game controller issue - TM WCS/FCS & pedals
FatKat
3ghz. Unfortunately, the gameport is out of the picture emtirely,
which mucks up the controller set-up I used in my last system.
Previously, using the gameport, I had a Thrustmaster WCS/FCS, and
(though they said it couldn't be done) CH gameport pedals (not the pro
pedals). I recently "won" a dual connector gameport-to-USB, but
hooking it up proved a dissappointment: after hooking one of the pedals
into one of the connectors, and putting the throttle into the other
connector (with the joystick going into the throttle), I was able to
get little more than one of the fire buttons and joystick movement.
Throttle buttons (because the WCS has a KB pass-through) were
recognized as keyboard punches, but movment of the throttle or pedals
was completely ignored. I tried adding the joystick w/throttle set-up
and rudders enabled in the WinXP gamecontroller section, but I kept
getting an error message; also, the USB gamebox comes up on winxp
control panel, but it won't be edited or removed unless in the device
manager.
Am I doing something wrong with this setup, or should I just junk it?
I figure I'd save myself trouble by just getting a new gameport, but
nobody seems to make one - just soundcards with gameports. That option
seems uneccessarily expensive, and also hints at numerous
conflicting-devices headaches. Is there a simple way to add an old
soundcard and disable the sound part while keeping the gameport?
JP
"FatKat" <roby...@juno.com> wrote in message
news:1116786143.7...@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
If you really wnat a card/gameport, why not just get some old
soundblaster product off of eBay ? Not expensive at all, and will work
fine.
>
Jay Williams
> Is there a simple way to add an old
> soundcard and disable the sound part while keeping the gameport?
>
Yes. Disable the sound part in device manager. (Big red X)
Bob Church
Hi FatKat,
>Previously, using the gameport, I had a Thrustmaster WCS/FCS, and
>(though they said it couldn't be done) CH gameport pedals (not the pro
>pedals). I recently "won" a dual connector gameport-to-USB, but
>hooking it up proved a dissappointment...
You might get it to work. You would need to plug the stick into the
WCS, the WCS into the pedals, and the whole thing into the USB port.
You'd also have to run it in analog throttle mode (GAME 0 0) because
the USB converter won't know what to do with the TM hat. You'd need
use a boot floppy or dual-boot to Win98 to do the download, too, since
2K/XP won't let the loaders talk to the keyboard port. I have a couple
of reports that the "DOS Box" utility available on SourceForge.net
will let you run DOS in a Windows and download from there, I haven't
actually done that myself, though. Anyway, once it's downloaded, it
will send the characters okay. It's just the download that doesn't
work.
If you do go to the soundcard with gameport, then you need to set it
as a ThrustMaster FCS to get the Hat recognized and check the Rudders
box going in. In that case you have to set it for Analog Hat, and so
Digital Throttle (GAME 1 0 or GAME 2 0). If you want to program the
hat with the WCS, then set for Digital Hat, Analog throttle (GAME 0 0)
and tell Windows it's a 3-Axis w/Pedals. It's best to decide on one or
the other. If you switch you've got to pull the setup out of Game
Controllers and then Add it again under the other moniker.
You might also check with your motherboard manufacturer. Some of the
chipsets have the game port, they just need one of those slot-cover
things with a DB15 on it and the right cable to go to whatever header
is on the motherboard.
Hope this helps!
- Bob
The StickWorks
http://www.stickworks.com
FatKat
Hey Bob Church, and thanks for the response.
[snippage]
I take it that you weren't that enthused about the first alternative
and just sort of added it in just in case your second idea (really the
principle one) didn;t pan out. It looks like I'll just toss caution to
the wind and get a sound card. I don't suppose my Dell has an ISA slot
deep in there - I could just dig my ACM card out of my junk draw and
just slip that in. Is it me or is it strange that they still make
cards with gameport connectors, but not a single dedicated gameport
card that can actually fit on any contemporary mobo? And while I've
got your attention, one question about USB controllers - since I've
been a dedicated gameport person, I never gave them a try. Besides not
having to shut down when you want to remove the controller, what other
advantage does USB have over non-USB controllers? Just a question....
>
> If you do go to the soundcard with gameport, then you need to set it
> as a ThrustMaster FCS to get the Hat recognized and check the Rudders
> box going in. In that case you have to set it for Analog Hat, and so
> Digital Throttle (GAME 1 0 or GAME 2 0).
