[Lebodde]

I just got an iMac SE 400 and Star Wars Pod Racer for my kid for Xmas. Based on recomendations from this board I also got the Saitek Cyborg 3D USB joystick.

The problem is that the joystick is obviously a PC thing with Macs as an after-after-after-after-thought. They repeatedly tell you that it will not work properly without their drivers being installled. But their drivers CD contains a bunch of individual PC files with no Install application and no easily recognizable Mac driver type of file anywhere.

Finally I found at the bottom of the box a little green paper which says "Mac owners, to set up the Cyborg 3D, start your game and go to the Input Calibration menu of your game." Well, Pod Racer has an Input setting menu but no joystick "calibration" that I can find anywhere. As a result, the thing works sometimes but often tends to pull in one direction or another. Another problem is that oftentimes when going through the "Choose your player screen" if you click on one of the blue glowing arrows to go to the next choice, nothing will happen and you can't shoose another player or another track.

Is there a magic driver that will make this joystick bring joy to my 9 year old Pod Racer (bummed) fan?

Tech stuff: I have just done the 9.0.4 upgrade through the Apple site so I imagine I have the latest Inputsprockets and all (although I did not check specifically). Everything in the machine is basically stock, except that I have also installed the Logitech driver for the Logitech wheel mouse.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

P.S. It also seems that the USB connector is very hard to insert in the keyboard USB receptacle...

[sine -''-..-]

Well according to saitek's website the cyborg 3d is game sprocket compatible, which is good because it dosent need any extra drivers...

If you're sure you have the newest sprockets installed, try USB overdrive (www.usboverdrive.com) Its a little controlpanel that allows you to configure USB input devices...
BTW, try disabling the Logitech drivers, and other "USB device" extensions in your extensions manager.

And about the tight keyboard USB port... its normal. They're tight on all the Apple KB's i've had.


s i n e
-''-..-

[Lebodde]

Thanks Sine!

Update:

1) Symptoms: After Calibrating it through Bugdom, it would go through about half a lap in Pod Racer with direction control working but at constant, uncontrollable speed (normally speed is to be controlled as an on/off thing by the joystick trigger). Then it would loose its right side direction and be pulling completely to the left, eventually just running around in circles by itself. (I read other people mentioning this) After hitting a whole bunch of keys and mouse clicks I would sometimes be able to get it out of that mode and back into normal but not for long.

2) Light at the end of the tunnel? After spending an hour and a half trying to debug the thing I started to suspect something funny about the mouse. Then I found in the Pod Racer manual a little sentence buried inconspicuously which said something like "Some mouse controls may interfere with joystick. In that case, hit Command M to disable it". I tried that and sure enough, it "appears" to have cured the problem - so far at least. Then I remembered people saying bad things on this board about the Logitech mouseware software. So I trashed that (it was version 3.5) and everything seemed to work much better... except that, obviously, the mouse wheel wasn't working anymore. So I downloaded USB Overdrive which gave me that option back.

Moral of the story: Logitech Mouseware 3.5 appears to conflict with Cyborg 3D and/or Pod Racer. Unless I post another update, that is the (happy at last) ending of this part of the story! (I haven't tried it without disabling the mouse contorls in Pod Racer yet)

Now for another question on this setup: I liked the fact that the Cyborg 3D had this cool throttle on the base of the joystick. But when I go to the Pod Racer Joystick setting and click on throttle to set assign it, it says "Move joystick control and hit Enter to assign it to this function" (or something like that). But when I go ahead and move the throttle up an down, the Pod Racer settings don't seem to recognize it and all I get is a bunch of question marks. So right now, all I have for speed control is the on/off switch in the joystick trigger. Does anyone know how to activate the "real" joystick throttle?

Thank you very much!