Extra Joystick ports on STE?

[800_Rocks]

The STE has two extra joystick ports on the side.  These are labeled as 'A' and 'B' and are female ports whereas the primary mouse/joystick and joystick ports under the STE are male ports. 

 

1. How does one use the two extra joystick ports on the STE? 
2. Do you just need an adapter to reverse the port gender and otherwise use standard joysticks?
3. Are these ports transparently supported by games?
4. If you have joysticks in these ports do they replace joystick ports 0 and 1 or do they allow for a total of 4 joysticks?
5. Any other uses for these two extra ports?

 

 

The dual mouse/joystick port 0 and joystick port 1 under the STE.

[MasterMotorola]

Those are enhanced joystick ports that take the 15-pin controllers like the Jaguar Controller.

[ParanoidLittleMan]

I guess that little search around WEB would answer all this questions, but hey, I'm good guy, so will express here my hmmm... not so thorough knowledge about subject ?

 

1.  2 things are needed:  HW and SW

HW - of course need to plug there compatible joystick(s)

SW - support in SW is required, more follows ...

 

2. Why would anyone use reversed ports with more pins ?

 

3. Nothing is transparently supported by games. Not even regular joysticks attached to ports 0 and 1 present on all STs .

Actually, I don't get that 'transparently' . Nothing is transparent here. Code reads specific port (and that can be in many ways) and then performs actions according to state read. And in case of ST it is not so easy - it can be done via TOS calls, so with less code, less ASM, but Atari DOCs really failed with joystick read via TOS. Even STOS has problems because that.

 

4. No. They are 2 separated ports, so, can have 4 joysticks at once. Or write SW so, that it reacts on both, in same way:

Joystick 0 and enhanced joystick port 0 (that's the proper name) have same effect. And same for 1-1 . It's all on SW.

 

5. Yes, ... and sadly no.  More pins - more functions, that's what is to expect - and yes, there are analog inputs too. And no, there is no joypad, joystick or whatever produced by Atari what have analog control (stick) for this type of ports. So, no SW what supports it. Except some my hacks with Oids . But I tested it with modified PC analog joystick. Correct me if I'm wrong in this.

Edited September 28, 2020 by ParanoidLittleMan
grammar correction

[TGB1718]

On 9/26/2020 at 4:13 PM, 800_Rocks said:

The STE has two extra joystick ports on the side. 

Got to laugh, until this post, I never noticed these extra ports and I have recently completely dismantled my STE

and put it back together again trying to get floppy drives to work again.

[zzip]

They will take the Jaguar gamepads.

 

From a programming point of view, I found it much easier to code for these new joysticks than for the classic ones, but still I don't think a lot of games use them.

[ParanoidLittleMan]

Yeah, support in SW is really poor - but that's with all STE extra features in compare to ST. Even blitter (at 1987) is supported in low count of SW.

 

"From a programming point of view, I found it much easier to code for these new joysticks than for the classic ones, but still I don't think a lot of games use them. "

As said Docs for regular joystick read via TOS are almost useless. It is actually very simple. I will add instructions on my site and in programming section here.

[zzip]

3 minutes ago, ParanoidLittleMan said:

As said Docs for regular joystick read via TOS are almost useless. It is actually very simple. I will add instructions on my site and in programming section here.

Cool,  I had some book on ST internals, and I could not figure out how to read the classic joystick ports for the life of me, but the new ones were simple.   Better documentation would be useful.  :)

[Stechmann]

are these ports the same as on 5200?

[Cyprian]

2 hours ago, Stechmann said:

are these ports the same as on 5200?

no, different pin layout

 

STE:

 

5200:

Edited December 17, 2023 by Cyprian

[zzip]

On 12/17/2023 at 12:37 PM, Stechmann said:

are these ports the same as on 5200?

No, they are the same as the Jaguar