Can anyone tell me how this product works?

[enemyace]

I know it's kinda obvious by the name, but does anyone know what physically goes on inside a splitter like this? Does it simply duplicate the wires in both plugs? I'm thinking this would be a good way to have two sets of controls attached and active at the same time (and I know not hooked to the gameport, I'm just thinking of using joystick cables for some of my hookups).

JOYSTICK Y ADAPTOR 1FT
http://www.cyberguys.com/cgi-bin/sgin0101.exe?UID=2002121912130333&GEN6=00&GEN9=5CG01&HKW=5CG01&T1=120+0310&UREQA=1&UREQB=2&UREQC=3&UREQD=4

Thx,
EA

[_Iz-]

The PC gameport was originally designed to allow operation for two - 2 axis, 2 button analogue joysticks. Most sticks use 4 buttons, 2 from stick 1 and 2 from stick 2 rendering the second joystick useless. This adapter will allow you to connect 2 sticks but not beyond the original limitations of the gameport. IE both sticks will only be able to use 2 buttons each, pressing button 3 and 4 on stick 1 will also press button 1 and 2 on stick 2. Major problem. Newer sticks / pads like the sidewinder overcome this problem by sending a digital signal thru the port and interpreting it in the computer with a special driver.

Your best bet if you need more inputs than a standard gameport can provide would be to get an:

- Ipac
 or
-hack some daisy chainable sidewinders
 or
-hack some playstation pads and connect them with either one or more usb adapters or a single parallel port hack.

I have personally built the playstation -> parallel port hack and it works well. Drivers for all windows versions are available, you can even get the force feedback to work on compatible games. The best part is up to 5 playstation pads can all be connected to one parallel port and used at the same time. That's way more inputs than anyone could ever need!

Now having said all that I personally use an Ipac in my MAME cabinet. Why? All games support keyboard input so it has the maximum compatibility, it can be programmed with custom mappings and it has the shift function so you don't need extra buttons on your control panel for esc, enter, tab, etc...

[Chris]

No.  The joystick port has inputs for 4 axes and 4 buttons.  This Y adapter splits those into 2 axes and 2 buttons, so you can plug 2 joysticks into one port.

[Howard_Casto]

splitters are useless in this day and age as your pads have a minimum of 6 buttons.  In case you were wondering if you hook up a sidewinder or any other modern joystick up to these splitters they will not work.  A true splitter (one that doubles the input of every single pin)  is what you need, but with it you have to disable the joystick you aren't using, so no dual joysticks.  Even then it usually doesn't work.

[enemyace]

Wow, thanks for the explanations!

Howard, I wasn't thinking of it so much as a way to use two gameport joysticks at the same time, but more of a way to split wiring (like with the true splitter you mention). I wouldn't even be attached to the gameport, I'd just be using the joystick cables in the same way that many use parallel or db15 cables.

So the main thing here is that this product is not a true splitter, correct?

[Thenasty]

I had tried this splitter before with two Gravis gamepad, and I could not get MAME to recognize both. It only recognize one gamepad. So I got the GAMECARD III which is a 8bit (plug in the ISA slot) card and I got MAME to recognize bothe joystick using -dual parameter. Now I have move to a better setup becuase new MB no longer have ISA slots in them, so I GOT ME AN IPAC4.
I have use GAMEPADS, HACK them, HACK Keyboard etc... and now I look back and say to myself " WHAT a waste of my time) however, I have learn alot. This happened when there were no IPACs and i could not afford what HAPPS (ME??? encoder etc) were selling. If you thinking of building a CP for 2 players with 6 buttons or more, save that WASTED time we spent and jump in and grab an IPAC. Now, if I can make some money to get OSCAR spinner and OPTI-PAC, then I can also get rid of my hack SPINNER using the HD guts.