Sidewinder Timing Patch Released

After browsing the Tech Support Forum, akula65 noticed that quite a few people reported issues getting Microsoft Sidewinder joysticks to work with Wing Commander games on systems from the early 2000s. He's developed a timing patch that corrects a flaw with how this joystick operates in Windows 95, 98 & Me. Download it here (256 k zip). The file includes a detailed readme with instructions and information. Players who are running a Windows 9x operating system and trying to get a Wing Commander game (or any game!) running with a Sidewinder should let akula know how the patch works. Hopefully this helps fans out there who are building Wing Commander computers out of older hard/software.

For years, many Microsoft SideWinder 3D Pro joystick owners have been unable to use their controllers in Win9x systems because the Microsoft driver (SW3DPRO.VXD) does not function properly on systems with FSB speeds of 100 MHz or higher. Microsoft has never provided an effective solution for the problem, and support for all Win9x OSes was terminated years ago. As someone who owns several SideWinder 3D Pro sticks and who still plays games on Win98 SE, I got fed up with not being able to use the sticks to their full potential, so I decided to do something about it.

I have put together a package of SW3DPRO.VXD replacement drivers in which the timing values have been adjusted to permit the drivers to function on a variety of Win9x systems with substantially higher performance than the original Microsoft driver. I have successfully used the drivers to get the SW 3D Pro to work on machines up to a Pentium III 933 MHz CPU with a 133 MHz FSB (the fastest Win9x system available to me), and the drivers will hopefully support much faster systems as well. Note that the drivers will only work on Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows ME. Newer versions of Windows are not supported (sorry).

File info on the ZIP archive (sw3dp10.zip) is as follows: 260320 bytes
md5: 60d5b0496fdf8ee332da0353355d817f
sha1: 0b75dcf6c0066d01fdc0bfab5cb90960c4a90730

Feedback is appreciated, particularly for systems faster than those tested by the author.