Need Dual Joystick Help!!

[OzStick]

Hi All,

I should know better but I have been stuffing around for ages trying to get
dual joysticks working correctly on my DOS box.

I am running MAME 0.36b6 with ArcadeOS v2.42 in a little cocktail cabinet I
have put together. I have wired one joystick and 2 buttons into a controller
box on either side of the cab, but as soon as I specify that I am using
"Dual" joysticks under ArcadeOS and/or MAME it won't detect either sets of
controls! If I change the joystick option to either "2 Button" or "4 Button"
then I am able to get the Player 1 controls working correctly.

I'm pretty confused by this, as I have mananged to get 2 sticks working in a
similar fashion but running via Windows 9x rather than in true DOS mode.

There has to be simple solution, but I can't see the wood for the trees at
the moment!

Please help......

[creatine28]

What kind of joysticks are you using?  

[Ghoul]

I'm not sure I follow.

If you are just using two joysticks you don't need any special settings do you? Mame should run fine by mapping the joystick to the corresponding mame defaults.

I think dual joysticks are for games like robotron.

[JustMichael]

I have wired one joystick and 2 buttons into a controller
box on either side of the cab

What is this controller box?  What joysticks?  If these are standard 8-way joysticks hooked up to a keyboard hack then telling Mame you are using 2 joysticks would fail.  Mame is thinking you mean analog joysticks hooked up to the analog port.

[OzStick]

OK Guys, I'm glad I got a few replies but very sorry for creating some confusion!! I will clarify my problem.

I have built a cocktail cab with 1 joystick and 3 buttons on each side of it. The joystick and first 2 buttons on each side are wired to a joystick extension cable as joysticks 1 & 2, buttons 1,2,3 & 4, which is all plugged into the soundcard. The 3rd button on each side along with 3 function buttons are routed to a keyboard hack, which of course is working fine.

The cab runs DOS and MAME via ArcadeOS, and works OK if I configure it to run a 2 or 4 button joystick. Naturally because I've wired up 2 joysticks to the relevant inputs of the joystick cable (done it literally dozens of times before so wiring is not the problem) I would like to get both working.

The trouble is, when I select "Dual" under Joystick in ArcadeOS, neither of the joysticks work!

I have done some tinkering around in the past with this exact setup and managed to get it all working, but now I'm stuffed if I can remember what I did!

Does anyone know of a DOS utility that can test and calibrate joysticks, similar to what occurs in the Game Controllers applet in Windows? It needs to be able to detect 2 joysticks.

Any help would be well appreciated, as I'm at the stage where I need to 'rehack' the keyboard to include D,G,R & F for the 2nd stick.

Cheers,
ChrisW

[Elkor]

soundblaster cards (sb, sb16 and I think awe32) used to ship with a joystick calibration utility in their install directories.  if you have sb dos drivers loaded, go look for .exe's in the directory.

[Thenasty]

I had similar problems before detecting DUAL joystick (Gravis Gamepads) with MAME in pure DOS. I had a SB16 card using the the joystick port and a splitter. I can only get one Joystcik to work. Luckily, I have the Automatic Gamecard III  joystick card that has 2 josytcik port and I use that, and bingo, MAME recognizes DUAL joystick. Now that I have upgraded my system and the MOBO hasno ISA slot, I no longer need the Gamecards. I have 2 of them (Check the For Sale Forum).
Good luck....

[OzStick]

Thanks to everyone for your feedback - I will try Elkor's suggestion when I get a chance as I reckon that may be the key.

Cheers,
ChrisW