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Author Topic: PC joystick slower than Amiga?  (Read 1625 times)

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Offline ElPolloDiablTopic starter

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PC joystick slower than Amiga?
« on: July 05, 2013, 02:19:46 PM »
A couple years back there was quite a long argument about joystick polling speed.
I have found an answer at: http://pinouts.ru/Inputs/GameportPC_pinout.shtml

If you read paragraph two: The joystick interface card was designed to be as simple and cheap as possible. The card consisted only of bus interface electronics and four monostable multivibrators (all in on 558 chip). Those monostable multivibrators were simple timer circuits which put out a pulse with width directly proportional to the joystick resistance value. The pulse width was then measured using software loop. This has caused anormous amounts of problems to game programmers when computers have become faster and faster all the time. On faster machines, the joystick routine in the software does not read the joystick signal properly resulting in a timing problems. Some dedicated joystick cards are designed to vary the joystick signal so the software can properly detect the joystick and process the data.

Whereas the Atari/Amiga style is a fairly simple design and wouldn't get any timing issues.
Link here: http://old.pinouts.ru/Inputs/JoystickAtari2600_pinout.shtml

Obviously some people would be getting buggy PC joystick behaviour.
It clears it up for me too.
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Offline ElPolloDiablTopic starter

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Re: PC joystick slower than Amiga?
« Reply #1 on: July 05, 2013, 08:40:30 PM »
You can get PC joystick that are digital. I'm not sure if it has problems with the software timing loop however.
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