Que Es?

[stc2009]

Or ask IntelligentVision directly...?

 

-dZ.

 

Nah too easy. Rev's more entertaining.

[voltron]

Nah too easy. Rev's more entertaining.

 

Agree This is a job for inspector Rev.

[+cmart604]

 

 

Or ask IntelligentVision directly...?

 

-dZ.

 

David didn't make these, Roger did.

[voltron]

David didn't make these, Roger did.

 

roger the psychostormtropper?

[+cmart604]

 

 

roger the psychostormtropper?

 

Yep

[voltron]

Yep

 

Then thats the guy that wrote the book. on page 22 he listed it as UX. The other rare games listed as ux they made 150 or so. But thats the amount they sold to the general public. If he made this and it was not intended for the public and only for testing, it has to be a lot smaller number.

[+intvnut]

The board design we used back then does allow four games in the 64K x 16 EPROM. Why 4 16K games instead of allowing larger games? The CPLD we were using could only capture enough address lines for a 16K x 16 game. IIRC, Chad was just going to tie the other two address lines off, but instead we decided to break them out to some pads and put some pullups on. That would allow us to build multicarts, if that turned out to be commercially interesting. It also gave us an avenue toward inventory flexibility, and the ability to make test carts like the Goldenboy. (I didn't know until recently, or if I had known, I had forgotten that Chris and/or Roger had made a couple testers like that.)

 

I've said several times in the past that with the EPROM based design, we had to have some idea of the quantity of product we'd sell before we went to the board shop. This is due to the fact that I didn't really have a strategy or mechanism for in-circuit programming. Chad pointed out I probably could have rigged something with JTAG and boundary scan on the CPLD, but that seemed risky to rely on.

 

To give a little inventory flexibility, I decided to use the multicart capability. This is an idea that occurred to me at the very beginning, and I personally thought it was pretty clever. If I (or anyone else using this design) was running multiple titles at the same time, we could program up multiple games in one board, with one game being the default. If it turned out that one title sold many more copies than projected, we could convert boards from some other title over to the popular title by soldering in a wire or two. This wasn't meant as subterfuge or anything, but simple risk management.

 

So, yeah, hidden in your 2004 boards are all four games from that time, just scrambled in different orders depending on which title was the "default" on that board. This was a risk management strategy, since we didn't really know if, say, Same Game would outsell Minehunter, for example. I think Chris did actually have to convert a few boards, so some of you might actually have wires soldered onto your boards to switch them from their build-time defaults. In practice, this hidden functionality hasn't been needed very much. Every title seems to sell out. :-)

 

Even better than the Goldenboy, I have a few of these kicking around. Each one is unique. (See attached.) Socketed, with a dip-switch installed. Also attached is a pic of some of the chips from my prototype graveyard. A few SP chips, a few unlabeled—dunno what's in those—and the SPB640 and SP0256-AL2 out of the Intellivoice I modified to be the breakout-board for developing JLP. (See here for some pictures of early, early JLP development.)

 

BTW, there are two major revisions of the board out there. One says © 2001, and the other © 2007. The main difference is that Vpp is tied differently. The AMD and Atmel chips allow Vpp tied to GND or 5v. We followed the Atmel data sheet when designing the board, and tied Vpp to GND. TI, Intel and several other vendors require Vpp tied to +5v, and in fact that's what the JEDEC standard tells you to do. So the 2007 revision ties Vpp to +5v. (That's also why one of the chips in the EPROM photo has a leg bent out straight—we were testing the 2007 changes on a 2001 board just to be sure we didn't break support for AMD chips.)

 

EDIT: One other aspect of inventory management comes in with board yield. We had something like 1% to 3% fallout on our boards. The inventory leveling capability also allowed us to have the same number of each title in stock in the event that all of them sold identically. Anyway, you get the idea. It was engineering pragmatism. :-)

Edited October 26, 2012 by intvnut

[voltron]

 

 

any idea how many were made?

[+intvnut]

any idea how many were made?

 

How many of which thing?

[Rev]

What intvnut said. :-)

[voltron]

How many of which thing?

 

how many golden boys with the switches.

[+intvnut]

how many golden boys with the switches.

 

No idea. As I said, I didn't know about these until relatively recently. If I had heard about them back in the day, I had since forgotten about them. Chris or Roger would have to say, since I wasn't involved with installing the switches, etc.

[voltron]

The board design we used back then does allow four games in the 64K x 16 EPROM. Why 4 16K games instead of allowing larger games? The CPLD we were using could only capture enough address lines for a 16K x 16 game. IIRC, Chad was just going to tie the other two address lines off, but instead we decided to break them out to some pads and put some pullups on. That would allow us to build multicarts, if that turned out to be commercially interesting. It also gave us an avenue toward inventory flexibility, and the ability to make test carts like the Goldenboy. (I didn't know until recently, or if I had known, I had forgotten that Chris and/or Roger had made a couple testers like that.)

 

I've said several times in the past that with the EPROM based design, we had to have some idea of the quantity of product we'd sell before we went to the board shop. This is due to the fact that I didn't really have a strategy or mechanism for in-circuit programming. Chad pointed out I probably could have rigged something with JTAG and boundary scan on the CPLD, but that seemed risky to rely on.

