From: jlb31348@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Jim Brain) Subject: TECH: U of I Powerglove update 8-24-92 Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 04:59:21 GMT Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana I am sorry to be gone for to long, but my week vacation turned into two weeks for all practical purposes, and by the time I got rolling again (or could have) the summer ended. Oh, well. Anyway, I have not forgotten about the project, just realized that moving into new places and getting books gets priority and that this week I can reap the benefit of having many other interested members to help me. here is what I have been working on: I have been in contact with Michael Starks of 3DTV in CA, and he is working on getting a low-cost SEGA circuit in preoduction. he has been toying with a parallel port interface, but I hope to convince him to keep it serial to ensure compatibility with earlier work by Dave Stampe and Glen Harris. We will see. He has a number of glasses that he can sell that will work with the circuit, so you might want to get in touch. He also has some wireless glasses, but they are incompatibe at the moment. He did tell me today that he is getting a wireless set fixed up for use on the standard circuit. Wouldn't that be great? I have found out that Greg Newby, the man that iniotially came to us with this PGSI idea, has told me he has gotten the legal aspects with AGE solved. That will make it easier to finish production on a glove box. I have all the code writtebn, but I am still disappointed at the 27 frames a sec. which I have not been able to up yet. I did not work on it a lot while the legal aspects were an issue, so I will work on it now. Since the grouop is back, I intend to check with them to let them evaluate my progress and determine the path to take, so please don't think I am cleaning my hands of this. I would hate to see all this work go to waste. Whatever we produce, we cannot call ourselves SIGARCH, so I am open to names for our group. Also, ironically, we CAN say we are in ACM at UIUC! I am going to relinquish a few of my responsibilities in order to move this project onward. I have repeatedly told you all that this is much too much to do as one person, so I intend to hand off the marketing, sales, physical appearance, and shipping, as well as manual writing, to other people. I am also giving up my title of PG project leader to the person who had that distinction in the Spring. His name is Ben Gross, and I will continue these postings until he finds a stable email. Then I intend to have him take care of PR. Rest assured I will still be available for questions, but I found that no matter how many times I told peopel that this thing will work on any computer that can use a standard RS232 modem, I still spent most of my time answering letters with that question. Ben can screen some of those calls, and send me the more in-depth questions to answer. I feel as though this will make a product be realized quicker, so I wish to try it. I have given him the files with all the prospective buyers names and he should be making up a mailing list, so watch for some mail here soon. I hope you all haven't lost hope in us here at the U of I, but I still have faith that a good Powerglove adapter can be put in the public's hands at a low cost. I will try to put some coals under evryone's feet and get the thing moving! I hear that a good book called "Virtual Relality Playhouse" is out now that has a lot of goodies on PG and SEGA stuff, so you might want to check it out. I intend to. I will try to keep ging on Mon-Wed_Fri posts, but please be warned that class starts on Thursday. I might switch to Tue-Thu, since those are the days I work and have no classes. The brain man is taking 15 hours, so wish me luck. All in all, I believe I had a great summer. I got a lot of stuff done, and found a lot of interested people. I guess the only things that I always wish I could redo is myn announcement of completed project dates. I have moved it twice, and that bugs me. it will probably bug me until the day I die since I personally lose faith in something when a supplier moves the due dates back, and you always hear about vaporware and that has a bad connotation. It just rubs me the wrong way since I am critical of myself for being too optimistic when it came to this, and I had to eat my words. I could probably ramble on for days about this, but I think I am making my self clear. Nobody else may care, but I doubt that! I have a new land address: Jim Brain 1005 West Gregory #364 Urbana, IL 61801 make note of this, as someone ele rents the other apartment. You can also send mail to the ACM office at: ACM 1304 Wset Sprinfield Ave #1225 Urbana, IL 61801 attn: Jim Brain or Ben Gross I hope we all get what we want, and rest assured I will keep on chuggin' Jim Brain (Just the resident HC11 programmer now) brain@cs.uiuc.edu -- Jim Brain, Power Glove Serial Interface Project Leader (for the summer) brain@cs.uiuc.edu Yes, my last name REALLY is BRAIN!