[linux-audio-user] Enabling joystick under alsa

[Barton Bosch]

I'm trying to configure a joystick so I can use it as an Mplayer 
transport control.

The first complication is that the actual machine that I need to use 
it on has no gameport for its onboard soundcard.  Under the 
assumption that I can add an adapter card with a gameport (an 
inexpensive pci soundcard or gameport adapter card) I proceeded to 
test a previously untested second hand joystick for functionality 
and linux compatibility on a secondary machine that does have a 
gameport.

The primary box (no gameport) runs FC2, a 2.6 kernel with ALSA.  The 
secondary box runs RH 9 with alsa added on through Planet CCRMA, the 
soundcard is a yamaha (ymf701 I think) which uses the snd-ymfpci 
module.  The joystick is a Gravis Blackhawk.  Having failed to get 
the input device detected (jstest /dev/js0) under linux I resorted 
to windoze and managed to test and calibrate it as a Gravis Analog 
Pro device, so I am fairly sure that it's the analog flavor of 
Blackhawk.

In reading some ALSA docs I found that the gameport needs to be 
enabled at the alsa soundcard module's compile time but I have no 
idea how to check whether it is enabled in the module.  Beyond that 
I'm not sure which modules need to be loaded.  My impression is that 
joydev and maybe analog are the relevant modules but I'd appreciate 
any tips or further info.


Thanks,

Barton