Hello from Canada! Overheating Intellivision 1

[Speedman]

Hello from Canada!

New here and had recently acquired an Intellivision 1 (also not long ago got 2 Intellivision 2's) with an issue where after playing for about 15 minutes the unit freezes (screen goes black and sound freezes on last sound). After restarting it, it just goes down hill from there lasting 3 min, then again less each time.

 

This clearly indicates that something is heating up and then going out of spec.

 

I've actually read about 20 different threads on here to help me out (which is most helpful and quite awesome!) and do have some home equipment for trouble shooting (soldering temp station, multi meter, component tester, oscilloscope, signal generator, power supply station, etc..).

 

So far here are the things I've done:

-Checked voltages of the transformer (seem OK).

-Tested caps on power board and main board (seemed to be ok but couldn't get accurate ESR value on my crappy component tester).

-Changed all caps on power board and main board with Quality Panasonic caps (Digi-Key has an excellent kit you can by that contains every cap you'd ever want, i'll post a pic below!).

-Changed voltage regulators  and 12Ohm resistor on power board.

-Tried playing Burger Time for about 15 minutes then cried.

-Also tried playing Atari in a fit of spite to make Intellivision jealous (pro tip from a member of here) but was also ineffective.

-Re-flowed all solder points on power board and main board.

-Re seated and cleaned contacts of STIC and the other 2 heatsinked chips as well as sockets.

-Created new power cable from power board to main board.

-Measured for any resistance on PCB main board around the power transistors near the cpu (as the PCB board was a little brown and this was a tip i read from someone on here).

-Added aluminum Heat Sinks to all remaining chips on main board that seemed a little warm.

-Tried Burger Time again and yet again cried for mercy...

 

I noticed that the traces on the main board are all bubbly, which is weird as the console was in mint shape. When i press on the bubbly traces, they do not crumble or collapse as they seem to pretty pretty solid and i tested continuity on most and it seemed OK, but this is still weird and who knows what the repercussions are when the traces are under load and under heat, maybe continuity is lost or resistance increases. Maybe this was due to humidity when it was stored by previous owner? I'll attach some pics.

 

At this point i ordered a broken Intellivision 1 from Ebay to scavenge it for parts (it looked pretty rough though!).

I fell like at this point it is either the traces on the pcb board or the STIC or ROM chips and wanted some input from the experts to see what i can check!

 

And thanks for the responses in advance, i really do appreciate it!

 

Here is my little home Electronics Lab i setup!

Edited October 22, 2019 by Speedman

[Speedman]

Excellent Panasonic cap kit from Digi-Key, has everything you'd ever want (almost):

 

Work i did on the Power Board and Main Board:

Edited October 22, 2019 by Speedman

[Speedman]

Pics of the traces of the Main Board:

 

[Speedman]

Double post somehow...

Edited October 22, 2019 by Speedman

[Swami]

42 minutes ago, Speedman said:

Double post somehow...

The white ribbon cable. Is that the power cable you replaced? How was it replaced?

[Speedman]

15 minutes ago, Swami said:

The white ribbon cable. Is that the power cable you replaced? How was it replaced?

Hey There!

 

I used male header connectors that i had previously bought in this little kit:

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B07C3TC68Z/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o09_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

I then used some jumper wires that came part of my Arduino kit and soldered them to the header pins and then checked continuity on them.

[IMBerzerk]

couple of things to rule out...

 

The bubbling in the board is common.  I have a few working boards with that same look. 

The white ribbon cable would not cause over-heating issues.  Over the years I've seen them working in various stages of de-lamination.  Was good to replace it, but not all that necessary unless the pins were all messed up, or the cable was torn.  Nice job though!!

The 'burn marks' you see on the flip side of the RF Modulator are normal.  That's just flux from the original solder... or maybe it was replaced once.

Adding all the heat sinks doesn't hurt, but is not necessary.  Never a bad thing to remove excess heat.

 

Looks like you have some burnt pins at the cartridge slot. 

