General¶

First of all, you need to enable GAMEPORT support on Linux kernel forusing a joystick with the ALSA driver. For the details of gameportsupport, refer toIntroduction.

The joystick support of ALSA drivers is different between ISA and PCIcards. In the case of ISA (PnP) cards, it’s usually handled by theindependent module (ns558). Meanwhile, the ALSA PCI drivers have thebuilt-in gameport support. Hence, when the ALSA PCI driver is builtin the kernel, CONFIG_GAMEPORT must be ‘y’, too. Otherwise, thegameport support on that card will be (silently) disabled.

Some adapter modules probe the physical connection of the device atthe load time. It’d be safer to plug in the joystick device beforeloading the module.

PCI Cards¶

For PCI cards, the joystick is enabled when the appropriate moduleoption is specified. Some drivers don’t need options, and thejoystick support is always enabled. In the former ALSA version, therewas a dynamic control API for the joystick activation. It waschanged, however, to the static module options because of the systemstability and the resource management.

The following PCI drivers support the joystick natively.

VIA686A/B only

With YMF744/754 chips, the port address can be chosen arbitrarily

The following drivers don’t support gameport natively, but there areadditional modules. Load the corresponding module to add the gameportsupport.

Note: the “pcigame” and “cs461x” modules are for the OSS drivers only.These ALSA drivers (cs46xx, trident and au88x0) have thebuilt-in gameport support.

As mentioned above, ALSA PCI drivers have the built-in gameportsupport, so you don’t have to load ns558 module. Just load “joydev”and the appropriate adapter module (e.g. “analog”).

ISA Cards¶

ALSA ISA drivers don’t have the built-in gameport support.Instead, you need to load “ns558” module in addition to “joydev” andthe adapter module (e.g. “analog”).