[foxglacier]

It felt like back then everything was a bodge and computers were somehow made without any thought to gaming or mice even after they became common. Wasn't the game port really a MIDI port and gamepads pretended to be MIDI devices?

[nsxwolf]

No, on the original Sound Blaster there is a jumper that switches the port between a UART for MIDI and a quad timer for IBM compatible joystick.

[tracker1]

I believe so, yes.