BorisSkratchunkov's Journal: Fun With Gamepads

You know, I just realized that I haven't written in this journal for a really, really long time. Therefore, I feel compelled to write this following entry:

Recently, I bought a super-old generic gamepad at a tag-sale for $1. I hooked it up to my linux-box, /MrCher/Duronas (don't ask about how it came to be called that), and found that my kernel (the one used by Mandrake Linux 9.2) couldn't detect any devices plugged into the joystick port, which this specific gamepad used. Sadly, I rebooted the computer and chose to boot FreeDOS on LILO. When I did this, I attempted to play Wolf3d with my new gamepad. Immediately, upon starting a new game with the gamepad enabled, I started turning around in circles, without pressing any buttons whatsoever.

...

I can't help but laugh at this, eventually it worked when I attempted to reconfigure the gamepad from within DOS, but it still was partially antagonizing.

Hopefully with a couple of kernel upgrades and some tinkering, I can get the good old /dev/js1 working. But, as of now, my generic gamepad sits idle....

...maybe I'll just buy a USB Gamepad instead.


Update: I ended up dishing out the cash and buying a USB gamepad. Mandrake 9.2 detects it, but the kernel doesn't making a proper device file for it. It is now in my best interests to just recompile my kernel and start from scratch. This should be difficult for me, considering that I'm only a linux hobbyist and a complete neophyte with kernel upgrades and such. Oh well, there isn't anything incredibly important on my linux partition that I don't have a back up of.