Does anyone know how they have the wiring for the joystick ports set up? i looked at a pinout foor a game port, however it of course only has support for three buttons, thusly they have to be using some sort of hack or packet system. does anyone know of a way to physically move or detur joystick buttons?
The pinout is on the IFI website and can be found in THIS document. There is no hackage weirdage or packeting at work here. The joysticks are nothing more than a bunch of switches and potentiometers in a pretty plastic housing with a cord and a connector. Btw i THINK that the HAT switch is actually a bunch of switches and resistors hooked up to an axis.
btw you might want to find a diff gameport pinout bc a gameport has input for 4 buttons not 3.
cibressus53,
The pinout is the same for any joystick with the gameport connector and you will find that inside wiring varies from one type to another. Some take advantage of an analog input and switch in resistor strings from the five volt power supply. The result is a varying DC potential dependent on which switch is depressed.
The pinout in the OI docs that Rick has linked to has the pinout available for the OI ports starting on page 7. Please note that when working with the OI some switch inputs are shared between ports, i.e. you do not have all of the switches available for each joystick at every port on the OI.
The tough thing for us in the future is that joystick manufacturers are going to USB devices which are not compatible with the OI. Watch for more ideas and innovations as we get into the season.
You are essentially correct about that. The hat itself is just a multi-positioning momentary SPST switch. The resistance is within the OI, so one needs not worry about it (You don’t need any external resistance when attaching switches to the OI).
It isn’t <i>too</i> simple to figure out but if you pull out the small pcb soldered to the POV hat, you (with the help of a multimeter) can figure out the pinout. I figured it out last year and could probably create an image of it if you’d like. Still, it’s good practice in reverse engineering if you decide to figure it out yourself.