Capacitors don't usually cause heat problems... they are usual casualties of heat problems by exploding.

Sounds like you have a transistor issue.  Might be hard to find without a proper oscilloscope but you can shotgun it by replacing all of them, or one at a time.

Which chip is hot?  If it's only one... which one?  Could also be the base the chip plugs into.  These boards are very old now.. a lot of stuff could be causing a heat issue.  You'll have to pinpoint the heat source with a laser surface temperature gun.... or if you're a FighterFigher... borrow the TIC (Thermal Imaging Camera).  ?

 

JR

 

 

[Speedman]

16 minutes ago, IMBerzerk said:

couple of things to rule out...

 

The bubbling in the board is common.  I have a few working boards with that same look. 

The white ribbon cable would not cause over-heating issues.  Over the years I've seen them working in various stages of de-lamination.  Was good to replace it, but not all that necessary unless the pins were all messed up, or the cable was torn.  Nice job though!!

The 'burn marks' you see on the flip side of the RF Modulator are normal.  That's just flux from the original solder... or maybe it was replaced once.

Adding all the heat sinks doesn't hurt, but is not necessary.  Never a bad thing to remove excess heat.

 

Looks like you have some burnt pins at the cartridge slot. 

Capacitors don't usually cause heat problems... they are usual casualties of heat problems by exploding.

Sounds like you have a transistor issue.  Might be hard to find without a proper oscilloscope but you can shotgun it by replacing all of them, or one at a time.

Which chip is hot?  If it's only one... which one?  Could also be the base the chip plugs into.  These boards are very old now.. a lot of stuff could be causing a heat issue.  You'll have to pinpoint the heat source with a laser surface temperature gun.... or if you're a FighterFigher... borrow the TIC (Thermal Imaging Camera).  ?

 

JR

 

 

Hey there, thanks for the reply!

 

The cable from the power board was replaced as it was delaminating as well and wasn't sure if under heat was opening a contact.

 

The cartridge slot pins was because I had to remove the RF shield which was soldered onto about 4 of those pins!

 

Power board voltage regulators and power transistors to the cpu were also changed but no difference

 

Thanks for the info on the traces, that scared me a bit!

 

I will actually be getting a thermal chepo camera soon for these type of things!

 

Also, I do have a oscilloscope and signal generator!

 

Thanks again for the reply!!!!

 

Also posting a pic of the power board as i had posted it before but somehow it's showing twice the main board above (this pic upload code they are using on this forum is very buggy!):

Edited October 23, 2019 by Speedman

[IMBerzerk]

On your main board, why are your main chips all chewed up?  Looks like a slip-joint pliers was used on them.  Not a good thing if any carbon casing under the metal was damaged.

 

Also, there is a pot next to the RF Modulator... Looks like a burn spot on the PCB.  Hard to tell with the lighting.  Some of the resistors next to the Modulator look rough as well... again, could be the lighting.

 

I've never come across a main board with serious heat issues, but over the years I've read that it does happen and is usually associated with burnt resistors, or over-voltage coming from a transistor.  So check all the soldering points of those components.  

 

Look here for service manuals and such.

 

https://console5.com/wiki/Intellivision

 

[Speedman]

1 hour ago, IMBerzerk said:

On your main board, why are your main chips all chewed up?  Looks like a slip-joint pliers was used on them.  Not a good thing if any carbon casing under the metal was damaged.

 

Also, there is a pot next to the RF Modulator... Looks like a burn spot on the PCB.  Hard to tell with the lighting.  Some of the resistors next to the Modulator look rough as well... again, could be the lighting.

 

I've never come across a main board with serious heat issues, but over the years I've read that it does happen and is usually associated with burnt resistors, or over-voltage coming from a transistor.  So check all the soldering points of those components.  

 

Look here for service manuals and such.

