Intellivision Controller Interface

[Ixliam]

After building my mame cabinet, I thought it would be nice to be able to play Intellivision games on it as well. I dug around on the net and found pinouts for the controllers, which use a interesting numeric keypad along with a 16 direction disc direction pad. The problem is that on pure diagonals, it connects three pins together, but the Nostalgia emulator only takes two input. There have been Intellivision to PC interfaces built commercially, but at present none are available. So, here is my circuit diagram that I came up with **UNTESTED** that should allow me to hook my Intellivision controllers up to my iPAC. I hope to get the parts in within the week and have at least a single controller interface constructed.

The pinouts and info on the controllers can be found here at http://users.erols.com/tiltonj/games/tech/intvcont.html

I plan on using quad triple input AND gate chips and quad XOR gate chips. Again, this diagram has not been tested so if you build it before me and blow up anything, I am not responsible.



It will be better if you click to view the image by itself or save it out on your drive.

Brad

[jcroach]

Hey,  Did you ever build this?  Can we get a status report?

[telengard]

Hey,  Did you ever build this?  Can we get a status report?

Not to take away from the above design, but I found an adaptor that supports this.  I was going to get one before xmas but I guess the company had issues w/ the manufacturer.  Here's the link:

http://www.sealiecomputing.com/retrozone/index.html.  I started to build a generic contraption to handle all of these controllers but have only got as far as supporting Atari joysticks.  Too many projects, too little time...

[Stingray]

Okaygoing in the other direction: I like building arcade controls for my old systems. After I finish my current Colecovision project, an INTV controller will be next. My question is, given that the INTV is 16 way, what if any arcade joystick could be hacked to it?

-S

[Kremmit]

An analog stick would probably be the easiest.

Or, a 49 way could theoretically support 24 discreet directions, as the "49 ways" are really the boxes in a 7x7 grid.  There are 24 boxes in the outside ring on the grid, see 1st pic.  Now, look at the 2nd pic:  make each red box code for a discreet direction.  Then, the blue corner boxes, AND their adjacent blue boxes all code to the diagonal.  Maybe the green box too, I dunno.  The corners would be a little over emphasized.

[Jakobud]

Not to steal your thunder or anything (cause coming up with your own wiring setup is above my skill), nut there is this plug-n-play USB interface wiring kit you can get:

http://www.sealiecomputing.com/retrozone/intellivision.html

Only $17 for the wiring kit, with a pre-programmed PIC.

I just got a couple SNES wiring kits from this guy.  Good service here

[Kremmit]

Jakobud:  That's the same site Telengard linked to, above.

[Stingray]

An analog stick would probably be the easiest.

Or, a 49 way could theoretically support 24 discreet directions, as the "49 ways" are really the boxes in a 7x7 grid.  There are 24 boxes in the outside ring on the grid, see 1st pic.  Now, look at the 2nd pic:  make each red box code for a discreet direction.  Then, the blue corner boxes, AND their adjacent blue boxes all code to the diagonal.  Maybe the green box too, I dunno.  The corners would be a little over emphasized.

Hmm, I've never even seen a 49 way in person and have no idea how it hooks up. I may have to see if I can google up some pictures to clarify this a bit.

-S

[jcroach]

I just got a couple SNES wiring kits from this guy.

[Kremmit]

There are easy interfaces for PC use for an analog or 49way, see http://dave.bit2000.com.   But to hook them to an Intellivision, you'd have to design your own interface circuit.  That's beyond me.  Here's a couple links to 49 way info, if you decide to try it:

http://dave.bit2000.com/SJCdoc.html
http://www.urebelscum.speedhost.com/49waySticks.html 

[Stingray]

Maybe, I'm missing something. I see that the 49 way is treated as 8 keys by an encoder. Not sure how one would go about getting the other 8 directions out of it. Anyone?

-S

[shawnzilla]

BTW, I just got an email back from Shiny Technologies regarding their interface (I already have one, but wanted to check for you). He said that they are planning on making more of them, but are trying to decide at the moment if they should do another full run or if they should make one whenever an order comes in (if they do this, they'll raise the price).

[Kremmit]

Maybe, I'm missing something. I see that the 49 way is treated as 8 keys by an encoder. Not sure how one would go about getting the other 8 directions out of it. Anyone?

Which encoder treats it as 8 keys?  My understanding is that the SJC reports it to Windows as an analog stick. 

Oh, I see.  You're referring to URebel's page, where it says:

Otherwise, the two 49-way sticks work much the the same way. Each axis has 3 optical sensors, each with it's own pin for the joystick output. Each axis' circuit tracks which side of center the stick is located, giving a fourth output pin per axis; the total is like 8 switches per joystick.

There's no encoder there, that's just how the stick tells whatever it's hooked to which of the 49 possible positions it's in.

Here's the key to understanding that (from the same page):

A centered williams outputs no current, current, current, current, no current, current, current, current (or NC C C C NC C C C; or 01110111)

Each "current / no current" reading is the reading from 1 of the 8 "switches".  Depending on which "switches" report current, you know which of the 49 possible outputs the joystick is sending.  It's essentially 8-bit binary data!- which is why Robin also lists the output as 01110111.  To build an interface, for your Intellivision, you would need a circuit that would:

• read the current/no current (binary) data the joystick is outputting
• decide which of the 16 available Intellivision directions that most closely corresponds to (see grid, in my earlier post above)
• encode that direction into "Intellivision format" and send it down the line to your console

Which doesn't sound outrageously difficult for someone that understands "Intellivision format" and electronic circuits.  Unfortunately, I have only the most basic electronic knowlege, and don't know jack about the signals an original Intellivision controller sent, so that's as far as I can take it.  Maybe one of the more electronically inclined members would be interested in circuit design?

[Stingray]

To be perfectly honest I haven't even taken apart an INTV controller and taken a look inside yet. I'll have to buy a spare first, I've only got the two that came with my system and I don't want to take those apart. I need tofinish up my  Colecovision project first, and then I'll try to round up a loose INTV controller to disect. After I have a better idae of what's actually going on in there I may be able to come up with another way to go about this.

-S