🚀 go-pugleaf

The following was posted in a flight-sim group. I thought I had
another file somewhere, but I can't find it.  Anyway, this basically
tells what you need to know about analog/digital joysticks.

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Unless there is something I am missing, I have never seen any problem
using the joystick port on soundboards.  PCs support having a game port
traditionally at 201h.  To read it, one basically turns on the
port/capacitors and when they charge a bit is set.   Most program loop
waiting for that bit to set and count the iterations in the loop for a
reading of the stick.  This is why faster machines calibrate differently.
The program has to be smart enough to scale the readings and or envision
how fast machine are gonna loop.  This is a waste of cpu time.  The only
gamecard that I have seen that could help the situation is the new
Thrustmaster one.  It has the most intelligent circuitry I have seen.  It
has two modes.  One is a new one in which knowlegable software can just
ask it for the reading and the card has circuitry that monitors the stick
and records the present reading.  As a fall back, if it operates in the
old mode, it fires off the bit that most programs need timed to simulate
the reading it is taking.  It will do this with usually smaller numbers
returned to the program to let it not wait as long reading the joystick.
It is possible that hardware usage of the gameport on the Sound Blaster
such as Midi may interfere, but I've never seen it.


Matt Shaw
Jaeger Software, Inc.
Makers of Fighter Duel
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-- 
Fred Mah  ---  fm...@ecn.purdue.edu
http://widget.ecn.purdue.edu/~fmah