8bitwidgets.com Posted May 15 Share Posted May 15 Hi everyone, so on an related thread some talk of making new joysticks/interface devices that require power were discussed and it's known that the INTV joystick ports have no power to them. This means batteries would be required or a power supply, which I'm not fond of either option for obvious reasons. Then @fdr4prez blew my mind when he mentioned there's an unused port on the Intellivoice that 1. has power and 2. was actually made with the intension of adding wireless controllers. sooooo This just got me thinking that my partner has been itching to do some FPGA programming and we're about to release the upcoming Intellivision MCP likely early June and so it just made me wonder two things: 1. how feasible would it be to use this port for new controllers and possibly an interface for the light gun adapter (use your NES Zapper or Sega Light Phaser with the INTV). Is the port cover easily removable and restorable? I don't think a lot of people want to permanently damage their intellivoices for something like this. Even I'd have doubts I'd want to break the IV case to get into it and I'm not even really a collector. Plus requiring the IV to use new controllers / adapters now reduces your user pool even more. sure the IVs are not hard to get or terribly expensive but it's still a barrier and if this drove demand, this could unintentionally drive prices up for them.. which is the last thing I want to contribute too! 2. maybe if getting into the IV is too messy, the thought was what about making a new IV module that basically offers the original voice feature with an expansion port for joysticks with power. This of course might even be able to do other stuff. wireless? usb keyboard and mice ports? i don't know, HDMI? lol.. but seriously.. i'm just thinking if we made a second generation MCP for the INTV that had some additional electronics to make it more than a socket protector. This is very hypothetical here, but getting some realistic sense of what would be involved and how powerful the cartridge slot really is would be very telling. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mr_me Posted May 15 Share Posted May 15 (edited) The data lines in that connector go through the Intellivoice SBP640 buffer chip. Some information and a schematic at the links below. https://wiki.console5.com/wiki/Intellivoice http://www.avoidspikes.com/dsplib/intv/intvoice.html The top cover is removable but a little awkward. Take the Intellivoice apart to see how to remove the cover without breaking it. During production Mattel Electronics stopped including the connector, so some Intellivoices have nothing under the cover. edit: While you might be able to make new controller inputs through the cartridge port, making them compatible with existing games could be tricky since the standard controllers interface through the sound chip. Edited May 15 by mr_me 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diamax Posted May 15 Share Posted May 15 Hi @8bitwidgets.com, What you mean by that '' This just got me thinking that my partner has been itching to do some FPGA programming and we're about to release the upcoming Intellivision MCP likely early June and so it just made me wonder two things: A new intellivision console with an hdmi output is coming out in June ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mr_me Posted May 15 Share Posted May 15 MCP makes me think of the Master Control Program. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
8bitwidgets.com Posted May 15 Author Share Posted May 15 (edited) 55 minutes ago, mr_me said: MCP makes me think of the Master Control Program. you sir, get the reference i always like the flow of the letters.. but in this case.. Master Console Protector. I'm sure there's some other good name out there for these, but at the time nothing really resonated. End of line.. 2 hours ago, mr_me said: During production Mattel Electronics stopped including the connector, so some Intellivoices have nothing under the cover. that is sad to hear, combined with tricky removal process.. pretty much a dealbreaker to pursue that further then.. but i'll shift my energy towards an "Intellivoice II" though I don't know if I could use that name (copyright?) 1 hour ago, diamax said: A new intellivision console with an hdmi output is coming out in June ? No no, I'm coming out with an INTV MCP (Master Console Protector) which is in short a cartridge socket protector (see @mr_me CSP just doesn't pop! ). This product acts as a buffer from the wear and tear on the internal socket pins and moves that over to the MCP's socket pins and stays permanently (it's removable of course, but stays in snug) as you insert/remove carts. I have made them for the Coleco/Adam and currently selling 2600 MCPs.. the INTV boards are being soldered now and I'll be making the enclosure for them and testing over the next couple of weeks.. I own a 2609, Sears SVA, and thanks to Casey an INTV II. I won't be able to validate that it fits the same on the other variations, buuuut, I believe they were SO much like the 2609 (i'm looking at you Tandyvision and INTV 3) that they should still work the same. A few other edge cases that I can't confirm either, but I feel pretty confident it will be ok if i can get it working well for the hardware I do have. Edited May 15 by 8bitwidgets.com 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Lathe26 Posted May 15 Share Posted May 15 4 hours ago, mr_me said: ... During production Mattel Electronics stopped including the connector, so some Intellivoices have nothing under the cover. ... I'll just extend the above and add that only about 40-50% of Intellivoices have the connector (from my own surveying of serial numbers). