Better use for Tornado USB arcade stick?

[NightSprinter]

Has anyone ever bought one of those "Tornado USB Joystick" aracde "joysticks" on eBay? I'd really like to know if there's a better way to put the hardware to use OTHER than trashing it. I mean the stick itself at least has a decent set of microswitches.

[+Stephen Moss]

I assume that you want to use it out of the box with whatever system you have. The only way of doing that is to build a USB interface that goes between the Joystick and you host system, the interface will need to contain a USB Host device plus associated hardware for which you will need to write a custom USB driver software, device driver software and interface software to convert the USB output to those required by the system in question.

Unless I have missunderstood you appear to be saying that the Joystick in question still uses microswitchs for the directional control as opposed to the potentiometers most modern Joysticks use, if that is the case and you don't want to take the option above your only other option as I see it is to remove the original cable and insert you own that connects directly to the microswitches.

[NightSprinter]

Not exactly. The joystick itself is already USB. THe thing is, the controls aren't accurate-enough for some games (Street Fighter-type stuff, for example), and despite it shows up as an "8-button gamepad" in the Control Panel, I actually have to MANUALLY enable 8-button mode.

[yuppicide]

I have no clue what you are talking about. I just searched eBay and found nothing containing the words "tornado usb joystick" "tornado joystick" or "tornado usb" -- well I found some things, but not joysticks.

[NightSprinter]

Where I found a picture of it.

 

Well, if you scroll down a little, you'll see it (except the handle and action buttons on mine are a dark aqua-ish color, same for the various buttons on the bottom). The thing seems like it'll be fine for 4-way games in its current casing, but it's been virtually impossible to just try and pull off a simple fireball with these..