IBM PC Oddities

Posted by  | Thursday, August 11, 2011


IBM Game Control Adapter

The PC shipped without a joystick or paddle port, but IBM’s Game Control Adapter was available for $55 (about $135 in today’s dollars) and supported a pair of two-button analog joysticks or four Pong-style paddles.

The game port held on as the standard for PC game controllers up until the USB era. They were found as a bonus on internal sound cards like the Sound Blaster. The port’s analog nature — and the lack of high-quality, low-cost joysticks or control pads for the PC — held back PC action gaming for the first 15 years, until the mouse/keyboard control scheme, and then USB controllers, relieved some of those deficiencies.

(Photo: jenesaispas1f)



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3 Comments For This Post

  1. Stilgar Says:

    What about IBM's word processing software, Display Write 1.0? It's hard to find any good information on this product on the internet. I even remember the name of the executable "dw1" 🙂

  2. Zomg Says:

    What's bizzare and dystopian about teaching people to read? I say it's utopian. Now if they subliminally taught them to only buy IBM or become chimp plant lackeys… that would be dystopian.

  3. Pheasant Under Glass Says:

    I think the author was just showing how limited his/her vocabulary is. …ah, if only they had access to one of those evil IBM enslavement machines during their youth.