Tissemon

The daughter board replaces the Color AY-3-8915 chip on U10 but also contains a capacitor and both xtals. It’s soldered down so it’s pretty hard to see.

A little update regarding the glitches I experienced in some games. I got to borrow some extra PCBs from a friend to test in my Intellivision. They are all PAL versions. Both PCBs with the daughter board have glitches in Antarctic Adventure, Dracula and Micro Surgeon from RTO (original version of Micro Surgeon works on them both). The one in the top right works without any glitches in all games I’ve tried, both original and from RTO.

Mine is a model 5370 (serial no P3049465). The white PCB says 2609-3239C and the extra PCB says 5370-7419 Rev XIII. I forgot to check what versions my friends had on theirs, but one of them had been through quite a lot of Intellivisions and this was the first time he saw an INTV 1 with the PCB:s I had in mine, so I guess my revision is pretty rare. When I tried to google Intellivision PCBs to find if somebody else had the same, the closest thing I found was somebody with a INTV3 that hade a green main PCB with the same extra PCB as I have in mine, here: https://www.the-liberator.net/site-files/retro-games/hardware/Intellivision-III/intellivision-iii.htm

Hi, I've posted some of my problems in another thread about the RTO, but I think it's better to continue with my experience here. I made 4 RTOs and sold 3 of them. On my Intellivision, most games work fine, but I have problems with some games like Dracula, Micro Surgeon and Antarctic adventures when I ran them from any of the 4 RTOs I built, using the default settings in the RTO firmware. I have the original cart with Micro Surgeon and that one works fine on my system. I sold 2 of the RTOs to my friends, and they work totally fine on their Intellivisions, so it's not some faulty chips in the RTO or something like that. So I thought it was my Intellivision that had some bad components. So I've since recapped the Power board, replaced the two regulators, recapped the logic board, changed the two crystals on the logic board and tested both with composite mod and with the composite mod removed. But the same error remains. I found out that I can get Dracula and Micro Surgeon to work on my INTV if I change the timing-values in the RTO Firmware (from the default: delRD=482; delWR=540 to delRD=422; delWR=480) and have experimented with a lot of different values, but I can't seem to get Antarctic Adventures to run without glitches. I've now come to the conclusion that it is probably my PCB-version that is the problem. It seems that I have an INTV 1 with the same PCB as INTV 3 - meaning that I have no separate Color chip, but instead I have an extra PCB with a lot of stuff on it. Could this be the problem? Does anyone else have this PCB and can try the RTO, and some of the games I mentioned on it?

I think the best way is to read some optional variables from a file named something like config.cfg or options.txt from the root of the SD-card. Shouldn’t be too hard to add, code-wise.

Thank you for testing! Then it's probably just my unit that is a bit weird. I'm starting to suspect that one or both of the crystals on my Intellivision has gone a bit off - that might explain why I get gray color instead of white on my CRT as well... I'll see if I can find new ones, and try swapping them out.

Could you complete a whole level without glitches? I get random stuff like these arrows with all settings I’ve tried. IMG_4580.mov

I got 74LVC245 from AliExpress and made 4 RTO carts. They all behaved the exactly the same on my Intellivision so I think they are all good. Havn’t got another unit to test with, unfortunately. I would like to clarify that all roms that I’ve tried boots up with the default settings (482/540) and only a few original games had glitches with those timings (Dracula and micro surgeon were the only ones I tried that crashed after a while). Bad Apple ran perfectly with 482/540. But Antarctic Tales seems really picky with the timings. Please try it and see if it works for you all. I got the bin+cfg from here:

Great! Meybe you and your testers can help each other out. I've got three "problematic" ROM's that I'm testing with: Dracula, Antarctic Tales and the Bad Apple demo (antarctic tales and bad apple are available as free downloads here on AtariAge) I've tried to experiment with a lot och timing-values and here are my rough findings: delRD=422 + delWR=480 -> Dracula works fine, Antarctic Tales does not work so good. delRD=402 + delWR=466 -> Dracula still fine, Antarctic tales quite good! delRD=382 + delWR=440 -> Won’t boot at all 392/456 -> bit more glitches 400/456 almost perfect 400/450 same 400/440 same or worse 400/465 worse 398/456 worse than 400/465 406/456 worse than 400/465 402/456 near perfect 404/456 near perfect. Maybe a bit worse than before 403/456 near perfect, bit better than last 403/450 near perfect, bit slow sound in beginning 403/453 same 404/455 best one yet! 405/455 same 405/456 worse 405/454 worse still 406/455 best yet! 407/455 same 408/455 best yet! Almost no glitches 409/455 Better! Almost none! 410/455 worse 410/456 worse 409/456 better than last, but really bad still 409/454 better than last, but not best. 409/467 worse Best one = 409/455 - tried some other games with this setting and they all worked great. And then I tried the Bad Apple demo - where the sound was off. So back to square one on finding a value that works with everything, I guess 😞 It seems that perhaps the difference between delRD and delWR is more important than the actual values on them? Is it just my Intellivision that are having these problems or is any one else having problems with these roms?

