Best AV mod?

[ApolloBoy]

It's been a long time since I've attempted to do an AV mod on an Intellivision, and recently I picked up an INTV II with the intention of using it as part of my main setup. What's currently the AV mod to get for the Intellivision?

[+-^CrossBow^-]

In my opinion the Intelly 2 isn't worth it. I've tried all of the various different common composite mods with intelly 2 units and could never get a good result. I've even told clients I won't composite mod an intelly 2 because I'm that picky with the results and lack there of from the Intellivision 2 models. RGB is likely the best bet, but until that is really released and tested more, we won't know for sure.

 

[koolmoecraig]

On 10/26/2020 at 10:06 AM, -^CrossBow^- said:

In my opinion the Intelly 2 isn't worth it. I've tried all of the various different common composite mods with intelly 2 units and could never get a good result. I've even told clients I won't composite mod an intelly 2 because I'm that picky with the results and lack there of from the Intellivision 2 models. RGB is likely the best bet, but until that is really released and tested more, we won't know for sure.

 

Sorry to hijack but do you have a link to who sells the best A/V mod for the first Intellivision? Thanks

[+-^CrossBow^-]

Well, my prefence used to be for the ones sold by the guy in Turkey through ebay as that is what I installed into my personal system. However, that started to develop issues starting last year and I ended up being a bit surprised by the quality being done on that guys boards. (Or lack thereof in this case). So I tend to use the two below as they give similar results from what I could see:

 

This is the one I've installed the most on standard model 2609 units from Retrofixes.com:

https://store.retrofixes.com/collections/upgrade-diy-kits/products/intellivision-composite-upgrade-amp-kit-coming-soon

 

But I currently have one of these that I purchased sometime back off ebay and while they didn't work at all in an Intellivision 2 (black n white or no video at all) they seem to work well in the model 1 Intellivision. Again I have this currently installed in my Sears Super Video Arcade: Also the ones I had at first were on white colored PCBs and these appear to be on standard green so they are likely changed from what I'm using currently.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Intellivision-Composite-AV-Mod-Board-Kit-A-V/312823534342?hash=item48d5bc5306:g:JjMAAOSwpz9duOuJ

[+Lathe26]

I'll say that I prefer the ones from the guy in Turkey.  I haven't had any problems with mine but then again I haven't stressed it too hard.  All other mods are similar to each other in that give picture quality that is slightly less than the Turkey one but still better than RF.

[+-^CrossBow^-]

10 hours ago, Lathe26 said:

I'll say that I prefer the ones from the guy in Turkey.  I haven't had any problems with mine but then again I haven't stressed it too hard.  All other mods are similar to each other in that give picture quality that is slightly less than the Turkey one but still better than RF.

The one from the guy in Turkey did produce the best picture for about 2 years. Then I noticed one day that the picture was suddenly darker than I remembered? So I cracked everything open and checked the wiring..etc. It wasn't until I replaced out the AV board that the issue went away so I knew something was up with the actual board I had received from the guy in Turkey. I removed his heat shrink to look things over and found that the caps had leads soldered to them to extend them as it would seem my board was using used caps that had very short leads on them and they were no name brands I wasn't familiar with. I did replace out all of the caps with much higher quality ones I had on hand of the same value..etc and even checked out a few of the resistors that appeared to have drifted out of tolerance but could NOT get it to look the same as it used to no matter what. I now have one of the older Winz mods board installed and looks like it did before with the one from the guy in Turkey.

 

Now I'm sure I had one of his earlier and first revisions of his boards etc, but for the costs of his board and the very thin wire it comes with, I prefer to get one of the others now since in my case, the boards seem to work the same as again as you stated @Lathe26, they are all based on the same initial design that Joe came up with in the Wiki but with slight differences in the resistor values used. The Winzmod board I have installed had all of the SMD resistors reading bang on to exact values so they are or were using at least 1% resistors in their boards whereas most just use the 5%.