Intellivision controllers

[liveinabin]

Don't worry, I'm not going to harp on about that useless disc.

Thing is, I'm toying with the idea of rebuilding an Intellivision, in a smaller casing - with built in Intellivoice and detachable controllers.

My only problem is, what should I use for controllers?? The existing ones are famously bad. Ideally, I want to keep that 16-way control, and have a controller that I can mount a little 12 key keypad in (double points if the overlays go in too )

[Ze_ro]

Well, don't use a disc!! I think it would be possible to create a "normal" (that is, Atari style) joystick that can do 16-way motion (though a lot of it would probably have to be custom made).

 

And I have to say, fitting overlays is a must! I can't imagine trying to play Treasure of Tarmin without the overlay!

 

--Zero

[jsoper]

If you want a 16 direction controller, you would probably have to use an analog joystick (like 5200) and hook the pots up in a voltage divider network.

 

Use voltage comparators to turn the analog voltage into digital signals.

 

EX:

0 to 1v = south

1 to 2v = south by (southeast or southwest)

2 to 2.5v = southeast or southwest

2.5 to 3v = east by southest (or west by southwest)

3 to 3.5v = no vertical movement

3.5 to 3.8 = east by northest (or west by northwest)

3.8 to 4.2 = northeast or northwest

4.2 to 4.6 = north by northeast (or north by northwest)

4.6 to 5v = north

I'm typing this quickly and the scaling is a little off.

 

This is just for vertical movement, you'd need another comparator network for horizontal motion. Then a whole bunch of logic to convert to intv controller encoding.

 

Jay Tilton's web page has a spiffy adapter to use genesis controllers on an intellivision (or 2600 sticks if you only need 1 fire button). It would be a lot less work, and 8 directions is still fun to play

http://users.erols.com/tiltonj/games/tech/index.html

 

John

[liveinabin]

I think 8-way would be just fine

I don't have too many Intelli games, are there any that REALLY need 16-way control?

I did think of modding a NES controller, puting a tiny keypad on the right hand side (heck, I'm only making one of them - I could make my OWN overlays)