joysticks

[David McFarlane]

Mich,

OK, I will jump in here if only to clarify the 
discussion a little for myself.  By "joystick" do 
you mean a pointing device that indicates both 
direction & distance (i.e., how *far* one moves 
the stick), or a pointing device the indicates 
only direction (e.g., only whether the stick 
moves up, down, left, or right)?  As you know, 
modern gaming-style joysticks are of the first 
variety, whereas older arcade-style joysticks are 
of the latter.  I find that users confuse these 
two all the time -- the last time someone asked 
me about a joystick here, after a lot of 
questioning I figured out that they needed only 
an old-fashioned 4- or 8-way joystick (based on 
simple microswitches), which we could read very 
simply through any digital I/O port (e.g., 
lpt).  So I bought one on eBay and rigged it up, 
it was very solid and worked great.

(BTW, love your story about the Commodore 64, I 
still have mine and, at the request of my 12-year 
old nephew who has an interest in old computer 
games, bought a Donkey Kong game on eBay and ran 
it for him on the C=64.  Did a lot of lab 
programming on that machine through the early 
1990s, wrote my first assembly code hardware 
interrupt service routine on it.  Those were the days.)

-- dkm


At 9/17/2010 09:48 AM Friday, you wrote:
>Hi,
>Thanks for your input! I used the XBOX360 
>controller before (for one, because it can 
>easily connect to a pc via USB, but more 
>importantly, because there are some very 
>convenient SDKs provided by Microsoft for it), 
>but its sticks aren't all that brilliant - 
>they're quite small and not very smooth in the 
>operation. Also, I looked at the entire range of 
>sidewinder stuff, but compared to someone who 
>last used a joystick to do Winter Games on the 
>Commodore 64 (ahhh, does that bring back 
>memories to anyone? Langlaufen, running, 
>whatnot, all by moving the joystick as fast as 
>possible left and right, thus ruining your wrist 
>for life... beautiful), simple isn't exactly the 
>way I'd describe it. Closest possible I got was 
>coming up with 'arcade style' controllers (my 
>C64 joystick is, apparently, a 'lollypop' style 
>one... is it me or are game-controllers 
>seriously off in their naming conventions?). I 
>hope I can get our technician to work something 
>out using such parts, rather than getting a 
>cognitive 'fmri-compatible' 'precision timing' 
>unit at the price of a small island in Fiji...
>
>Cheers,
>Mich
>
>Michiel Spapé
>Research Fellow
>Perception & Action group
>University of Nottingham
>School of Psychology
>www.cognitology.eu
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: e-prime at googlegroups.com 
>[mailto:e-prime at googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Matt
>Sent: 16 September 2010 21:12
>To: E-Prime
>Subject: Re: joysticks
>
>I know people have used joysticks/gamepads from Microsoft and Logitech
>successfully with E-Prime.  Some of the Microsoft joysticks are pretty
>simple and only have a couple of buttons.  Logitech makes some
>gamepads with a similar layout to Playstation 3 or XBox, which might
>be more familiar for some subjects.  I believe these are all USB-
>driven and should be really easy to set up.

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