Papa Intellivision Purchase

[+Lathe26]

Last item arrived today: the Portman IMI cartridge.

 

Analysis: It has not been dumped yet but it has run.  It behaves as an original IMI test cartridge in that it doesn't display a version number and ends with "Pass Pass Pass" instead of a game like Baseball or Night Stalker.  It also is one of the few shielded cartridges since it has the heavier weight of 70g.  My suspicion is that it actually is a normal IMI cartridge since it seems unlikely that an early prototype version would have a shield soldered in place since that would make changing chips difficult.

 

Update: It has been dumped.  It is exactly identical to the IMI Test Cartridge v1.0 code.

 

 

 

[+cmart604]

22 hours ago, Lathe26 said:

Last item arrived today: the Portman IMI cartridge.

 

Analysis: It has not been dumped yet but it has run.  It behaves as an original IMI test cartridge in that it doesn't display a version number and ends with "Pass Pass Pass" instead of a game like Baseball or Night Stalker.  It also is one of the few shielded cartridges since it has the heavier weight of 70g.  My suspicion is that it actually is a normal IMI cartridge since it seems unlikely that an early prototype version would have a shield soldered in place since that would make changing chips difficult.

 

 

 

Wait. Natalie Portman made a test cart? Was she even born then? 

[+Lathe26]

The Natalie Portman IMI cartridge has been dumped.  It is confirmed to be the same code as a normal IMI Test Cartridge v1.0.

[+Lathe26]

[+BBWW]

I commend you. I have yet to even try to fire my KBC up! Sort of intimidated by the thing. LOL

 

[gunoz]

[+Lathe26]

14 hours ago, gunoz said:

I literally laughed out loud at this one!

[Walter Ives]

On 8/25/2022 at 9:24 PM, Lathe26 said:

Someone else on AA has stated that this most likely just contains normal audio recordings of various compression levels for the SP0256 (i.e., the Intellivoice's speech chip)

General Instrument did in fact demonstrate weather service audio to Chandler, Ron Carlson and several others. I hope you didn't pay too much for this tape—if you did, you might maximize your return by asking Steve Maine what he remembers about it.

 

On 8/25/2022 at 9:24 PM, Lathe26 said:

The "National Weather" audio (i.e. lines 1 and 2) was likely erased and recorded over.  Even using spectral analysis was not able to find anything other than 2 seconds where there is faint audio of something intelligible, but using noise reduction, filters, and normalization was not able to recover anything usable.

It would not be surprising to discover it was proprietary work funded by another customer and GI didn't feel comfortable leaving a copy with Mattel. But that's a guess—don't spread it further. And under no circumstances cite me for suggesting it if you do.

 

On 8/29/2022 at 1:20 AM, Lathe26 said:

Theory: At a glance, the Diagnostic Test #1 - Mattel Tape and the Diagnostic Test #1 - American Sound Tape appear to contain the same data.  Since there is currently a company called American Sound & Electronics, it is possible that the Mattel Tape is the original tape and the American Sound is the professionally made copy made by a company that specializes in high quality cassette tape duplication as a test before going into tape production for the KC software.

Some facts: 1. American Sound was the name of the tape duplicating house. 2. APh provided American Sound with masters recorded at 7½ ips on ½" four-track reels. 3. The tape labeled "Mattel Tape" is not the master delivered to American Sound. 4. APh could produce fully functional cassette tapes in-house but recorded them at 1-7/8 ips. 5. At the time Mattel didn't have the in-house ability to play ½" professional tapes. (It did get some ½" decks a year later for the voice synthesis project). 6. Although APh had a stock of new C15s, C30s, C60s and C90s, developers would grab and recycle whatever cassettes were nearest at hand when making tapes in the course of development. 7. For production tapes, American Sound used bulk raw tape stock procured by Mattel. 8. American Sound trimmed its production tapes to match the length of the recorded material. 9. The tape in the "Diagnostic Test #1" cassette you show in your picture appears to be cut to length. 10. American Sound was having difficulty with tape quality consistency.

Theory: I'll leave the theorizing to you. I merely remind you that in my experience most inferences are wrong.

Please post side-by-side samples of the two data track waveforms for comparison.

 

On 8/29/2022 at 1:20 AM, Lathe26 said:

made ... as a test before going into tape production for the KC software.

You should not be under the misimpression that all that was required was one simple little test to verify that everything worked. There was a lot of back-and-forth involving many more tapes than the ones you have.

 

On 8/26/2022 at 9:23 AM, Lathe26 said:

The voice actor is different and some of the spoken sections have a different script (the words spoken)

(Old-timer rolls his eyes). "Voice actors" weren't a thing back then. The person you are listening to would have been called a narrator. Radio performers were just plain actors. Producers and directors were prone to calling them "the talent," usually with a dismissive undertone. Come to think of it, they still do that.

 

On 8/30/2022 at 9:04 AM, Lathe26 said:

Here is a Demonstration Tape from Dec 31st, 1980.

The label and handwriting almost definitively indicates that it was created at APh. What were those guys doing working on New Year's Eve? With a million people assembling on the Rose Parade route half a block to the north for an all-night party? Oh, yeah, Winter CES began the next week. What dedication!

 

On 8/31/2022 at 9:31 AM, Lathe26 said:

"Demo" tape (this one) - earliest known pre-production version

Again, a pre-production unit is (supposed to be) identical to the production unit, just not made on the actual production line. An APh-produced cassette containing the exact same material as on the mass-produced version but recorded at 1x speed would be a pre-production tape—you wouldn't give the go until QA had put that tape through the wringer. (APh could record several of those at once, but all at 1x speed). Alternatively, the duplicating house could have made a small pre-production run. If this tape is what you think it is you would better refer to as a development iteration. It wasn't even worth giving a proper label!

 

On 8/31/2022 at 2:32 PM, Lathe26 said:

My guess is that it was simply a placeholder before they got someone to speak the lines.  This way, the dev could here if/when analog audio playback was activated.

Nope. Creating a tape with synchronized audio and data tracks was a somewhat involved process that used a script-driven editing facility called "Autoconform" to dub all of the audio and program components into their precise places onto a four-track ½" master reel. There was no point in going through that trouble for every development iteration. So it's more likely that this was just a random tape created as part of one cycle of the program process and they didn't bother mixing in the voice track. Despite their reputation for wizardry, even APh programmers couldn't write code that always worked the first time.

Throughout Hollywood, the audio is recorded first and the animation drawn to match the audio. (The same is true for action/music or action/sound effects.) It's a real pain to do it the other way around. APh had several Hollywood clients and so had considerable experience with this. The animation on the demo tape is not a series of hand-drawn cels, so it's not as much a pain to adjust its timing as it would be for normal animation, but you'd have to completely redo Mimi's lip-synching. If the tape contains lip-synching that matches the final tape you can be pretty sure the audio track already existed and APh just didn't take the trouble to record it onto the cassette for this particular development iteration.

 

On 8/31/2022 at 1:19 PM, DZ-Jay said:

So, if your theory is correct, what would you expect that annoying tone to represent?  Is it a bias line or additional data?

Neither. It's just random audio the programmer can use to tell him the track is being enabled at the appropriate places. Otherwise he'd have to jam his ear next to the TV speaker to listen for tape hiss. Furthermore, the TV sets of the day had little knobs on the front you could use to turn the volume down to a non-annoying level.

 

On 9/2/2022 at 8:56 AM, Lathe26 said:

This is Dave Chandler's Business Card!

That's a later card, probably from 1983.