[Bruce Mather]

I don't entirely see how a serial port joystick works. A serial port interface generally requires the external device to have power since you have to drive RS-232 lines (+/- 12 vdc) as input to the computer. So you either have batteries or you have to phantom power from the RS-232 control lines (has been done, but not recommended due to the limitations of sink current on those lines). Also, a typical joystick has many channels: X, Y, 2 or more switches. These all have to be muxed into the RS-232 channel at a reasonably high rate (low latency) for a good response time for a game. Then you would need a PC (Windows?) device drive that could take this mux'ed RS-232 input and convert it into something looking for a gameport interface. Not impossible I suppose.

The beauty of the joystick is that the PC supplies a voltage on this 15 pin connector, uses the pots in the joystick as part of an RC circuit and measures the decay time of this RC circuit (I think that is the way it worked when I was a wee lad). Almost too simple. Plus other wire inputs for directly measuring switches.

The real problem we're facing is that RS-232 is GOING AWAY in favor of USB. My own laptop didn't have a RS-232 (DB9) port to test the camera with! But more USB ports than I could shake a stick at...