> If you want to program the
> hat with the WCS, then set for Digital Hat, Analog throttle (GAME 0
0)
> and tell Windows it's a 3-Axis w/Pedals. It's best to decide on one
or
> the other. If you switch you've got to pull the setup out of Game
> Controllers and then Add it again under the other moniker.
It's at this point I really should mention that, while I was able to
get my FCS/WCS & Rudders to work, I never got them to work quite right.
I had movement of the axes and recognition of the buttons, but I never
got the hat right, at least not that I could remember. The only way I
could get it to work was by setting the HAT to digital & the red switch
to analog. What do you mean when you say (GAME O O) and so forth?
>
> You might also check with your motherboard manufacturer. Some of the
> chipsets have the game port, they just need one of those slot-cover
> things with a DB15 on it and the right cable to go to whatever header
> is on the motherboard.
>
> Hope this helps!
>
> - Bob
>
> The StickWorks
> http://www.stickworks.com
I'll check on that last one ASAP. I'm not exactly sure how I'm going
to find the MB maker - on my last computer it was easy, the model no.
flashed on boot-up. I tried running the part no. fo rthis setup on the
dell website, but nothing came up. In any case, thanks for the right
back.
Bob Church
Hi FatKat,
>> Hey Bob Church, and thanks for the response. <<
You're welcome!
> I take it that you weren't that enthused about the first alternative
> and just sort of added it in just in case your second idea (really the
> principle one) didn;t pan out.
The Gameport->USB adapters haven't worked very well for anything but
standard 4-axis/4-button controllers, really, and even then only about
half the time. With things like the WCS, what I think happens is that
the +5 is derived from the gameport, USB ports don't generally put out
a full +5 and then the adapter drops the voltage even further. It can
get low enough that it drags the keyboard signals down with it and so
you lose everything. If you've just got pots and buttons things aren't
so fussy, but when you make the keyboard connection it gets a bit
trickier.
> It looks like I'll just toss caution to the wind and get a sound card. I
> don't suppose my Dell has an ISA slot deep in there - I could just dig my
> ACM card out of my junk draw and just slip that in. Is it me or is it
> strange that they still make cards with gameport connectors, but not a
> single dedicated gameport card that can actually fit on any contemporary
> mobo?
There are none that I know of. Actually, an SBLive is cheaper than an
ACM card was. So long as you can kill the sound side, just think of it
as a PCI game card. There aren't any ISA slots anymore, they slowed
things down too much, and then back around 2000 MS sort of "outlawed"
game ports on motherboards. I think the deal is that you can't get the
"Designed for Windows" logo on a motherboard that has a game port on
it, but in any case they made it kind of an unattractive option for
the mobo manufacturers.
> And while I've got your attention, one question about USB controllers -
> since I've been a dedicated gameport person, I never gave them a try.
> Besides not having to shut down when you want to remove the controller,
> what other advantage does USB have over non-USB controllers? Just a
> question....
Well, they don't need a game port<g>. Actually, I was like you, quite
content with the game port. Done right, they worked fine really, but
the system has changed. I've been doing USB for CH for the last 4
years or so and I've spent some time with the things, they do have
advantages today that they didn't really have 5 years ago. I suppose
the main problem with the game port is that todays systems do a lot
more bus transfers, DMA or whatever, especially for the video and
audio stuff, and those transfers need bus cycles. For the game port to
be read, the driver needs pretty much unobstructed access to the bus
for about a millisecond every frame. In the old days you could just
shut down the interrupts and the bus was yours, but in XP you can't do
that and even in Win98 where you can, you're likely to end up delaying
video and audio transfers and that starts to show up as little flashes
on the screen and maybe a buzz or clicks in the sound depending on how
the timing happens to line up.
OTOH, The USB transfer from the stick to the PC is all handled by the
host controller chip in hardware and doesn't use the system bus at
all. When the system has time, it collects the data from the host
controllers and just hangs on to the data until an app asks for it.
There's no real need for a clean shot at the system bus with USB, and
with todays system speeds, the system always has time to collect the
data quickly enough that it might as well be instantaneous. Things
just don't get in each others way so readily using USB. You can still
get the game ports to work, but it gets harder all the time and really
it's just a matter of time until they die entirely. If you're going to
keep gaming, you're going to have to go with USB (or some non-gameport
protocol) sooner or later.
> It's at this point I really should mention that, while I was able to
> get my FCS/WCS & Rudders to work, I never got them to work quite right.
> I had movement of the axes and recognition of the buttons, but I never
> got the hat right, at least not that I could remember. The only way I
> could get it to work was by setting the HAT to digital & the red switch
> to analog. What do you mean when you say (GAME O O) and so forth?
