It is possible that you may experience difficulties in installing the Smart Game card for use with Windows 95. Listed below are some possible troubleshooting tips to solve any problems that you may have. It would be advisable to follow the list in order of section, as each procedure requires the previous procedure to be undertaken. To install the Smart Game card properly, you need to make sure you have a joystick to plug into it, which you know is definitely working.

To understand why you have to set the joystick up in a certain way, you must first understand how the game port(s) works.

Any standard gameport is capable of supporting a maximum of 4 axis of movement and 4 fire buttons. Using drivers it is possible to obtain two further fire buttons but this is software dependent. Using a game card with two game ports, extends this maximum to 4 axis of movement and 6 fire buttons. It is possible to split these axis of movement and fire buttons to enable use of two joysticks and thus have two ports. As there are four physical axis of movement, these can be quite easily split to give two separate axis of movement (X1, Y1 and X2, Y2). As there are only six physical available fire buttons (A,B,C, D, X and Y), to split those between two joysticks would mean that one joystick could only have a maximum of four fire buttons (A1,B1 C1, D1) and the other joystick could only have a maximum of 2 fire buttons (A2 and B2).

Now take for example a joystick with a throttle control. If it were plugged in on its own into a standard game port, the maximum available functions would be 4 fire buttons and 4 axis of movement. As the directional control only uses 2 axis of movement (X1 and Y1), there are two further available axis of movement (X2 and Y2) for the second joystick. On a throttle joystick the third axis is used for the throttle (Y2). Axis 4 is usually left alone. It is possible however to use rudder pedals with this type of joystick as the rudder control would use axis 4 (X2).

If you have a look at the table below it will explain what happens when you use certain types of joystick with the game card:

Joystick 1 is not necessarily port one on the game card, it is just referring to the first joystick that you may have. As you can see from the above table, the only way that 2 joystick are going to work together is if they are setup as 2 axis, 2 button joysticks or one with 2 axis, 4 buttons and the other with 2 axis and 2 buttons. If you have a throttle control on the joystick, it is still possible to use it as a 2 axis, 2 button joystick. This however will disable the throttle, but enable to use 2 joysticks at the same time. To find out how to calibrate the 2 joysticks in Windows 95 using the game card go to the section called Joystick Calibration.

1. First of all, you will need to disable the game port on the soundcard. If you are unsure as to how to do this, refer to the user manual of your soundcard.
2. Turn the machine off, and install the game card into your machine.
3. Restart the machine and go straight to Windows 95. Now shutdown to MS Dos mode (Start, Shutdown, Restart computer in MS Dos mode)
4. Install the software provided with the soundcard. Leave the directory names as they are by default. If you require instructions for how to do this, refer to the game card manual.
5. Type in the following at the Dos Prompt: EDIT C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT
6. Have a look through the contents of the file and ensure you have the following line: C:\GCARD\GCARD.COM
7. If you have the above line, then the software has been successfully installed and you can skip the rest of this section and go to the section 2 - How to check if your joystick is working with the Smart Game card.
8. If you don’t have the above line in this file, type it in at the end, on a new line and then save the file. Once this is done restart your machine. Now go to section 2.

1. Re-start the computer and go straight to Windows 95.
2. Right click on My Computer
3. A small menu will appear, go to the bottom and click on Properties; this will bring up a window with the title ‘System Properties’.
4. Click on the Device Manager tab at the top of this window
5. A list of hardware on your machine will appear. Go down the list until you come to Sound, Video and Game controllers.
6. Expand this section by double clicking on the word ‘Sound, Video and Game controllers’, or by clicking on the ‘+’ beside the words.
7. A list of devices should appear; one of which should be a Gameport Joystick. It is possible that you have a plug and play game port, in which case the name of the joystick driver may be different to that of ‘Game port joystick’. For example it may be ‘Yamaha Game port’. If you have this driver then skip the rest of this section and go to the section called ‘Calibration’. If however, you have more than one ‘Gameport joystick’, you will find that the joystick calibration will not work properly. You will have to remove the redundant drivers. For details on how to do this go to the section called ‘Removing Redundant Drivers’ on this guide.
8. If you have not got the ‘Gameport Joystick’ device driver installed it will not appear on the list and you must install it. You may not even have a section called ‘Sound, Video and Game controllers’; there is no need to worry. All you need to do is install the joystick driver. Installation instructions are in the section called ‘How to Install the Windows 95 driver’.

