Gravis Phoenix!!!

[John Brandon]

Hi All, not sure if anyone looks at this site anymore, but I'm trying to get my Gravis Phoenix going in Dosbox. 

The interesting thing about the Phoenix and some other gravis joysticks is that part of the joystick is DB15, and the other part of it (via an additional cable) is intended to connect to a PS/2 keyboard port.  I guess this was to circumvent DB15 limitations on the number of buttons a joystick can have and have the extra buttons be read as keyboard inputs... the Phoenix has a whopping 24 buttons!

Anyways, the DB15 parts of the joystick all work with a standard DB15 to USB adapter, but I cannot get the PS/2 side to work.  I have the DOS configuration software for the Phoenix, but get an error message that the Phoenix is not detected... it seems it might not allow me to simply configure the PS/2 side of the joystick if the entire joystick is not detected. 

I saw on the old website here that the author was able to get the Gravis Firebird working using DOS configuration software.  I think this is analogous to the Phoenix and I'd like to read more about how the author configured this joystick...  there's a link to a full article about the Firebird but it is a broken link and the internet archive did not archive the page. 

Anyone know how I might go about configuring the PS/2 side of the joystick?  Would be nice to use more than 2 buttons on this insane 24 button joystick!

[John Brandon]

For anyone trawling these forums in the future, I did manage to uncover the previous writeup about getting the Gravis Firebird up and running.  Those instructions can be found here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20140908160804/https://sites.google.com/site/joystickrehab/firebird2

I think these instructions would be equally applicable to the Gravis Phoenix and any other similar Gravis joystick that makes use of a ps/2 connection to map additional buttons... however, I think this process is more involved than I want to pursue right now so I don't plan on undertaking it in the near future.  Good luck to anyone attempting it!