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Joysticks

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sy2002 edited this page Dec 29, 2020 · 10 revisions

Quickstart

  1. Plug in a real joystick to MEGA65's joystick port #1 or #2. As long as you are playing with only one joystick, it does not matter which port you choose.

  2. Alternatively, switch on CAPS LOCK on your MEGA65 to turn the cursor keys ← → ↑ ↓ into an emulated joystick. Use the Space bar as a fire button.

  3. In the game that you want to play, select the Sinclair joystick option, which is sometimes also called Interface 2.

  4. Play

Details

When you power on the machine, all three joystick ports, i.e. the two real joystick ports #1 and #2 as well as the emulated joystick port are configured to act as Sinclair P1 ("right" joystick port). If you are playing alone (only one joystick needed), then you just need to configure your game's joystick setting to use Sinclair - or sometimes it is also called Interface 2 - and everything will "just work" because most games are supporting Sinclair and are configured to use the "right" joystick port for player 1.

There were several competing Joystick Standards for the ZX Spectrum. We are supporting:

  • Kempston
  • Sinclair P1 ("right" joystick port): Default after power-on
  • Sinclair P2 ("left" joystick port)
  • Cursor (aka AGF aka Protek)
  • Fuller

Testing your joystick

Configured as Sinclair P1 (default mode)

  1. Insert the SD Card that you prepared in the Getting Started guide
  2. Reset the machine
  3. Enter the following two comands (the LOAD command is entered by pressing J): 
    .tapein /zx/tests/testkeys.tap
LOAD ""
  4. You should see the joystick movements and the pressed fire button on the top right of the screen:

Configured as Kempston

Enter the following BASIC program and run it. You will see the direction of the pushed joystick and the fire button represented as numbers. You might want to open the Keyboard Mapping in parallel while you type:

10 LET kj = IN 31
20 PRINT AT 5, 5, kj, "  "
30 GO TO 10
RUN

Press Restore to end the program.

Changing the joystick configuration

If you want to use two joysticks at once, then you need to change the joystick configuration. The configuration is remembered after a reset (e.g. by using the MEGA65 reset button). But the configuration needs to be redone after a power cycle. Here is how you do it:

  1. Calculate the number X by adding the number A and the number B (see table below).
  2. Reset your MEGA65
  3. Type in the following two commands. You produce OUT by pressing and releasing Ctrl (you should see the cursor changing into E) and then Shift + O. Do not enter X literally, but enter the number you calculated, instead. 
    OUT 64571, 6
OUT 64827, X

Choose from this table: Which configuration do you want for joystick port #1? This is A. Which one for joystick port #2 and for the emulated joystick? This is B. The sum of A and B equals X, which you need to use in the above-mentined OUT command.

Joystick Model A: Port #1 B: Port #2 & Emulation
switched-off 0  0
Kempston 16 1
Sinclair P1 32 2
Sinclair P2 48 3
Cursor / AGF / Protek 64 4
Fuller 80 5

Example: If you want the joystik in port #1 to act as Kempston and the joystick in port #2 (including the emulated "cursor-key-joystick") to act as Sinclair P1, then X = A + B = 16 + 2 = 18.

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