Everything you wanted to know about Joystick ports

The de facto standard for joysticks on 8bit (and 16bit) machines is a DE-9 connector, first introduced on the Atari VCS console. Unfortunatly, some machines implemented it with some variations, resulting in compatibility issues and confusion. This page attempts to summarize the main problems that you may encounter.

The original port on the Atari VCS

The original port has 5 digital inputs and two analogue ones. The digital inputs are up, down, left, right and trigger (button) on pins 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6. Pins 5 and 9 are analogue inputs, wired to potentiometers. Pin 7 is a +5V power supply, and pin 8 is ground. All Commodore machines also fully implement this standard (complete with analogue ports).

Amstrad CPC and Sam Coupé

These machines manage to handle two joysticks with only one connector. Support for analogue input is missing. The joysticks inputs are wired as part of the keyboard matrix. It's expected that joystick 1 will connect the input pins (up, down, left, right, or button) to the COM1 line (pin 8), and joystick 2 will connect them to the COM2 line (pin 9). These lines are forced to 0 by the computer when scanning the respective joystick, and left floating (with pull-up resistors) otherwise. On the Sam Coupé, pin 7 is still a +5V supply, and a real ground is found on pin 5. You can use this to power up some electronics in the Joystick. The Amstrad CPC, however, wanted more buttons, so pins 5 and 7 are used for two extra buttons. As a result, there is no ground and no +5V signal. This makes it difficult to have "intelligent" electronics in the joystick, as there is no simple way to power it. All the input and output lines are connected to the PPI and AY chips IO pins in the CPC. The idea for this port is that the first joystick would have a connector on its base to connect the second one. This connector would swap pins 8 and 9, so the second joystick would work without any specific changes. To avoid any problems with keyboard scanning, the input pins should be forced to 0 only when the respective COM pin for the joystick is 0, and left floating otherwise (or directly connected to the COM pin).

Thomson machines

The situation on Thomson machines is yet again a bit different. This time there are two ports on the machine. However, their up/down/left/right pins are also wired to other devices. On the MO6, they are used as outputs for the printer port. On the TO8, they are used for the audio output. To avoid interferences, similarly to the Amstrad and Sam Coupé ports, pin 8 is not an actual ground, but is forced to 0 only when the joystick is being scanned (and pulled up with a resistor otherwise). Take care of the fact that the pins are used for output by the computer, and make sure this will not damage your controller. Note that Thomson's own mouse does not do this properly, and it will interfere with sound output, if you move it, or even if you don't move it but left it in a position where it's forcing one of the lines to 0. Nice work, Thomson! There is a +5V supply on pin 5, and a ground this time on pin 9. Pins 6 and 7 are used for two button joysticks (in a way compatible with the Amstrad CPC ones).