Important notes

• On circuit diagrams, plugs are displayed as viewed from the back side, the solder side. Chips are displayed as viewed from above; also, see the small semicircular cut for finding the correct orientation. When in doubt, see the corresponding description on the legend page.

Construction

You need the following parts to build this cable:

• One solderable 7-pin female mini-DIN plug (Commodore 1531 datasette)

• One solderable 15-pin male plug (PC game port)

• One solderable 25-pin male plug (PC parallel plug)

• A 6-wire cable of 0.5 meters

• Some heat-shrink insulator material

Step 1. Use a sharp knife to strip off the insulation from about 2/3 of the length of the cable. Separate the wires into two strands, 2 and 4 wires each. Use heat-shrink insulator material to insulate the two strands again, so that, in the end, your cable represents a Y-fork.

Step 2. Solder the 2 wires of the first strand to pins 1 (+5V) and 4 (GND) of the game plug.

Step 3. Solder the 4 wires of the second strand to the appropriate pins of the parallel plug.

Step 4. Solder the 6 wires on the other end of the cable to the mini-DIN plug. Solder the two GND wires from the different plugs together, and add short lengths of wire to connect pins 1-7 and pins 2-5. You should have the following connections:

   Mini-DIN plug   
     Game plug       
   Parallel plug

 1 and 7, GND     
        4, GND       
   18-25, GND

 2 and 3, +5V     
        1, +5V       
    not connected 

       4, Read    
    not connected    
      10, Ack

       5, Write   
    not connected    
       3, Data 1

       6, Sense   
    not connected    
      12, PaperEnd

Circuit diagram

You can find the description of all parts used on the diagrams at the legend page.

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