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Walter Ives Posted June 8 Share Posted June 8 On 5/15/2024 at 1:43 AM, 8bitwidgets.com said: how feasible would it be to use this port for new controllers No harder than interfacing directly to the CP1600 bus. The expansion connector on the Intellivoice was called the "stacking connector" because it was intended to accommodate multiple peripherals on something called a "peripheral stack" that sat on the flat surface of the Intellivoice unit. That stack was planned accommodate not only a remote hand controller interface, but also other peripherals including a RAM cartridge. The remote hand controller interface was at $01FE-$01FF, each of the other peripherals would get a 256-word block at one of $0700-$07FF, $0800-$08FF, $0900-$09FF, $0A00-$0AFF or $0B00-$0BFF. The three bus control lines are routed directly to the stacking connector, and the low order 8-bits of the CP1600 address/data bus are passed transparently through the buffer chip. Since only the low-order bus is passed through, that only lets you address memory locations within one of the 256-word blocks—you need to do something else to get the "chip enables" for those blocks. If you look at the Intellivoice schematic you will see three pins labeled AD0-AD2; these are used to select one of the 256-word blocks of memory mentioned above. The mapping is not obvious, so you'll have to experiment. If all you need is 16 input pins, just attach an AY-3-8914 sound chip directly to the port. That chip understands the CP1600 control signals and multiplexed data bus, so you won't need any other parts. Well, you may have to give some thought to how you use AD0-AD2 to generate the enable signal for the sound chip. As a bonus, you'll get three more channels of sound. You can even go wild and attach multiple sound chips. WJI 3 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Walter Ives Posted June 8 Share Posted June 8 On 5/15/2024 at 3:38 AM, mr_me said: While you might be able to make new controller inputs through the cartridge port, making them compatible with existing games could be tricky since the standard controllers interface through the sound chip. Not really. The remote hand controllers had to respond to the same addresses as the regular hand controllers. To that end the SPB640 buffer chip had beefy drivers that could overpower those in the sound chip if the remote hand controller was addressed. WJI Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
8bitwidgets.com Posted June 8 Author Share Posted June 8 On 5/15/2024 at 11:38 AM, Lathe26 said: 40-50% of Intellivoices have the connector (from my own surveying of serial numbers). yep i'm not exploring this option at this time due to this fact. if it were 100% of them, maybe.. we're doing it differently. still a WIP and will take some time, but some cool things are in the works. 4 hours ago, Walter Ives said: No harder than interfacing directly to the CP1600 bus. Yea we're looking in this direction for future items. bypass the reliance of an intellivoice which, while still affordable and reasonably plentiful, is just going to be a headache if we can bank on every one of them having the port. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
8bitwidgets.com Posted August 29 Author Share Posted August 29 @Walter Ives my partner and I are looking at exploring a solution similar to this wireless controller port, but simply put, to allow hooking up alternative / easier to source controllers to connect and drive original games through the cartridge port to avoid the need to open up / mod the original hardware.. I've been talking with Decle about it and he's had some interesting insight that's a big help and (good thing) even a bit over our heads as we are not well versed in the hardware that makes up the intellivision, but we believe we can figure it out.. You mentioned that it's ok to overpower the sound chip, which isn't meant to be overpowered. do you know how this would be deemed safe? It's one thing for us to experiment and make a one off for ourselves and maybe risk damaging our own hardware, but if we were to mass produce these, we'd need to be sure we're not mass producing intellivision audio killers! Do you know how we can be sure we're not hurting hardware or maybe a way to get around it easily? I imagine sure if you crack open the intellivision and do enough soldering you might be able to modify it to be safe, but we are looking at a simple cartridge port based product that would give the user the ports and power needed to drive newer controllers.. Thanks, Caleb 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Lathe26 Posted August 29 Share Posted August 29 I don't think the word "overpower" was a good choice of words since the SPB640 doesn't work that way relative to the in-built sound chip. It makes it sound like SPB640 drives the data bus stronger than the sound chip, which it doesn't actually do. Instead, your external device can simply disable the in-built sound chip for addresses $1FE-$1FF by filtering the BC1, BC2, BDIR loopback signals to be a NOP bus operation (at those 2 specific addresses). This frees up those addresses for your own controller hardware. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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