intellivision t-card...anyone have more details?

[CincYnoTi]

i have owned an intellivision T-card for a couple years, brought it to cincyclassic a couple times. it did not get much reaction because nobody seemed to know anything about it. i saw this in another forum

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/viewtopic.p...=asc&highlight=

 

Making a new cartridge with  

standard EPROMs requires implementing circuits roughly equivalent to  

what's on a T-Card.  

 

If you've ever seen a T-Card, you'll understand why it's no small  

challenge to squeeze this into an acceptible form factor.

i did a google search and only found a couple references... sounds like there are only about four known to exist.

 

there are example pictures at:

http://www.dsplib.com/intv/tcard.html

 

and the four known t-cards are listed at:

http://intv.mphokie.com/MasterList.php

 

i'm pretty sure the one i have is a test cart, since the opening screen looks like the MTE test cart. does anyone out there have any more info on these T-cards?

 

thanks

[Tempest]

They're basically large Intellivision prototype in a special "T" shaped casing. They're very rare and rarely if ever show up on ebay. You've got quite a find there. Do you know what version of the Diagnostic cart it is?

 

Tempest

[CincYnoTi]

Do you know what version of the Diagnostic cart it is?

 

Tempest

 

i don't know enough about the different versions of the diagnostic to know. i've plugged it into an intellivision I a couple times. i don't think i've ever tried it in an intellivision II.

 

what are the clues to telling the different diagnotics apart?

[Tempest]

Here's a link to teh reelased one: http://home.earthlink.net/~intvman/manifes...esto/mte201.htm

 

But I believe there's an earlier version that was only on T-Cards. Any Intellivision experts want to chime in? This isn't my area of expertise.

 

Tempest

[CincYnoTi]

i know i've gotten past the hand controller screen, and at some point i get to the U0xx screen where a failure is reported...so i've never seen the baseball game. so, either i have a bad intellivision I or this t-card was intended to be used on a inty II. i'll have to try this out again this weekend and see if i can make some photos.

[CincYnoTi]

in case you have never seen one of these t-cards, i posted a photo in this thread:

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=25324

 

it's next to a 2600 and 5200 cart, so you can see how big it is.

[CincYnoTi]

pic of the T-card board.

any of the markings mean anything to anyone here?

[CPUWIZ]

My guess is that the 4 digit numbers on the labels are EPROM checksums.

[CincYnoTi]

Here's a link to teh reelased one: http://home.earthlink.net/~intvman/manifes...esto/mte201.htm

 

But I believe there's an earlier version that was only on T-Cards.  Any Intellivision experts want to chime in?  This isn't my area of expertise.

 

Tempest

 

i ran the tcard on an INTV II and tried to compare the screens from the above link. the first screen to show was the one with the keypad graphics. you can see V3.3 on the left.

[CincYnoTi]

after pressing 1&9, the next screen is the gold box described as the second screen at intvman's site, which ends in a full screen of flickering colors. then i get screens 8,9,10, and 11 (F/B VIS). pressing clear must be the end of the test, because it just goes to a single color screen.

 

guess i'll try the 1&7 and 2&8 things next.

[badbrad]

Well this came in the intellivision lives newsletter today.

http://www.intellivisionlives.com/media/ne...rs/current.html

 

The game was loaded into one of the Intellivision prototyping cartridges - known as a "T-card"

 

Not too important, but I thought I'd mention it.

[chrisbid]

i got that today too, that was a cool story, those guys getting their own personal copy of SLam Dunk Basketball for 1000 bucks.

[CincYnoTi]

i got a nice email reply from intvman on this t-card. from all evidence, it looks like it is v3.3 of the mte201 test cart, something that may have been distributed in a rush in protoype form (the t-card) to service centers when they realized the mte201 would not work on INTV II's. this t-card does work with my INTV II. when intellivision finalized a version of the mte201 that did work with the INTV II, they released it in a standard intellivison cartridge, but it was version 4.1. version 3.3 has only ever been found in this t-card form, never in a standard intellivision cart. mine is the third one found, with the possibility that there is a fourth one that hasn't yet been confirmed as v3.3.