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PAL Intellivision STIC needed


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I have several dead Intys that are in the "to be fixed someday" pile. I'm probably going to Frankenstein some of them together to get one or two working ones (they have different faults). It'll be at least summer before I get around to looking at them tho. You are welcome to any spares after that.

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Are the STIC chips not all the same from any Intellivision or Intellivision II?

 

 

I think in the Inty I the STIC is the same for NTSC and PAL. That's why the screen is much smaller on PAL TV's. A PAL STIC was planed for the international release of the Inty II. But that never happened.

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PAL STIC is definitely different from the NTSC STIC. They have different part numbers.

 

PAL STIC part number is AY-3-8900. NTSC STIC is AY-3-8900-1. They work at different clock/multipliers for the different videosignal rates.

 

I tried an NTSC part in it since the pinouts are the same, and the system plays and I get an RF signal with audio but scrambled video. The audio seemed to be sped up a touch. So I know it works and it's the STIC causing the black screen. The original STIC in it had a couple of holes underneath so I think the magic smoke has gone...

 

Tempted to do a composite mod on it and see what signal I get out of it.

 

- HZ

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I have several dead Intys that are in the "to be fixed someday" pile. I'm probably going to Frankenstein some of them together to get one or two working ones (they have different faults). It'll be at least summer before I get around to looking at them tho. You are welcome to any spares after that.

Thanks GroovyBee I am in no rush. After a STIC marked AY-3-8900 without the "-1" at the end.

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Actually now I think of it I think I know what's happened. Early AUS 3668 Intys should have the daughter board.

 

So someone has swapped the (presumably) working logic board (presumably daughter board version) and possibly controllers from this Intellivision into a later (presumably cosmetically nicer) case and dumped the nonworking later revision board into this...

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What STICks :lolblue: in the brazilian Inty II? Brazil has a PAL system, but with special frequencies.

Brazil used a system called PAL-M that is very similar to NTSC except for colour generation. I would guess a PAL-M Intellivision would have an "NTSC" AY-3-8900-1 STIC and PAL M compatible colour PROM and RF modulator. Crack it open and see. ;-)

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I think in the Inty I the STIC is the same for NTSC and PAL. That's why the screen is much smaller on PAL TV's. A PAL STIC was planed for the international release of the Inty II. But that never happened.

 

As others have noted, the two STICs are different. The PAL STIC shows a smaller screen because it doesn't stretch the screen vertically to fill it. Rather, both versions generate 192 lines of active display. The PAL chip does this across 312 scan lines per field instead of 262, which is why the PAL display has so much dead space at the top/bottom of the screen.

 

The planned (but never released so far as we know) PAL upgrade STIC would likely have stretched the display vertically by generating more than 192 lines of video (probably by repeating some of them).

 

I think it's fair to say the two versions share much of the same core logic and state machines, but the PAL version has different frame-level timings. To make the most of PAL, they'd need to rework more of the core logic, and that never happened.

Edited by intvnut
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  • 4 weeks later...
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I have several dead Intys that are in the "to be fixed someday" pile. I'm probably going to Frankenstein some of them together to get one or two working ones (they have different faults). It'll be at least summer before I get around to looking at them tho. You are welcome to any spares after that.

Any PAL units among this lot? Still in need...

 

I did have the idea of putting an NTSC STIC in it using PAL colour circuitry and making it a PAL60 console - but what else do I need to swap? Already verified the console runs with an NTSC STIC but picture is scrambled and out of synch.

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All my 2609s are PAL units. I still haven't managed to look through them yet.

 

 

Are you sure? The 2609 is the US version and therefore should be NTSC.

The UK version is 1591, the german 5370, the french 5156 and there is at least a italian Inty too.

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