> Probably expense.. what else besides BASIC Programming could have used
> anything beyond the 12-key touch pad? Also, with your setup, you can't
> press multiple keys at once. The TIA does have separate inputs for each
> joystick direction, plus both buttons. BTW, the number of combinations
> wouldn't be 5!, it'd be 2^5... minus one to signal "no button pressed".
Actually, it's exactly 2^5 = 32. Thus my original 32-key keyboard.
(not the one that was prototyped) No buttons pressed is %00000 in a
"pressed = 1" world.
> I can't think of a way for a custom controller to do more than one button
> while retaining all four joystick directions, independent of the button.
> With an eight-way stick (four diagonals) and one button, there's eighteen
> possble configurations of stick and button (joystick in each of nine
> positions * two button position). Adding a second button doubles that to
> 36 possible configurations, or more than the (2^5)-1 = 31 theoretical limit
> of the port. Of course, you could add the second joystick port, but two
> buttons independent of an eight-way stick cannot be done in one port on the
> 2600.
Wanna bet? You're thinking linearly. Add an extra dimension to the
port (time) and you can have any number of buttons required. The keyboard
I actually built used a technology that allowed 1k inputs, although I only
implemented 4 :) The keyboard hogged both joystick ports, but it offered two
ports of its own. When I stopped working on it, it only supported joysticks,
but support for other devices was planned.
-Chris
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