pudie Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 Hi....great forum I bought an Intellivision console from Ebay recently with a number of games. Alas... the games are unplayable due to missing sprites and platforms etc. The sound is fine and the sprites that do appear are ok too. Has anybody any idea what is wrong and is there an easy fix? Sorry about the poor quality pics but they may help ...............thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pimpmaul69 Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 (edited) First thing i would do is open it up, remove the top casing that is soldered on around the motherboard and push the socketed chips down and make sure they are in good. If not you might have a bad chip. At 2 in the morning here i cant think straight to remember which chip so i am sure someone else will chime in. Gram?? Edited February 19, 2015 by pimpmaul69 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pudie Posted February 19, 2015 Author Share Posted February 19, 2015 Hi...Thanks for your reply. 8 hours ahead here .I took it apart but there is no casing soldered around the motherboard. Pushed in all the chips, so looks as though, as you suggest, that a chip is faulty. It's a shame really as otherwise it's in good condition . I have ordered another console as a replacement from www.consolepassion.co.uk which works out at about $140 (£89) . Maybe I can sell my faulty one on to try reclaim some of my money back ? Thanks again Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
m-crew Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 Too bad, maybe keep the faulty one for spare parts..... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+JasonlikesINTV Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 Welcome to the forums! I can't solve your console issue...just saying hello and welcome. Good luck! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kiwi Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 It looks to me that one of the 2K word GROM got disconnected. The Numbers and the executive portion seems to works. The letters and the colorstack tiles are missing in these picture. I think some of the GRAM aren't working. I would open it up and inspect the motherboard for defect. Probably a bad trace somewhere on the motherboard. It probably need to be cleaned. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HunterZero Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 Could be bad STIC too... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pudie Posted February 19, 2015 Author Share Posted February 19, 2015 Thanks boys I will take a look again but don't have a clue as to where the stic or groms are Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+nanochess Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 Thanks boys I will take a look again but don't have a clue as to where the stic or groms are Some help for you : http://console5.com/wiki/Intellivision Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
intvnut Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 (edited) It looks like half of your GRAM is dead. GRAM card numbers 32 - 63 appear OK, while GRAM card number 0 - 31 aren't showing up. You have a PAL Inty, it sounds like. Depending on which revision motherboard you have, you have either two 256x8 RAM chips, or two 1024x4 RAM chips for GRAM. Judging by the nature of the failure, you more likely have the dual 256x8 configuration. Those chips were part number GTE 3539, or equivalent. One chip holds cards 0-31 and one holds 32-63. Either the first chip itself is bad, or it's developed a short on one of its connections. If you want to locate these chips on the board: The RAM chips are slightly larger than a typical TTL DIP chip, but not as big as the 40-pin socketed candy bars. If you can spot them on your motherboard, make sure the pins are clean (both sides of the board), clearing away dust, etc. One other possibility: The XOR gate used for generating the chip select to the GTE 3539 has failed, or developed a short somehow. This is a 74LS86 TTL device. Look for it and check it out / clean it also. Recently, lathe26 resurrected an Intellivoice that had failed due to a short that had developed on one of its internal data buses. Just cleaning dust from the bottom of the board did the trick. Edited February 19, 2015 by intvnut 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pudie Posted February 19, 2015 Author Share Posted February 19, 2015 Thanks intvnut I will give everything a clean tomorrow when I get home from work 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pimpmaul69 Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 Thanks intvnut I will give everything a clean tomorrow when I get home from work 91% isopropyl achohol and a toothbrush or q-tip works best 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
intvnut Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 91% isopropyl achohol and a toothbrush or q-tip works best That reminds me. My big bottle o' 91% isopropyl alcohol is almost gone. The 90+% stuff is harder to find than I'd like. Most stores usually carry the 70% stuff, which leaves too much residue and water behind for my tastes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
m-crew Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 That reminds me. My big bottle o' 91% isopropyl alcohol is almost gone. The 90+% stuff is harder to find than I'd like. Most stores usually carry the 70% stuff, which leaves too much residue and water behind for my tastes. How about using Electric Contact Cleaner? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
freewheel Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 That reminds me. My big bottle o' 91% isopropyl alcohol is almost gone. The 90+% stuff is harder to find than I'd like. Most stores usually carry the 70% stuff, which leaves too much residue and water behind for my tastes. I love living in an arid climate. I've never noticed any water problems with 70% Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pimpmaul69 Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 That reminds me. My big bottle o' 91% isopropyl alcohol is almost gone. The 90+% stuff is harder to find than I'd like. Most stores usually carry the 70% stuff, which leaves too much residue and water behind for my tastes. and grocery stores stopped carrying it. I have 70% but only use on cartridge contacts never on the circuit boards themselves. I dont need a short. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HunterZero Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 (edited) Intvnut would a logic probe help determine if the GRAM or chip select gate is bad? How would you do this? I think these chips are soldered in on my PAL board. Only the sound, STIC, system RAM, CPU, EXEC and GROM are socketed I believe. Edited February 19, 2015 by HunterZero Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+intvsteve Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 That reminds me. My big bottle o' 91% isopropyl alcohol is almost gone. The 90+% stuff is harder to find than I'd like. Most stores usually carry the 70% stuff, which leaves too much residue and water behind for my tastes. Funny, I noticed the same thing last night - i.e. almost out. Needed to clean the heads in a 5.25" disk drive. Someone asked me to try to rescue some data. The disks were... *sigh* ... bad enough to stop the drive from spinning! The discs didn't *look* that dirty, and were in sleeves when I received them! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
