Extended Joystick Port. How does the keypad work

[Justin Payne]

Hey all,

 

So, I was thinking about picking up a Jaguar joypad. It doesn't look like that great of control but unless there is something better, it's the only game in town. Now, I'm looking at the pinout and the pad and I notice the pad has a keypad but it doesn't look like there is any way to send that kind of keypad data. Any ideas?

[English Invader]

My guess is that there is very little (if any) software that takes advantage of that functionality. The STe was notoriously under-utilised.

 

Personally, I don't see the point in using a Jaguar pad on an ST. The games are designed for joystick and a D-pad won't give you the same level of flexibility which is why people on emulators spend good money on USB to 9-pin adaptors so they can use a regular joystick instead of an XBox 360 gamepad.

[Rybags]

http://www.atari-forum.com/wiki/index.php?title=The_Atari_Enhanced_Joystick_Ports_FAQ

 

The trick is that the program outputs to a register to select a group of buttons, this type of multiplexing allows more buttons that there are input pins on traditional "parallel" controller port arrangements.

 

As mentioned before though... there's probably very little software that even uses the extended ports, let alone the extra functionality of the Jag controller.

[Justin Payne]

My guess is that there is very little (if any) software that takes advantage of that functionality. The STe was notoriously under-utilised.

 

Personally, I don't see the point in using a Jaguar pad on an ST. The games are designed for joystick and a D-pad won't give you the same level of flexibility which is why people on emulators spend good money on USB to 9-pin adaptors so they can use a regular joystick instead of an XBox 360 gamepad.

I actually have a Falcon and I'm interested in getting one for possibly using it for developing games but, of course, if there is no need to get one other than that, what's the point. I was mostly just interested in the "How" of how it worked. I guess it makes sense if it does multiplexing. Are there any games on the systems that can use it?

[Fletch]

Are there any games on the systems that can use it?

 

Check out this thread : http://atariage.com/forums/topic/121908-stefalcon-power-pad-games/

[Lynxpro]

My guess is that there is very little (if any) software that takes advantage of that functionality. The STe was notoriously under-utilised.

Personally, I don't see the point in using a Jaguar pad on an ST. The games are designed for joystick and a D-pad won't give you the same level of flexibility which is why people on emulators spend good money on USB to 9-pin adaptors so they can use a regular joystick instead of an XBox 360 gamepad.

 

 

More than 1 fire button is a definite plus. If Gauntlet and Gauntlet 2 were hacked to support EJP, you could plug in the Jaguar Team Tap and have 4 controllers plugged into 1 single STE/Falcon EJP instead of plugging 2 controllers into the DB9s and resorting to using one of those Parallel Port adapters that offer an additional 2 DB9s.

 

EJP supports analog joysticks so it would be possible to build an adapter to use PC analog joysticks if games were modded to support them. Light pens/guns are supported, and if you have 2 Jaguar Team Taps you could plug them both in and have 8 controllers plugged in at once.

[atarian1]

I don't feel most people would like to play Gauntlet/Gauntlet 2 with a joypad. It really requires a digital (not analog) joystick just like the arcade.

 

Also, Gauntlet/Gauntlet 2 came out before the STE was even released so supporting the enhanced joystick ports would be impossible. Very doubtful that US Gold would release a version 2.0 to support the enhanced joystick ports. Not only that, the Jaguar did not even exist yet, so there were no joypads to use anyway.

[Lynxpro]

I don't feel most people would like to play Gauntlet/Gauntlet 2 with a joypad. It really requires a digital (not analog) joystick just like the arcade.

 

Also, Gauntlet/Gauntlet 2 came out before the STE was even released so supporting the enhanced joystick ports would be impossible. Very doubtful that US Gold would release a version 2.0 to support the enhanced joystick ports. Not only that, the Jaguar did not even exist yet, so there were no joypads to use anyway.

 

Gauntlet on the Lynx, Genesis, and other consoles use Dpads. It's not a biggie. You seem to think a DPad reads differently than an 8 directional digital joystick, for some reason.

 

As for adding support for the JagPads and EJP, it shouldn't be difficult. Users are already modifying old ST games to allow them to install to hard drives as well as improve compatibility for later TOS versions and CPUs.

[atarian1]

No, Gauntlet is much like other maze games like Pac-Man. It's easier to control and go in every direction with a joystick than a control pad.

 

While adding EJP support is nice, I would rather have the hackers fix that nasty teleporting bug in Gauntlet 2. When two players teleport at the same time in a 3-4 player game, they can end up on top of each other and then neither can move. The only thing you can do is reset the machine. It happened at least twice at the Atari Party; thus, forcing a reset and a long wait time for the game to reload and unpack again. I hope that D-Bug reads this and considers fixing it.