JOY(4) | Device Drivers Manual | JOY(4)

# NAME

`joy` —
game adapter driver

# SYNOPSIS

`joy* at acpi?`
`joy* at eap?`
`joy* at eso?`
`joy0 at isa? port 0x201`
`joy* at isapnp?`
`joy* at ofisa?`
`joy* at pci?`
`joy* at pnpbios? index ?`

# DESCRIPTION

This driver provides access to the game adapter. The lower bit in the minor device number selects the joystick: 0 is the first joystick and 1 is the second.

The game control adapter allows up to two joysticks to be attached to the system. The adapter plus the driver convert the present resistive value to a relative joystick position. On receipt of an output signal, four timing circuits are started. By determining the time required for the circuit to time-out (a function of the resistance), the paddle position can be determined. The adapter could be used as a general purpose I/O card with four analog (resistive) inputs plus four digital input points.

Applications may call ioctl(2) on a game adapter driver file descriptor to set and get the offsets of the two potentiometers and the maximum time-out value for the circuit. The ioctl(2) commands are listed in `<machine/joystick.h>` and currently are:

`JOY_SETTIMEOUT`
  Sets the maximum time-out for the adapter.
`JOY_GETTIMEOUT`
  Returns the current maximum time-out.
`JOY_SET_X_OFFSET`
  Sets an offset on X value.
`JOY_GET_X_OFFSET`
  Returns the current X offset.
`JOY_SET_Y_OFFSET`
  Sets an offset on Y value.
`JOY_GET_Y_OFFSET`
  Returns the current Y offset.

All these commands take an integer parameter.

read(2) on the file descriptor returns a joystick structure:

    struct joystick {
    	int x;
    	int y;
    	int b1;
    	int b2;
    };

The fields have the following functions:

x
  current X coordinate of the joystick (or position of paddle 1)
y
  current Y coordinate of the joystick (or position of paddle 2)
b1
  current state of button 1
b2
  current state of button 2

The b1 and b2 fields in struct joystick are set to 1 if the corresponding button is down, 0 otherwise.

The x and y coordinates are supposed to be between 0 and 255 for a good joystick and a good adapter. Unfortunately, because of the hardware hack that is used to measure the position (by measuring the time needed to discharge an RC circuit made from the joystick's potentiometer and a capacitor on the adapter), calibration is needed to determine exactly what values are returned for a specific joystick/adapter combination. Incorrect hardware can yield negative or values greater than 255.

A typical calibration procedure uses the values returned at lower left, center and upper right positions of the joystick to compute the relative position.

This calibration is not part of the driver.

# FILES

/dev/joy0
  first joystick
/dev/joy1
  second joystick

# SEE ALSO

acpi(4), eap(4), eso(4), isa(4), isapnp(4), ofisa(4), pci(4), pnpbios(4)

# AUTHORS

Jean-Marc Zucconi wrote the FreeBSD driver. Matthieu Herrb ported it to NetBSD and wrote this manual page.

July 22, 2006 | NetBSD 9.5