Date   : Tue, 19 Dec 2000 14:18:19 -0800 (PST)
From   : Thomas Harte <t.harte@...>
Subject: Re: Joysticks

>  Can I use a BBC joystick on a PC or a PC joystick on a BBC? or in 
> other words; Is the Analogue port on the BBC and the Game port on a 
> PC similar?

You can't connect a PC joystick to a BBC or a BBC joystick to a traditional
PC joystick port because they work differently - BBC joysticks provide a
genuine analogue feedback which is digitised, whereas PC joysticks use a bit
of a cheat - the hardware polls them, then depending how far pressed they
are they delay their response. This means that early IBM PCs could read the
IBM analogue joysticks without any expensive analogue to digital chips, but
of course stops working particularly well as soon as the PC speed starts
being variable - hence the need to 'calibrate' PC joysticks on traditional
interfaces.

That said, connecting a BBC joystick to a modern PC shouldn't be much of a
problem because DirectInput means assumptions aren't made about hardware
like they used to be, and there is at least one public domain project (for
which I don't have the URL, but I've seen it mentioned) aimed towards
providing instructions for building various interfaces from old computer
interfaces to your PC's parallel port, and installing a supplied DirectInput
driver to make it work with all DirectX 3.0+ games. I'm sure if you dig
around the various emulation sites for a small while you'll find the project
I'm talking about . . .

-Thomas





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