HunterZero

Joined solder isn't a problem if they are connected by a trace. I would suggest the first thing to do is get a multimeter and check the voltages on the 5 pin header. Then check the fragile ribbon cable for continuity. Missing voltage on this cable can cause black screen. Continuity check on a multimeter can help you check suspicious cracked or bad solder on the power supply.

I'd imagine that they had the boxes, manuals and overlays printed to order in several places where it was cheaper, and put together the final boxed games with the cartridges in their USA warehouse. - J

Ahhh! I have PAL consoles... So that's why the Dreadnaught Factor I have crashes, it does exactly the same thing. I thought I had a dud cartridge. Good to know my cart is good - sad that I can't play it! - J

Tried a few more games to get a few more symptoms: Lock 'n' Chase: Title screen OK. Press any key to go to the select 1 or 2 players screen, the maze appears with the cops and corrupted Lupin sprite briefly, first tone of the music plays, then crashes to black screen and constant audio tone. Bump 'n' Jump: Title screen OK. Press any key to select players, press start. Roadway appears with a corrupted yellow blob instead of the player car sprite, with brief white noise, then the game crashes. D2K: Game usually crashes on Electronite screen, but sometimes boots fine to game select screen. When it does boot, the game starts and plays fine, but there are some graphical corruptions: On the how high screen, the left half of DK's tan face is corrupt, and replaced with random other garbage graphics from the game. Sometimes in-game sprites are corrupt or replaced with other sprites. Most common are the rolling barrels being replaced with the flaming barrel graphics, and corruption of the floating points scores. Beauty and the Beast: Starts plays, however the 1st and 4th sprites making up the biplane sign are missing on the title (C imagic) and after each level. Buford's sprite is occasionally missing the yellow body, and enemy sprites are occasionally invisible. Buford will glitch to the left while moving to the right, sometimes glitches off the left side of the building and falls. It is possible to complete several levels though. Thunder Castle: Where do we start, the most glitches of all. Intro screen usually shows OK and music starts, although occasionally the top left character is a black and red check, and the music freezes. When the title starts OK, it will cycle through the attract mode, although the music will occasionally glitch out into wrong notes. Game will start, and can be played for a short time, but the sprites glitch (eg missing parts of dragon) and usually crashes, either with random garbage on the top and bottom lines, or crashes when the bat enters or player would be energised. - James

Cartridge itself says Singapore, with square label corners, exactly like the 4th from the top in the stack of carts pictured above. Mine has no glue staining on the label that I can see. - J

The Burger Time I have is gatefold. Had it since new, it's my original copy from BITD, and know it's 100%. Manual is black/white/blue 4549-0920, says printed in Hong Kong, and the overlays are 4549-4289-G1 and say printed in USA with the egg, not the 'enter' text. - J

I played loads of Nova Blast. Became quite good at it, could clear several levels. Considering how basic Ice Trek was, I played the heck out of that - rather enjoyed the ice bridge level. And spent many hours playing White Water. Played lots of 2-player Dracula too. - J

I am sure I haven't touched those, almost certain I hadn't touched the pot on the daughterboard actually. It crashes consistently at the same place every time, which is why I'm inclined to think it's a logic/IC issue. Noticed as well the system hangs to black screen when I use pepper on Burger Time. I see a quick flash of the pepper sprite, don't even hear the white noise SFX play, then black screen. But definitely many thanks for your input so far. - J

Twiddled the knob, no difference. - HZ

Haven't tried yet. Having a new baby means finding time is tricky... - J

Hmmm, the picture looks really good though, with strong colours. Is there a proper method to properly adjust that pot? Eg, turn it one way until the picture goes out, then turn it back X turns? I'm pretty sure I didn't touch it, It's a bit hard to reach on the PAL Inty, but there is a small chance I might have. Demon Attack is definitely good, though. It works 100% in my INTV System III. I'll try a few more games with it... Beauty and the Beast, Thunder Castle, Bump 'n' Jump. I have an idea that BatB works the console pretty hard, I played the heck out of that game on this console and recall issues first appearing with that game at the same time I noticed sound problems on other games (eg, missing arrow count on AD&D). Eg, the banner trailing the plane between levels with the encouraging messages would be messed up - it appears it's made of sprites, and they're shown mixed about, although I haven't tried this cart recently. So I'm now pretty sure it's an IC logic issue. - James

