🚀 go-pugleaf

>I want to connect this set to my PC via the standard (Sound Blaster)
>game port. I want to have the possibility to play two player games
>using this "joy controller", so that each player has one joystick and
>three buttons.

You can connect two joysticks or gamepads to your SB joystick input using a
Y-connector commonly available at most computer and video game stores.
However, if you want to be able to use digital position inputs and more than
two microswitch inputs per player, you are going to have to write special
drivers for your project.

The pinout for the gameport is as follows:

  1  +5v for X1 and Y1
  2  Switch 1
  3  X1 input
  4  Switch 1 (GND)
  5  Switch 2 (GND)
  6  Y1
  7  Switch 2
  8  N.C. (MIDI on SoundBlaster)
  9  +5v for X2 and Y2
 10  Switch 4
 11  X2
 12  Switch 3&4 (GND)
 13  Y2
 14  Switch 3
 15  N.C. (MIDI on Soundblaster)

Since your X and Y inputs are based on the amount of voltage getting to the
X and Y input pins (controlled by a variable resistor called a
potentiometer), hooking a digital button up to these inputs would cause your
players to swing wildly back and forth, rather than smoothly.  Digital
gamepads overcome this through software by slowly "ramping up" the amount of
"delta" (the speed at which your player is moving on the screen) gradually.

As for the microswitch inputs, the standard limit per system is four inputs.
However, you could cleverly rig up your game controller  to send some kind
of binary input through the joystick, which is captured by your joystick
driver and converted into standard joystick input.  This again would require
special driver software, plus hardware to send the serial input data to the
gameport (since you have two players and four inputs, you could rig your
system to use two pins for serial input (one per player) and one pin for
flow control per player.

This could be a fun project.  Hope it inspired some people!

Craig D. Cocca - Internet Support Representative
Aberdeen LLC          craigc@aberdeeninc.com
(800) 300-5545         www.aberdeeninc.com