Re: Unindentifiable motherboard port (II Plus clone)

[spec@vax2.concordia.ca (Mitchell Spector)]

In article dalloff@freenet.columbus.oh.us (Dave Althoff) writes...

>Michael Black (blackm00@CAM.ORG) wrote:
>: I have a II clone board that I found in the garbage at one point.  It was
>: missing parts, so it's scrap.  But it had two DB-9 connectors on it.  One
>: of them I took off for something else, but the remaining one is male and
>: I assume the missing one was male too.  They are both labelld (in silk
>: screening on the board) "Game I/O".  The IC's that would be in the
>: joystick circuitry are right near it.
> 
>: With a little time, mainly to get around to it, I could trace the pins on
>: the DB-9's too see what's what. Would that be useful?  I guess I hesitate
>: to simply do it because if nobody sees DB-9 male connectors as standard
>: for some joystick (I can't think of anything) then can we assume that two
>: clone boards would use the same pinout?  If you have a multimeter and feel
>: capable of tracing the circuitry, at least you could verify a match from
>: my data, though there is also the chance that the pinout is the same but
>: different sections of the IC's are being used.
> 
>Perhaps those are (were) ports for switch-type joysticks?  Atari 2600
>joysticks have female DB-9 connectors on them, which would necessarily
>mate to male DB-9 connectors...

    As far as my board is concerned, it is definitely not an Atari 
2600 (digital switch) joystick connector. When I plugged one of my
joysticks in, it didn't respond and actually caused the II+ clone
to reset if pushed to the right (hmm, I may have damaged to board
or zapped the joystick in the process :/).

    My best guess at the moment is it is analog Apple joystick port,
but with the gender reversed (I'd have to have a look at the date
codes on the board, but it may have been designed before the IIe
existed and that could explain it).

Mitchell Spector
spec@vax2.concordia.ca