Hi!

Picked up the set of Saitek X36 USB joystick / X35T throttle, and wondered where I could find the latest drivers? This was all in a nice (old) box complete with a set of drivers on a CD from the year 2000. I'm trying to use the USB implementation of f the joystick.

Two questions:

1. Did Saitek ever release a set of newer (USB) drivers that actually work under XP or Windows 10? (website has dropped all support for the X36)

2. Is there a way to get any of this to work on European Air War combined with a set of analog rudder pedals (Thrustmaster)?

I've been unable to get Windows XP to work with the shipped drivers. I could also use a configuration utility, profile maker, and a way to test/calibrate the stick as I'm not sure if the standard Game Controllers app in XP would work with the USB controller.

Thanks in advance,

I'm no expert,

but the CD is most likely for win98/ME.

You either have to find a Win2000/XP set of drivers
or
connect to winxps built in drivers. (uninstall all the stuff you tried to get to work)

You might not be an expert, but I think that's exactly what was shipped. There are folders for Windows 95 and Windows 98 on the CD, but no mention of anything past that. BTW, I'm using Win XP SP3.

That's why I'm looking for help with later drivers from the community, but given that I have no idea what I'm looking for from Saitek, I was hoping to find somebody that might be able to clue me in as to the latest drivers that Saitek had produced for the extinct X36. There's about 10 gillion drivers sites that have driver sets, but they all want you to download their "download manager", and who knows what gets put on your PC, in addition. I might take a chance on one of them, if I knew what the last drivers that Saitek produced for them.

Regarding your 2nd suggestion, I'm assuming that you're referring to Windows XP's built in USB drivers. Hmmm, I did nuke the installed Saitek drivers, but it doesn't give you anything when I tried to use the built-in drivers. Just the HID entry in Device Manager.

I also tried Dhauzimmer's drivers but it errored out short of completing the install. The set I received didn't really have a visual calibration routine, and he tells you over and over, NOT to use windows calibration from the XP Game Controller's app. After the install, I tried firing up EAW 1.2a, but the plane just augured in. No control. Later, I ran across a post that talked about using Device and Port numbers to set things up in EAW.ini. Not sure how to use those things, nor which version of EAW it works with? I've had EAW on my machine since 2000, purchased a copy way back when, and have thoroughly enjoyed the sim. It's one of 3 games on my PC, 2 of which are flight sims. I just downloaded 1.60, and am in the process of completing the install.

If I'm trying to use a USB stick and throttle, and a set of analog rudder pedals - does anyone have an idea how the port and device assignments in EAW.INI should go? Or should I wait until I successfully get a set of Saitek drivers (or some kind of drivers!) that will work with the Saitek X36F flight stick / X35T Throttle setup to test it out?

BTW, I should mention I have a SB Live! sound card/joy port in my machine on which to attach my rudder pedals. Right now I'm concentrating on finding the correct drivers for the USB X36.

Thanks for your input, Mark!

GoldenHound104

One of the settings you need to make is the preferred device to the joystick using "advanced" settings:



With my combination of the Logitech j/s and Saitek pedals it was defaulting to the Saitek pedals if I did not make this setting.

My ini settings

============================
[CONTROLS]
Force Feedback=0
Force Feedback Gain=0
Flight Sensitivity=1.000000
Camera Sensitivity=5.000000
Snapview Speed=7
Swap Mouse X=0
Swap Mouse Y=0
Windows Joystick=1
Device1 Port=1
Device2 Port=2
Device3 Port=3
Rudder Device=2
Throttle Device=1
Stick Device=1
Key Device=1
POV Device=1
JoystickDeadZone=4
Guns Convergence Z=0
Guns Convergence Y=0
============================
[Miscellaneous]
Debug Flags=0
Debug Path=.\
============================
[Remappable Keys]
FLIGHT CONTROL=Joystick
CAMERA CONTROL=Mouse
RUDDER CONTROL=Rudder
THROTTLE CONTROL=Throttle

Jel

As far as my research (I spent 45 mins looking and reading) for your stick I have not seen any XP official drivers (not even custom ones). I did see those driver sites that want you to use their download manager, but my experience is they uselly install crap software and the drivers are usualy just the last offical drivers released, like for Win ME.

