Non TI-99 game controllers on TI-99 part II

After my "experiments" yesterday, I would like to make two adapters. One adapter would allow an
Atari CX-30 and Sega Genesis. The second Adapter would be fore the Atari Video Touch Pad. It is possible, only one would need to be made for all three of these.
TI-99 41 Joystick port
     ___________
    ( 1 2 3 4 5 )
     \ 6 7 8 9 /
# Use \_______/
- -------
1 not used
2 joystick 2 ground / common
3 Up
4 Fire button pressed
5 Left
6 not used
7 joystick 1 ground / common
8 Down
9 Right

Atari 2600 CX-30 Joystick port
     ___________
    ( 1 2 3 4 5 )
     \ 6 7 8 9 /
# Use \_______/
- -------
1 Up
2 Down
3 Left
4 Right
5 Paddle B
6 Trigger
7 +5 volts
8 ground / common
9 Paddle A

Sega Genesis Joystick port

     ___________

    ( 1 2 3 4 5 )

     \ 6 7 8 9 /

# Use \_______/

- -------

1 Up

2 Down

3 Left

4 Right

5 +5 volts

6 Button C / Trigger

7 ground / common

8 Select Button

9 Button B and A

TI-99 has one joystick port and the Atari 2600 has two joystick ports.

With the Atari 2600, on either controller, if  pin 8 to pin 4 is a closed circuit, the joystick is pushed Right.

With TI-99/4A if joystick #1 has a closed circuit with pin 7 to pin 9, the joystick #1 is pushed Right.

So from our experiments yesterday, it makes sense that only down worked for the CX-30 and genesis as this is the only mapping that is the same (except reversed) and had a closed circuit. 

So with this information, I should be able to make an adapter that would allow me to use two Atari CX-30 Joysticks or genesis controllers to the one TI-99/4A port.  But the easier (first option) would make 1 joy to 1 port for testing the concept.

Thinking though this, it looks like I would need to create a separate adapter for the touch pad.  By the mapping above, Button five would have done pin 2 and pin 5 for button 3 and pin 2 and pin 9 for button 4.  So I'm going to concentrate first on making a 1:1 CX-30 to TI-99 joystick port adapter.

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.

using TI-99/4A for unusual tasks