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New Versions of Intellivision and Coleco Color

G

Grandcheapskate

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I was in Micro Center the other day and saw reproductions of both the Intellivision and Coleco Color consoles. I know nothing about the Coleco but I do have the original Intellivision. These are not exact reproductions as the Intellivision does not accept the original cartridges and is smaller in size but seems to come with 60 games stored in memory.

Just an interesting and nostalgic item should anyone be interested.

Joe
 
The Intellivision used the 16-bit GI CP1610 CPU that dates from around 1975. GI designed the ISA so that only 10 bits of each instruction word were used and even had 10 bit-wide ROM. I fooled around a bit with the CP1600 CPU; it was blindingly slow at 1MHz and seemed to waste a lot of space in its instructions--some were 3 words (6 bytes) long. The architecture was similar to the PDP-11. R7 was PC and R6 was SP.

A curious beast. GI sold its microprocessor division to Microchip. The Microchip PIC is the direct descendant of the GI 1600 I/O processor--Peripheral Interface Controller (PIC) chip. GI PIC manual.

One of those odd things--few people remember the CP1600, but PICs are in wide use today.
 
I just spent an hour playing SPACE ARMADA and AUTO RACING prior to discovering this thread.

I still have the same Intellivision I had in 1979. Well, it's had the gubbins of a Sears machine in it since 1996, after the original gubbins gave up the ghost 1986 or do. Hence DUNGEADVANCEDAGONS.

Img0007_09-06-2013-640x480.JPG

Apparently from what I've read, the guy that designed the new miniature thing made decent replica controllers, intentionally, so that they could be used to replace original controllers. But he somehow bungled the electronics and they don't interchange.

I saw them at Target for cheep a couple years ago. I just can't bring myself to buy one though I probably should.
 
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I think the price on the Intellivision was $59.99 which I guess is pretty good since it comes with 60 games. I didn't see a price on the Coleco but it's probably the same. The bigger question would be the quality of the unit.

I have two "originals" here.

One was bought back in the 80s when a group of my fellow workers took an assignment in Venezuela. They bought the IT so they would have something to do. I bought it from them when they returned and a few of the games are in Spanish. Unfortunately, the machine has a habit of occasionally turning off during play.

The other was given to me at a garage sale. I don't even know if I have tested it and it may be the Sears model.

Joe
 
The various Flashback units (Coleco, Atari, Intellivision, etc.) are all using the same basic ARM board to drive an emulator. Only the plastic shells and controllers differ.
 
Grandcheapskate said:
I think the price on the Intellivision was $59.99 which I guess is pretty good since it comes with 60 games. I didn't see a price on the Coleco but it's probably the same. The bigger question would be the quality of the unit.

I have two "originals" here.

One was bought back in the 80s when a group of my fellow workers took an assignment in Venezuela. They bought the IT so they would have something to do. I bought it from them when they returned and a few of the games are in Spanish. Unfortunately, the machine has a habit of occasionally turning off during play.

The other was given to me at a garage sale. I don't even know if I have tested it and it may be the Sears model.
Click to expand...

Joe, do you by chance have the capability to make a YouTube video? I'd be very interested to see the games in Spanish. I've seen a lot of the different variations on some games but never anything foreign language that i can recall.

The Sears model (Tele-Games is the name, I think) looks very different from a real Intellivision. It's beige in colour and has a different case design. If I recall, the case and controllers were actually better designed. If it doesn't look radically different than an original Intellivision, it could be one of the many other clones, or even an InTV, which is actually the proper successor to the original unit.

Does the one actually power off during play, or just change to a black screen? I've found that in most cases, bad cartridge contact is actually the problem. These cartridges for whatever reason seem more prone to this than other machines'.

The failure mode of the one I have was to go to a black screen during play. It would do this sooner and sooner and finally stopped playing altogether. I always meant to find out why but never did. The power supply was not the problem because I didn't change that when I swapped parts with the Sears unit.

Matt.
 
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krebizfan said:
The various Flashback units (Coleco, Atari, Intellivision, etc.) are all using the same basic ARM board to drive an emulator. Only the plastic shells and controllers differ.
Click to expand...

That's one of the reasons I haven't bought one. I have not been impressed with the other emulators.

The other Intellivision emulators have been particularly bad. This one stands to be better, but I don't know.
 
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Chuck(G) said:
I fooled around a bit with the CP1600 CPU
Click to expand...

