Stickworks Digital Upgrade Chips Review - By Mark "Frugal" Bush Page 1 of 2
The Thrustmaster F22 pro / TQS combo has always been considered my many to be the best hotas available. Nowdays though it has been getting a little long in the tooth when you consider the many new digital usb sticks. Also many owners of the F22 have experienced spiking due to "noisy" pots. Bob "Sticky" Church aims to change that with his Stickworks digital upgrade chips.
The chips replace the rom chips in the F22 and TQS and upgrade the stick and throttle to digital. This is designed to remove the spiking and also give the hotas extra functionality. The chips can be used in both the old style "track ball" TQS and the more up to date "erazorhead" TQS. The chips tested in this review are for the latter.
Installation was a simple matter of following the well laid out instructions, opening up the F22 and TQS and removing the old chips and replacing them with the new digital chips. Great care must be taken here as the old chips are a very tight fit in their sockets. Being a stickler for using the right tools for the right job I gently worked the chips out with a standard kitchen knife, gradually working from one end of the chip to the other. Once the old chips are out it is important to make sure you put the correct chip in, the TQS chip won't work in the F22 and visa versa also it is very important to put the chip in the right way round but the chips are clearly marked so as long as you pay attention this shouldn't be a problem.
Once the chips were in I hooked my F22, TQS and Elite rudders up as normal, installed the drivers, then went into the Control Panel, Gaming Options and added the Stickworks Digital F22. Here is where I encountered my first problem. I was unable to calibrate the hotas via the control panel applet. Fortunately there was a message telling me "Use the SWFCTL utility to calibrate the SWF22. A quick check through my Start menu later and I was happily calibrating my F22. This is a handy little utility that allows you to calibrate the stick, download files, and also find out which config is already downloaded.
Here's where I met with my second problem, my rudders where not being recognised. I checked all my cabling and all was fine. I decided it was time to RTFM. It's amazing how many problems could be solved by reading the instructions before installing rather than after :) I discovered that with the Digital F22 you need to connect Stick to Throttle - Throttle to Rudders - Rudders to PC. This is slightly different to the way that TM recommend with the original equipment.
One thing that is worth mentioning here is that if you do not have Thrustmaster rudders you will likely need to use a special Y connector in order to use them with the Digital F22 and TQS. Fortunately the instructions come with full details on how to make the Y connector and all the parts should be easily obtainable.
Once I had calibrated the stick I went into the Game controllers applet to test it out and here is where I thought I'd hit my third problem. When I selected the test option I could see no movement of the little cross. It just sat there in the centre perfectly still. No twitching, no jittering, nothing, not even the slightest movement. Dang ….. I must've put the chips in wrong was my first thought, as I had never seen any stick that does not display at least the tiniest bit of jitter when in the control panel applet. My fear turned to a combination of joy and amazement once I moved the stick. It worked!!! I do not know how Bob managed to make my old spiky F22 pro so stable but he will have my eternal gratitude.
The thing is that my F22 was so spiky that it was beyond usable. I did not expect the digital chips to be able to fix that. While waiting for my chips to arrive I'd picked up a set of new pots for the hotas to compliment the chips. I expected the digital chips to improve the spiking but I wasn't expecting miracles. Yet here I am with not even the smallest jitter and my brand new pots are still sitting in the drawer unused.
The other thing noticeable in the control panel was that I now had 32 buttons and a point of view hat, I also have two extra axis which represent the range and antenna knobs on the TQS. This has made my life easier in several games. I have a few games that I play on occasion, but not enough to warrant programming the hotas. With the digital F22 many games were able to recognise the 32 buttons and allowed me to make the assignments in game. Also all the games recognised the POV hat by default. This has really made my life easier. The one exception being Mechwarrior 4 which promptly crashed when the stick was plugged it. This is apparently a problem with the game not liking 32 button Joysticks. Fortunately Bob "Sticky" Church has created a special 31 button driver for fans of MW 4.
But what of the programmability that the F22 is famed for, how has that been affected? Well for the most part it hasn't save that the loading time is now next to nothing. My Falcon 4 config loaded up in about 1 second. I fired up Falcon 4 to put the stick to the real acid test. Here's where I discovered a minor drawback, the raw codes have changed with the digital chips. This is not a major problem as the new Raw codes are well documented in the instructions. Also many of the commands that needed to be done with Raw codes seemed to work fine with just standard key assignments in the Digital F22. JSX and JSY are not supported for digital programming. The RPT function and the CMPLT and CMPGT functions are not supported. Type 3 Analog statements are not supported. Apart from the Raw codes I wouldn't have noticed these changes were they not posted on the Stickworks web site
There are several advantages with the new chips:
l No connections are required to the PC keyboard or mouse port
l Digital operation mode eliminates the 'TQS Jitters' and improves overall stability
l Download time is reduced to just a few seconds
l Operates as a standard Windows joystick when no F22 file is active
l Hat 1 can be programmed normally or used as a Windows 8-way POV switch
l Mouse-cursor sensitivity can be adjusted in the F22 file
l BTN MT and AB characters can be used with an analog throttle
l Hats can be used as 4-Way or 8-Way (in most cases) switches
l User program space is increased from the original 1000 bytes to about 4000 bytes
The following compatibility issues are worth being aware of though:
l The SWF22 requires a 'Standard Gameport' and may not work with other gameports
l Use of non-TQS throttles and rudders will require a special Y-Cable or ACM Card and their operation is not guaranteed
l The SWF22 will not work in DOS games or in Win2K, it 's W95/W98 only (Win2000 drivers are currently in beta)
l The hats on some F22 and F16 FLCS units may not work reliably in the corner positions
l The SWF22 requires the use of the TM pots or equivalent, 'standard' pots will not work
l The F22 or F16 FLCS must be standard, they will not work with the 'Analog Bypass'
l The SWF22 will not compensate for bad pots, they must be must be in good working order
As far as the pots are concerned, my experience is certainly different. The pots on my F22 were unbearable before the upgrade. Since the upgrade it has been working perfectly. So the moral is that if you have bad pots the upgrade may solve the problem but don't expect it.
