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Problem splitting gameport for midi and joystick

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First post, by Thirst

Posted on 
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Hi!

I'm having trouble getting both my joystick and external midi devices to share the same gameport in DOS. If I plug my joystick straight into the port on the soundcard it works fine, and the external SC-55 works with the MIDI splitter cable I have (this one https://www.ebay.com/itm/New-MIDI-to-Joystick … kIAAOSwHN9cdsn1), but the joystick isn't recognized if I plug it into the other end of that Y splitter cable. Could it be that this cable isn't wired for joystick, only midi, and in that case, could I ask for suggestions for a cable that might work instead? Or could it be another unrelated issue?

I tried with Xwing (CD), and Wolfenstein 3D, but neither would recognize the joystick unless I plug it directly into the port, without the splitter cable.

I did some searching, and the only post I could find for this usage is this one, which suggests it should work just fine: Sound Blaster Gameport,Y-Joystick Splitter Cable, Joystick and SC-55

My specs are:

Pentium 3 Tualatin @1,4Ghz
TUSL2 Socket 370
512 MB RAM
GeForce Ti4200
MX300 Vortex2 PCI Soundcard

Roland SC-55
Microsoft Sidewinder 3D Pro

Windows98SE/DOS7

Reply 1 of 1, by Thirst

Posted on 
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In case anyone else has this issue in the future and finds this thread;

I initially bought a CH Gamecard III plus on Ebay to get an extra gameport just for the joystick, also switching to my P166 build for ISA slots. Unfortunately I couldn't get it working. Apparently it's an older card intended primarily for the XT/286 generation, so it might have been a cpu speed issue. It also didn't come with any drivers, and the ones I did find for the Gamecard III Automatic - also from CH - don't seem to support the older card.

In the end I got both joystick and midi out working (At least in X-Wing thus far), by running a AWE64 in tandem with an Aureal Vortex2 and just disabling conflicting devices in the device manager. Since the Vortex2 is a PCI card and conflicts with Setmul, I won't be able to run both for something like Wing commander, which requires the slowdown util on the P166, so I ordered the more modern Gamecard III Automatic card as well. Hopefully that will work too.

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