 

https://console5.com/wiki/Intellivision

 

Hey there,

 

the black heat sinks look all scratched up because there was mounds and mounds of hot glue that were used to keep the main chips down. I had to remove the glue on all of them to clean the contacts of the chips and their sockets, but it didn't change anything unfourtunetly. It's only cosmetic scratches to the oaint of the heat sinks that you are seeing there!

 

I think for the pot and resistors nera the RF must be lighting issue as when i see it in person i don't really see any heat signs.

 

I will check all the resistors on the board as i hadn't checked all of them, only the ones that i thought were suspect!

 

I'll also check out the link you sent me, thx again!

[Swami]

On 10/23/2019 at 12:29 AM, IMBerzerk said:

 The white ribbon cable would not cause over-heating issues.  Over the years I've seen them working in various stages of de-lamination.  Was good to replace it, but not all that necessary unless the pins were all messed up, or the cable was torn.

It doesn't cause over-heating, but the heat can cause it to warp and crack. On mine, the ten minute crash was due to the ribbon heating up and warping until, after about ten minutes, the cracked wires lost contact.

[Speedman]

2 minutes ago, Swami said:

It doesn't cause over-heating, but the heat can cause it to warp and crack. On mine, the ten minute crash was due to the ribbon heating up and warping until, after about ten minutes, the cracked wires lost contact.

Yeah exactly what I was worried about.

Mine looked like they were on their way out delaminating and I wasn't sure of their continuity under a heat scenario so I changed them out in case!

[HunterZero]

Bubbly looking traces on the Intellivision main board are completely normal.

 

The GI chipset is known to be susceptible to thermal faults.

 

I would try swapping the ICs out with known good ones one by one, starting with the RA-3-9600 SRAM, then the AY-3-8900-1 STiC, then the CP-1610 CPU, then the AY-3-8914 sound chip.

 

- J

Edited October 28, 2019 by HunterZero

[Speedman]

Just an update to this, i now have a fully working Intellivision!!

 

I had received a parts intellivision a few days ago that looked real rough (was marked as not turning on). The exterior was in horrible shape ( see pics below) and i was expecting the inside to be a similar story with corrosion and rust etc..., however when i opened it up i couldn't believe it. It was in mint shape!! Everything looked almost brand new.

Long story short since the board was so clean i ended up swapping the boards and ran some tests and it was good!

 

Here is a more detailed breakdown of everything i tried just recently and how i found out that burgertime was pretty cpu heavy and causing some issues!

 

I had always used Burgertime as my test bench since my Intellivision always locked up 20 mins into the game (from a cold start) and thereafter within 30 seconds after restart.

Played the game and within 20 mins, console froze. Hit reset and within 30 seconds it froze. Tried 3 more times and same. Then i got a little suspicious about maybe the cartridge itself was being susceptible to heat.

Quickly swapped for Astrosmash and was able to continue to play without issue, i couldn't believe it! After playing Astrosmash for 30min, and unable to pass the level where UFO's start attacking you (around 35k points), i had a 2nd copy of Burgertime so i decided to swap that in. Within 30sec, system froze again!

At this point i realized that the cartridges of both copies of Burgertime were fine and that the game was pushing something to it's thermal limit.

I swapped out the U2 Sram chip from my donor Intv, and i played about 10min without issue, so it seemed like the U2 Sram chip was the culprit.

 

I ended up swapping back the U2 Sram chip to the donor board because it was so clean, i wanted to use that board instead in my original Intellivision system.

I had also checked the AC voltages at the transformer plug and for the y/b i was getting 16.5vac on my original and on the donor transformer i was getting 17.5vac, so i also swapped transformers since it was closer to the spec of 18vac.

 

I did notice that there was some slight differences between both Intellivisions. My original, is a model 2609 (seems to be one of the 1st generation ones?). My donor was a model 2609A. My original main board was green and looked to have rectangular resistors while the donor one was a white mainboard with normal looking resistors.

 

Also the power boards are different on both. On my original, i had 4 brown ceramic capacitors but on the donor, these have been replaced by what looks like zener diodes (see pics below of side by side)? 

