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OK, you've got a few options. Let me know which one appeals to you and I'll write another paper (the serial one was mine).
Option 1: DirectX. Advantages: Industry standard. Can support more axes/buttons than the next method. Disadvantages: a lot of overhead for setting up DirectInput, only works under Windows
Option 2: Assembly!!!!!! Yup, you can do it straight from assembly. Advantages: none of the DirectX stuff, can be used w/o windows. Disadvantages: it's assembly. 'nuf said.
In all honesty, assembly isn't really that bad, especially if you have someone tell you exactly what to write in your code--it's the method I'd recomend for a simple project like this.
However, as I said before DirectInput is the industry standard nowadays, so if you want to learn it for the pure sake of learning some introductory DirectX, I'd be happy to write a paper on that too.
As for doing it through a serial port, it just isn't going to happen. A joystick uses a different pin for each axis/set of buttons, but a serial port has only one pin for data.
My Linux box just died a slow, painful death with lots of pretty colors, so I'm off to remedy that (and maybe sleep?), but let me know which you'd prefer.
--Rob
(I could have the assembly one done in about 20 mins. The DirectInput might take a few days)
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