OK, so I replaced that capacitor with the split shrink wrap (it otherwise looked fine), and replaced the two transistors. And... No change. If anything, the picture looks slightly sharper. Remarkably clean for an RF signal. I noticed that there's what looks to be a trim pot on the daughterboard with the PAL crystal circuitry. My younger self may have meddled with this - What are the symtoms if fiddling with this? My sister has another non-working unit that she's going to give me to try and get working, so when I have that apart, I will try swapping IC components. Unless there are any more suggestions? Or cartridges to try? Or voltages to test on the board? Or someone locally in Australia with an MTE-201 they are willing to let me use? - James

The capacitor is C40. It's a 16V 47uF electrolytic. - James

Although it's faint, you can actually see brown discolouration of the board under those two transistors. It is faint, I didn't notice it until I took the pictures. I'll pick up a replacement for that cap and transistors and see how that goes. - James

Given their proximity to the CPU and the crashing nature of the fault, I'm inclined to agree and suspect those transistors... Found a better schematic that lists them both as 2N3906 PNP Transistor. http://intellivision_2609.tripod.com/2609_schematic.JPG http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=ZT2328 - James

What specifications are those two transistors? They are only shown as NPN? (Is Q2 PNP?) on the schematic. Will this do? http://www.jaycar.co...w.asp?ID=ZT2283 - James

So replace both the blue cap near the channel switch, and both transistors? - James

It looks like the heatshrink has shrunk and split on that capacitor (is that C31?). The capacitor cylinder itself doesn't look like it is bulging or anything. I thought the plastic may have just shrunk as the plastic deteriorated with age or use with the heat in the console, but now you mention it the capacitor may have been the cause of the heat and failed/overheated. May as well try replacing it, I'll see if it makes a difference. Other than that, there's only some very light discolouration underneath the two transistors that you can see on the bottom of the board. Two of the crashes do seem to be just before the game plays a louder volume sound, ie the swoosh on AD&D and the loss of life music on BurgerTime. - James

As requested, some pics attached. - James

Hi all, thanks for the replies. I haven't had a chance yet to tear down the unit again to take photos. I'll try and do that as soon as I can. Is there an area I should concentrate on for more detailed photos? I'll take detail photos of the traces and parts around the exec and cartridge slot. I did tidy up all the soldered ground traces around the cartridge slot after removing the huge blob of solder there that was holding on the shielding. Would it be a heat related issue if the console has the same crashes immediately after being turned on from cold? - James

Thanks for that. So the next thing would be suggestions for cartridges to try to get more symptoms... Unless someone has a test cartridge they can lend me? - James

Rechecked voltages... + 5 VDC --+ | |_| | Checks OK + 12 VDC --+ | |_| | Checks OK + 16 VDC --+ | |_| | Reads 23.3V DC steady... Unregulated + 0 VDC --+ | |_| | Checks OK - 2 VDC --+ |_|_|_| Checks OK Bear in mind this is a 240V PAL unit, so I am not sure if that high reading on the unregulated third pin is OK or not, or if I should look to replace the 2200uF capacitor? Cleaned and reseated all chips and the cartridge port with DeOxit... No improvement. - James

If the exec had failed entirely, yes - but I'm wondering if it's possible that only part of the ROM in the exec has gone bad, so only a subset of the routines in the exec cause problems. - James

I'm wondering if it's the exec ROM because there are apparently library routines in there that may be used by some games and bypassed by others, but don't know enough about how some games use the exec to be sure. I will give it another clean though. The games consistently have the exact same problems. - James

Hello all! First post. I have an Australian 50Hz Intellivision here with weird logic problems (it has a daughterboard over one end), was wondering if anyone could point towards what the problem could be. Started out completely dead. Fixed this by reflowing cracked solder on the 2 pin power header, and replacing the ribbon connector entirely (it had come apart completely and the two outside wires were bad). Tested voltages, seems OK, but not sure what result I should get on the pin from the capacitor? However the console then booted to a black screen. I remembered when I put it into storage years ago that the sound would start to go bad as the console heated up, eg the arrow count sound on AD&D would be missing. Desoldering the shielding was a complete pig... I replaced the sound chip with a known working one, and now the console boots to the title screen, yay! However, now the console tends to crash. I tried a few games: * AD&D Cloudy Mountain starts and you can select difficulty and move about the map, but crashes to olive screen when you try to enter a mountain * Burger Time starts and plays, but crashes to black screen when you lose a life (death animation doesn't play) or complete a level. * Demon Attack plays, but the aliens have sprite problems (missing red bodies and just appear as eyes) and the player's ship glitches about when you move * Pole Position plays fine! All carts tested working fine on another system. So I'm wondering if this is some sort of exec ROM, RAM or STIC issue? I have quite a few other games and Intellivoice with it, so could try a few more if you could suggest them to get more symptoms. - James