Intellivision A/V mod - guide and review

[bacteria]

I know this has been discussed before, however thought i'd share what i've done on the composite mod, and modding to my system, and review of the Beeslife mod:

 

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Credit to this site *Beeslife* for providing the guide for the composite video mod for an Intellivision console. I've had various email discussions with Oliver Puschatzki who does the commercial version of the mod, which he got his friends Joe Zbiciak and Tim Linder, who is knowledgeable on electronics, to assist him originally in the schematics for the video mod.

 

Tim Linder has a Wiki page which shows the schematics so others can replicate the work, the wiki is *here* . I tried to replicate the mod a while back and failed, now I have a little more experience, did it and made it work fine.

 

Basically, from what I understand, the video mod brings the amplification of the video signal right down to a range that's compatible with a normal television.

 

All you do with the commercial mod is to connect 5v, ground and the video in and audio in to the boards, simple. The item is small, and as you see in the pic, is small and very compact.

 

 

The item costs about £40 to buy if you want to (look on his website for details).

 

The image quality you get is similar to the RF quality, which frankly is fine, the little shadows you get on the characters were how it used to be in the old days, so very "retro" for memories!

 

If you have a French Intellivision, you can get RGB or composite out as standard, however these units are rare and very expensive - you can buy a normal Intellivision console for about £20-£25 normally, plus this mod £40, so about £60-£65 all in (or about £22-£27 if you make your own mod from the diagram and have the parts); the French console costs well over £100 if you can even find one.

 

On a personal note, i'd recommend this mod, "it does what it says on the box".

 

The diagram on the Wiki is this:

 

 

I found another diagram on the net for a different composite mod for the console but it doesn't seem to correlate to the board!

 

So, I have an "official" video mod, and have also got my own one working, as well. Didn't use a PCB to save some money, you don't need a PCB for your own use for this mod really. When wired up, stuck the capacitors onto cardboard to keep the whole thing in place. Doesn't look tidy, but is flat, the whole assembly is lower than the height of the chips nearby, which is the other reason for not using a PCB for my project - I wanted it flat.

 

 

The silver pot on the right of the pic above adjusts the brightness/contrast, BTW. You may also notice I have removed the old RF box - it isn't needed, and I don't want any RF boxes in my project as don't want to incorporate shielding on the console boards i'm using on my projects to reduce radio waves. The video/audio mod doesn't need the old RF box, so you can keep or remove yours if you like.

 

Here is my project so far, working as you see on an old 14" television, seen running off one battery source. The separate video daughter board will be located against the motherboard and the controller board i've made will fill in the gaps; all the spaghetti of wiring will be removed and left with clean wiring - that's the next jobs.

 

 

I promised Oliver i'd do a review of his mod, as this is (I am a man of my word). This mod he sells and the schematics gets my approval and i'd recommend it to others; you can make your own version for about £2, or buy a commercial one; up to you. The commercial one is ideal if you aren't good at soldering as there are only 4 solder points you need to do with the commercial mod.

[Rev]

I wish i knew more about electronics.......

[bacteria]

I don't know much about electronics but bits and bobs here and there, learning as I go.

 

System above is Intellivision, using copper sheet as flat heatsink, RF removed and composite mod in place (my version), remade controller for wiring to my own controller (not made yet), power regulators to get 16v, 12v, 5v and -3v working off one 7.4v Li-ion battery, and the game cart relocated using 7" wiring. The parts will be brought more together and mounted onto one flat board, wiring will be made neater, etc. The Intellivision is part of an 18 (or 17) original console system i'm making (Alpha Omega project) hence I want everything as flat and compact as possible. The system is at the stage at the moment that it could easily be made into a handheld portable console system, however that isn't what i'm doing with this project. This Intellivision modding work has proven very interesting and quite complex; had to work with transistors, resistors and diodes, as well as different step-up and negative voltage regulators. Fun!

[jaybird3rd]

Interesting. So the board sold by Beeslife is no different than the circuit on the Intelliwiki? I tried building that mod twice in the past, and I always got vertical lines in the video, but since yours seems to be working fine, it must have been something I was doing wrong.

[bacteria]

The result looks the same. Originally I got the vertical lines too, ladders, and I thought the video looked crappy - however, by cutting the video connection to the RF, the video quality increased to being rather good. The RF box only has 4 wires going into it; the audio is tapped off anyway, so if you're going to do the composite mod, I suggest just cutting off the wire to the RF.

 

It was suggested that using capacitors as low as 4.7uf might increase the quality further, however i'm not sure it does.

[intvdave]

It was suggested that using capacitors as low as 4.7uf might increase the quality further, however i'm not sure it does.

Did you try using the 4.7uf capacitors? Could you get a perfect image or do you have some ghosting?

 

Do you know how to convert the SCART output on the French console to Component or VGA? (Any connection the U.S. uses) That console has perfect output.

 

Thanks, David

[bacteria]

Actually, tried 10uf capacitors and they seem better on video quality than 100uf. Got a very good quality image on the circuit built that way.

 

Regards the French units - they are very hard to get hold of, and when they do come up are very expensive; or i'd have got one as it outputs RGB too. No idea how to convert to VGA although sure it can be done.

[tz101]

If the end result is no better than RF, then why do it?