Oh, yeah, sorry for posting in the wrong thread. But this issue might be in 5-11s version as well, so I hope it's ok with him. I'll test some more and continue with my findings in the other RTO-thread. Just to clarify: I've got a PAL Intellivision, model 1 that I've removed the RF-unit on and I'm using a composite mod instead. It's not a perfect mod - on my CRT it shows gray color instead of white, but on my digital panel it gets correct but somewhat washed out colors, so I've got to work a little on that mod as well later on 🙂 But I don't think the mod is the problem - it might drain a bit more electricity than the RF unit, but that shouldn't make very much of a difference. I havn't got the original cart for Dracula, so I can't test that. But the glitches that I'm talking about are not just graphical - with the original timings on the RTO the Dracula sprite would sometimes randomly get really big, and when I transform to bat-form it gets normal for a while again. Sometimes I get teleported to somewhere else on the screen. Sometimes the Dracula-sprite transforms to something that looks like a head on a stick. The policeman won't throw stakes at me and other weird stuff like that. All those bugs disappeared when I used the lower values on the timing.

Thanks for this info! I've built myself a RTO cart 1.1 from your GitHub but experienced some glitches in some games like Dracula and Antarctic Tales (actually I've built 4 carts, but they all behave the same). I first thought it was my capacitors that were bad, so I did a full recap - both the logic-part and PSU-part. Before the recap I had to push reset to get the boot screen on the RTO, and after the recap it booted right away. But the glitches in said games were still there. So I then started to suspect a faulty chip in my Intellivision. That is until I read this comment. I tried changing the values and recompiling the firmware to my cart. With the values for the Secam-unit the glitches got much worse, and games crashed after a few seconds. Then I tried some in-between values (554/621), but those also made things worse than the original values. I'm now testing values below your values - and it seems to be less glitches the lower I go. I'm down to delRD=422; delWR=480; and Dracula plays perfect now! But there are still glitches in Antarctic Tales (random arrows and stuff comes up all over the screen after a little while on first level).It feels good to know that the chips in my Intelli are probably fine 🙂 Do you have any good pointers on how I should go from here to trim in the values perfectly for my unit? Until now I first lowered both by 40, and then both by 20. Should I change one value at the time? Should I keep lowering them both the same? Do you know if there is some sort of test-cart that immediately can tell me if I've gotten the values right?

Vedder9 wrote this link to his Google Sheet: Google Sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_I32OhJaOwqnsKMicRm7z578IbU1UJRCX_qT9e1zO0k/edit#gid=0 According to his list, most games are fully scanned and fixed, and that's perfectly good for me. Just wondering if the work he has done so far is available to download somewhere. Or if someone has any other suggestion where I can find overlays in equal quality.

Hi! Great work! Those overlays looks really nice! I'm reviving an old thread here by asking: are all the fixed overlays and manuals available for download somewhere?

Thank you for your answers! I think I will build one as soon as I can get my hands on a Teensy 4.1 that isn't too expensive. Right now the cheapest one I can find is for around 60USD with shipping to sweden included. 😞 Is there a readily available parts-list anywhere? I could tell most things, like 74LVC245 and the resistor-values from the ki-cad files, but what about the tactile switches? What are the best measures for them, if I intend to use your 3d-printed shell? Is it 6x6x17mm ? And I'm guessing the LEDs are standard 2X5X7 rectangle-LEDs, right?

Another question: Would it be theoretically possible to program the chip to also act as if an Intellivoice was connected? That would have been really cool feature and a true LTO-killer 🙂

This is really awesome! Just too bad that there seems to be a shortage of Teensy-cards here in Sweden right now. Would it be possible to convert the code / PCB to use a Pico Pi instead or is it too slow / too much work to convert? Would be extra nice if that would be possible since it's about 5 times cheaper and readily available.

Hi, just wanted to chip in with some recent experience I had with a Lynx II. I got one in pieces together with Chips Challenge. I put it all together but the game froze on boot. Reading here I directly assumed something was wrong with my Suzy, so I tried reflowing the solder joints on it first. Didn't help. I then ordered another game: Paperboy which actually worked, but the intro screen just flashed past. I then tried both games on an emulator to see if the startup was the same there. And that's when i noticed that you should be able to throw papers with both A and B - for me only A worked. And I also noticed that if you hold down a button while booting up Chips Challenge it freezes with music playing, just as in my case! First I tried measuring if there was a short on the plastic membrane, but my multimeter didn't pick anything up, other than readings when you actually pressed buttons. So I thought the membrane was OK and instead tried to put some tape over pin 7 on the cart (which is where B-press goes in) but that resulted in an INSERT GAME screen. I then tried some tape over pin 3 on the flex cable from the plastic membrane (even though my multi meter readings said it was ok) and this worked! Chips Challenge booted ok! (couldn't use B-button ofcourse, but that told me exactly what was wrong). So I went over the entire plastic membrane with a Q-tip dipped i destilated water and a drop of dish soap. I think it was some dust particle that had gotten stuck under the plastic to the left of the power button. However, after that it all works fine! Oh yeah, I also had to cut off the top of the flex cable since the metal there was all worn off. TL;DR: Check your plastic membranes and the flex cable as well as the connector to the game carts - seems like many freeze-issues come from these two places. Also, if your membrane is FUBAR, I noticed that RetroSix produces and sells new ones! Good luck you all, and thanks for your help!