1296
Vintage
(lemmy.world)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2025
1296 points (98.9% liked)
Programmer Humor
25699 readers
1422 users here now
Welcome to Programmer Humor!
This is a place where you can post jokes, memes, humor, etc. related to programming!
For sharing awful code theres also Programming Horror.
Rules
- Keep content in english
- No advertisements
- Posts must be related to programming or programmer topics
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Except that wasn't a serial port, it was midi, and the reason it was on the sound card was because the input was analog.
Your joystick was just two fancy potentiometers, and your soundcard decoded the voltage on the middle legs into a position.
Soundcards handled joysticks because they had the fastest ADCs.
They didn't even use an ADC. They used 555 timers to produce a pulse. They measured the length of the pulse to determine the potentiometer position. Since there are 4 analog inputs, they typically used the 558 timer which is the quad version of the 555.
And here I thought I had it all figured out. But it does make sense. Doing it with an analog signal introduces noise and measuring pulse widths is going to be simpler.
I don't know what I'm going to do with this information but I'm glad it's in my brain now.
huh, i thought it was just because "owning a sound card" and "likely to play games" was the biggest overlap of the Venn circles.
Wow, 30 years later and I'm just learning this now. Thank you
Considering MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface, I have no idea what you're trying to say.
More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_port
The 15-pin D-sub connector itself was apparently a combination of analog and digital. It had to be, since MIDI is digital (it's right there in the name: Musical Instrument Digital Interface). TIL it wasn't all digital.