TI-99 Wired Controllers

[Retrospect]

Hello everyone. Just thinking about the joysticks and the 8-way directional commands that come with them ... Extended Basic would be limited to 0,-4 and 4? Why are the numbers done so, almost as though they (TI) were going for analog control by perhaps 8 values or more for each direction ?

 

Has anyone in assembly (I can't do assembly) tried tinkering with the velocities, are they addressed in the same way?

 

I did hear something about analog sticks being considered for the 99/4 (Dimension-4 prototype had it, iirc )

Would have been awesome for parsec - no need for keyboard 1,2,3 shift?

 

Pictured are a set of wired controllers for the 99/4 and possibly Dimension-4.

If you look, there's enough "give" in the space between the stick and the outer hole for an analog push.

Edited January 11, 2017 by Retrospect

[Tursi]

Apparently that is the case, the story is that the 99/4 originally supported wireless infrared analog sticks, 0-7 each direction. MESS actually supports them, as the code to read them is still in the ROMs.

[Retrospect]

Shame XB can't address it with

CALL JOYST(1,JX,JY)

IF JY=2 THEN SPEED=2

IF JY=3 THEN SPEED=3

 

and so on ... instead of the usual 4 or -4 , could have / would have been interesting.

[Airshack]

IMHO the TI joysticks are the worst joysticks ever produced for a consumer product. Sure, the Colecovision and Intellivision II controllers are bad but the TI sticks are simply torturous to use. The whole -4,0,+4 CALL JOYSTICKS scheme is silly too. Lubbock Engineering.

[Retrospect]

IMHO the TI joysticks are the worst joysticks ever produced for a consumer product. Sure, the Colecovision and Intellivision II controllers are bad but the TI sticks are simply torturous to use. The whole -4,0,+4 CALL JOYSTICKS scheme is silly too. Lubbock Engineering.

I know what you're saying, they're a pain aren't they. But that's my point, the commands should be addressing analogue values not just on or off, and the only reason i can think they made the joyst command so complex IS for analog. If only that could be addressed through XB ... it sure doesn't look like it was removed - it looks like you can address 0-7 instead of sticking to -4 or 4 ... but we've no analogue sticks to try it with. Unless anyone has an xbox360 controller with mess / mame in windows!

[+Ksarul]

If you thought the later TI joysticks were a pain to use, you should have tried the original ones (pictured in the first post). Those ridges on the ball at the top of the joystick bite into your flesh and cause serious physical pain after about 15-20 minutes of use. I used to play TI Invaders with those (before I went out and got myself an Atari adapter) and my hands were useless after about half an hour of play. They left deep parallel grooves in my hand. . .and half of the time, the grooves ended up being bruises.

[Omega-TI]

[Retrospect]

If i can get my hands on an Xbox360 wired controller and a modern-ish windows machine I will test my theory of XB being able to address MORE than just 4, and -4.

 

Only reason no one tested it on real iron ever is 'cos TI didn't supply the analog hardware (Idiots)

[Tursi]

Experimentation is always fun, but I'm not seeing how you intend for that to work. The joystick pins are wired up to single-bit inputs... there's no analog connection INSIDE either. The JOYST values are based on the original design for the 99/4 which apparently supported -7 to +7 analog sticks. The analog hardware was removed and they mapped the single-bit version to the middle of the range, most likely for future compatibility if they ever brought the analog back.