How to use your old Thrustmaster WCS MARK II with FCS MARK I

[Guest Ricko]

Hi guys,

I thought I’d share some info about how I managed to salvage my old Thrustmaster equipment :joystick: and used it to play Black Shark.

 

Needed equipment:

Besides the obvious WCS & FCS, you need the following stuff:

1)A PCI sound card with a gameport. You can find them on ebay for about $5 (see pic).

2)If you have a PS2 keyboard (not USB) you will need a “PS2 to AT” adapter. This also can be found on ebay for just a few bucks (see pic).

3)In order to connect you WCS to the computer you will also need an “AT to PS2” adapter (see pic).

4)You need the Thrustmaster drivers and utilities found here

5)A Dos boot disk or a dos USB boot device.

 

Connection:

1)Connect the FCS gameport plug to your WCS gameport socket.

2)Connect the WCS gameport plug to the gameport socket on the PCI sound card.

3)Connect your PS2 keyboard to the WCS AT socket using the adapter.

4)Connect the WCS AT plug to your PC’s PS2 socket using the appropriate adapter.

You’re all connected…

 

Windows procedure:

1)Make sure your soundcard is properly installed in the device manager.

2)Click start->settings->control panel, and double click “game controllers”.

3)Click “add” and select something with “throttle” (5-button joystick w/throttle) and click “ok”.

4)Make sure your RED WCS switch is set to “digital” and your BLACK hat switch is set to “analog” otherwise the throttle wont work for some reason.

5)Select the device you installed and click “properties” in order to calibrate it. If the throttle doesn’t respond, try flicking the hat switch.

 

Here goes…

Since you can not program the WCS and FCS buttons from windows, you will have to do it from DOS, and the easiest way I found to do this is to simply copy the “mark2.exe” utility to your boot disk.

 

You can edit your ADV and MDF file from windows and after your done you can even check them for syntax errors by downloading them to the WCS from windows, this will NOT actually program the stick as said earlier, but it will notify you about any errors in the file enabling you to fix them without booting in DOS mode every time.

 

After your done programming and checking, copy the ADV & MDF files to the boot disk, boot to DOS and run the m2.bat file, follow the instructions to download the files to the stick. You can check the results with the keytest program (F3 from the main menu of the m2.bat)

 

If you have any questions feel free to ask.

 

Good Luck!!! :thumbup:

 

 

P.S.

I have also built rudders and am using freetrack while playing, they both work great and I’d be happy to help out if you have any questions.