I wanted to use my Saitek PCDash2 in Windows 7. Unfortunately, there are no drivers for it. The default driver seems to be OK, but only first 32 buttons are reported, both in the Game Controller console and in various apps, such as GlovePIE.

From what I've read, it might be a problem with how DirectX reports the buttons. I've read that there are mapping programs that support more than 32 buttons, but I cannot find them anywhere...

By the way, I've changed the registry entry to the correct number of buttons. It does not seem to change anything, though...

DirectInput has a limit of 32 buttons, 8 axes, and 4 hat switches per controller ID, with up to 16 IDs.

The only workaround I can think of is if Saitek produced Win7 64-bit drivers for the old PCDash2 that permitted keyboard emulation in addition to the DirectInput buttons, but I doubt it at this point.

That is not entirely true:

The button states are actually bitfields; if button 1 is pressed, the bitfield indicated by JOY_BUTTON1 is set, and so on up to JOY_BUTTON32. If your joystick has more than 32 buttons (!), you can use the dwButtonNumber to see if a particular button is pressed. Since this field is not a bitfield, you cannot check for multiple buttons pressed above button number 32. For the point of view hat, use the values shown in Figure 13.
http://www.microsoft.com/msj/archive/S241.aspx

This is a very old quote, but I believe this has not changed between DX versions.

As I understand it, DirectX does allow for more than 32 buttons, but the software needs to provide for it specifically.

As I wrote, I've read mentions of some joystick mappers doing just that (M16 was one, if I remember correctly), but I cannot find a working download anywhere.

Well, I stand corrected after all. When you say that it's not a software limitation, is that on the device driver side or on the game side? (As far as games go, I've encountered enough to know that a lot of them arbitrarily can't see all of the usual 32 buttons for whatever reason. Sometimes the limit's 16, other times it's only 8.)

I think this is a very old issue, I have my PC Dash 2 since W2K days and I never had all buttons working, neither on W2K nor on XP.

The device was working fine with the Saitek drivers on XP...

I've tried different button mappers which are confirmed to work with devices with more than 32 buttons (GlovePIE, SVmapper) and they see it as a 32-button gamepad (and don't see the presses).

I'm beggining to wonder whether it is not a limitation of a generic gamepad driver...