Reason I started collecting Intellivision

[ebelhaki]

I'm super excited about this and figured you all would be the only ones excited for me so I thought I'd share it here.

 

The reason I got into collecting for Intellivision was about 6 months ago my parents were wanting to get rid of stuff from their basement and asked if I wanted the old game systems my siblings and I had growing up. I jumped on it because I love playing games, I just haven't played on any of the older systems in a long time. They gave me an Atari 7800, great shape, bad power supply, I order a replacement and got it going. They also gave me a super video arcade. My parents bought this before I was born for my siblings and by the time I started playing games when I was young, it was all on the Atari 7800 then on to the NES.

 

I never really knew what the super video arcade was until I googled it and realized it was an Intellivision, sweet! Over the last 6 months, I've been working on it off and on as it has never been working. It would work for about 15 second then go to a black screen. I basically rebuilt the power supply board, still no luck. After doing that and it didn't work I kinda lost hope and ended up buying a "broken as/is" intellivison on ebay for parts but it actually ended up working, the cartridge slot just needed to be cleaned. So I've been using it for the past several months and buying games off ebay and found a few at my local shops and have been loving it.

 

I really wanted to to get my super video arcade working since its the original one to my family so I contacted pimpmaul69 and he helped try to troubleshoot it with me. I finally ended up taking the main board completely apart, removing all the shielding (what a pain) and ended up finding a couple of black places on the main board where it looked like it was burnt. Yikes!

 

The black places were under 2 transistors so I thought why not try and replace them, it doesn't work anyway and we'll see if I get lucky. I order the transistors last week and they got here yesterday, just replaced them and played burgertime for 15 minutes! Thats 14 minutes and 45 seconds longer than every time I've tried to play it before!

 

I'm excited that my super video arcade is finally working. I can't wait to continue my collection, I'm about half way to 125!

 

Just thought I'd share and thought someone on here would appreciate it.

[+DZ-Jay]

Great story, ebelhaki! Thanks for sharing it, and welcome to our community.

 

The Intellivision is indeed a great console with many fun games available. I'm glad you were able to restore your old console, it must have great personal value to you.

 

I myself had one when I was a kid, presented to me by my Grandfather. I lent it to a girlfriend I had in High School, many years ago, and forgot to pick it up when we broke up. I always meant to go back and ask her for it, but time just flew by and here we are. I regret that, for I had a good collection of over 50 games.

 

I now have various consoles, bought on e-Bay, but none of them have that special quality of being The One.

 

Cheers!

-dZ.

Edited November 4, 2012 by DZ-Jay

[accousticguitar]

Cool story

[pimpmaul69]

glad to hear that worked for you. even though it was extra work on the psu, at least it will last a long time with new parts.

[+thegoldenband]

Nice story, and great to see these "black screen" problems actually have an answer for once! I have two consoles that do that, and I wonder whether they might have the same transistor issue.

 

Is there a step-by-step guide around to removing the shielding, BTW?

[intvnut]

I really wanted to to get my super video arcade working since its the original one to my family so I contacted pimpmaul69 and he helped try to troubleshoot it with me. I finally ended up taking the main board completely apart, removing all the shielding (what a pain) and ended up finding a couple of black places on the main board where it looked like it was burnt. Yikes!

 

The black places were under 2 transistors so I thought why not try and replace them, it doesn't work anyway and we'll see if I get lucky. I order the transistors last week and they got here yesterday, just replaced them and played burgertime for 15 minutes! Thats 14 minutes and 45 seconds longer than every time I've tried to play it before!

 

Awesome!

 

Those two transistors drive the high-voltage clock inputs to the processor. I've noticed discoloration around them on multiple logic boards. I'll have to remember this the next time I come across a glitchy unit.

[Fushek]

Welcome to the wonderful world of the Intellivision. You've found the best place on the web to discuss it!

[ebelhaki]

Nice story, and great to see these "black screen" problems actually have an answer for once! I have two consoles that do that, and I wonder whether they might have the same transistor issue.

 

Is there a step-by-step guide around to removing the shielding, BTW?

 

For the top part of the shield, I just tried what retrogam3nerd on youtube suggested and used a small screw driver to pop off the top part at each point where it was soldered. This was much easier than trying to desolder every point. Here is a link to that part in his video where he discusses it:

 

As far as the bottom half, it wasn't bad except for removing the part of the shield that is connected to the cartridge slot. It's soldered to like 4 or 5 pins there with a ton of solder and is a bear to remove. I took a picture of my board and circled all the points where it is soldered to the shield. I just had to heat each spot up and use a solder sucker to remove it. I saved the part where it was connected to the cartridge slot for last. I removed as much solder as a could, then I just let it heated it up and pulled the shield off while my iron was on it so it couldn't cool off. I hard a hard time removing all the solder at that point because there was so much and it never wanted to let go of the shield.

[ebelhaki]

Awesome!

 

Those two transistors drive the high-voltage clock inputs to the processor. I've noticed discoloration around them on multiple logic boards. I'll have to remember this the next time I come across a glitchy unit.

 

It was a cheap fix too. The two transistors were part 2N3906 and I got 50 of them shipped for only $3 on ebay.

[nukeshed]

Those are really good pics of the situation. Thanks for the share!

[intvnut]

For the top part of the shield, I just tried what retrogam3nerd on youtube suggested and used a small screw driver to pop off the top part at each point where it was soldered. This was much easier than trying to desolder every point. Here is a link to that part in his video where he discusses it:

 

As far as the bottom half, it wasn't bad except for removing the part of the shield that is connected to the cartridge slot. It's soldered to like 4 or 5 pins there with a ton of solder and is a bear to remove. I took a picture of my board and circled all the points where it is soldered to the shield. I just had to heat each spot up and use a solder sucker to remove it. I saved the part where it was connected to the cartridge slot for last. I removed as much solder as a could, then I just let it heated it up and pulled the shield off while my iron was on it so it couldn't cool off. I hard a hard time removing all the solder at that point because there was so much and it never wanted to let go of the shield.

 

Wow, that's a much newer logic board. The couple I deigned to open have no green soldermask on the top, and the PSG, GROM and EXEC are all socketed. Also, yours has pairs of AM9114 RAMs (like the Intellivision II) in place of the GTE 3539 RAMs. That means you actually have 1K of Scratch RAM, 3/4ths of it unavailable to programs, and 1K of GRAM, 1/2 of it unavailable to programs, just like an Intellivision II.

[ebelhaki]

 

Wow, that's a much newer logic board. The couple I deigned to open have no green soldermask on the top, and the PSG, GROM and EXEC are all socketed. Also, yours has pairs of AM9114 RAMs (like the Intellivision II) in place of the GTE 3539 RAMs. That means you actually have 1K of Scratch RAM, 3/4ths of it unavailable to programs, and 1K of GRAM, 1/2 of it unavailable to programs, just like an Intellivision II.

 

That's cool. Didn't realize there would be a big difference like that.

[IntellivisionDude]

Awesome story.

[IntellivisionDude]

My story is rather simple. I grew up with the Intellivision, it was my first system (and only system my mother ever bought me). Had about 37 games for it. It got sold at a yard sale after i wore the controllers out on it and at that time it wasn't being sold in stores anymore (early 90's). And finally around Dec 09 i decided it had been way too long and got back into it. Not sure why it took me so long.