There was only mention of the stick being assigned a XP generic stick. But some of the buttons on the stick won't work like the pinkie button.
I can't remember how to assign a new device in XP, if you unplug and uninstalled and cleaned up the old drivers/software for the stick, then restart windows.
Plug in the stick and then a window should pop up, and select, 'let you pick driver for device' then pick a generic one that has 4 -way axis...

If you get it installed follow MrJellys advice above on picking the preferred device.

Note: The EAW eaw.ini file ports and devices entries apply to v1.28c and above I believe of EAW. (They allow three in total Joysticks to work in a limited fashion. Meaning you can use the eaw.ini special entry's to assign the throttle and pedals if need be).
But they won't do you any good unless you can get Windows to recognize your stick in some fashion.

Note 2: Your pedals you say plug into the gameport on your sound card. That's usually good news for EAWv1.2 as it can have a USB stick and gameport pedals. EAWv1.60 can benefit from that too.


EDIT:

This is an unofficial XP driver (gameport stick version I think only)
https://sourceforge.net/projects/x36driver/

USB Drivers for the x36 (Dhauzimmer's)
https://github.com/willmmiles/x36usb

EDIT2:

Regarding getting the pedals to work, apparently there where official drivers used in Win98 that allowed for rudder pedals to work with your stick....

Hello MarkEAW and Mr. Jelly,

Thank you, gentlemen for your posts and your pertinent and valuable information!

MarkEAW - I'm very thankful for your time and effort researching drivers for the X36. The detail in your posts are of great help, i.e., the rudder pedals, and old drivers. I can relate to your experiences - there is a dearth of information to be had for this joystick! :o) I'm truly amazed at how little information and support is available from Saitek. Most any other company keeps a link for legacy products on their site! But, again I thank you. Thanks for the links! I'll follow up on those this evening.

And Mr. Jelly - Thanks to you as well for bringing to light the need to make the joystick the preferred device. I had not heard of that before! Also, may I thank you for including a great example of what I need to do with the EAW.INI file regarding Devices and Ports. Is that the Windows 10 joystick configuration - JOY.CPL?

Regards Gentlemen!
GoldenHound104

Saitek released some statement back in the day about that joystick would hang in win2000/xp because too much traffic/speed for the keyboard input is used, so there not going to make new drivers for them, or something or the other. But that statement I only found for the gameport only version of your stick. It may have applied to the usb one aswell.

Yes that's the windows 10 joystick control panel. The Joy.cpl you can run in windows xp too. In the run area off the start menu.

Your welcome too for the help. I'm curious if you can really get basic function at least out of it, as its a usb device, but I think the gameport functionality is limiting its use.
I have a Joystick Help document at my site, but it doesn't cover your issues really, just a few paragraphs about using built in xp drivers or assign it a generic axis stick.


EDIT:
http://www.stickworks.com/x36drv04.zip
X36DRV04.ZIP contains an auxiliary driver you can install to allow the use of analog rudder pedals with the Saitek X36. The driver only works with the stick in USB mode and only with Windows 98. There's a small text file, X36PDLS.TXT, in the ZIP that tells how to set the driver and get it running (12,909 bytes).

Still working on it...

Taking another crack at Dhauzimmer's drivers.

Thanks MarkEAW for the links. I've downloaded everything you've pointed to. So far, I've finally got Dhauzimmer's driver's installed, and supposedly calibrated, using CALIB.BAT. I'm going to try just the joystick as you suggested on your Joystick page, and see how it works. I've left the .ini as it is...for now. I know this isn't going to work first time, but I'll test it and observe.

Well Heck.

No joy.

I got Dhauzimmer's drivers installed. The cleanest that I can get them. Calibrated it through his batch file, CALIB. The XP game controller app shows no buttons or hats working, the joystick is sporadically jumping all over the place. EAW 140 is set to stock values:

Device1 Port=1
Device2 Port=2
Device3 Port=3
Rudder Device=1
Throttle Device=1
Stick Device=1
Key Device=1
POV Device=1

EAW140 freezes when I jump into Instant Mission. I chose EAW default Theater, P47d, and SPAW45.
EAW1.2A spins until I use the keyboard to right the plane. Nothing from the Joystick or Throttle seems to work. My in-game configure settings have been Joystick only, and everything else keyboard. And, Joystick, Rudder, Throttle assigned to the appropriate device.