1. Right click on My Computer
2. A small menu will appear, go to the bottom and click on Properties. This will bring up a window with the title ‘System Properties’.
3. Click on the Device Manager tab at the top of this window.
4. A list of hardware on your machine will appear. Go down the list until you come to Sound, Video and Game controllers.
5. Expand this section by double clicking on the word ‘Sound, Video and Game controllers’, or by clicking on the ‘+’ beside the words.
6. A list of devices should appear, in which you will have either one or more of the driver called Game port joystick. It is possible that you have a plug and play sound card, in which case the name of the joystick driver may be different to that on ‘Game port Joystick’. For example it may be ‘Yamaha Game port’.
7. Remove the joystick drivers. This can be done by clicking on the word ‘Game port Joystick’ (or whatever your one(s) may be called), so that it is highlighted, and clicking on the remove button on the bottom of the window. This can be repeated until all of the ‘Game port joystick’ drivers have been removed.
8. Restart your machine (Start, Shut Down, Restart Computer). This is required just in case you have a plug and play game port, in which case when the Windows 95 restarts, it will automatically install the joystick driver.
9. When the computer has restarted, if you see a screen at the beginning saying 'Windows has found new hardware and is installing the software necessary to install the device', then you will need to make sure that it is the joystick driver that has been installed. For information on how to check this, follow the instructions as described in here, and go to the section titled Checking to see if you already have the joystick driver installed. If it is installed, then you can calibrate your joystick as necessary and everything should work properly. If on the other hand you did not see such a message then you will need to install the Windows 95 driver manually. For information on how to do this, refer to section 5, titled Setting up game card / joystick for use with Windows 95. Once this is completed, you can calibrate your joystick as necessary and everything should work properly.

In Windows 95, it is not necessary to specify that you have a game card installed. Just telling Windows that you have a joystick installed is sufficient. The only necessary step is to ensure that the Windows 95 joystick driver is installed.

1. Go to Control Panel (Start, Settings, Control Panel)
2. Click on Add new Hardware
3. Click Next
4. Answer No for the question for auto install
5. Select Sound, video and game controllers, and click on Next
6. For manufacturer, select Microsoft
7. For model, Select Gameport Joystick
8. Click Next until Finish is seen.
9. Restart your computer if necessary
10. ‘Joystick’ Icon should appear if already not there in control panel, and can be reconfigured / removed in the same way as described above.

You must calibrate the joysticks for them to work properly with any Windows 95 games that you might want to use them with.

1. Go to Control Panel (Start, Settings, Control Panel)
2. Double click on the joystick icon.
3. A ‘Joystick Properties’ window will appear, if your joystick is not connected properly message ‘your joystick is not connected correctly’ will be seen.
4. Select Joystick 1 in ‘Current Joystick’
5. Select the appropriate joystick under ‘Joystick Configuration’
6. Now select Joystick 2 in ‘Current Joystick’
7. Select the appropriate joystick under ‘Joystick Configuration’
8. Select Calibrate for both joysticks and follow the instructions given carefully. If these instructions are not followed carefully it may result in the joysticks not being calibrated properly and causing it to not respond as it should.
9. To test each joystick click on Test.
10. After you have finished testing, click on Apply then click on Finish.

Congratulations!! The Smart Game Card should now be setup and ready to use with Windows 95. If you did not have any success or you have difficulty with any part of this guide, then please do not hesitate to get in touch.