Gameport equipment issues...

[Bino]

Question.
Is it possible to cut the wire to a gameport type controller say. Rudder pedals and simply splice them to a USB cable to make them USB compatable?

Nope.  The old gameport from the 1980's and 1990's was analog.  Whole different beast.

[Zerstorer]

So Fulcrum...what your telling me is to not buy one of these nifty things for 40 bucks and then take apart my new (to me) toys to ultimately be unable to solder those tiny wires that I cannot see to tiny connections on a small and relatively expensive board....if I did and and failed it would make some interesting climb-out conversation for FSO though...  

Yes. You would be very mad at me!

Seriously though...if you are up for a small challenge it can be fun to do so and honestly isnt THAT hard to do. The potentiometers are relatively easy to rewire to a Bodnar board. Its the buttons that can be a challenge if the are already integrated onto the PCB board...usually you will need to replace witha new button.

If you are interested Google it. Lots of people rewire these old joysticks (the old Suncom F15 stick and its throttle are a particular favorite). Be sure to look at the Images tab in google when you do so....you'd be surprised how many people have taken pictures and how helpful those can be.

[CptA]

If your motherboard has an available PCI slot open, your best bet may be to find an older (used) Soundblaster Live! or other (hardware based) soundcard with built-in gameport and install it into your machine.

Don't try to use an off brand or built-in motherboard port as the chipsets on these often don't support full gameport funtionality.

Make sure you also go into your motherboard's BIOS and disable any on-board soundcard and game/midi port settings to avoid conflicts with the new hardware.

However, if I recall correctly, Microsoft removed full (2-way) functionality from the gameport with the release of WinXP, claiming that this was a possible route for hackers into your machine, although I never heard of this happening.

Anyway this was the reason I had to switch from my old reliable CH gameport equipment (and Win98) to CH USB based controllers and WinXP.

Good Luck!

CptA

[Bizman]

Microsoft hasn't supported gameports since the release of Vista.

[MajWoody]

Google HomeBoy's inventions. Go to his site. Click on projects. Scroll down to" converting gameport pedals to USB

[puller]

Google HomeBoy's inventions. Go to his site. Click on projects. Scroll down to" converting gameport pedals to USB

I have a ST290 that I am going to break into a thousand pieces and see if I can do this...Hopefully once I get into the pedals I will feel a little better about it....thanks for the link 

[MajWoody]