Simviation Forums

I was given a Microsoft Force Feed " Sidewinder" joy stick, it was for Win 98. I am running XP;  will I be able to use if for FS9 on XP?
Also it used to connect with a 15-pin connector. I am guessing I can get an adapter to be able to connect to a usb port??
Advice needed!

Thanks Guys,

Chief

XP will recognize it. I don't know about the adaptor. My MoBo has onboard sound but came with a GamePort adaptor plate, connector & cable so I use it the way it was originally designed to.

Cal (CYXX)

If the stick has USB/16pin programming it will work. You can't just get an adaptor and guarentee success. If the stick has USB ability then an adaptor will work fine.

buy yourself a half decent soundcard, with a gameport plug on it, an Audigy 2 should suffice nicely.

I have the same stick as you and its excellent for FS & CFS  :) sadly, it won't work with Battlefield 2 but  I don't like to fly in that game anyway.

I'm surprised your motherboard dosen't already have a gameport built in.

All you need is a gameport cable/connector that screws into an expansion slot at the back of the pc to plug into.

The end of the cable plugs into the gameport riser pins on the mainboard if they are available, that's if there is no gameport connector on the back panel of the mainboard already.

make sure the pinout is standard on the riser pins.

USB is not compatible with the analog 15 pins port (0-5v smooth on the axes) until you have something in between

Thanks everyone, I think I can get it going now! All good advice.

Chief

Chief
I would be very surprised if you can get the MS Sidewinder Force Feedback 1 stick working in XP.
The stick you have is a Gameport device as far as connection is concerned but it runs a digitial software format using the midi port etc and is dependant on having the MS Sidewinder 3.0 software loaded on your PC for full functionality of the stick.

There are no drivers available for this stick in XP that will allow you to programe the stick in any way.
The stick would be recognised as a MS 3D pro which is an analog gameport device (using pots etc and no digitial programing.)

Note also that using the on board M/B gameport connection with the adaptor backmount will slow down your game as the polling to the gamne port device would be a lot slower than using a gameport access thru a sound card that has midi and digitial functionality.

I know this because I have tried this in my simpit when I upgraded my pc as I have expensive Hoffman rudder pedal's etc that I wanted to keep using and was not prepared to scrap just to run XP..

I ended up using Win 2000 Pro instead of XP to solve this problem. Win 2000 has a set of drivers loaded to support the Gameport sticks but note you will get much higher framerates using a Sound card to provide the gameport connection .
cheers
chuckcrc

[quote]Chief
I would be very surprised if you can get the MS Sidewinder Force Feedback 1 stick working in XP.
The stick you have is a Gameport device as far as connection is concerned but it runs a digitial software format using the midi port etc and is dependant on having the MS Sidewinder 3.0 software loaded on your PC for full functionality of the stick.

There are no drivers available for this stick in XP that will allow you to programe the stick in any way.
The stick would be recognised as a MS 3D pro which is an analog gameport device (using pots etc and no digitial programing.)

Note also that using the on board M/B gameport connection with the adaptor backmount will slow down your game as the polling to the gamne port device would be a lot slower than using a gameport access thru a sound card that has midi and digitial functionality.

I know this because I have tried this in my simpit when I upgraded my pc as I have expensive Hoffman rudder pedal's etc that I wanted to keep using and was not prepared to scrap just to run XP..

I ended up using Win 2000 Pro instead of XP to solve this problem. Win 2000 has a set of drivers loaded to support the Gameport sticks but note you will get much higher framerates using a Sound card to provide the gameport connection .
cheers
chuckcrc

I also run one or the other of my 2 old gameport Sidewinders with perfect accuracy and control, on excellent onboard sound with the gameport connector straight off the mainboard riser, no polling problem, or other problems.

I'm glad

All versions of XP support the sidewinders, no programmable software though.

Don't try to load any drivers for a sidewinder under WinXP. They auto detect.

All the buttons work, set the button config in your application settings.

Thanks
I will give it a go .
chuck

Thanks Congo for your help as I got it working.

I feel like a complete silly bunt about this but I know what I did wrong in loading the Sidewinder software when I shouldn't have. I even uninstalled the s/w but I think the driver files were overwritten and I should have re-installed XP to fix it.

I didn't do this with Win 2000 as I read the "supported devices Help me file and it listed the MSFF1 there so I just plugged it in and it worked.

So my question is should I upgrade to XP from 2000. What would be the advantages

Thanks
chuck