INTV Standard stick adapter

Preface

Face it, the Intellivision controller sucks. Not many people care for a controller that has sixteen directions if it's wretchedly uncomfortable to use. I'm sure many people would sacrifice the precise directional control if they could use a stick of their own choosing.

There are a few problems with adapting the standard stick to the Intellivision. Fortunately, they all have easy solutions.

The Intellivision Master Component doesn't have a proper controller jack.

(Use a Sears Video Arcade or Intellivision II)

The Intellivision family doesn't have a 5V supply for powering external gadgets.

(Run a wire from a +5VDC source inside the machine.)

The Intellivision controller has three fire/action buttons, while the standard stick has only two.

(Since the Intellivision is too stupid to permit button-chording, my solution to the three-button problem is to fool the Intellivision into thinking the third button is pressed when you press both buttons on the standard stick.)

Diagonals use an extra pin (see the Intellivision controller pinout). That is to say, North grounds one pin, West grounds another, and Northwest grounds a third in addition to the first two. Without grounding this third pin, the controller direction is actually North-Northwest instead of the proper Northwest.

(Getting around this is is the primary purpose of the adapter.)

Materials needed

• [2] 4.7 kohm resistor
• [3] silicon diodes
• [1] 7400 Quad NAND gate
• [1] 74266 Quad XNOR gate or another 7400 Quad NAND gate
• [2] 9-pin male Dsub connector (for joystick and regular Intellivision controller connections)
• [1] 9-pin female Dsub connector (for Intellivision port connection)

Schematics

On the Intellivision console side of the schematics, the number refers to the controller port pin number on an Intellivision II or Sears Super Video Arcade, and the color in parentheses refers to the wire in an ordinary Intellivision.

You will notice that the +5VDC source is not carried by the controller connection. You will have to go inside the console, find a point to get it, and run a wire or something to the outside world. Ground is taken to be the metal shield, and +5VDC is referenced against it.

As an alternative to the 74266 Quad XNOR, you may use another 7400 Quad NAND, which is more likely to be available in your stash of extra parts. All four gates of the second 7400 plus the one gate left over from the first are used to construct an equivalent XNOR.

The last thing to construct is a Y-adapter to allow connection of the standard Intellivision controller so you can use its keypad functions. Simply connect the pins of the female D-sub you plug into the console jack to a male D-sub jack, pin 1 to 1, 2 to 2, etc.

Jay Tilton
05/04/99