My first contract gig out of state was with GI in Hicksville to write code in the summer of 1978 for a wafer mapping system built
out of a GI GEMINI development system, then spent a month of hell in Chandler a year later trying to get it into production.
Somewhere, I have a tape with the homebrew floppy OS the guys in Hicksville wrote for it. That was the only time I ever used
a Xerox Sigma 9; trying to use their cross-development tools and was the closest I ever got to a semiconductor fab line. I still
remember all of the PDP-9's and 15's they had for testing DEC's UARTs that were made there.
 
The Inty was my first console as a kid. We had a Tandyvision. Now I have a Sylvania GTE Intellivision (with a Cuttlecart), but both of these are mostly just cosmetic variants compared to the Sears Tele-Games version, which as you say was a significant redesign.
 
Some friends had an Intellivision back in the day, I liked playing B-17 bomber with voice pack. Think I have a voice module for the machine in my stack of oddball stuff.

Not sure I would want to play with one now, but I did buy a Colecovision and a bunch of games a few years back. Same friends had all the good consoles, I just have an Atari 2600 (still do).
 
Chuck(G) said:
Wasn't that "GIMINI" for the GIC1600? Wonder how many still exist...
Click to expand...

If I recall correctly from my reading over the years, the Intellivision is highly based on the GIMINI, and in fact may be an exact copy with additional parts.
 
KC9UDX said:
Joe, do you by chance have the capability to make a YouTube video? I'd be very interested to see the games in Spanish. I've seen a lot of the different variations on some games but never anything foreign language that i can recall.

Matt.
Click to expand...

Matt,
Unfortunately I can't make videos (I am way behind technology wise...and loving it). But if I remember correctly, only the manuals are in Spanish and the games (screens) are in English. Luckily none of the games are too hard to figure out.

Joe
 
Grandcheapskate said:
Matt,
Unfortunately I can't make videos (I am way behind technology wise...and loving it). But if I remember correctly, only the manuals are in Spanish and the games (screens) are in English. Luckily none of the games are too hard to figure out.

Joe
Click to expand...

OK. Yeah, if it's just the manuals, you aren't missing much. I read the SKIING manual earlier, and quickly remembered why I didn't know the answer to the question I was seeking. The manual is horribly written. You're much better off just figuring it out by trying than following those instructions!
 
Chuck(G) said:
The GIC1600 was an MDS-sized box, complete with switches and LEDs. 13 card slots. Can't find a photo of one.
Click to expand...

There were likely multiple products named GIMINI, then. The one I recall reading about was a CP1610 based video game machine, meant to demonstrate the GI video and sound chipset, as well as the CP1610 uP.
 
Something I remember thinking from a very long time ago, is that C64 cartridges are eerily similar to Intellivision cartridges. I should open two and see why I thought that. Clearly the pinouts must be different. Maybe just the board form factor is the same.
 
My Uncle had a printing/color business back in the 1970s/1980s and he did a lot of work for Mattel, including the boxes for the Intellevision (before the work was farmed out to China). Mattel has a Employee Toy that was open only one day a week (or one day a month) that Mattel Employees were allowed to enter and buy Mattel Products at amazing prices. Some were discontinued, some were future products, and some were current products that were in high demand and impossible to find in stores. There was a limit on how many of each an employee could purchase. Because of my Uncle's Business' importance to Mattl (his shop was across the parking lot from Mattel, he and his employees were allowed to enter the Mattel Employee Store when it was open.

He bought some Intellevision consoles, and bags of games. I have his original Intellevision console, and a grocery bag of games. Some of which are duplicates, and have never even been opened.
 
I'll never forget early 1984 when all the stores had 55 gallon drums full of loose cartridges for $.50/each.
 
Chuck(G) said:
The Intellivision used the 16-bit GI CP1610 CPU that dates from around 1975. GI designed the ISA so that only 10 bits of each instruction word were used and even had 10 bit-wide ROM. I fooled around a bit with the CP1600 CPU; it was blindingly slow at 1MHz and seemed to waste a lot of space in its instructions--some were 3 words (6 bytes) long.
Click to expand...

Thank you for confirming what I thought I heard the Blue Sky Rangers mention in a talk they gave a decade ago. The 10-bit thing I can forgive, but the 3-word-long instructions are unforgivable. I'm betting this made ROM carts overall more expensive for the Intellivision as a result, needing more ROM space for code.
 
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