PC gameport joystick interface
The classic 15-pin DA-15 game port found on PC sound cards and motherboards from the 1980s through the early 2000s, used to attach analog joysticks, flight sticks, and gamepads. It also covered the gameport headers built into ISA and PCI sound cards like the Sound Blaster Live, Audigy, and FM801-based boards.
recommendation
A candidate for future removal because the underlying hardware was made obsolete by USB in the late 1990s, no new PCs or sound cards have shipped a gameport in roughly twenty years, and even Creative's current Audigy line no longer exposes one. The code still sees the occasional treewide cleanup in 2024 and 2025, but nothing resembling active development, so keeping it on a deprecation track lets retro and industrial users keep their old joysticks working while signalling that USB HID is the path forward.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
Recent subsystem activity exists, but a 2024 linux-input patch against gameport was a small cleanup rather than new hardware support.
- lore.kernel.org
The directory was still touched in 2025, but via a large treewide timer API rename, indicating maintenance compatibility rather than product momentum.
- cateee.net
LKDDb shows CONFIG_GAMEPORT still exists upstream and maps to legacy ISA/PCI-era hardware such as SB Live/Audigy game ports and FM801-era devices.
- en.wikipedia.org
The IBM PC game port was common in the 1980s/1990s and was made obsolete by USB in the late 1990s.
- us.creative.com
A current 2026 Audigy-branded internal sound card is PCIe audio hardware with modern audio I/O, not a legacy DA-15 gameport product.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Real driver directory. lore_file_timeline on drivers/input/gameport/gameport.c showed continued but sparse activity, dominated by treewide refactors plus one minor 2024 linux-input cleanup; no removal thread was found in the lore checks I ran. Web search found LKDDb confirming the driver targets legacy ISA/PCI gameport hardware, Wikipedia stating the PC game port was obsoleted by USB, and a current Creative Audigy product page showing the surviving product line no longer exposes gameport functionality. 2005 is an inference from those sources: gameport hardware lingered on early-2000s sound cards after mainstream obsolescence, but appears absent from modern new hardware. Recommendation: deprecate rather than remove, because upstream still carries low-level maintenance and legacy retro/industrial deployments likely persist at low volume.