Hi!
I want to install under Win 95 a joystick with more than buttons. Can you tell me, which one will be the best?

I cant ever remember if Win 95 supported USB or not now.

I guess you'll need something with a game port connector so that rules out anything new.

Try in the Buy/Sell/Trade forum right here
http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/forums/12/1/Buy_Sell_Trade.html
Or maybe Ebay,
Look out for Saitek X36 or older CH sticks or a Microsoft Sidewinder if you fancy force feedback
Good luck

Yes, Win 95 has support for USB. But it can be also on GamePort. I want know, which joystick with more than 4 buttons is supported under Win 95. I need only INFORMATION.

OP - Why in the name of God are you still running Win 95??

Win95 did not support USB. They had an updated version of Win95 called "OSR2" later on that did support USB (and FAT32 among other things).

With that being said, I'm shocked you even want to mess with Win95. I "MIGHT" could understand Win98 but Win95 is so far obsolete it's not even funny. If you have an extremely old game that you need Win95 to play on then it's not likely going to support more than 4 buttons anyway.

I understand you need information but you have to remember that most people on here have probably never even touched Win95 (some probably weren't even alive when it came out!) For me it's so far back in the past that I simply can't remember. You might need to spend some time researching this yourself.

Because I want...it isn't important, why I want play under Windows 95, only this, which joystick with more than 4 buttons is supported under this system...

Do yourself a huge favour and get at least Win XP. Win 95 is so old, slow, annoying, ugly in comparison. What are your system specs?

OSH_ were used to a bit of chit chat here, you cant just ask, get and run around here.
Think of it like the sketch in "Monty Pythons Life of Brian" where Brian has to barter for a gourd while trying to run from the Romans

Any way, back on topic.
Forget my previous idea of an X36, the oldest drivers I could find for it were for 98/98se, I think the sames going to be true of the others too.

In the end that's what its going to comes down to, drivers.
My suggestion is any stick you see that takes your fancy search to see if there are 95 drivers available for it, if there arent forget it and move on to the next one.

I had one of the first Thrustmaster HOTAS and the second (second called F22, I think). They came out in the 90's -- next one to release was the USB Cougar. Both of those old 90's HOTAS (Hands on Throttle and Stick) had lots of programmable buttons. They were great at the time of release.

Both were gameport, I think (but, may need correcting on the F22). If I remember, both would handle Windows 95 if you can get the drivers today (assuming you can get a used HOTAS -- I finally pitched mine in the trash a couple years ago).

What about this one, MS Sidewinder Pro gameport stick:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=230643745941

Hi OSH_

If you're talking about using a Gameport, then most any stick will work up to 4-buttons and with a throttle wheel and rudders, 4-axes. No-brainer there. Win95 was, IIRC, supposed to support USB but when was the last time MS was on time?

They did offer that OSR2 update that put a bridge between what was the HID stack at the time and VJOYD, the joystick driver, so USB sticks did work with that. I believe it was DX3 in the first Win95 DDK and it supported as many as 6 axes, 32 buttons, and a POV. You could have sixteen of them, but aside from FS95 there was very little that supported more than a single controller. Most of the sims at the time were still single-controller, meant to recognize the stick -> throttle -> rudder pedals daisy-chain.

There were a few sticks that supported more than 4 buttons. The CH FlightStick Pro and the follow-ons (CombatStick F16, etc) did. The also supported the POV. They used a chording arrangement. With four buttons you get 16 combinations, so if buttons 2 and 4 were active at the same time it might generate a button 6 (I don't recall exactly, but that was the general idea. The problem with the scheme was that you were pretty much limited to one button at a time since pressing two could end up looking like a "chord" and generating a button you didn't really mean to press.

The TM didn't use chording, the used 5 fixed resistors on the POV and then fed it down the throttle axis. That produced 5 different outputs which were translated to hat positions. It didn't suffer the chording problems, but it also couldn't have a throttle built into the stick. The WCS II took care of that, You could plug the stick into the WCS II and then either program the hat to send characters and the throttle to work as analog, or you could pass the hat through and let the throttle produce characters. Most sims of the day supported character for both view and throttle, frame rates were low, it worked out pretty well.

There was also the MS SideWinder 3D. It had extra buttons on the base and it's own driver. The stick itself, at least the one I had (probably still have) was nothing to write home about. The deadzone and endzones were wide enough that you didn't need to calibrate it, but you lost a lot of active movement getting around the deadzone/endzone thing. The driver was a little flaky, too. The stick didn't use axes at all, It bundled the thing up in a data packet and sent it, buttons, axes, and all, as a serial data packet down the four button lines. The axes were only used because you could tell by watching the gameport from the stick side when the sim had tried to poll and knew to start the serial transfer. The driver would decode that and, assuming it was actually working, you were set. It also had a switch on the front that selected the CH-style hat or the TM-style had depending on which you wanted to use.

Beyond that, the sticks generally depended on programming software to send character. You could only get 4-button through the gameport, but the sims responded to character commands and that let them get around that limitation. TM put out the WCS II, it would program the buttons on itself and the FCS, CH had a throttle that did much the same with the FighterStick I believe.

If you're going to try to get OSR2 installed and use USB, good luck. I've never tried it, but it did apparently work. For sticks, I'd look at the earlier CH USB sticks. It was USB 1.0 at the time, I don't know if the later versions of USB would do the trick or not.

Anyway, I hope this is of some help!