I'm stumped! Is there any hope that the X36F stick will work under USB?
Short of throwing the USB out, and trying my luck on the Gameport drivers, can anyone suggest other settings?

Regards,
GoldenHound

OK. Success. Or at least progress.

Still using the Dhauzimmer's drivers. I plugged in the X35T throttle, and it also seems to be working now that I've made some changes to the eaw.ini

Now, the eaw.ini for 1.60 looks like this:

Windows Joystick=1
Device1 Port=1
Device2 Port=2
Device3 Port=3
Rudder Device=2
Throttle Device=2
Stick Device=1
Key Device=1
POV Device=2

I have a very annoying rudder trim problem. The plane wants to spin right. The trim controls on the throttle are no help. When viewed in the Game Controller, it shows the rotary 1 & 2 are full on. The rudder is full on. I'll play a little more with the utilities provided by Dhauzimmer.

I really could use a profile editor. Is there one that works with Dhauzimmer's stuff? There is a post about the XD Profile in his stuff, but the link is broken.


GoldenHound

This maybe an old version of the XD Profile program, or last, IDK.
https://web.archive.org/web/20050213030903/http://xdprofile.freebirdswing.org/

Try changing Rudder Device to 3 in your ini.
ShoGun

XD-Profile

After searching for quite a while, I stumbled upon the website.

Please update your bookmarks as the old links referenced no longer work. Here is an excellent tutorial site, along with the software:

http://web.archive.org/web/20050914213424/xdprofile.freebirdswing.org/usersguide.asp


For those that haven't had any luck with Dhauzimmer's drivers and are searching for an alternative, here is a driver (I haven't tested it) that has usb/gameport functionality. It works with Saitek X36, X45, and X52.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/x36driver/?source=typ_redirect

Hope this is useful to someone else besides me! :o)

GoldenHound

Hi MarkEAW,

Sorry - I didn't see your post until just now. My link is essentially the same as the one you posted. Thanks very much for your help. And thanks also for your great body of work on your site. It's excellent. I have it bookmarked - It's going to take some time for me to look through it.


GoldenHound

Your welcome.
My site is a labor of love (ps: not always). It takes a lot of reading and digesting to beable to re present informative text. Some could be wrong, but once errors are pointed out I fix them.

BTW I couldn't get to the xd profile site you linked, I needed to use the wayback machine to find an archive copy of it.

So is your stick mostly working properly now?

I checked my post that included the address of XDProfile, and sure enough it didn't work! Weird. It worked from my desktop but not from my notebook. I changed it. Thanks for the heads-up!

Regarding my joystick: The USB driver works, but when using the throttle controller, depending on the position it can interrupt the joystick movement essentially disabling it. In addition, the joystick pointer freezes when it reaches the far right X axis. I get movement only occasionally. I wonder if this is the reason the person that owned it previously gave it up? I haven't pulled it apart to look, but I'm not real confident I'll be able to fix it. My time is free, so I'll give it a shot.

I'm currently checking out the other driver that I linked in my post. It has USB and Gameport drivers, but with no instructions or manual! Sheesh! I tried the gameport, and nothing worked, though it had a sophisticated test screen in the XP MS Game Controller app. The USB driver also has a sophisticated test screen, however, the joystick pointer suffers from the same problems in the right-hand coordinates. That driver was written by Alfredo Costalago. The labels in the test screens are all in spanish. I read spanish, but even if you don't know spanish, you can infer the meanings of the labels if you think about it.

So, at this point I can't say conclusively if the drivers offered will take me where I need to go. It's not functional enough to play EAW at this point. I'll update this post once I make a decision which way I'll be going.

One final informative link.

https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/showthread.php?184974-saitek-x36-on-windows-XP

Following up on my last promise about checking in.

I've exhausted all the links, software, and options. I've come to the conclusion that the X36F Flight stick & throttle are defective. I bought them used in AZ. Who knows what happened to them. The software that I've uncovered, etc., may work for those that still use the X36F. Hopefully, the work that we've done (myself, MarkEAW, and Mr. Jelly) has produced resources for those that may find them useful.

So, I guess it's time to see if I can use the throttle alone with my Suncomm F-15e Strike Eagle stick, along with my analog pedals. Failing that, I'll be looking for a Saitek X52 pro setup.

GoldenHound

Thanks for checking in and following up.
I have no additional info to give on the X36 issue.