
Connecting the Nintendo PowerGlove 
to a Standard Parallel Port
Written by Bernie Roehl, July 1992
(based on an article on page 288 of the July 1990 Byte)

Note: PowerGloves are no longer manufactured.  One may try the Funco Company 
in Minneapolis (612-946-8883), who had old PowerGloves for $20, or try and 
find a source on the newsgroups and mailing lists. 

What you're doing is building a cable that does two things: connects control 
signals from your parallel port to the Nintendo PowerGlove, and provides 
power (+5 volts and ground) to the PowerGlove.

The connector you're looking for has 7 pins; if you're looking at a 5-pin 
connector, you've got the wrong cable.

I would strongly suggest getting one of the Curtis "Super Extendo Cables", 
in order to avoid hacking away at the glove cable itself.

The wiring is as follows:

	DB-25 Connector Nintendo Cable
	2                       2     (DATA CLOCK)
	3                       3     (LATCH)
	13                      4     (DATA)
	18                      1     (GROUND)

In addition, you must supply +5 volts to the Nintendo Cable on pin 7 
(remember to connect ground (pin 1) to the supply's +5 volts!).

You can get the +5 volts from the keyboard cable, but we would recommend 
using an external supply.

So which pins are which on the Nintendo cable?  If you look end-on at the 
connector you're building, as if you were the glove interface box, you will 
see that the connector is not rectangular.  It has a bulge out at one corner; 
the pin in the bulging corner is pin 1.  It's actually the first in a column 
of four pins; these are pins 1, 2, 3 and 4.  Continue reading around 
counter-clockwise and up the column of three pins; these are pins 5, 6 and 7.


(If you're not sure about any of this, go to your local library and get 
the July 1990 issue of BYTE magazine; on page 288 you'll find all the 
info you need, including a nice illustration and details about getting 
power from your keyboard).

NOTE: I make absolutely NO WARRANTY whatsoever that any of the above 
actually works as expected, and take NO RESPONSIBILITY for any damage 
to your computer, your PowerGlove or yourself.

If you're not hardware-smart, you may want to contact a fellow named 
Jim Brain -- he's selling little boxes that do it all for you.
Advantages of using his box:
     It handles all the overhead of talking to the glove, so your computer 
	doesn't have to.
     It doesn't tie up your parallel port.
     It provides support for the Sega 3D glasses.
Disadvantages of using his box:
     It costs money (though not much).

You can contact Jim Brain through the sci.virtual-worlds newsgroup 
on USENET; the email address I have for him looks like a student account, 
so it will probably have expired by the time you read this.

Please don't contact me with questions about this; the above is the 
sum total of all my knowledge of the PowerGlove interface, and virtually 
all of it came from the Byte article.  If you've got questions, go to 
your library and look up that issue.

PowerGlove is a registered trademark of Mattel, Inc U.S.A. Nintendo 
is a registered trademark of Nintendo of America Inc.


