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Intellivision Joystick (Hacked a TV P&P)


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Dunno if this has been done yet, but I took it upon myself to make an Inty stick from the good ole Radica Space Invaders Plug & Play game.

 

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I thought this side view was a pretty good one. It shows the DB9 out (white cord) to the Inty, and the DB9 in (Black joystick plug) which has a Sears Video Arcade controller plugged into it. This passes through so I have a keypad etc. It's also connected to an AC adapter (center negative . . .) which gives me the volts I need to run the logic gate that allows for true diagonal control. You can also use batteries. Those are the options to power the original game which I utilized for my own maniacal purposes.

 

I guess that I should have made a video of gameplay, but for now, here are the guts. I had to cut my board with an exacto to fit it in place. It probably fits better than the original.

 

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I bought the wrong logic chip which complicated the design a bit. This chip requires pull-ups on the outputs, so there are some extra resistors in there to complicate things. I'm not sure getting true diagonal was worth it, but I learned quite a bit in doing this. The Radica game that was in there is now partially disassembled. I harvested some parts from it to help re-build their power switch into my design, and I removed their LED and its plastic case which is also installed in my stick.

 

Most of my time went into prototyping the circuits so I could be sure I understood what needed to happen. I'm not trained in this at all so it was a lot of individual research and trial and error that got me to a working unit. Here's a pic of my prototyping:

 

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Once I got that to work, I had to design a way to fit it into the base of the stick. It was a lot of careful and methodical work. I kinda thought it would be easier when I started, but thankfully, I planned very carefully and didn't really have to do any re-soldering. Here's an early version o my hand drawn design for the board that I installed. It's not correct in a couple places, but that's why I had to draw it up.

 

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It plays great. I got my highest score ever on Astrosmash on my first try with this thing!

 

Happy to answer questions on this if you want to try and build your own. I have a small pile of these games and may make a couple more of them if there is high interest.

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Thanks for the comments guys - I'm pretty proud of this. I was going to make a gameplay video last night, but I couldn't find my tripod - doh!

 

Here are the resources that really helped me complete this project:

 

http://web.archive.org/web/20060317145051/http://users.erols.com/tiltonj/games/tech/intvsticky.html

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/165229-the-intellivision-controller-matrix-guide/

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/212928-intv2-to-sms-adapter-build/

 

I also want to just put a plug in for user grips03 - he seems to know what he's doing ;)

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Intv controller has 3 DPST switches for button (S1,S2,S3). Are you wiring each button to work independently or are you wiring like SMS adapter in the link you posted?

 

I see 4 buttons on the controller.

 

They are wired independently from left its S1, S2, S3, S1. I opted not to use the logic gate like he did in the link as I didn't need it for this layout.

 

I REALLY wanted to make the "menu" button that is on the top function like 1 + 7 (pause), but it was a bit more wiring in a tight space - also, I got impatient to finish. Perhaps I'll figure out a smarter way to include that and add it in on my next attempt.

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