 

All I want to do to my Intelly is a component mod, yellow for component video and red and white for the stereo audio channels. Can someone tell me how this might be achieved in a fairly simple manner?

[+5-11under]

If the end result is no better than RF, then why do it?

 

All I want to do to my Intelly is a component mod, yellow for component video and red and white for the stereo audio channels. Can someone tell me how this might be achieved in a fairly simple manner?

That's composite video (and audio), and I think the answer is in post #1. If it's not simple enough, find a friend who can help you out... or find someone here.

5-11under

 

edit: clarification.

Edited July 13, 2010 by 5-11under

[bacteria]

tz101 - as 5-1under said, you are referring to composite. Simple reason for doing this mod - new televisions don't tend to like to use systems outputting RF (coax) these days, mine for example says "weak signal or no signal present", send the signal via a DVD recorder (coax in, composite out) and it works fine once you search for the channel the RF signal is on - in the old days, you just set your game system to a channel number like you did for any television channel so was easy. The point therefore of this mod is to output the video and audio easily to a modern television. Old televisions, like the one in my video, didn't have composite input usually, but one single SCART plug to connect an old VHS player; however of course you can easily get a SCART adaptor for composite and audio input, which is what was used here.

[masseo1]

Hey there,

 

Thanks for the insight on everything. I have just gotten back into intellivision, and need to do a mod like this.

I have to get the parts and do it. (Radio shack used to sell electronic parts, so I need to get them online)

 

i found another hack... it seems simpler. I was wondering if anyone has tried it:

http://solarfox.triluminary.net/hwh_intvav_p1.php

 

 

Something funny... I actually hooked my intellivision up to a computer monitor in 1983.

I first hooked up my intellivision to my monitor a TI-99/4 monitor by Zenith, ... by merely tapping off of the video at the RF modulator, it worked. (I had no clue at age 12, but trial and error prevailed) .. I guess I got lucky it seems the monitor had the same impedance. The picture was perfect. No noise whatsoever; I was spoiled for years. The internet came about, and I never thought to share this info.

 

A few years ago, I got rid of my trusty monitor, as I hadn't had an intellivision in some time.

I wish I had my monitor again!!!

Edited July 14, 2010 by masseo1

[PacManPlus]

Hi Guys:

 

I tried this mod on the Intellivision II, and I am having some issues. I've done mods in the past with no problems, so I'm not exactly new to this.

 

After doing the mod in the first post (going by the picture), I get audio, but no video. I had to replace two resistors with 'close approximations', but I don't think that would cause me to get nothing at all:

 

 

In the first picture, the top red wire goes to +5v on the daughter board. The left red wire goes to the board labeled 'video'. the bottom wire is ground, and the right is video out.

In the bottom two pictures, I have the wire from the mod going to the pad directly next to where it's labeled 'video'

 

Can anyone see what's wrong?

[Akito01]

I can only tell you from my own experience in doing this same mod.

 

There were two reasons why I encountered a no-picture result during the process. The first was that I didn't have the circuit properly grounded. This was a deliberate experiment, because I was curious that since the RCA connector part was grounded, I didn't quite understand why you also needed the ground on the circuit. Turns out you do need it. That was interesting to me just because I don't know anything about anything, so I wanted to see what the result would be.

 

The other reason was that I tried cutting the leads going into the RF box, since I'd heard that disabling the RF would result in a stronger picture. Instead, I got no picture at all. I still have no idea why this should be the case, but in my experience, you still need the RF box connected and running to have a video signal.

 

 

 

Hi Guys:

 

I tried this mod on the Intellivision II, and I am having some issues. I've done mods in the past with no problems, so I'm not exactly new to this.

 

After doing the mod in the first post (going by the picture), I get audio, but no video. I had to replace two resistors with 'close approximations', but I don't think that would cause me to get nothing at all:

 

 

In the first picture, the top red wire goes to +5v on the daughter board. The left red wire goes to the board labeled 'video'. the bottom wire is ground, and the right is video out.

In the bottom two pictures, I have the wire from the mod going to the pad directly next to where it's labeled 'video'

 

Can anyone see what's wrong?

[PacManPlus]

Crap. I discarded the RF box.

 

Thanks for the reply.

 

Well, if anyone knows how to get this to work without the RF box, please let me know.

Otherwise it looks like I'm tossing this unit to the garbage

 

Bob

[Kakaboy]

I have done the same mod except I had to bump up the 22ohm resistor to 55ohm due to the top half of the screen tearing .

 

I have a good stable picture the only thing is when the bright colourd graphics/sprites are against a black background the leave a dark band horizontally with the bright grahpic .

 

 

This is a US version INTV and im using a step down converter because im in Australia .

 

BTW I also had to leave the RF module connected due to no picture issue .

 

Does anyone have any idea if this issue can be fixed ?

 

Thanks for your help

Karl

Edited January 26, 2011 by Kakaboy

[yell0w_lantern]

I read on one site that coaxial cable was recommended to do some of the wiring inside the unit. Anyone know if there's really much of a difference with or without?

[SlowCoder]

Poor Intellivision. Looks like a cross between Mattel and the movie "Virus".

[bacteria]

Don't worry, it will be unleashed by new life!