Sidewinder joystick not compatable for vista?

Any word if we can get a driver for this old joystick and if it will ever be
usable with the new Vista OS?

"Dale "Mad_Murdock" White" wrote:

I have the sidewinder Precision 2 and it worked by default. I assume you're
referring to like the original Sidewinder ?

On reading your post I rushed to my wardrobe, hauled out my ms sidewinder
precision pro, plugged it in (using the game port to usb adapter that came
with it) and vista popped up installed its own driver and when I go to game
controllers in control panel all the buttons ans axis work. So Have You tried
it with vista or are you assuming it won't work because you can't find a
driver?

P.S. do a search for joytokey this is a great little proggie for those games
that don't support joystick, it makes the joystick emulate keyboard stokes so
any game that supports a keyboeard!! will support ALL the buttons and axis of
your sidewinder. I have not tried it in vista (am at work now so can't) but
it worth the download to see!!

I'm new and I found your comments I too have sidewinder precision. How did
you make it the default and how did you check it?

The problem i am havein is, in my device manager my gameport shows up as
unknown gameport. And My joystick doesn't show up in the control panel (under
controllers). Is anyone else have this issue?

Vista no longer supports "game ports".

Your only choice is to get a USB to Gameport Adapter for your joystick, or
get a new USB joystick.
I got the Thrustmaster TopGun Fox 2 USB for $40, to replace my 8 year old
Thrustmaster, and am pretty happy with it.

usb to gameport adaptors will not work as they only support analogue controllers, I don't think the drivers support usb anyway. It appears that your gameport is recognised, but unknown, I had a similar problem, and had to auto detect several times, before the stick was recognised. perhaps your game port is not standard, try also reinstalling your sound card drivers which control your game port. calibrating your stick once it is finaly recognised. If that fails, try updating your sound card drivers.

I have an old Windows 98 computer that I sometime play games on and my
Soundblaster sound card would not recognize my analog Sidewinder FF
joystick. So I went to a RE-PC store and bought and old cheap sound card
(definately worse quality) but the joystick worked in the game port on the
sound card. I use a headset for sound in the game anyway, so no big deal.

Oh, I forgot - check your "system requirements" and if DirectX 9.0 is
required, I don't think your game will work in Vista, as DirectX 10.0 is
built in :) At any rate, run the diagnostic "DxDiag" and see what it says.

All versions of DirectX are backwards compatible. If a game requires
DirectX 9.x, then it will work with DirectX 10.x.
--
Geoffrey Cohen


"Phil Rhodes" <pe.rhodes@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:%23F1GkrJZKHA.740@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
> Oh, I forgot - check your "system requirements" and if DirectX 9.0 is
> required, I don't think your game will work in Vista, as DirectX 10.0 is
> built in :) At any rate, run the diagnostic "DxDiag" and see what it says.