Krom's comments about Creative drivers in Woodchip's post got me to thinking. Yes, I know, not a good idea.
Anyway, I use an MS 3D Pro stick and have to connect it to an SBLive card because my mobo, an ECS N2U400-A, doesn't have a game port connector. I have only the Creative Unipack drivers installed and have enabled the mobo onboard sound, but I still have to connect through the card and make SBLive the primary device in order to get any sound out of this box. Can I uninstall the drivers and still have the gameport work? Or, second question, will a gameport/usb adapter work with the 3D Pro?
The onboard sound on the motherboard needs to be enabled in BIOS. You should be able to get away with running only the gameport, but you can't just uninstall the drivers for the SBlive. What you can do is disable everything but the gameport in device manager and windows will not load the drivers into memory on bootup.
But I don't think you have much to worry about, perhaps in your case you could just remove the creative unipack drivers and update the drivers from windows update, they only have WHQL drivers on there and normally they are stripped down to the basics.
Deadmeat wrote:Or, second question, will a gameport/usb adapter work with the 3D Pro?
No, not in digital mode. It'll fall back to analog mode which will restrict the sticks functionality. The hat will become 4-way-only plus other drawbacks depending on the emulation mode (CH - switch in pos. I or Thrustmaster - pos. II). See also here.
Grendel, I'd be willing to pay at least $25 for a USB converter that allowed my 3D Pro to work in digital mode. If you find out enough information to create one, you've got yourself a customer.
Grendel wrote:It'll fall back to analog mode which will restrict the sticks functionality. The hat will become 4-way-only plus other drawbacks depending on the emulation mode.
Top Gun, the idea is to use this project as a base. The reasons why I'm sort of shying back from it are: my FF2 still works , I would have to build the board, build the programmer, rewrite the assembler code of the atmel chip to deal w/ the 3dp digital interface -- which is a real pain, the 3dp digital mode is extremly screwy (click). OTOH I've a hard time to get the 3dp on my LAN box going so I may just go ahead..
Ok, AC97 sound is enabled in bios. I disabled Creative SBLive Series (WDM) in Device Manager and lost both sound and gameport. So, I'm back to running off the card. Looked in Windows Update, but didn't find any sound drivers. Any more ideas?
According to the picture Grendel posted above of the Sidewinder manual (which I still have lying around somewhere myself ), the lack of 8-way-hat isn't the only problem with the analog modes. Neither one supports any of the base buttons. The CH Flightstick mode doesn't support multiple button presses at once, which of course makes playing D3 just about impossible. The Thrustmaster mode doesn't support the throttle, which I use not only for Descent but for several other games. Bubbalou, would a similar fix to Sickone's be able to take care of these issues as well?
Grendel, I don't really understand any of the technical aspects, but it sounds like it is a very hefty task. Still, if you decide to go through with it, I have the feeling that you'd make a lot of Descent players very, very happy.
Deadmeat wrote:Ok, AC97 sound is enabled in bios. I disabled Creative SBLive Series (WDM) in Device Manager and lost both sound and gameport. So, I'm back to running off the card. Looked in Windows Update, but didn't find any sound drivers. Any more ideas?
I had same exact problems a few years back. I went with the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card and never had those problems.
HI.i went to radio shack and bought a gameport to usb adapter kinda worked. Then i went out and bought the a new sound card audigy 2 zs palt and now i use that game port instead of onboard sound.For some reason my ac97 didnt work either would pick up 3d pro.
, I would have to build the board, build the programmer, rewrite the assembler code of the atmel chip to deal w/ the 3dp digital interface -- which is a real pain, the 3dp digital mode is extremly screwy (click). OTOH I've a hard time to get the 3dp on my LAN box going so I may just go ahead.. 
