Non-TI game controllers on a TI (no special adapters) - Part I

This post is about testing controllers on the TI-99/4A without adapters or special hardware. How am I testing? I wrote a super simple joystick read:

100 call joyst(1,x,y)
200 print x,y
300 goto 100

Next change the 1 to a 2 to test for the other controller.

1st, what about the Atari Video Touch pad?

Controller #1... nothing appears to send a valid signal. How about controller #2? With controller #2, two (2) buttons out of the 6 work. Button 4 sends the left control input and Button 5 sends the right control input. So mostly unusable, but if you wanted to make a game that only used left and right set for controller #2... it is something.

How about the Atari Joystick (original CX-30)?


Controller #1 reads nothing and Controller #2 only reads and sends out the down position. That is even worse and pretty much unusable.

Next I tried the 6 button Sega Genesis game pad. How did it do? Exactly the same as the Atari CX joystick. Only down on the controller #2 input.  Worthless. 



Next I tried the new Coleco controllers for the Colecovision Flashback. Controller 1 has two (2) buttons that worked and Controller 2 only had one. A failure.

No worries, I have more to test!
Next I have a Chinese NES knock off controller.
Controller #1 - nothing!
Controller #2 - nothing!

So next I'm going to try the Atari 7800 Pro controller (US). Don't have high hopes for this.


the 7800 controller was STRANGE.  It actually changed the mapping of the keyboard when I plugged it in!!!  Also, no inputs were registered.