Privateer 2 Deluxe on a Windows XP laptop

So I've decided to give Privateer 2 a try again. It's been years since I've played any game from the Wing Commander series. Unfortunately, Priv2 doesn't work without a joystick or mouse play and it is a tad fast on a modern PC.

So, let's see what we can do for a WinXP laptop:

1. This speed patch by Jonathan Scobbie works exactly as advertised (in makes priv run at a normal speed):
http://wcrevival.de/hcl/exe_dll/ -- scroll down a bit for the Priv2 patch.

2. Joystick or mouse control. Steering and firing with a touchpad stinks! I will attempt to find a joystick emulator or mouse button remap tool.
This one seems to work quite well: http://www.geocities.com/deonvdw/Docs/PPJoyMain.htm

3. OK, I got maybe 1/3 throught the game, and now I get consitent errors about memory references. Burried deep within this "guestbook", http://128859.guestbook.webtropia.com/, there is a suggestion to make sure there are proper definitions for the joystick in the dark.cfg file... let's try that.