 

To give a little inventory flexibility, I decided to use the multicart capability. This is an idea that occurred to me at the very beginning, and I personally thought it was pretty clever. If I (or anyone else using this design) was running multiple titles at the same time, we could program up multiple games in one board, with one game being the default. If it turned out that one title sold many more copies than projected, we could convert boards from some other title over to the popular title by soldering in a wire or two. This wasn't meant as subterfuge or anything, but simple risk management.

 

So, yeah, hidden in your 2004 boards are all four games from that time, just scrambled in different orders depending on which title was the "default" on that board. This was a risk management strategy, since we didn't really know if, say, Same Game would outsell Minehunter, for example. I think Chris did actually have to convert a few boards, so some of you might actually have wires soldered onto your boards to switch them from their build-time defaults. In practice, this hidden functionality hasn't been needed very much. Every title seems to sell out. :-)

 

Even better than the Goldenboy, I have a few of these kicking around. Each one is unique. (See attached.) Socketed, with a dip-switch installed. Also attached is a pic of some of the chips from my prototype graveyard. A few SP chips, a few unlabeled—dunno what's in those—and the SPB640 and SP0256-AL2 out of the Intellivoice I modified to be the breakout-board for developing JLP. (See here for some pictures of early, early JLP development.)

 

BTW, there are two major revisions of the board out there. One says © 2001, and the other © 2007. The main difference is that Vpp is tied differently. The AMD and Atmel chips allow Vpp tied to GND or 5v. We followed the Atmel data sheet when designing the board, and tied Vpp to GND. TI, Intel and several other vendors require Vpp tied to +5v, and in fact that's what the JEDEC standard tells you to do. So the 2007 revision ties Vpp to +5v. (That's also why one of the chips in the EPROM photo has a leg bent out straight—we were testing the 2007 changes on a 2001 board just to be sure we didn't break support for AMD chips.)

 

EDIT: One other aspect of inventory management comes in with board yield. We had something like 1% to 3% fallout on our boards. The inventory leveling capability also allowed us to have the same number of each title in stock in the event that all of them sold identically. Anyway, you get the idea. It was engineering pragmatism. :-)

 

 

I think you should change your name from intvnut to IntelliBrain

[DZ-Jay]

 

 

I think you should change your name from intvnut to IntelliBrain

 

I vote for that!!

[Chuck D. Head]

LOL, If I told you where I got it, you would not believe me, If I told you I got it free, you would not believe me.

You bastard! You leave me, with a bullet in my leg to be attacked by Cmarts rottweillers and then I get no credit?!?!?

[+cmart604]

You bastard! You leave me, with a bullet in my leg to be attacked by Cmarts rottweillers and then I get no credit?!?!?

 

:rolling:

[voltron]

You bastard! You leave me, with a bullets in my leg to be attacked by Cmarts rottweillers and then I get no credit?!?!?

 

Sending some drones to save you.

[voltron]

Well I going to say Roger only made 5, based on some forensic findings

Edited October 27, 2012 by voltron

[DZ-Jay]

Well I going to say Roger only made 5, based on some forensic findings

 

Apart from the fact that he made the guide and he made the carts... so he knows how rare it is.

[voltron]

Apart from the fact that he made the guide and he made the carts... so he knows how rare it is.

 

Well I did some forensics. The cartridge has a little sticker and it says 3 of 5. its hand written, so at first its easy to dismiss, but it looks like an important clue. In an unrelated previous finding I have 2 envelopes with the hand writting of the psychostormtropper. I asked a friend at the FBI forensics if he would look at the sticker and compare it to the hand writting on the envelope. And the hand writting matches, So another clue in favor of the case that roger only made 5 cartridges with the switches.

[DZ-Jay]

Well I did some forensics. The cartridge has a little sticker and it says 3 of 5. its hand written, so at first its easy to dismiss, but it looks like an important clue. In an unrelated previous finding I have 2 envelopes with the hand writting of the psychostormtropper. I asked a friend at the FBI forensics if he would look at the sticker and compare it to the hand writting on the envelope. And the hand writting matches, So another clue in favor of the case that roger only made 5 cartridges with the switches.

 

Wow, so case closed.

 

Now, would you tell us how you came about it? You said that we will not believe it... was it presented to you by aliens from another world? I'd believe it!

[voltron]

Wow, so case closed.

 

Now, would you tell us how you came about it? You said that we will not believe it... was it presented to you by aliens from another world? I'd believe it!

 

Technically its not cased close, since the little sticker is just circumstantial. Only thing I can say is the sticker based on forensic analysis was written by roger. The only way to have certainty is to hear it from Roger himself.

 

Well it was found by a friend of my. He buys "junk" and goes to estate sales, garage sale, etc etc etc. He doesn't buy video games but knows to look out for intellivision stuff for me. anyway he said he had spotted a nice intellivision box. I assumed it was a console box and said it was being sold for $10 (basically free) with a bunch of games. So I told him just get it for me.

[DZ-Jay]

Technically its not cased close, since the little sticker is just circumstantial. Only thing I can say is the sticker based on forensic analysis was written by roger. The only way to have certainty is to hear it from Roger himself.

 

Well it was found by a friend of my. He buys "junk" and goes to estate sales, garage sale, etc etc etc. He doesn't buy video games but knows to look out for intellivision stuff for me. anyway he said he had spotted a nice intellivision box. I assumed it was a console box and said it was being sold for $10 (basically free) with a bunch of games. So I told him just get it for me.

 

You're right, I don't believe it! LOL!

 

-dZ.