Are there any issues with the Intv III

[Luvac Zantor]

New here, got lots of knowledge from some of these threads. Just made a bid on an INTV III and was curious if it had any issues.

 

Won an INTV I (original) that does power up, but BSOD. Reset makes the screen flicker though. Bought a multimeter that has DC (AC too) to test power supply tap points. I've read that the BSOD could be due to a myriad of things. The seller is to give me a partial refund as I wanted to work on it. 

Also, great forum here. I've read so many posts and the lack of toxicity is fantastic. I also applaud how you guys help each other out. 

[Sinjinhawke]

I have only been on here for a couple years but have received lots of help with hardware issues, parts, games and developing an appreciation for tasteful nudes (you will get all of these here).  I have an INTV III, Sears, Tandyvision and original and they are mostly the same on the inside and can share parts.  Obviously the INTV II has a different board but even it has some shared parts.  I wouldn't expect any INVT III specific issues.

 

Some of the main chips in the Intellivision are in sockets so if you have a 2nd working unit you can sometimes just swap components one at a time to see how it changes the non working one.  I have had a couple machines come back to life just by swapping in a CPU.  Other times I had to break out my soldering iron and solder sucker and replace some RAM chips.  So far I have only got one board that I have not got working yet.  One day I will learn how to read a schematic and figure out voltages and eventually get that last one working.

 

Warning, opening the RF shielding of an Intellivision is a pain in the ASCII.  There are two pieces and they are soldered together at multiple points.  The INTV II is so much easier to work on.  Not sure what is more annoying, separating the two pieces of RF shielding or pulling apart the two pieces of the Colecovision shell.

[+Lathe26]

Only issue I've seen unique to the INTV III (and the Super Pro) units has to do with the LED and it only comes into play when you open up the console for repairs and such.  Inside those particular Intellivisions, the LED has 2 long wires coming from it to the main board.  If you forget about these wires, you might yank them right off when you lift the lid.  They are easy to solder back on, if you have a soldering iron.  Different units have different lengths of wire because there is some variance in where these two wires were soldered to.

 

The only thing you need to do differently, if you open up your console, is to remember to carefully lift the lid off.

 

Side note: if the LED doesn't work but the unit is otherwise fine, then likely someone previous to you opened up the console and yanked a wire off (one of mine had this).

[mr_me]

The INTV systems made in Hong Kong were by the same manufacturer Mattel used.  Not sure if quality control changed but reliability should come down to components which seem to be the same.  My issue with those systems would be the flat keypads on the controllers, unrelated to reliability.  Later INTV systems were made in the USA, with sometimes old stock parts it seemed.

[Games For Your Intellivision]

The occasional INTV System III or Super Pro system have Tutorvision parts in them.