confusion with joysticks and the gameport

[calgar]

ok, well i found this pinouts here http://www.technick.net/public/code/...conjoy_pc_game which would seem to say the maximum you can use on a gameport is a 4 button 4 axis thing

then how come windows can aparantly use the gameport for a 6 button flight yoke with two POV controllers, throttle and two pedals!? it doesnt make any sense!! arrgh!!

help?

[cloasters]

Originally Posted by calgar

ok, well i found this pinouts here http://www.technick.net/public/code/...conjoy_pc_game which would seem to say the maximum you can use on a gameport is a 4 button 4 axis thing

then how come windows can aparantly use the gameport for a 6 button flight yoke with two POV controllers, throttle and two pedals!? it doesnt make any sense!! arrgh!!

help?

Maybe the change to digital joysticks expanded the possible axes?

[Gizmo]

The spec says that you have 4 analog and 4 digital inputs. It does not say what those inputs have to be used for, although by convention they are generally implemented as a pair of two-axis analog joysticks with two buttons each. However, with a bit of clever programming in the PC and some smarts in the joystick it is possible to implement a simple I²C bus interface with the joystick using two of the digital inputs which then allows you to implement all kinds of neat stuff in the joystick, limited only by your imagination and how fast you can send the data.

[calgar]

cool,

whats I^2C

[Gizmo]

It's a serial bus protocol, like RS-232, but half duplex, shorter distance, and faster. It's used quite heavily in control applications. They keyboard interface that has been used on IBM-compatible PCs for the last 1,000 years or so is a variant of the I²C protocol. That includes the PS/2 style keyboard/mouse ports as well as the older PC/AT keyboard port. The main change with the PS/2 protocol was to make it bidirectional (which I²C always was), IIRC.