PDPI L4 Gameport

Lightning 4 Digital Gameport (L4)

Manufactured By: PDPI

Retail Price: $59.95

Review Date: **05-05-99

A Control Center visitor e-mailed me asking if I had heard of the L4 gameport. News of the L4 has been burning up the flight sim newsgroups. Occasionally one slips through and this was one I miss it. I quickly contacted PDPI and had a Lightning 4 (L4) gameport in my system within a week of first hearing of them.

You may ask what the big deal is, you already have a gameport on your soundcard and it works fine. Well, the L4 makes the argument equal to "I have a VW bus, what difference would a Porsche make?". Once you look into the specifications of the L4, compare them to your current gameport and decide to -get off the bus- you'll not be looking back. Just how the L4 works is far too technical for my level of comprehension but I can still describe how it functions. Standard gameport technology has remained stagnant for about 15 years. Essentially you system spends a great deal of time polling the joystick (polling is the action of determining the location of the controller in the most basic sense) while trying to do an array of other things we seem to care about a bit more- creating graphics, sound, etc.

To illustrate just how much of your system resources can be eaten up by this cycle PDPI placed this example on their web page: _"Using the Thrustmaster T2 Steering Wheel, in a full right turn, at 72 joystick polls per second, more than half the total available CPU time is spent reading the standard gameport. Note that this leaves less than half of the computer's time to run the game." _ This is one of the reasons Quake addicts refuse to use anything but the keyboard and mouse for gameplay; it robs the system of framerate.

The L4's digital architecture reduces this translation from over 50% in the example above to around 0.18%! The design also has numerous other "why didn't someone else think of that" features. The L4 does not require disabling of interrupts (default setting for most gameports) meaning it does not interfere with modem communications. Using a modem for online play with a joystick use to be subject to either poor modem or joystick problems. The L4 doesn't require this compromise so it is much more stable when used to play while online.

Another feature of the Lightning 4 Gameport that I put to the test almost immediately is its filtering capability that eliminate jittering by smoothing the signal from the controller. As soon as I had my unit installed I plugged in a cheap, old generic gamepad that had difficulty calibrating with my standard gameport. Much to my amazement not only was I able to calibrate it but you would have thought it was a brand new expensive digital controller because it held its center like a rock!

The feature list goes on and on. You can stack 2 L4's in your system to give you 8 gameports with the incredible speed and stability described above. Using the JoyMap utility that comes with each L4 you can assign a specific controller plugged into any of the ports to be used for a specific game. Have a standard joystick on #1, wheel on #2, gamepad on #3 and a flight yoke on #4; assign them to the appropriate games and forget about having to disconnecting and reconnecting every time you want to switch controllers. Also included is a Virtual Joystick utility that allows you to join controllers from the different ports. You can have pedals, a wheel and yoke plugged into different ports and establish profiles that join either the wheel and pedals or the yoke and pedal. You can combine axis's and have up to 64 buttons.

Features-

• 4 gameports per card (up 2 can be used in a single system)
• Backwards compatibility to DOS
• Smoothing filter to eliminate jitter
• Up to 400 X faster than a standard gameport

Appropriate For-

• Any analog joystick, gamepad, throttle, yoke, pedals, etc. requiring a 15 pin gameport connection. Also works with most digital controllers not using special features (i.e. MIDI interface for force-feedback).

System Requirements-

IBM computable with a single free ISA slot and free mounting slot for the additional 15 pin gameport plugs (can also be removed from the header and mounted in your case).

Price -

The price of the L4 has been reduced to near $60 from its debut price of just under $100. The benefits of having this port installed in your system may be higher than upgrading you processor or video card making it an investment to definitely consider.

Warranty-

5 years from the date of purchase.

Performance-

The PDPI has been connected to my system for a couple of weeks while I played a variety of games using different controllers. I did not have the ability to measure any of the games framerates for comparison but can offer the following: Using the same controllers I normally use to play I consistently played better. Its a subjective claim but when I complete a knockout tournament in Need For Speed III for the first time I have to analyze what contributed; the only change has been an addition of the PDPI L4 card. Input from the controllers is definitely smoother and calibration of them was much more consistent because of the L4's filtering mechanisms.

I also experimented with the 2 utilities, JoyMap and Virtual Joystick. Both add convenience. I used JoyMap to create start icons to use my gamepad for NHL 99, FIFA 99 and SouthPark; flight yoke for MS CombatSim and European Air Warrior; and additional icons to use my wheel for Need For Speed III, Andretti Racing and finished the setup with an icon for my stick for Motocross Madness. I just needed to assure each was plugged into its assigned port and ran the game from the icon. The appropriate controller was selected and activated as "game controller #1". This is a very nice feature.

I took it a step further using the Virtual Joystick utility by creating setups using devices connected to different ports together. The best application for this is using a single set of pedals with a wheel and yoke. Normally I would have to disconnect the pedals from the wheel to setup the yoke. With the Virtual Joystick utility I created 2 profiles- Yoke on port 1 with pedals on port 3 and Wheel on port 2 with pedals on port 3. To switch between them I simply chose the appropriate Virtual Joystick profile.

Setup -

Setting up the L4 is fairly easy for anyone who has ever done any type of a hardware upgrade. You should thoroughly read the manuals installation instructions before installing the L4. The manual recommend physically uninstalling you current gameport or soundcard first. Once that is complete insert the card into a free ISA slot and mount the 3/4 gameport header in a free slot or on you case body by removing the ports from the header plate. Close up your system, start it and install the software on the included CD. Upon restart you should see the L4 listed in your device list. Now shutdown, reinsert your soundcard and upon restart its gameport address should be reassigned to one that does not conflict with the L4. Thats all there is to it. The manual does a great job detailing the entire process. Now its time to start plugging in all of your controllers.

**Software -

** The software included with the L4 consists of the drivers, manual, and utilities on a single CD. Also added to the CD are copies of the on-line flight sims Dawn of Aces and Warbirds. The software is an easy install and auto-play will do most of the work for you. The two flight sims must be "manually" installed by selecting their executable from explorer.

Documentation -

The L4 that I received did not include a printed manual. The manual on the CD is very comprehensive and will guide you through the entire hardware and software installation. The PDPI web site contains a HTML version of the installation manual and a nice description of how you will benefit from this upgrade.

Overall Rating -

The PDPI Lightning 4 Gameport is a wonderful addition to any serious gamers system. Its only limitation is its inability to connect some of the advance-feature digital controllers. Otherwise, the speed, stability and convenience offered are worth every penny! Highly recommended.

Pros Cons

• 4 gameports with easy switching - requires 2 slot headers in most
• increased speed and stability installations
• great utilities - incompatibility with some digital controllers