Simviation Forum - Microsoft Force Feed

Aug 30^th, 2005 at 2:26pm

chief1995 Offline
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I was given a Microsoft Force Feed " Sidewinder" joy stick, it was for Win 98. I am running XP; will I be able to use if for FS9 on XP?
Also it used to connect with a 15-pin connector. I am guessing I can get an adapter to be able to connect to a usb port??
Advice needed!

Thanks Guys,

Chief

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Reply #1 - Aug 30^th, 2005 at 2:46pm

Calb Offline
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XP will recognize it. I don't know about the adaptor. My MoBo has onboard sound but came with a GamePort adaptor plate, connector & cable so I use it the way it was originally designed to.

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Reply #2 - Aug 30^th, 2005 at 2:49pm

Saitek Offline
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If the stick has USB/16pin programming it will work. You can't just get an adaptor and guarentee success. If the stick has USB ability then an adaptor will work fine.

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Reply #3 - Aug 30^th, 2005 at 4:22pm

4_Series_Scania Offline
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buy yourself a half decent soundcard, with a gameport plug on it, an Audigy 2 should suffice nicely.

I have the same stick as you and its excellent for FS & CFS

sadly, it won't work with Battlefield 2 but I don't like to fly in that game anyway.

I'm surprised your motherboard dosen't already have a gameport built in.

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Reply #4 - Aug 31^st, 2005 at 1:48pm

congo Offline
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All you need is a gameport cable/connector that screws into an expansion slot at the back of the pc to plug into.

The end of the cable plugs into the gameport riser pins on the mainboard if they are available, that's if there is no gameport connector on the back panel of the mainboard already.

make sure the pinout is standard on the riser pins.

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Reply #5 - Sep 1^st, 2005 at 7:28am

Ivan Offline
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USB is not compatible with the analog 15 pins port (0-5v smooth on the axes) until you have something in between

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Reply #6 - Sep 1^st, 2005 at 10:17pm

chief1995 Offline
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Thanks everyone, I think I can get it going now! All good advice.

Chief

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Reply #7 - Sep 2^nd, 2005 at 11:38am

chuckcrc Offline
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Chief
I would be very surprised if you can get the MS Sidewinder Force Feedback 1 stick working in XP.
The stick you have is a Gameport device as far as connection is concerned but it runs a digitial software format using the midi port etc and is dependant on having the MS Sidewinder 3.0 software loaded on your PC for full functionality of the stick.

There are no drivers available for this stick in XP that will allow you to programe the stick in any way.
The stick would be recognised as a MS 3D pro which is an analog gameport device (using pots etc and no digitial programing.)

Note also that using the on board M/B gameport connection with the adaptor backmount will slow down your game as the polling to the gamne port device would be a lot slower than using a gameport access thru a sound card that has midi and digitial functionality.

I know this because I have tried this in my simpit when I upgraded my pc as I have expensive Hoffman rudder pedal's etc that I wanted to keep using and was not prepared to scrap just to run XP..

I ended up using Win 2000 Pro instead of XP to solve this problem. Win 2000 has a set of drivers loaded to support the Gameport sticks but note you will get much higher framerates using a Sound card to provide the gameport connection .
cheers
chuckcrc

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Reply #8 - Sep 2^nd, 2005 at 1:12pm

4_Series_Scania Offline
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Quote:

Chief
I would be very surprised if you can get the MS Sidewinder Force Feedback 1 stick working in XP.
The stick you have is a Gameport device as far as connection is concerned but it runs a digitial software format using the midi port etc and is dependant on having the MS Sidewinder 3.0 software loaded on your PC for full functionality of the stick.

There are no drivers available for this stick in XP that will allow you to programe the stick in any way.
The stick would be recognised as a MS 3D pro which is an analog gameport device (using pots etc and no digitial programing.)

Note also that using the on board M/B gameport connection with the adaptor backmount will slow down your game as the polling to the gamne port device would be a lot slower than using a gameport access thru a sound card that has midi and digitial functionality.

I know this because I have tried this in my simpit when I upgraded my pc as I have expensive Hoffman rudder pedal's etc that I wanted to keep using and was not prepared to scrap just to run XP..

I ended up using Win 2000 Pro instead of XP to solve this problem. Win 2000 has a set of drivers loaded to support the Gameport sticks but note you will get much higher framerates using a Sound card to provide the gameport connection .
cheers
chuckcrc

Erm, My Ms Stick is actually a Force Feedback 1, with a game port plug.

With the exception of Battlefield2 which supports USB joysticks only apparently, my MSFF1 stick works just fine with XP & Service Pack 2. Wink

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Reply #9 - Sep 3^rd, 2005 at 5:00am

congo Offline
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I also run one or the other of my 2 old gameport Sidewinders with perfect accuracy and control, on excellent onboard sound with the gameport connector straight off the mainboard riser, no polling problem, or other problems.

Mainboard: Asus P5K-Premium, CPU=Intel E6850 @ x8x450fsb 3.6ghz, RAM: 4gb PC8500 Team Dark, Video: NV8800GT, HDD: 2x1Tb Samsung F3 RAID-0 + 1Tb F3, PSU: Antec 550 Basiq, OS: Win7x64, Display: 24" WS LCD

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Reply #10 - Sep 3^rd, 2005 at 11:15am

chuckcrc Offline
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I'm glad

to hear that you have got MSFF1 to work in XP.

I only have XP Pro SP1 and I couldn''t get it to work with that as it would not be detected correctly by XP.

I did search a number of sites (including here back in december last year) trying to find the answer to this but no -one had any fix for the Sidewinder s/w. There was talk that a Sidewinder Version 4.0 software is out there somewhere which will only work with the usb MSFF2.

With SP2 do you get the full functionality of the Sidewinder software to program the buttons etc on the stick.

Do you think it would be worth the effort to upgrade from Win 2000 to XP Pro SP2. What would the advantage be. I only use the Win2000 PC for flight sims. Nothing else is on it.
thanks
chuck

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Reply #11 - Sep 4^th, 2005 at 12:06pm

congo Offline
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All versions of XP support the sidewinders, no programmable software though.

Don't try to load any drivers for a sidewinder under WinXP. They auto detect.

All the buttons work, set the button config in your application settings.

Mainboard: Asus P5K-Premium, CPU=Intel E6850 @ x8x450fsb 3.6ghz, RAM: 4gb PC8500 Team Dark, Video: NV8800GT, HDD: 2x1Tb Samsung F3 RAID-0 + 1Tb F3, PSU: Antec 550 Basiq, OS: Win7x64, Display: 24" WS LCD

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Reply #12 - Sep 5^th, 2005 at 5:53am

chuckcrc Offline
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Thanks
I will give it a go .
chuck

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Reply #13 - Sep 7^th, 2005 at 8:22am

chuckcrc Offline
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Thanks Congo for your help as I got it working.

I feel like a complete silly bunt about this but I know what I did wrong in loading the Sidewinder software when I shouldn't have. I even uninstalled the s/w but I think the driver files were overwritten and I should have re-installed XP to fix it.

I didn't do this with Win 2000 as I read the "supported devices Help me file and it listed the MSFF1 there so I just plugged it in and it worked.

So my question is should I upgrade to XP from 2000. What would be the advantages

Thanks
chuck

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