Need Help With Intellivision 1 Controllers

IpsylosIpsylos
in Help Wanted!
So my mom has been looking for a decently priced Intellivision for a while now. FInally came accross one with 36 games (most CIB) and paid $40. To her luck, Advanced D&D was included and she nearly shit a brick (nostalgia obviously). So after tampering with the A/V connector I finally got a picture on the TV. The downside is that nothing is functioning beyond the console itself and the game.



Does anyone know what a common problem is, or how to fix them? I've looked around on google a bit but no dice.



Thank you

Comments

  • ShinjuShinju
    Take them apart and clean the contacts with rubbing alcohol. If that doesnt work then take the system apart and see if maybe they have come unplugged inside the console if it is a gen 1 or 3.
  • IpsylosIpsylos
    What exactly are the contacts? I've taken apart a controller and it has four layers of plastic sheets among a few other things. I've taken the top off the console and they were still plugged in, I swapped controllers to see if the second one would work in the first port, no dice though.
  • ShinjuShinju
    Sounds like the wires are bad inside of the cords.



    Try wiggling them around and see if you cannot get any response.
  • IpsylosIpsylos
    Nah, just wiggled them for a few minutes while hitting the level select button but nothing happened on either controller, how much would expect to pay for Intellivision 1 controllers? Sorry, ancient consoles aren't my market of knowledge.
  • ShinjuShinju
    Kind of hard to say, you will probably have to find a broken system and harvest them out of that. I really never see used controllers for an INTV III or Gen 1.



    There was an online game store that did repairs and had parts but I cannot remember the name, I would google Intellivision Repair and see.



  • IpsylosIpsylos
    I had and there were two I haven't done, strip the wires a bit and trim them, then put it back together. The other I read up on was tampering with the matrix sheets with an ink pen or something to re-write the paths or something another, but I'd rather not since I have 0 experience with repairs that specific, plus it's not my console.
  • N64 LoverN64 Lover
    I don't have any experience with Intellivision consoles but with some old consoles that I have come across, it's not always the controllers, it could be a faulty connection on the board. When you look at the console board look for anything that looks different, broken or corroded.
  • IpsylosIpsylos
    I haven't taken apart the whole console, just the lid, but I'll check it out later today and see if anything looks like it shouldn't.
  • RetroHackerRetroHacker
    Neither controller does anything at all? That seems highly unlikely to be an actual controller problem. These controllers suck, for sure, but they usually don't die completely. Usually it's just a couple of buttons that fail. If both controllers are dead, it's possible the sound IC is bad, since this is chip with the input lines on it.



    Easy enough to rule out the membrane in the controller, open it up and trace out which pins go to, say #1 button to start the game, and manually connect these two wires with a jumper. If the game still won't start, then you have a deeper problem than just the controller itself.



    -Ian
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