speaking, the joystick is hard work to use. It's too big and heavy. I found it awkward to use for both this game, and also for TIE Fighter. Perhaps it's good for other games, eg flight sims. Rapid movement and fire combat seems hard work with it. I think I need something altogether smaller and lighter.

Malik wrote:

Since we're in this thread, just would like to know if there's any reason to get one of those Gamecards,.. any reason to use that rather than the sound card's joystick port? (Other than the availability of dual separate gameports?)

Any advantages per se?

No technical ones as far as I know. I talked my dad into buying an ISA joystick card for the family 286 when he bought a Paradise SVGA video card and monitor around 1990 to replace the Hercules card and monitor that we had been using for around a year after burning out the EGA monitor that had originally come with it. Sound cards were way out of my price range at that time, but the joystick adapter and joysticks were pretty cheap. I believe I had it in that system until I eventually replaced it with a Sound Blaster 2.0 and Gravis Gamepad around 1992-1993.

retro games 100 wrote:

Hehe, yes it is a bit strange. The CD-ROM itself has "Tomb Raider limited edition to be sold with ThrustMaster hardware only" written on it. I will install this game, and test out the joystick with it. Perhaps the buttons all do something useful in the game?

Seems incredibly silly to have a Top Gun branded joystick that doesn't come with a Top Gun game, or at least a flight sim of *some* kind. I wonder if they were trying to do some kind of deal for Top Gun: Fire at Will, which came out the same year as Tomb Raider (1996). Note: I've never heard of that Top Gun game, I just browsed around on MobyGames for it :p

BTW, I tried TIE fighter, and movement was OK if not a bit "laboured", and only one of the other buttons did something: it toggled between seeing the cockpit and not seeing the cockpit. All other buttons including hatswitch did not do anything.

That's bizarre, maybe TIE Fighter only supports CH flightsticks? I know it supports top-hat looking for some kind of DOS joystick(s).

Edit: I used the joystick with Tomb Raider. You can assign all the buttons to various actions. The only thing you can't do is use the hatswitch for 4 actions. You can only use the hatswitch for one action.

Generally speaking, the joystick is hard work to use. It's too big and heavy. I found it awkward to use for both this game, and also for TIE Fighter. Perhaps it's good for other games, eg flight sims. Rapid movement and fire combat seems hard work with it. I think I need something altogether smaller and lighter.

Is the resistance adjustable? I always thought that cheap flightsticks like my old QuickShot had too little resistance, which made fine control difficult.

Hehe, the more I think about this joystick bundle, the stranger it becomes. I've just tried the hat switch on TIE Fighter, and it has no effect. Re: adjustable resistance - I cannot see a way to adjust this joystick's resistance.

As a temporary measure, I tried ctmouse with the /R9 switch, using a serial mouse. That makes it fairly responsive in TIE Fighter. It's still difficult to spin your craft around 180 degrees without a lot of physical mouse movement.

I think I might buy a 15 pin gamepad, and see how I get on with that...

Gamepads are a bad idea for TIE Fighter unless they have analog sticks, as pressing the D-Pad simulates moving the joystick fully in that direction. For TIE fighter this is pretty much equivalent to steering using the keyboard arrow keys (possibly even worse).

HunterZ wrote:

Gamepads are a bad idea for TIE Fighter unless they have analog sticks, as pressing the D-Pad simulates moving the joystick fully in that direction. For TIE fighter this is pretty much equivalent to steering using the keyboard arrow keys (possibly even worse).

OK, thanks a lot for your advice. I'm mostly in to RPGs and such. I don't have any flight sims. I think TIE Fighter (and X-Wing) are the only games of its kind I have. Therefore this is not too important, and so I'll continue to use a mouse when I play these games. I know the movement is ridiculous, but the aiming is good.

HunterZ wrote:

Malik wrote:

Since we're in this thread, just would like to know if there's any reason to get one of those Gamecards,.. any reason to use that rather than the sound card's joystick port? (Other than the availability of dual separate gameports?)

