From: lance.norskog <lance@motcsd.csd.mot.com>
Subject: Re: Big Dave Diode cries in the wilderness
Date: 21 Jan 91 11:16:49 PST (Mon)



[ Big Dave Diode pleas for help, and nobody gives him a straight answer ]


I'm four months ahead of you :-)

Byte Magazine, July 1990, pp. 298-299 shows you how to hook up a Nintendo
joystick to a PC via the parallel port.  It keeps talking about the 
Power Glove, but it's really just Nintendo.  It does not tell how to
hook up a Zap Gun, which appears to be a light pen.  Hercules 
Monochrome cards and Cirrus VGA chips support light pens.  Konami has
a really spiffy Nintendo helmet with the Zap Gun lens as a monocle that I'd
love to bring up as a mouse.  The helmet also has stereo headphones;
list ~$40.  Covox in Beaverton, OR has a PC card for $100 that does
stereo sound from generated samples.

I've got the Power Glove running as a Nintendo joystick under X Windows
under 386 UNIX.  Based on this experience, I'm buying a real Nintendo 
joystick for my main mouse because of the savings in table space.
You can type with a Power Glove on, but it's not fun.

You could buy a Nintendo with special games for the Power Glove, 
watch the data lines with a logic analyzer, and figure how the Nintendo games 
download new programs into the Power Glove, but that would be difficult.
It would probably be illegal to disclose your results, also.

Someone at Cal Arts posted a circuit that is a starting point for 
reading raw-mode data from the Power Glove.  It generates a 50khz
signal to the base box and reads out the three sensors on the L-bar.

The story, as near as I can make out, is that VPL had a patent on
some data-glove techniques, and AGE (the PG designer) stepped on these.
VPL sued them, and won.  So, VPL makes some revenue on the Power Glove
and also stopped AGE from distributing a serial box that reads out raw
mode from the PG.  VPL is now building their own serial box and has been
going to announce it Real Soon Now for several months.  Virtual Technologies
in Palo Alto builds the CyberGlove for $5500, also.  VPL sued them and
lost.

The glasses part is easy: Haitex Resources in South Carolina make
an LCD glasses set for $110.  The info is that it hooks up to the
Amiga joystick port and sucks 5V for power and a 5V signal port enables
the left or right eye.  The flicker is something awful.  I have one
but haven't hooked it up to the PC yet, but it will be a snap, I 
just know it.  You can run it off the PC parallel port, with power
from the PC disk cables.

    Haitex Resources
    P.O. Box20609
    Charleston, SC 29413-0609
    (803) 881-7518

I think you're looking at a major project here.  Don't worry about the
glasses part.  I'd concentrate on getting real-time update of pictures
based on mouse or joy-stick input.  The Glove is really cute, but it's
going to be a mother if you try to go beyond its Nintendo joystick mode.

Hot tip: Binary Space Partition (see Computer Graphics: Foley, Van Dam,
Feiner, Hughes) is the algorithm of choice for 3D polygon sorting.
Another hot tip: you can't shuffle your data around fast enough running
in 16-bit instruction mode.  The PC is going to be really slow.

Lance Norskog