“I bought this adapter thinking it would work with an analog Atari 2600 joystick. After installing the most updated drivers, and testing it on three different apps that could possibly use it, it's not detecting the device. Please advise.”
Answer This Question
1-2 of 2 Answers
Your Atari 2600 analog joystick requires a connection involving analog to digital converters. The USB to RS-232 adapter converts digital serial from USB level ( 4 conductors max with USB 2.0 ) to RS-232 which is also serial- yet involves extra wires for flow control- hence it ends in a de-9 ( BTW- many folks use the term 'DB-9' because the original connectors for serial were DE-9 and DB-25 per the major mfr. ). The DE-9 on your Atari mouse expects to connect to an analog to digital converter ( such as is found in many extra circuit cards for PCs including legacy sound cards ) with at least two analog-to-digital converters involved. One pertains to the X-axis and the other to the Y-axis ( that means up and down is X and side to side is y ). Old issues of 'Nuts and Volts'(tm or R) magazines had conversion wiring diagrams ( schematics in the trade ) for wiring analog joysticks to IBM XT and similar PCs. You may be able to use the USB adapter for a modem port, yet you would need more hardware for your analog joystick. Sorry, no joy in this case... I am the messenger, not the instigator of your issue. What is analog, you ask- a signal level which varies, for example between 0 and 5 volts, your joystick might provide 1 volt at one extreme, 2.5 volts in the middle, and 4 at the other extreme ( so it varies according to position )- the ADC converter might provide that voltage or just measure the resistance. What is digital? The same signal level would always be 0 or 5 volts ( in the example of TTL chips ) but would vary between just those two levels in a code which represents something else. Early PCs almost always used either 5 volts or 12 volts for input and output ports, and would not tolerate short circuits- so measurement needs to be done with appropriately sized probes insulated one from the other.
Sorry, there was a problem. Please try again later.Try going into device manager and see if you can change the com port under advanced settings. I had to change mine from COM3 to COM1 to work
Sorry, there was a problem. Please try again later.