Intellivision Audio Hardware Passthrough?

[First Spear]

 

I didn't see anything in a quick skim of the intvprog archives or on Spatula City, so here I am.

 

I was wondering if there was a way for an Intellivision to accept audio input and then pass it through to the "television", so external audio would complement the rest of the Intellivision output. 

 

If it was possible with stock hardware (or maybe ECS since it has the cassette in ports), I think it might be interesting to do something similar to Psychedelia on the Commodore 64, where graphics display/change based on what comes through the lines.

 

If it was not possible with stock hardware, I wonder what it would take for a special cartridge (since there seem to be available input lines that could be "hijacked") with say a  3.5mm port to take audio in, gate it into a running program for display, and get it out of the RF line to the television.

 

 

Sometimes I can't turn my brain off with this stuff.

 

 

 

 

[+DZ-Jay]

4 hours ago, First Spear said:

 

I didn't see anything in a quick skim of the intvprog archives or on Spatula City, so here I am.

 

I was wondering if there was a way for an Intellivision to accept audio input and then pass it through to the "television", so external audio would complement the rest of the Intellivision output. 

 

If it was possible with stock hardware (or maybe ECS since it has the cassette in ports), I think it might be interesting to do something similar to Psychedelia on the Commodore 64, where graphics display/change based on what comes through the lines.

 

If it was not possible with stock hardware, I wonder what it would take for a special cartridge (since there seem to be available input lines that could be "hijacked") with say a  3.5mm port to take audio in, gate it into a running program for display, and get it out of the RF line to the television.

 

 

Sometimes I can't turn my brain off with this stuff.

 

 

 

 

I believe that's what the Intellivoice and ECS do:  they feed the synthesized audio through the cartridge port directly to the TV, which is why they have their own volume control.

 

There's also video pass-through in the Intellivision II, for the System Changer.  But if you're replacing the video signal, I'd say that's no longer an Intellivision.

 

http://wiki.intellivision.us/index.php/Cartridge_Port

Pin #6: Ext. Audio (External Audio Input)

 

Quote

• EXT AUDIO -- External Audio Input

  The Intellivoice and ECS's second Programmable Sound Generator provide audio input via this pin. I'd imagine if the Keyboard Component can generate Audio, it also provides it on this pin.

 

I also remember that the BeeHive board that GroovyBee was working on was going to support PCM samples in Flash RAM with the firmware feeding it to the console as external audio, via CPU control -- for voice games without the Intellivoice.  Irrespective of the changes of this product ever existing, I guess it is technically possible to do something like that.

 

     -dZ.

Edited August 8, 2022 by DZ-Jay

[+cmart604]

4 hours ago, First Spear said:

 

I didn't see anything in a quick skim of the intvprog archives or on Spatula City, so here I am.

 

I was wondering if there was a way for an Intellivision to accept audio input and then pass it through to the "television", so external audio would complement the rest of the Intellivision output. 

 

If it was possible with stock hardware (or maybe ECS since it has the cassette in ports), I think it might be interesting to do something similar to Psychedelia on the Commodore 64, where graphics display/change based on what comes through the lines.

 

If it was not possible with stock hardware, I wonder what it would take for a special cartridge (since there seem to be available input lines that could be "hijacked") with say a  3.5mm port to take audio in, gate it into a running program for display, and get it out of the RF line to the television.

 

 

Sometimes I can't turn my brain off with this stuff.

 

 

 

 

Did you check the FAQ? ? I hear it's  awesome! ?

[First Spear]

On 8/8/2022 at 5:50 PM, cmart604 said:

Did you check the FAQ? ? I hear it's  awesome! ?

I have a feeling this will make it in there, if one other person looks. It's for "frequent" questions, not necessarily edge questions from daydreaming nuts.

 

[+DZ-Jay]

1 hour ago, First Spear said:

I have a feeling this will make it in there, if one other person looks. It's for "frequent" questions, not necessarily edge questions from daydreaming nuts.

 

 

Well, actually ... it is a frequently asked question ... by you, who asks it frequently. 😄

 

   -dZ.