Pete's QBASIC Site

I have a simple game-like quickbasic program that allows a gamepad to control directional movement of a cursor -- at least it did when running in Windows 98. On a new computer with Windows XP, I can still use directional key presses to move the cursor, but the gamepad input is not recognized. Has anyone dealt with this (please keep replies in simple language, I am a beginner with QB)?

making sure you euther use the original disk that came with the game pad should solve it. the thing is that if you just use the windows plug and play driver it only works while windows is in control.

what you should look for is a dos driver for the game pad so then when windows surrenders control to Qb the dos enviroment has the game pad installed on it aswell.

I had this identacal problem with my USB game pad and my thumbdrive Now they both work well with QB even using an usb expander hub on my XP machine.

Also some older computer's just wont support it or only support it if the USB socket is setup as com1 or com2 in harware manager you may want to make sure of that aswell often times we forget QB has that com1&2 only quirk.

the only alternitive I ever heard beside these I offered above is using a USB to serial adapter and a serial driver but that goes a bit deeper than I can describe here..
Good Luck!

All you need is PortTalk for NT-XP machines. NTVDM does not allow access to game, serial or parallel ports.

Download the free PortTalk program and follow the install instructions. Place a copy of AllowIO.exe in your program's folder. Add the REG file information by double clicking it and clicking OK.

Create a batch file to run your program. It must be a compiled EXE!
Below is the syntax assuming the game port is &H201 (windows = 0201):
Do NOT just run allowio.exe or your mouse may be disabled!

I'd really like to see your code for the gamepad. Could you email the program code to me?

Ted