Setting up an analog Joystick with SB Live! Gameport in Mandriva 2007.0
Posted 01-23-2007 at 02:14 PM by ernie
I have an SB Live! sound card which includes a MIDI / Game port. A generic analog joystick is connected to the game port. I run Mandriva 2007.0 (Official), although the following procedure should work for any distribution with a 2.6 kernel. I calibrated the joystick with KDE's joystick component (KCC / Peripherals / Joystick).
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My first step was to identify the module needed for my game port. I opened MCC / Hardware / Look at and Configure the Hardware - Game Port Controllers / SB Live! (joystick) which reports:
Module: ?emu10k1-gp
If you use a different Sound Card, you will have a different module.
Research informed me I need the joystick package. For Mandriva it is joystick-1.2.15-4mdk. If you use another distribution, use your distribution's package manager to search for joystick in the name. Use your package manager to install the joystick package.
Open a terminal window and su to root.
Run the following three commands:
modprobe analog
modprobe ?emu10k1-gp
lsmod
In the second command, replace 'emu10k1-gp' with the module name for your game port if yours is not an SB Live!
The first two commands install the emu10k1-gp, analog, joydev, and gameport modules needed to make the analog joystick work.
The third command lists installed modules so you can confirm installation.
Now open the KDE control center and run the joystick applet. Click the 'calibrate' bar to calibrate your joystick. I had to do the calibration a few times to get it right. If you do not use the KDE desktop, you can use the jscal application included with the joystick package.
To make the Joystick work after a reboot you must edit (as root) /etc/modprobe.preload. Add the following two lines to the end of the file:
analog
emu10k1-gp
/etc/modprobe.preload provides the following information:
# /etc/modprobe.preload: kernel modules to load at boot time.
#
# This file should contain the names of kernel modules that are
# to be loaded at boot time, one per line. Comments begin with
# a `#', and everything on the line after them are ignored.
# this file is for module-init-tools (kernel 2.5 and above) ONLY
# for old kernel use /etc/modules
After a restart, you should still have a working joystick.
<!--break-->
My first step was to identify the module needed for my game port. I opened MCC / Hardware / Look at and Configure the Hardware - Game Port Controllers / SB Live! (joystick) which reports:
Module: ?emu10k1-gp
If you use a different Sound Card, you will have a different module.
Research informed me I need the joystick package. For Mandriva it is joystick-1.2.15-4mdk. If you use another distribution, use your distribution's package manager to search for joystick in the name. Use your package manager to install the joystick package.
Open a terminal window and su to root.
Run the following three commands:
modprobe analog
modprobe ?emu10k1-gp
lsmod
In the second command, replace 'emu10k1-gp' with the module name for your game port if yours is not an SB Live!
The first two commands install the emu10k1-gp, analog, joydev, and gameport modules needed to make the analog joystick work.
The third command lists installed modules so you can confirm installation.
Now open the KDE control center and run the joystick applet. Click the 'calibrate' bar to calibrate your joystick. I had to do the calibration a few times to get it right. If you do not use the KDE desktop, you can use the jscal application included with the joystick package.
To make the Joystick work after a reboot you must edit (as root) /etc/modprobe.preload. Add the following two lines to the end of the file:
analog
emu10k1-gp
/etc/modprobe.preload provides the following information:
# /etc/modprobe.preload: kernel modules to load at boot time.
#
# This file should contain the names of kernel modules that are
# to be loaded at boot time, one per line. Comments begin with
# a `#', and everything on the line after them are ignored.
# this file is for module-init-tools (kernel 2.5 and above) ONLY
# for old kernel use /etc/modules
After a restart, you should still have a working joystick.