The GAME statement was usually the first line in your ADV file. The
first digit defined the type of throttle that it used. Type 0 was
analog throttle, type 1 was up/down throttle, e.g. send 10 "+"
characters to increase the throttle from min to max, 10 "-" characters
to decrease from max to min, and type 2 was positional throttle where
it would send 1, 2, 3, 4,....9 as you moved from min to max and vice
versa.
The second digit in the GAME statement was the character delay and was
normally set to 0 unless you were running into problems with slow
frame rates and missed characters. I set it up originally for AOTP,
some might recall that if you dropped a bomb and then restarted the
mission, the bomb would drop on the carrier deck as soon as the
mission started because the sim missed the release of the 'bomb' key
in the first play. The delay held the key a bit longer so that the sim
would see the key release before it ended the first game and so you
weren't placed on the deck with the bomb key pressed when you
restarted.
Anyway, you had to have GAME 0 0 for any analog throttle, the red
switch had to be analog and the black switch had to be digital. That
meant you got a 3-axis stick and you had to use the WCS to send hat
characters. If you went to GAME 1 0 or GAME 2 0, then you were telling
it to use a character throttle, the red switch went to digital, the
black switch put the hat out as an analog signal on the Z axis. When
you tell Windows it's an FCS, it understands that it should treat the
Z axis as one-of-five resistance values that indicate which position
the hat is in and sort it out as a POV. MS never really got it right,
though. A really lame calculation error in the Windows drivers made
the hat forward position unreliable. Really, if you can get it working
I'd standardize on programming the hat and go for analog throttle.
Analog throttle is better, and almost everything today supports it. In
'93 when the WCS came out, analog throttle was "leading edge" (and hat
switches were magic).
> I'll check on that last one ASAP. I'm not exactly sure how I'm going
> to find the MB maker - on my last computer it was easy, the model no.
> flashed on boot-up. I tried running the part no. fo rthis setup on the
> dell website, but nothing came up. In any case, thanks for the right
> back.
Dell could be difficult, but maybe the info is on the website. I don't
really know by brand or mobo, just what I've heard back from folks.
All you can do is give it a try.
Anyway, hope this is some help. Good luck with it!
Best regards,
Adamski
>I figure I'd save myself trouble by just getting a new gameport, but
>nobody seems to make one - just soundcards with gameports. That option
>seems uneccessarily expensive, and also hints at numerous
>conflicting-devices headaches. Is there a simple way to add an old
>soundcard and disable the sound part while keeping the gameport?
A 2nd hand card should be pretty cheap. Depending on what sims you
play, it may even be an *advantage* to have 2 sound devices. I've used
a 2-device setup for Flacon & RogerWilco - it meant I could adjust
game or comms sound levels independently.
Adamski.
FatKat
question goes to the CH Pedals's stated requirement for a 2-connector
gameport. I managed to get it to work using my first machine's single
connector card, but had limited play - for one thing, I could never get
the hat to work right. (oops, I said that already). Anyway, do I
really need 2 connectors? And if i do, can I get away just using a Y
cable? Lastly, just for the gameport alone, and with the intention of
keeping the sound card I already have, will any PCI card do?
Bob Church
Hi FatKat,
> So it looks like I'll just pick up a 2nd hand PCI card. My next
> question goes to the CH Pedals's stated requirement for a 2-connector
> gameport. I managed to get it to work using my first machine's single
> connector card, but had limited play - for one thing, I could never get
> the hat to work right. (oops, I said that already).
Pro Pedals, yes? Plug the FCS into the WCS, the WCS into the
"Joystick" connector on the pedals, plug the "Gameport" connector on
the pedals into the PC. The toe brakes come out on the X/Y axes of the
"Aux.Port" connector. Just leave it dangling. The toe brakes won't
work, but the rudders will. Also, make sure the switch on the pedal
base is in "Plane Mode" and not "Car Mode".
> Anyway, do I really need 2 connectors?
Only for the Toe Brakes.
> And if i do, can I get away just using a Y cable?
No. There are only 4 inputs to a game port, X, Y, Z, and R. X and Y
are the stick, Z is throttle or TM hat, R is rudders. The toe brakes
don't have anywhere to go without the second game port.
> Lastly, just for the gameport alone, and with the intention of
> keeping the sound card I already have, will any PCI card do?
You want one that allows you to disable the sound portion and still
leave the gameport running. Some disable everything. I can't give you
a particular model. Maybe someone else knows a specific card that will
do the trick.