 

Also i noticed that on my original system, there are no cutouts for the remote side buttons, on the tray area to store the remotes, meanwhile on the donor there are cutouts (see below).

 

And finally a pic of my nice clean Intellivision 1:

 

Edited October 31, 2019 by Speedman

[Sinjinhawke]

Glad it worked out.  I have a 2nd Intellivision 1 that turns on but does not play games.   Always enjoy learning from other people’s experiences before I eventually try to tackle mine.   

[Speedman]

Also seems lately i've been fixing every single console i buy used LOL.

 

On my GameGear, had to change all the caps (old leaking caps).

On a used Atari 2600, had some contact problems with switches.

On a Atari 5200, the Ebay user said he was unable to test the unit and was selling it "as is" and neglectfully forgot to tell me that there were several controller ports pins that were missing as they had been ripped out. That was a fun repair, i had to use header pins and solder them into that tine controller port, it was a big PITA! I believe i can now join the Olympics for the sport of Contortionist Soldering and come out in the top 3 spots.

Colecovision that would not display properly (cleaned power switch, mainboard, contacts, power plug).

Sega Master system, power adapter center barrel plug was worn down.

 

And no the next one to move onto to fix is my Atari 7800 that looks like is not reading carts.

[Speedman]

3 minutes ago, Sinjinhawke said:

Glad it worked out.  I have a 2nd Intellivision 1 that turns on but does not play games.   Always enjoy learning from other people’s experiences before I eventually try to tackle mine.   

Thx!

It can be a bit of a pain in the ass, but once it's done you have a nice fully functional system and some experience lol!

[mr_me]

Did you ever check the voltages coming out of the power supply board?

 

Canadian intellivisions continued to use model number 2609.  They could be newer than a US intellivision model 2609A (probably not in your case).

 

Never noticed those cutouts before.  The controller cable comes out a different spot as well.  What's the serial number on that intellivision?

Edited October 31, 2019 by mr_me

[nick3092]

10 hours ago, Speedman said:

Also the power boards are different on both. On my original, i had 4 brown ceramic capacitors but on the donor, these have been replaced by what looks like zener diodes (see pics below of side by side)? 

 

 

Those are not diodes. They are axial capacitors. Substituting a diode for a capacitor generally will not work so well.

 

Also, I've noticed that on the power boards with the axial caps, they changed out the resistor to a beefier style, most likely wire wound. On the one with the disc caps, you will frequently find the regular carbon/banded resistor discolored from excessive heat.

 

It looks like you already replaced yours with a sandblock wirewound. So I'm guessing they also started to see that as well and correct it on later revisions of the power board. 

[Speedman]

8 hours ago, mr_me said:

Did you ever check the voltages coming out of the power supply board?

 

Canadian intellivisions continued to use model number 2609.  They could be newer than a US intellivision model 2609A (probably not in your case).

 

Never noticed those cutouts before.  The controller cable comes out a different spot as well.  What's the serial number on that intellivision?

Hey there,

 

yes checked the voltages coming out of the pins that feed the mainboard several times and all seem within spec.

 

Ya disregard the controller cables coming out of a different spot as i had just shoved the controllers back in without connecting the wires on the donor lol.

 

The donor with the cutouts sn is: 1073885

[Speedman]

53 minutes ago, nick3092 said:

Those are not diodes. They are axial capacitors. Substituting a diode for a capacitor generally will not work so well.

 

Also, I've noticed that on the power boards with the axial caps, they changed out the resistor to a beefier style, most likely wire wound. On the one with the disc caps, you will frequently find the regular carbon/banded resistor discolored from excessive heat.

 

It looks like you already replaced yours with a sandblock wirewound. So I'm guessing they also started to see that as well and correct it on later revisions of the power board. 

Ok, phew, thought i was going crazy when i saw those and thinking what the hell, how does that even work with replacing caps with zener diodes lol.

