[Dysko]

Some days ago I was playing X-Plane. I was landing on a carrier, and when I had to do the "bolter" (when you give max power to the engines when touching down to avoid splashing in sea in case of a missed approach) and I discovered the throttle on my joystick stopped working!!!

My joystick is a Trust GM-2500 Predator. I went immediatly on the Trust website, only to discover that my joystick model is the only one for which are not available troubleshooting programs.
Since this is my 3rd joystick (over 3 joysticks bought ) which has problem to the throttle, had anyone of you problems with the joystick throttle? Is it a common problem with joystick throttles?

Oh, and BTW I landed safely

[IceFire]

The throttle was probably the last thing to go on my MS Sidewinder Precision 2.  My original Precision 1 had a good life and then the sensors died.  MS replaced it with another one and then few more years later the sensors died again.  Then finally I got the Precision 2 which had sensors that still work to this day but most of the buttons have long since ceased to respond.  On the other hand the throttle on that stick works quite well

Now I have a Saitek X-52 which I expect to be able to hold on to for quite some time and this throttle is a big solid heavy piece of engineering and *touch wood* I hope to get allot of use out of it.

[Ashrak]

saitek rocks

[Cobra]

Yeah. I thought the x52's MFD showed waypoint times for FS2004 though. That's what it looked like in the promotional pictures and the ones on their site.

[Sandwich]

Icey, I still have the MS Sidewinder Precision Pro I bought ages ago. Unfortunately, my latest motherboard upgrade removed the game port connector, so I have no way of plugging it in anymore. But it lasted until today - not that it's seen much use over the past couple of years. And the joint between stick and base sometimes clacks when you turn it just so...

Anyway, I've long been keeping my eyes open for a replacement (USB this time), but I do have one near-requirement: a shift key. I loved that feature of the original Precision Pro, was gutted that it was omitted from the PP2, and have yet to see it on any other joystick. Do you know of anything with the same functionality? I loved being able to have the trigger fire my primaries, and the shift-trigger switch between primaries.

[Mongoose]

The Saitek Cyborg Evo has two shift buttons, one on either side of the base.  They might require the Saitek profiling software to be running in order to function properly; I just use one of them as my afterburner button myself.

[Cobra]

Icey, I still have the MS Sidewinder Precision Pro I bought ages ago. Unfortunately, my latest motherboard upgrade removed the game port connector, so I have no way of plugging it in anymore.

I still have the gameport/usb adapter, but not the joystick.

[Admiral Nelson]

Yeah. I thought the x52's MFD showed waypoint times for FS2004 though. That's what it looked like in the promotional pictures and the ones on their site.

The x52 pro's MFD shows the radio stack in FS X.  I don't have anything else that makes use of it.  It does show a clock though....

[Cobra]

Mine has a clock, date, and stopwatch.

[Sandwich]

The Saitek Cyborg Evo has two shift buttons, one on either side of the base.  They might require the Saitek profiling software to be running in order to function properly; I just use one of them as my afterburner button myself.

Hallelujah - IT EXISTS!!!!!!

[jr2]

Icey, I still have the MS Sidewinder Precision Pro I bought ages ago. Unfortunately, my latest motherboard upgrade removed the game port connector, so I have no way of plugging it in anymore. But it lasted until today - not that it's seen much use over the past couple of years. And the joint between stick and base sometimes clacks when you turn it just so...

Erg.  Buy yourself a decent sound card (read: one that has a gameport).

[Cobra]

Ok, that is the most statement I've ever read. Soundcards with gameports?

[Nuke]

you get better precision with an old sound blaster + analog stick. the best usb seems to be able to do is 10 bit precision, where a game port can run about 16 bit.

[Ulala]

If I remember correctly, old game ports are the same as old midi ports for music keyboards and such, so I could see why a soundcard would offer it.

[jr2]

Ok, that is the most statement I've ever read. Soundcards with gameports?

ROFL.  Now I know how often you look at your hardware.

[Cyker]

Not worth getting a gameport for the Sidewinders; If your compy doesn't come with one, chances are it won't work even if you get one for it due to MS' retarded design.

(A guy called Grendel on one of the sister sites, descentbb, made a box that converts a Sidewinder into a USB device, but alas I found out too late to buy one )

The sticks themselves are awesome - Unlike most other sticks, which use resistance strips and pots, all the Sidewinders use optical sensors so the damned things never wear out!!

I still have one plugged into my SB Live!, but I have to use it in analog mode (So the 8-way hat is only 4-way, and half the buttons don't work )


I really wish somebody would start making decent 'sticks again... I'm really not impressed with the ones available these days...

[Zenzic]

hear hear Cyker.

Although i do like my X52.

[Sandwich]

Erg.  Buy yourself a decent sound card (read: one that has a gameport).

Pardon me for getting an X-Fi! I was only upgrading from a SB16.

[IceFire]

Erg.  Buy yourself a decent sound card (read: one that has a gameport).

Pardon me for getting an X-Fi! I was only upgrading from a SB16.

LOL thats a fair upgrade I think   You managed to miss the crappy Audigy days...decent hardware encumbered by terrible drivers.  I hear the jury is still out on the X-Fi drivers although its better than before.

Saitek Cyborg Evo should do the trick as Mongoose points out.  Good sticks...I wanted something a bit heaftier this time around as I spend allot of time playing IL-2 Sturmovik and all of the expansions.

[Nuke]

i wasnt to happy with my x-fi. it had some probs, first off no headers for front ports, no gameport, and the sound quality wasnt that much better over my old extigy, or even my older soundblaster live (which was on the computer i had built to play fs2 on). there were game ports before there were midi ports though. the idea was keep all the analog circuitry on one board. later as the midi standards emerged, sound card manufacturers wanted both midi controllers and joystick adcs on the same card,  so they just doubled them up on the same port.

game ports are fun to tweak with, you cross the right 2 pins through a 100k ohm potentiometer and its recognized as a joystick. really cool stuff. i would have perfered an extension to this legacy standard over usb any day. im actually contemplating designing a custom pci board which dumps the output of a bunch of high bit depth adcs into memory, for use in building custom joysticks. but i probibly lack the expertise. theres like a $10 circuit board on the net for buiilding your own usb joystick interface, complete with pre-programmed microcontroler, i think it was called the joy warrior, but it suffers from the one thing i always complain about, low bit depth, and every arc-second counts.