Your controls config is the most important element in Descent. You either have a good config or a bad config. A good config lets you control ALL YOUR SLIDING MOVEMENTS (Yes, 100%); a bad config will RESTRICT your sliding movements (If your config is 99% functional, it is a BAD config). Therefore, your config will GREATLY INFLUENCE how well you play in the future or not. A good config is what separates great players from lesser ones, so if you want to become good, you need to pay attention to this.
The joystick is the easiest device to use. The best players usually prefer the Sidewinder 3D Pro made by Microsoft (who also discontinued them). However, you can find Sidewinder 3D Pros at EBay.com. The configs that I will give you will be some of the easiest to learn, provided that you have the 3D Pro (I recommend it so much that I'm using it as my standard in this section). The easiest config to learn is the famous w-s-a-d config (also called R2D297's config, found on the now-defunct website of Glock21, The Descent Professional's Resource Page), which is usually used with a 3D Pro. This is for Descent 2 Users who use D2DOS, which doesn't permit them to simply move the hat up and then to the left to make you slide up-left. So the hat needs to be used for sliding up and down, while one of the slide left/right keys supplies the left and right sliding. (This is VERY important, if you're going to become very good. This is needed for triple chording in D2 DOS.) If you use D1x, D2Win95, D2x, or Descent 3, all of which use Windows-joystick controls, you will be able to combine the hat slides. Sometimes though, the Sidewinder 3D Pro driver that is set up in Windows doesn't detect your joystick, so you need to choose an Thrustmaster FCS, which will let you use the hat, but it won't let you combine hat-slide directions, in which case, you need the slide left/right keys. There is a drawback with using the w-s-a-d setup though. You might go through several joysticks, because if you play a lot, overtime, you can wear your hat out. But here is the config!
Below are configs with all sliding keys on the keyboard. These configs are for you if you are being sick of going through joysticks just because the hat is broken. You could be saving some money in the long run. Getting a new stick just because the hat is broken is a waste, in my opinion. Here is Grax's config. Grax's config is probably the best config I have ever seen, being the most organized config presented here. Here is his config: