M$ Sidewinder Precision Pro and Win XP

[TheChronoRogue]

The other day I was rummaging through my attic and I found my Sidewinder Precision Pro joystick. I figured I havent used it in about 6 months or so, so I hooked it up to my rig through my game port. Then I hit a wall, seems M$ won't support it on Win XP. They won't support their own device on their own OS and the joystick is only 2 years old or so.

What does their website say? Well, in so many words it says that they want more money and you have to go out and buy the Sidewinder Precision Pro 2 if you want a Win XP joystick. Is this ridiculous or what?

Well, needless to say I kinda annoyed with them right now and I was wondering if anyone had some sort of workaround or 3rd party driver to get the thing to work with Win XP? Thanks.

[Epidemic]

I have not had any luck but have not looked into it recently.

i was perty peeved myself when I saw that. I mean how hard would it be to make a DLL for that for MS and their army of uber programmers.

[wavefront]

That is typical.
I had a Precision Pro Sidewinder and the software wouldn't work for Win 2000.
It isn't just Microsatan® though... Plextor Manager 2000 (CDRW software) won't work in XP either and they refuse to udate it.

[Nighthawk]

I think the problem is that it's a gameport joystick and they're trying to move everything to USB.

You might be able to find a USB->gameport adapter somewhere online.

[Dudster]

http://www.techimo.com/forum/showthr...threadid=56082 <--- it should work in XP using XP's built-in drivers, no profile support though.

[wavefront]

Yeah, but the profile support is almost half the usefullness of the SW. If you're really into games having key functions linked to the joystick buttons makes life so much easier.