 

Indeed, the one that had the disc caps had a 12ohm resistor that had its ceramic coating cracked, so i changed it out to one that was rated double (4watts) and that sucker gets HOT! Like i was wondering if it was even normal as you touch it and it can burn your finger if more than a sec!

[nick3092]

54 minutes ago, Speedman said:

Ok, phew, thought i was going crazy when i saw those and thinking what the hell, how does that even work with replacing caps with zener diodes lol.

 

Indeed, the one that had the disc caps had a 12ohm resistor that had its ceramic coating cracked, so i changed it out to one that was rated double (4watts) and that sucker gets HOT! Like i was wondering if it was even normal as you touch it and it can burn your finger if more than a sec!

Several years ago when I recapped my Intellivision, I ran across those different boards, and the suspect resistor. did a little testing on it. Here are my notes if you are curious:

 

The burned R12 as is was still good from a value perspective, and the console worked with it in. But it was running ridiculously hot to the touch. If my Flir One is to be believed, it was greater than 248 degrees F. I checked and it was dropping about 4v across it. Which works out to about 1.3W or so. Given the heat factor and the fact the last one got discolored, I decided to replace mine with a 3W metal film.

[Speedman]

10 minutes ago, nick3092 said:

Several years ago when I recapped my Intellivision, I ran across those different boards, and the suspect resistor. did a little testing on it. Here are my notes if you are curious:

 

The burned R12 as is was still good from a value perspective, and the console worked with it in. But it was running ridiculously hot to the touch. If my Flir One is to be believed, it was greater than 248 degrees F. I checked and it was dropping about 4v across it. Which works out to about 1.3W or so. Given the heat factor and the fact the last one got discolored, I decided to replace mine with a 3W metal film.

Damn that's friggin hot! 248 degrees F, holly smokes lol!

[Speedman]

So you guys are not going to believe this but the intellivision that I had that I fixed, which was working for a while, has now stopped working again!

 

All thanks to the crappy power switch that destroyed the good working ram chip!!!

 

As a quick recap on this story, I had swapped the transformer from the parts intellivision which was a 2609a to my intellivision 2609 as the transformer was slightly more in spec, however I noticed that the switch was maybe 2-3mm higher and didn't think much of it.

 

Well that damn switch was not sliding on /off nicely (even though it was cleaned with a contact cleaner with a lubricant for electronics) due to being a couple of mm taller and since it stopped half way a couple of times, it shorted out my friggin RAM chip

 

So make sure that stupid power switch glides nicely.

 

So now when I turn the unit on, I get a black screen. On my other intellivision board, that unit has a ram chip that after 15 mins, the system hangs and freezes. I swapped over ram chips and the problem (black screen) was followed to the other board.

 

Interesting bit to explain though,

as I tried troubleshooting step by step and was able to come to the conclusion that it was the ram chip, I tried turning the unit on and off many times and always a black screen.

 

Even after removing the ram chip, cleaning it several times and the socket, as well as bending pins to see if it was a contact issue, nothing.

 

I came up with a test theory to try something as I have seen before in the past (rarely) that re-baking some chips can sometimes work. So I took my soldering iron, set it to 350 (yes I know silicone chips are made at 1000degrees), went on each pin and applied heat for 5 seconds.

 

Re inserted the chip and I couldn't believe it, I had burgertime up and running!!! Tried on/off several more times and it was still working.

 

Waited a couple of minutes and tried again after it cooled down and nothing again. Tried swapping to other board and same thing.

 

Removed ram chip again, set soldering iron to 400, re did the same to each pin, reinserted and boom, was working again!

 

After it cooled it no longer worked again .

 

Im thinking of trying to somehow apply an extereme amount of heat and see what that will yield, who knows maybe we can rescue some of those chips with a high bake point.

Edited November 5, 2019 by Speedman

[Speedman]

I also now have to make the hard decision if I canabalize one of my 2 intellivision 2 units to un-solder the ram chip, or buy another old Intellivision just for the damn ram chip....