Best regards,

- Bob

The StickWorks
http://www.stickworks.com

When USB was introduced with Win95B (the name it called itself) I remember there was almost nothing available to use it. Mostly a few keyboards and mice. I don't recall when the first USB joystick came out, but it was late 90s.
Also remember that 95B only predated Win98 (the one with full USB support) by 2 years, but even in 98 it was flaky until 98SE (2nd edition). I recall Win98 crashed on me a lot, but 98SE rocked and I kept it until WinXP SP2 was released and THEN I went to XP (SP2 was basically XP-B or XP 2nd edition!)

Anyway, if possible stick to gameport sticks with 95, it works a lot better. Finding one now, though, well...



The Jedi Master

Stuffy...and what do you say, I HAVE Windows XP Professional with SP3? If I say, I want to know which joystick with more than 4 buttons is supported under Windows 95 is it not clear? I expect only information concerning my question, and not advices like "buy Wndows XP" (why not Windows 7 or even 8?). I know, Windows 95 is old and slow, but for something purpose I want have such information. Is it now clear?

Bob, Jedi Master - that's what I have expected: broad and precise information. Thanks!

OSH, it's not like we're asking for your bank account information. Some people (including myself) are just curious as to what you're trying to accomplish here with a Win95 installation.

Don't be offended, it's conversational.
There's a lot of free info in this forum that would cost you $50/hr in person.

Well, It wasn't me who started this flame war. I've simple asked about information, without guarantee, I receive such information. But I don't like, when somebody gives me advice in such way like Stuffy. This was simple question, and Bob Church, and Jedi Master have demonstrated, they understood, what I was on about. Thread can be closed now, I've gained informations.

Can we keep it open until we find out why Win95?

Because some old games doesn't work under Windows XP?

We need someone to ask about peripherals for a TRS-80 next!



The Jedi Master

Wow - take a chill-pill, daddio! And I didn't mention Win 7 or 8, since you're currently running Win 95 - and the one and only reason I can think of for that is your system cannot support a modern O/S - Win 7 is as modern as they come.



Exactly...

There is no flame war here, just curious individuals.

The more we know about your intentions, the better we can answer questions. It's not fair of you to demand answers to your questions while limiting the scope to your narrow focus. This is a discussion forum, and everyone is simply discussing.

Damn now what did I start.

Hi OSH_

If your main concern is XP compatibility, you'd probably do better with Win98 Gold or SE. Say away from ME. The joystick system was essentially identical, but the USB support was there if you needed it. It was no use in a DOS game, but if you're playing Windows games '98 is much stabler.

The main drawback to '98 was that you couldn't really get a pure DOS prompt from Win98 and it made DOS games difficult. If you put an AutoExec.bat file in the root directory that has COMMAND as it's last line (it can be it's only line) then you'll boot straight into DOS. I've run everything back at least as far as Red Baron 1 there without any problems at all.

If there are other considerations, then just ignore the above.

Best regards,

- Bob

The SticWorks
http://www.stickworks.com

I still have my TRS-80 (unlike the TM HOTAS I pitched -- mentioned above)

Back then, we had to design/program our own games in BASIC language. No joysticks (well really crude ones). So, I mainly used it for working at home. Though it computed slowly, it was faster turnaround than our TSS mainframe.

Brings back memories of the "good old days". Got so excited, I opened the storage box for the first time since Windows 95 was released In the box, there are four 40 track "floppy" drives in series and the TRS80 expansion (too much to drag into my office for this picture). Some of the stuff I have got used with the next computer I bought (also a Radio Shack). The stock TRS-80 (for those not born at the time) was no larger than a keyboard is today. The barely visible monitor background of the image is me typing this response



Wow, these threads sure can get off-track -- particularly with guys like me around

I see your TRS 80 and raise you:



The very first computer I ever owned.

Cool Glad to see others have felt moved to hold on to these "historical keepsakes"

I often think I might try to fire up the TRS 80 someday. Finding a compatible monitor might be the stumbling block (tossed my old "green screens" long ago).

I guess Windows 95 and a Windows 95 compatible multi-button joystick may be in the same category

To cut-off any more speculations. I'm using Windows 95 under DOSBOX. This is reason, why I've asked about support for joystick with more than 4 buttons. EOT.

Now, that wasn't so hard, was it?

Thanks.

I had a similar issue with F-29 Retaliator, in the end I used JoyToKey to map arrow keys to my USB stick axes.

This is in the Buy Sell Trade Forum:
http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/3348974/Longbow_2_Complete_Win_98_SE_B.html#Post3348974

Since we are talking about joysticks for Win95, I'd look for a Thrustmaster F22 and TQS with Bob Church's Digital Chips. Just my .02 cents.

I think I still have my "Top Gun" Thrustmaster Joystick.... I bought it with Top Gun Fire At Will..... using 15 PIN Gameport.

I used it all the way up till about 2002 then it was boxed and put in storage.

Hi Falstar,

>> Since we are talking about joysticks for Win95, I'd look for a Thrustmaster F22 and TQS with Bob Church's Digital Chips. Just my .02 cents. <<

Thanks for the plug. They do show up on eBay now and then. Chipped F22/TQS setups go for like $20-$30 dollars it seems to me, less than the chips were. They wouldn't work with a pure DOS game, though. They should be okay with real Win95 games, nobody's ever mentioned any problems with it, but with games that read the gameport directly they wouldn't run. It needs that Windows driver under it.

Best regards,

- Bob

The StickWorks
http://www.stickworks.com