PC Gameport with flight controller joystick

Hello experts,
i found an old flight controller joystick like this one:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/PC-FLIGHT-FORCE-PRO-SV-241-ANALOG-JOYSTICK-4-BUTTON-includes-Decent-CD-/223068420335

It has a gameport connector and i want to turn it to usb via a sparkfun pro micro (=mini leonardo).

A gameport can transmit 4 analog and 4 digital signals. The joystick has 5 Buttons and a coolie-hat (8 more buttons) besides x,y axis and throttle.

Does anybody know how this is internally wired (in the joystick). I only can read out 2 Buttons, x,y and throttle.

Thanks in advance.

th_her:
Hello experts,
i found an old flight controller joystick like this one:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/PC-FLIGHT-FORCE-PRO-SV-241-ANALOG-JOYSTICK-4-BUTTON-includes-Decent-CD-/223068420335

It has a gameport connector and i want to turn it to usb via a sparkfun pro micro (=mini leonardo).

A gameport can transmit 4 analog and 4 digital signals. The joystick has 5 Buttons and a coolie-hat (8 more buttons) besides x,y axis and throttle.

Does anybody know how this is internally wired (in the joystick). I only can read out 2 Buttons, x,y and throttle.

Thanks in advance.

For some reason, I never threw this folder away.

Back in 1992, I was playing with the game port to use as a voltmeter. A couple of copies of the Microsoft C are in the folder , along with the official IBM Game Controller Adapter reference document.

I do not have anything on the external device to connect to the game port.

"When a button is pressed, it is read as a 0". "Software should be aware that these buttons are not debounced in hardware".

"The Joystick position is indicated by a potentiometer for each coordinate. Each potentiometer has a range of 0 to 100k ohms that varies the time constant for each of the four one-shots."

The connector is 15 pins, as follows:

1 - +5
2 - Button 4
3 - Position 0, a pot, I assume
4 - Ground
5 - Ground
6 - Position 1
7 - Button 5
8 - + 5
9 - + 5
10- Button 6
11-Position 2
12-Ground
13- Position 3
14- Button 7
15- +5

Does that offer any help?

Paul

Thanks for answering.

unfortunately this doesn't really help. There must have been alternative pinouts, for as you see, the original definition allowed only four buttons. My joystick has 12 or 13.

The potentiometers do not vary the time constants, they are simply connected to the +5-line. You add an external resistor to gnd and get a voltage divider. The voltage can be read via analogRead().

Thomas

th_her:
Thanks for answering.

unfortunately this doesn't really help. There must have been alternative pinouts, for as you see, the original definition allowed only four buttons. My joystick has 12 or 13.

The potentiometers do not vary the time constants, they are simply connected to the +5-line. You add an external resistor to gnd and get a voltage divider. The voltage can be read via analogRead().

Thomas

Then it was not connected to an IBM PC game port. You are on you own. Can't help any further.

Paul

Thanks for comments.

I'd now like to mark this topic as solved, because I found this link:

Furthermore when reading through the linux drivers sources, I found a hint, that there is such a thing as

"Microsoft's US Patent 5628686 which is titled as <>"

An explanation is given here: GitHub - MaZderMind/SidewinderInterface: AVR/Atmel digital Interface to Microsoft Sidewinder-Precision Pro Joysticks - useful for Quadrocopter-Control

So things ain't as easy as in the very early days and I'll think over, whether I continue with this project.

Thomas