Any advantages per se?

No technical ones as far as I know. I talked my dad into buying an ISA joystick card for the family 286 when he bought a Paradise SVGA video card and monitor around 1990 to replace the Hercules card and monitor that we had been using for around a year after burning out the EGA monitor that had originally come with it. Sound cards were way out of my price range at that time, but the joystick adapter and joysticks were pretty cheap. I believe I had it in that system until I eventually replaced it with a Sound Blaster 2.0 and Gravis Gamepad around 1992-1993.

Yes, thought the same too. Didn't find any difference now with the sound cards and using a separate gamecard. Maybe by the time Creative Labs started the trend of including gameport in almost every card they made, the tech has become so much more advanced that there's no need to get a separate card?

I also wonder what they meant by "speed compensation" which is printed at the back of the box. I have a Gravis Game Card with the Speed Calibration Dial, which can be attached to the card. It helps me in calibrating the joysticks, and mainaining a synchronized ratio of 1.0 (Whatever that means or does. All Iknow from the manual is that I should match the calibration ratio of 1:1, i.e. 1.0) Perhaps the synchronized ratio will help in maintaining constant or more synchronized joystick movement and it's resultant movement in a game. And the box says that it's compatible with XT 4Mhz - 486's 99MHz. I guess newer systems does not require that "speed compensation"?

retro games 100 wrote:

Hehe, yes it is a bit strange. The CD-ROM itself has "Tomb Raider limited edition to be sold with ThrustMaster hardware only" w […]
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Hehe, yes it is a bit strange. The CD-ROM itself has "Tomb Raider limited edition to be sold with ThrustMaster hardware only" written on it. I will install this game, and test out the joystick with it. Perhaps the buttons all do something useful in the game?

BTW, I tried TIE fighter, and movement was OK if not a bit "laboured", and only one of the other buttons did something: it toggled between seeing the cockpit and not seeing the cockpit. All other buttons including hatswitch did not do anything.

Edit: I used the joystick with Tomb Raider. You can assign all the buttons to various actions. The only thing you can't do is use the hatswitch for 4 actions. You can only use the hatswitch for one action.

Generally speaking, the joystick is hard work to use. It's too big and heavy. I found it awkward to use for both this game, and also for TIE Fighter. Perhaps it's good for other games, eg flight sims. Rapid movement and fire combat seems hard work with it. I think I need something altogether smaller and lighter.

(I hope no one gets too "excited (you know, THAT type...heheh)" while we're talking about "pressing buttons on Lara" and moving Ms. Croft around "up and down". Hey, we're discussing seriously, here! 🤣 ( Sorry, Lara Croft games lovers, I just can't seem to like this game series. *A shimmering halo appears above Malik, just after he said sorry*)

Most of the Dos games, have pre-determined button assignments. Some games will have button assignment options where you may change the button configurations.

And most games, will ignore the button presses on the hat switch and mini-throttle triggers/sliders, unless the games are written to make use of these.

To make use of every single button (including the hat switch) on the joystick, you have to pair it with a programmable throttle like the CH Pro Throttle or Thrustmaster's WCS Mark I or II. A HOTAS - Hands On Throttle And Stick combination will completely bypass the need to use the keyboard (almost completely), since these throtles comes with keyboard connector - where you connect the keyboard to the connector on the throttle and in-turn, the throttle connector to the keyboard port of the motherboard.
(Even flight sims doesn't support the hat switch directly. You'll need the the throttle to program it, or the flight sim supports that joystick or is programmed to support one.)

Once you try playing with a HOTAS setup with a Flight Sim, you will not go back to using the Keyboard. At least for me anyway, since I always wanted to be a Pilot. (No, I'm not a Pilot now, not a REAL one anyway. 😁)

The sound of the engines burning up when the exhausts are are expanding while you push the throttle is just astounding!