Steering wheels and game port cards

I'm using an older Thrustmaster wheel and pedal set plugged into the game port of my Soundblaster AWE64 ISA card (it's in my 400a Celeron along with a Voodoo2). For all games I play (ICR2, GPL, NFS2, even old DOS games like Grand Prix Unlimited) I just tell the game I have a 4-button stick, and to use "up" for accelerator, "down" for brakes, and "left-right" to turn, plus various buttons to shift/handbrake/horn/whatever else. And, this seems to work OK for me!* Why is it that people need special game cards, special wheel drivers, etc? This is a serious question--maybe I'm missing out on something. Do the faster game cards offer better granularity (faster sampling) of the controls? Do they resolve weird conflicts in people's systems? * Ok, actually, the only problem is that I don't have accel and brake on different axes, thus, I can't brake and accelerator at the same time. But that's a separate issue--as a "brute force" solution, I can just wire the brake up to the 2nd controller's inputs and reconfigure the game, but the wheel is borrowed, so I won't do that. -- Visit the Classic Home Video Games Museum at http://ns2.apmtech.com/museum Nothing I say is officially endorsed by UNC. Hooray for alumni accounts!

Valid question -- I was getting by fine with my generic sound card joystick interface and my TSW2 wheel, and I wondered the same thing. I did suffer from a TON of drift, though, so I made the leap and upgraded to a PDPI L4 digital game card and the difference was truly ASTOUNDING. If you'd like to read my full view of the PDPI card, check out my review at: http://irlinsider.adnetweb.com/sims/pdpi/ Note that I don't receive any kickbacks from PDPI -- I'm just another satisfied customer, though I may be putting up a link banner for them on my site in the future. Enjoy! -- John Bodin Publilsher, The IRL Insider Magazine http://irlinsider.adnetweb.com/ On 1 Apr 1999 17:48:34 -0500, Dennis Brown

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>I'm using an older Thrustmaster wheel and pedal set plugged into the >game port of my Soundblaster AWE64 ISA card (it's in my 400a Celeron >along with a Voodoo2). For all games I play (ICR2, GPL, NFS2, even old DOS >games like Grand Prix Unlimited) I just tell the game I have a 4-button >stick, and to use "up" for accelerator, "down" for brakes, and >"left-right" to turn, plus various buttons to >shift/handbrake/horn/whatever else. >And, this seems to work OK for me!* Why is it that people need special >game cards, special wheel drivers, etc? This is a serious question--maybe >I'm missing out on something. Do the faster game cards offer better >granularity (faster sampling) of the controls? Do they resolve weird >conflicts in people's systems? >* Ok, actually, the only problem is that I don't have accel and brake on >different axes, thus, I can't brake and accelerator at the same time. But >that's a separate issue--as a "brute force" solution, I can just wire the >brake up to the 2nd controller's inputs and reconfigure the game, but the >wheel is borrowed, so I won't do that. >-- > Visit the Classic Home Video Games Museum at http://ns2.apmtech.com/museum >Nothing I say is officially endorsed by UNC. Hooray for alumni accounts!