intvnut Posted February 20, 2015 Share Posted February 20, 2015 Intvnut would a logic probe help determine if the GRAM or chip select gate is bad? How would you do this? I think these chips are soldered in on my PAL board. Only the sound, STIC, system RAM, CPU, EXEC and GROM are socketed I believe. Possibly, if it can identify toggling vs. stuck-at-0, for example. Pin 14 on the RAM is the CS2 signal. This is the only signal that's wired differently between the two RAMs. Otherwise, the two RAMs are wired identically. If this signal is stuck at 0 for the low-half RAM, then the 74LS86 likely is the culprit. If this signal is toggling, then the RAM seems more likely at fault. You should be able to compare to the same pin on the other RAM, and that pin should be toggling too. If pin 14 is stuck-at-1 on the other GRAM, then you have a different problem. Either the GROM is bad, or something further back up the bus (the RA-3-9600 system RAM) may be misbehaving. But, by the pictures shown above, it appears that the STIC and GROM are correctly switching between the two GRAMs, and one of them simply isn't responding. The low-half and high-half RAMs are U8 and U7, respectively, on an NTSC machine. At least, that's according to the schematic I have. Note, when testing those signals, you should probably have a game displayed that uses characters from GRAM, and which exhibits a mixture of missing and not-missing graphic items, such as the two shown at the top of the thread. That will ensure both GRAMs are getting accessed. The stock Intellivision title screen has no GRAM characters on it, and so may never toggle either chip-select. They'll both look stuck-at-0. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HunterZero Posted February 20, 2015 Share Posted February 20, 2015 Here's a block diagram... 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+intvsteve Posted February 20, 2015 Share Posted February 20, 2015 Here's a block diagram... intv_block.jpg Great picture! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
intvnut Posted February 21, 2015 Share Posted February 21, 2015 (edited) Funny, I noticed the same thing last night - i.e. almost out. Needed to clean the heads in a 5.25" disk drive. Someone asked me to try to rescue some data. The disks were... *sigh* ... bad enough to stop the drive from spinning! The discs didn't *look* that dirty, and were in sleeves when I received them! From the "Cool Story Bro" archives: In the late 80s (I think just as I was entering high school, or maybe it was jr. high still), I had a padded vinyl folder with a pad of graph paper, and a handful of 5.25" floppy disks shoved in the pocket that held pretty much all of my Apple ][ and IBM PC work at the time. It wasn't an amazing corpus of stuff yet, but it was everything I had. My dad was temporarily laid off (such were the whims of GM at the time), and was taking some computer courses at the local college as part of the Jobs Bank program, IIRC. I tagged along a few times and brought my vinyl folder of disks with me, spending time hacking away at BASIC and DOS on the PCs there in the lab. One weekend, I managed to forget my folder in the lab. That very same weekend, a pipe burst, flooding the lab, my disks included. Amazingly, I got my water-logged disks back. Heartbroken, yet determined, I ended up disgorging the disks from their sleeves, giving them isopropyl alcohol baths, and then reinserting the bare disks into new sleeves (donated from fresh, blank disks) to try to recover what I could off of the affected disks. (And by sleeves, I don't mean the tyvec or paper outer sleeve, but rather the vinyl square that forms the outer part of the floppy disk itself. I removed the circular spinning-rust part from the outer square part, cleaned it, put it in a new outer square part.) Quite an operation for a tweenager, but, amazingly, it worked well enough for me to rescue at least a few files. My dad had written off the disks, but he humored my devotion to the random crap that was on them. I'm glad he did. Edited February 21, 2015 by intvnut 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pimpmaul69 Posted February 21, 2015 Share Posted February 21, 2015 From the "Cool Story Bro" archives: In the late 80s (I think just as I was entering high school, or maybe it was jr. high still), I had a padded vinyl folder with a pad of graph paper, and a handful of 5.25" floppy disks shoved in the pocket that held pretty much all of my Apple ][ and IBM PC work at the time. It wasn't an amazing corpus of stuff yet, but it was everything I had. My dad was temporarily laid off (such were the whims of GM at the time), and was taking some computer courses at the local college as part of the Jobs Bank program, IIRC. I tagged along a few times and brought my vinyl folder of disks with me, spending time hacking away at BASIC and DOS on the PCs there in the lab. One weekend, I managed to forget my folder in the lab. That very same weekend, a pipe burst, flooding the lab, my disks included. Amazingly, I got my water-logged disks back. Heartbroken, yet determined, I ended up disgorging the disks from their sleeves, giving them isopropyl alcohol baths, and then reinserting the bare disks into new sleeves (donated from fresh, blank disks) to try to recover what I could off of the affected disks. (And by sleeves, I don't mean the tyvec or paper outer sleeve, but rather the vinyl square that forms the outer part of the floppy disk itself. I removed the circular spinning-rust part from the outer square part, cleaned it, put it in a new outer square part.) Quite an operation for a tweenager, but, amazingly, it worked well enough for me to rescue at least a few files. My dad had written off the disks, but he humored my devotion to the random crap that was on them. I'm glad he did. "cool story bro!" thats awesome. I wasnt into computers much then. I was fixing electronics from like 9-12 but between 13 and 19 spent more time with a social life than repairing stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pudie Posted February 21, 2015 Author Share Posted February 21, 2015 Well back to the topic I unplugged the chips and cleaned and refitted ....but broke off one of the legs on the R03-9504-021 chip . Does anybody have a spare one? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
intvnut Posted February 21, 2015 Share Posted February 21, 2015 Well back to the topic I unplugged the chips and cleaned and refitted ....but broke off one of the legs on the R03-9504-021 chip . Does anybody have a spare one? Which pin did you break off? 7 of the pins on there are "NC" pins—pins 2, 3, 5, 11, 14, 18 and 22—meaning you have a 1 in 4 chance that the pin doesn't matter at all. http://spatula-city.org/~im14u2c/chips/ro39504.pdf The RO-3-9504 is the upper-half of the EXEC, in case anyone's wondering. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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