Thinkpads Forum

I'm looking for a joystick that can be used on serial ports that works with MS-DOS 6.22 and up; I wanna play some space simulators on my 701c. I'm looking for specifically for a joystick with multiple buttons on it (e.g. one on top, a trigger button, and a few buttons on joystick base).

Please message me with offers, and I'll try to replace within a day.

- Bovine Mage

> I'm looking for a joystick that can be used on serial ports

That's a new one. I'm pretty sure no such device ever existed.

You might be thinking of the old Atari compatible joysticks used with Atari, Commodore, Timex, and other non-DOS computers back in the MS-DOS era, and still being used by thousands of people who still use these computers. They use a 9-pin "D" connector that looks like the one on a serial mouse.

DO NOT PLUG ONE OF THESE JOYSTICKS INTO YOUR SERIAL PORT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Unless, of course, you *like* seeing smoke and flames coming out of your ThinkPad.

Bookworm wrote:>I'm looking for a joystick that can be used on serial ports
That's a new one. I'm pretty sure no such device ever existed.

Oh, I think there were some. I used to use a Logitech Wingman Warrior to play Descent I and II on my Thinkpad 350C and 760L. The Wingman Warrior had both a serial connector as well as a gameport connector. I don't recall the details of how I got it all running, but I think I actually used the serial port because my laptop did not have a gameport at the time. And I remember I had to fiddle with the Logitech software for quite a while before I got it to work the way I wanted.

Here is one available on eBay -- you can see the serial port in the photo:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0357962410

Mmmm...I am sure that it is generally bad form to post a link to eBay within the Marketplace forum, but this seems like a special case.

Caution: I think I went through two of these joysticks in less than a year because the sensitivity would eventually go wonky. I think I actually pulled one apart to try to fix it, but my fix only lasted for a week or so before the sensitivity went haywire again.

Phil.

Wow, I never heard of them. It makes sense, though. Mice originally used the joystick port. Do these use a mouse driver?

Everything else I said still goes though: make sure you *know* it's a serial joystick!

Thanks for the advice, everybody. I'll go buy that serial joystick, and I'll make sure to post the results here.

- Bovine Mage