st joysticks

[howerton]

Hi I recently bought a Atari ST. I love playing it. But I noticed that not all joysticks work with the ST. Can someone recommend a good joystick/controller?

[Justin Payne]

All joysticks that work with the 2600 and 8-bit computers work with the ST. Which joystick are you using?

[howerton]

A black and grey Wico bootgrip. I had trouble getting my red wico stick and a sega genesis controller to work on gauntlet. The fire button worked but I could not move. I had both in the second port. Not the mouse port. and assigned the controller to joystick 1 not 0.

[Sak]

Gauntlet (if I remember correctly) uses all ports, both mouse and joystick. I used to have this game original and it featured two splitter joystick cables to offer four player support. I dont know if you are using a splitter that does not work correctly on the second (splitter side) port. Try using the mouse port as well, with the red wico and the genesis joypad.

Edited December 23, 2015 by Sak

[Amimitl2]

A black and grey Wico bootgrip. I had trouble getting my red wico stick and a sega genesis controller to work on gauntlet. The fire button worked but I could not move. I had both in the second port. Not the mouse port. and assigned the controller to joystick 1 not 0.

Genesis controllers are known for not working properly on the Atari ST. It's better to use a Master System controller instead, when it comes to gamepads. As for joysticks, the popular ones were the ZiPSTiK and the Competition Pro. I prefer the ZiPSTiK, but we all have different preferences of course.

 

ZiPSTiK: https://stiggyblog.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/img_4869-821x1024.jpg

Competition Pro: https://stiggyblog.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/competition_pro_5000.jpg

Edited December 26, 2015 by Amimitl2

[Lynxpro]

A black and grey Wico bootgrip. I had trouble getting my red wico stick and a sega genesis controller to work on gauntlet. The fire button worked but I could not move. I had both in the second port. Not the mouse port. and assigned the controller to joystick 1 not 0.

 

Gauntlet - it might be Gauntlet 2 - on the ST and Amiga requires a DB9 to DB25 cable. You plug in the extra 2 controllers into the printer port so you can have 4 controllers and thus 4 player. I believe Leatherneck also uses the same technique.

 

Shame nobody patched the game to support the enhanced joystick ports on the STE and Falcon.

[leech]

 

Gauntlet - it might be Gauntlet 2 - on the ST and Amiga requires a DB9 to DB25 cable. You plug in the extra 2 controllers into the printer port so you can have 4 controllers and thus 4 player. I believe Leatherneck also uses the same technique.

 

Shame nobody patched the game to support the enhanced joystick ports on the STE and Falcon.

There seriously needs to be an easy way to add support for them, maybe some sort of program that can survive a warm reset to translate Jaguar controllers through the enhanced port into being Joystick Port 2 and 3? Not sure if that's possible or not. The ports are another case of "Atari, you are awesome and have wonderful ideas... you just didn't take them to where they needed to be!" Kind of like the useless LAN port on the MegaSTe/TT030/Falcon030. Everything I read is they included them for that many years, yet never bothered to write a driver for them

 

Back on Topic; I always loved the Epyx 500xj controllers;

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epyx#/media/File:Epyx_500XJ.jpg

 

I also have one of these;

 

http://www.ebay.com/sch/items/?_nkw=%28amiga,atari%29+%28power+stick,powerstick,power-stick%29&_sacat=&_ex_kw=&_mPrRngCbx=1&_udlo=&_udhi=&_sop=12&_fpos=&_fspt=1&_sadis=&LH_CAds=&rmvSB=true

 

And I bought two of these;

 

http://knoppix.net/store/PSX-Controller-Black-PS2-pad-with-adapter-Amiga-C64-Atari-Joystick-Mouse_311229868375.html

 

Unfortunately there are two kinds of those floating around and I thought I had bought the older ones (that will emulate a CD32 controller and all it's buttons) sadly, I got the one above, but it does work great as both a Joystick and a Mouse on my Falcon. I just need to get a couple sets of the short joystick extenders so I don't have to keep plugging/unplugging on the ports under the Falcon and 1040ST.

[Rick Dangerous]

Was playing gauntlet last night with the 2600 joystick, and was wondering about better options.

 

I noticed my 1040STe has two joystick ports that look like they'd accept standard Jaguar pads (like the falcon). Does anyone know if that's the case?

 

Where would the player 4 stick go? Lol

[Lynxpro]

 

Gauntlet - it might be Gauntlet 2 - on the ST and Amiga requires a DB9 to DB25 cable. You plug in the extra 2 controllers into the printer port so you can have 4 controllers and thus 4 player. I believe Leatherneck also uses the same technique.

 

Shame nobody patched the game to support the enhanced joystick ports on the STE and Falcon.

 

 

I should've written that that adapter cable is required to have a Player 3 and Player 4 with their own controllers, not that you need it if you are just going to play solo or with 1 other player with a controller.

Edited January 27, 2016 by Lynxpro

[Lynxpro]

Was playing gauntlet last night with the 2600 joystick, and was wondering about better options.

 

I noticed my 1040STe has two joystick ports that look like they'd accept standard Jaguar pads (like the falcon). Does anyone know if that's the case?

 

Where would the player 4 stick go? Lol

 

Atari Corp introduced the let's-not-call-them-5200-ports Enhanced Joystick Ports (EJP) with the STE. [they aren't the same pin configuration as the 5200 although they are DB15s]. They were later used on the Falcon030 and then most famously with the Jaguar.

 

The Jaguar JagPads first debuted in Europe as the ST Power Pad. Very little software was written to use them, unfortunately. Gauntlet and Gauntlet II definitely do not unless someone has made a patch for them. And either one of the Enhanced Joystick Ports will support a Jaguar Team Tap so you could run 4 controllers off a single port with one of those. Again, probably no software support for that nice feature.

[Rick Dangerous]

 

Atari Corp introduced the let's-not-call-them-5200-ports Enhanced Joystick Ports (EJP) with the STE. [they aren't the same pin configuration as the 5200 although they are DB15s]. They were later used on the Falcon030 and then most famously with the Jaguar.

 

The Jaguar JagPads first debuted in Europe as the ST Power Pad. Very little software was written to use them, unfortunately. Gauntlet and Gauntlet II definitely do not unless someone has made a patch for them. And either one of the Enhanced Joystick Ports will support a Jaguar Team Tap so you could run 4 controllers off a single port with one of those. Again, probably no software support for that nice feature.

 

Thanks! Bummer to have those ports there and so few games that utilize them oh well Anyone have a list of games that do support these ports? I'd rather use a jag pad when possible than a 2600 stick.

 

Luckily the standard joystick worked pretty well for Gauntlet, though I couldn't figure out how to activate the potions (as usual, always have this problem with Gauntlet.)

[Lynxpro]

 

Thanks! Bummer to have those ports there and so few games that utilize them oh well Anyone have a list of games that do support these ports? I'd rather use a jag pad when possible than a 2600 stick.

 

Luckily the standard joystick worked pretty well for Gauntlet, though I couldn't figure out how to activate the potions (as usual, always have this problem with Gauntlet.)

 

Download the manual. The potions are done with a keyboard key. Which if I recall was very annoying when playing 2-player mode.