I was curious if anyone was aware of an adapter to convert vintage Apple II joysticks to USB for usage with modern Apple II emulators?
I have seen such adapters for the commodore, but they only enable one button for Apple joysticks and not the secondary fire. Any ideas?
The Apple II joystick can be rewired to work with a PC gameport:
http://home.swbell.net/rubywand/Csa2KBPADJS.html#005
For USB, you can do the rewire for a PC Gameport, then use a gameport to USB adapter (I just know they exist...you're on your own for tracking one down).
You also might have luck with an adapter from Raphnet, who absolutely rocks. He makes multi-use adapter boards, among other things, that can adapt a variety of older joysticks/gamepads to usb. I was using one of this boards with an Atari db-9 joystick, and it was a just a quick re-wire to connect up a SNES controller to the board instead, with support for all buttons.
His site doesn't mention the Apple II stick specifically, but you might want to send him an email and I'm sure he'll know whether his board will support the stick out of the box or not. Maybe you can talk him into supporting the Apple II if it isn't already, since that would also open up his board to supporting PC gameport sticks.
Typing "Gameport USB" into Google gets you plenty of links. ;^)
I remember a lot of those old analog joysticks actually came with a jumper cable so you could use them on either a PC gameport or an Apple. (They'd generally also have a switch on the bottom labeled "Apple/PC" to bias the pots and rewire the buttons correctly for the different systems.) Might be worth looking for one of those if you want the analog joystick feel without hacking up an Apple-only joystick.