About 3 years ago, I "won" a set of CH gameport pedals - I already had
a gameport throttle and stick, so I figured that I couldn't get USB
pedals. After the auction, I sort of felt like kicking myslef, sure
that between likely age, or gameport or winXP issues, the thing would
never run.

Lo and behold, three years later, the thing still works. Though the
manual claims that it needs a twin port (or connector - I forget the
actual language) gameport like the Thrustmaster ACM (there were no such
cards made for PCI, and of course there are no more ISA on today's
MoBo's) and despite CH's insistence that the pedals won't work under
XP, the pedals were hooked up painlessly. The trick is that when you
have to add them under the game controls menu on control panel, you
have to enable them before you enable the other controls.

There may be something kludgy about the actual implementation - I can
almost never get the hat-switch to work on my FCS. Between XP, the
pedals, the board and the other controls and my clutziness, I have no
idea where the problem really is, but the plusses really outweigh the
minuses. If you want to fly chopper sims (even those on MSFS), pedals
are pretty-much indispensable. Also, they're great for pre-modern sims
as well. I spent about $30 on mine. There's no doubting that buying
used hardware is always going to be a gamble, no less so on E*Bay, but
it's hardly a losing proposition.