Digital Joysticks on parallel port

You can connect your old digital joystick used on Commodore or Atari Computers to the parallel port. This is supported by the Linux Joystick drivers and well documented in the /usr/src/linux/Documentation/joystick-parport.txt file. However the pinout presented there needs a bidirectional parallel port to work properly. If you only have a standard parallel port (SPP) you can still connect your joystick with the following pinout:

25-SubD  9-SubD
  pin      pin   func
-------------------------
   15 ----- 1    Up
   13 ----- 2    Down
   12 ----- 3    Left
   10 ----- 4    Right
   11 ----- 6    Button
   14 ----- 7    Vcc
18-25 ----- 8    Gnd

Then enable the Multisystem, Sega Genesis, Saturn joysticks and gamepads Module of the Linux Joystick Drivers and compile, install and depmod them. Load the joystick driver with "modprobe db9 db9=<port>,8" (Linux 2.4) or "modprobe db9 dev=<port>,8 [dev2=<port>,8] [dev3=<port>,8]" (Linux 2.6). The port value is your parallel port number, usually 0 or 1.

You can even connect a second digital joystick to the same parallel port! Add the following pinout and use 9 instead of 8 as the second parameter in the modprobe line.

25-SubD   9-SubD
  pin      pin   func
-------------------------
    5 ----- 1    Up
    6 ----- 2    Down
    7 ----- 3    Left
    8 ----- 4    Right
    9 ----- 6    Button
    1 ----- 7    Vcc
18-25 ----- 8    Gnd