Posted by Bill Lash on August 06, 1999 at 15:16:21:
I bought 2 Powerramps (one to use normally, and the other to take apart and use as the basis
for a control panel), and so far I am really impressed. I figured that the joystick would be
kind of flimsy, but it seems pretty robust, and the buttons aren't bad either, though they are
a little bit lower profile than regular arcade buttons. I can definitely say that my
scores in joust and donkey kong are much higher with this than the little gamepad that I was
using. It is hard to flap with your thumb in joust, and it was hard to get the "D" button to
react right when trying to go up ladders in donkey kong.
I was also pleased to discover that the powerramp doesn't need any software running on the PC
in order to program it. Just plug a keyboard into it, flip the setup switch, hold down the button
that you want to program and hit the key (or key sequence for the 10-in-1 buttons) that you want
the button to send, and then release the button. turn off the setup switch, and it is ready to go.
This was important to me since I run Linux, and I didn't want to have to boot dos just to program
the arcade control.
I am sure that if I had a HotRod, or one of the other controllers, that it would be better, but
for $20 the powerramp seems hard to beat.
The only down side that I can see for using one of these for building a control panel around is
the relaively small number of inputs, (14 buttons and a joystick) This might get limiting in
some situations.