And still ... somehow it seems too unnatural and forced and involved solution to me ...

There would be 2 latency on the PS/2 protocol ... I mean not only one PS/2 protocol latency, but two ...

And the native joystick input lines would be avoided ...

I understand that from the perspective of the EP softwares it would be good ... but yet, I do not like it somehow ...

Your requirements are that:

You want to play the keys of an already made game or program on the buttons of your joystick.
But at the same time you want to adapt a "strange" joystick to the Enterprise.

I think you have almost achieved the first requirement, you only have to find the way of assign the keys.

But for the second one you must create a new connector, the same as the strange one. The Arduino is flexible, and fast too. If you have spare pins you can have your ps2 keyboard project and the joystick project inside the same Arduino chip.

Don't intent at first to emulate all joysticks. Begin with the easiest.

Képzeljétek csak el milyen jó volna pld. az earthlight egy sega kontrollerrel ...

Az ugye 6 iranyban tud mozogni (3D) + a loves ... ez pont ráférne még egy 3 gombos sega kontrollerre is ...

I'm only saying that is better to search for a lower goal in order to take impulse for connecting more complex controlers.

Your project is a great one if you find the way to replicate the  keyboard contacts on the expansion port. Then the project  will be easily copied by other users. The trick to share  those complex things is to make them easy for others. Then the information spreads itself.

Every game has at least one more key than fire-space, say Enter for confirm, "P" for pause, 1 or 2 for number of players, etc. But some games have other necessary actions(pick object, bomb...) assigned to keys as the Enterprise only have one fire button for games on every controller.  It will be great to have them as buttons near the stick.

But that doesn't make the game better

I am only saying that better try make your project work with a simple joystick(four directions+three or four buttons). Then if it works try a more complex one.


The chinesse Arduinos work, I already used one of that clones on the Msx to ps2 mouse interface.

They only have a different driver(also chinesse), but  after instaling you can program with the official Arduino software.

I think the different driver is because the copyright of the Serial to Usb chip the original Arduino use.  The Arduino is an open project but uses a third party chip for that. Then the Chinese use a cheaper one to overcome the copyright.