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Thread: Best Joysticks and Gamepads for Retro PCs

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    Pac-Man (Level 10) vintagegamecrazy's Avatar
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    Those are the D sub connectors I'm talking about. Thank You. For OS I have Windows 3.1 and MS-Dos 6.22 if that helps.

    So did the Sound blaster cards have a 15 pin D sub port on them? If so then I have several open slots on the back of the PC that I could install the card in. Do you have a link somewhere or an ebay link for a good card?

    If I get one of the 15 pin pads can I generally find drivers easily enough for it online and copy it to a floppy and install it on the 386?

    Thanks for the help!
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    Yes, Sound Blaster cards from that era usually had a 15-pin "game port" on it. See this (there's even a note on here on game ports in DOS):

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_port

    The game port typically doubled as a MIDI port, for those who wanted to hook up their electronic keyboards to their computer and do some sort of MIDI recording.

    It would appear that you have 6 16-bit ISA expansion slots, and 2 8-bit ISA expansion slots.
    http://support.dell.com/support/edoc...0/00000004.htm
    http://support.dell.com/support/edoc...0/00000005.htm

    I would recommend getting an original Sound Blaster / Sound Blaster Pro / 2 card. The Sound Blaster 16 and above appears to require a 486 / Pentium or higher processor.
    http://support.creative.com/kb/ShowA....aspx?sid=5800

    This means you should search for models CT1350, CT1330, or CT1600 (or some variant thereof), and not anything later than that.
    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/124944

    The few eBay auctions I could pull up all listed at least $20 as the price for a card. It's hard for me to believe it's that much, but apparently there's a market. Searching for a simple game port may yield less results. I'll poke around in my (not-too-large) stash when I get home; not sure if I have anything below a SB16, honestly (got rid of my 386 years ago, and do DOS on something a bit heftier), but if I do I'll PM you. I'm sure my wife will appreciate the opportunity to get some of it out of the house.

    But you should check the auction sites. There may be other sound card or game port manufacturers out there, but Creative Labs was the most popular. The fact that you have a 386 limits you to some of the earlier iterations of some of the hardware, unfortunately. Hope this helps.
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    Pac-Man (Level 10) vintagegamecrazy's Avatar
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    Thank you so much calthaer! You have been a great help for sure. Actually everyone who's helped me in the Classic Computing Sub Forum has greatly helped me. I've been having a blast fixing up this old PC as it's been a trip down memory lane for me for sure. It's been a good 15 years now since I last used Dos and Windows 3.1 so I'm loving it! When I get this thing up it its full blown glory then I need to take a few pics of the setup with the games I got for it.

    Now it's off to find a CRT monitor for it that's not all blurry like mine is!
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    Red (Level 21) Jorpho's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by vintagegamecrazy View Post
    I am looking for recommendations for my 386 Dell System 310, it only has the 9 pin ports for the mouse and the game pad and not the 15 pin like I hoped it had. What good 9 pin game pads are recommended? Are there some good adapters from 15 to 9 pin if not?
    I've never heard of 9-pin pads working on a PC. I'm pretty sure those are exclusively digital and thus very different from the typical joystick supported by the vast majority of PC games.

    (There was once a series of shareware arcade remakes that would let you use a 9-pin joystick with a special cable - which you could make yourself if you wanted - that plugged into the parallel port, but those were special.)
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    I'm guessing that's just two COM ports, not a COM port and a game port. I specifically remember my old 386 had two 9-pin COM ports, one for the mouse and one for my external modem.

    I must be about the same age as Jorpho. I don't ever remember a 9-pin joystick for the PC either. Best I can remember, they went from 15-pin (game/MIDI ports) to USB, at least as far as PCs are concerned. I do remember some goofy 25-to-9 pin adapters for (I think) Amigas.

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    I do believe that some early PCs had proprietary joystick ports. I know for a fact that the Apple IIc has a 9-pin joystick, but it's reverse gender from a COM port (joystick end is male, plug on the computer is female).

    If it's specifically labelled as a joystick port, try a Genesis pad or something. Worst case, nothing happens. Otherwise, it's likely just a COM port.

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    Quote Originally Posted by NayusDante View Post
    I do believe that some early PCs had proprietary joystick ports. I know for a fact that the Apple IIc has a 9-pin joystick, but it's reverse gender from a COM port (joystick end is male, plug on the computer is female).
    Sure, the same thing was used on the Spectrum, I think. By "PC" I for one usually mean IBM PC or compatible.

    Quote Originally Posted by Flack View Post
    I do remember some goofy 25-to-9 pin adapters for (I think) Amigas.
    If I'm not mistaken, 25-to-9 adapters were simply used with older 25-pin serial ports (which were pretty much functionally equivalent to 9-pin ports, just with some largely redundant pins).
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    ServBot (Level 11) kedawa's Avatar
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    Amigas used 25-pin serial ports.

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