About the BJL_PAD software
--------------------------

As an Atari Jaguar developer with BJL-equipment i encountered the problem
that i had to remove the BJL-cable and to insert a Joypad very often while
working on games which should suppport the Joypad port 2.

Fortunately Bastian Schick (developer of the BJL-kit) provided me some
weeks ago with a beta-version of a Windows NT/Windows 2000 compatible
version of his BJL-uploader software.
This software was using a well documented device driver (TVicPort V3.0
by Victor Ishikeev) which is available as shareware at
	http://www.entechtaiwan.com/tools.htm

and i decided to write a Windows program which should emulate
a Jaguar Joypad utilizing the BJL-cable.

Unlike the real Atari Jaguar Joypad the BJL_PAD-software can not response to
the requests from the Jaguar which reads the Joypad as a matrix of four
rows with six columns, so it doesn't support the 21 keys of a normal Joypad,
but only the 6 column values. Read the chapter "Technical Reference" in the
Atari Jaguar docs for more information about this topic.

But using BJL_PAD is sufficient when you just need info about the direction
keys (Up, Down, Left and Right), Pause and any fire button being pressed.

So BJL_PAD is intended as a tool for developers, not for use with older games.
These could interprete the BJL_PAD-emulation of the Up-key as the request for
a reset, because the asterisk and the hash-symbol are in the same column as
the Up-key!


About the driver-files:
Load the complete shareware-archive from the above mentioned website and
either install the complete package or just copy the files TVICPORT.DLL
and VICPRT00.VXD into the Windows SYSTEM-folder, and the file VICPRT00.SYS
into the Windows SYSTEM32/DRIVERS-folder.

Whenever you start the BJL_PAD.EXE a shareware-reminder dialog appears
(seee REDAME.1ST), simply click on OK to procede.

BJL_PAD reacts only on keyboard input, there is no mouse-interface.

Some hints:
1) You don't need a BJL-modified Jaguar to use BJL_PAD, only a BJL-cable ;-)
2) Use a batch-file to start BJL_PAD directly after a BJL-upload, so BJL_PAD
can immediately set the printer port pins to "no button pressed".
3) Don't forget that you have to close BJL_PAD before you can make a new
 BJL-upload!
4) To work properly the BJL_PAD-window has to be the active window!


Matthias Domin
May 23, 2001

Email: Matthias.Domin@t-online.de
Homepage: http://home.t-online.de/home/Matthias.Domin/jag_eng.htm

