Using old serial game controllers on new PC's?

[norkusa]

I just found some CH Products rudder pedals for PC today at Salvation Army for $5. Nice find considering I was going to spend $100 on a new set soon. Only problem is that it's the older version with the serial connection and not USB.

I think I've seen serial to USB adapters but don't know how they'd work with something like this. Could I just get a USB adapter, plug it into my iMac, and expect the pedals to work? Or is it more complicated than that?

[kedawa]

I doubt you'll find drivers for OSX, since Apple never used the 15pin gameport in any of their computers, but if you're running windows, the adapter should work.

[norkusa]

That's what I was afraid of. Looks like there are serial drivers you can download for Mac though. Would this help or is it something completely different?:

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/drivers/pl2303usbtoserialdriver.html


BTW, I screwed up earlier and noticed that the pedals have a gameport adapter and not serial. Does that make a difference or will I still not be able to use this on a Mac?

[Poofta!]

im not sure what youre talking about... are they pedals like from a driving wheel? if so you'll need the wheel since that serial port plugs into the wheel (not the pc).

as for the usb -> serial i dont think any of those adapters work 100% (not sure how to explain it, but ive read it online somewhere, same thing with parallel->usb adapters, will only work for printers & not external drives, etc), you can however get a pci card with a couple ports on it from newegg.com (usually have a parallel port on em as well) however im not sure how that'll work for mac.

[norkusa]

They're pedals that are used for flight sims. They don't look much different from driving pedals though. And there's 2 gameport plugs on it....one goes into the yoke/stick and the other goes into the computer.

I've got an iMac, so a PCI card won't work. I've heard conflicting accounts of USB gameport adapters working. Sounds like it should work in XP but I'm more concerned with using them in OSX because I want to use them in X-Plane. Guess I just have to buy a adapter and find out.

[boatofcar]

Once you get it hooked up, try ControllerMate (http://www.orderedbytes.com/controllermate/). I use it to map save state keyboard shortcuts to my usb controller. Should work with your pedals, as long as OSX recognizes them.