The Interton VC 4000 is originally a rebranded and reshaped Radofin 1292 Advanced Programmable Video System, released in 1976 (making it the second, if not the first, CPU and interchangeable ROM based console).

The machine is powered by a CPU and a GPU, both made by Signetics, an American chip maker bough by Philips in 1975. The APVS/VC4000 seems to be conceived by Philips to promote their Signetics chips, and was probably sold to various little electronics companies.

Claims are that Interton conceived the VC4000 before the APVS, but the release date is still 1978.

Various threads on Internet show different specs for the APVS and the VC4000, but it’s probably a confusion between the CPU speed and RAM and the GPU speed and RAM.

The specs seems to be as is:

• CPU : Signetics 2650AI : 0,887 Mhtz
• GPU : Signetics 2636 : 3.58 Mhtz
• CPU RAM : odd numbers, but as low as 87, 65 or 32 octets
• GPU RAM : 32ko

The GPU is able to offer a display of 218*200 pixels, with 8 colors, and monochrome sprite(s?).

It’s also in charge of the sound. It seems more able than your regular beeper, but not on par with the Atari 2600 or Videopac. (or, maybe it is but never shows, at the sound is exactly the same on the Arcadia 2001, and it sounds much better, tho still weak compared to other systems).

The input consist of 3 keys : Reset, Select and Start.

Plus two joysticks; they have an analog joystick (free on the APVS family, auto-centered on the VC4000 family) 2 action/fire buttons (which seems to be one button, so they might be internall wired together) and a 12 buttons keypad-like keyboard.

About 50 games have been programmed for the various systems release. Although Interton (or Interton fans?) claim that the Interton VC4000 is superior to the APVS, back in 1980, cart adapters were sold to play APVS carts on Interton VC4000 and vice-versa; furthermore, dump of games showed no difference between most games, the main difference being for some in-gam words changed to English to German, and the mention “Interton VC 4000″ added in few games.

Also, Interton claimed all games to have been programmed in Germany, but looking at the code in the game “Shoot out” bring up this text :

“CHOI ANDREW, HONG KONG, MARCH 31 1981. PROGRAMS BY THE SAME AUTHOR: INVADER, BREAKOUT”

The system was sold from 1976 to 1984; tho there isn’t any definitive date, as those date covers all licenced clones; I have seen the Interton VC4000 in a French video game magazine dated from December 1982; and I own a ITMC MPT-05 clone with a receipt from 1984 inside (tho it might just be some old stock; but the IMTC MPT series of clones seems all to started to sell in 1983).

From what I have found, there are 50 different games released for the system, tho some are available only on one family.

The families are :

1292/1392 APVS (6 uniques games + Hobby Module)
Interton VC4000 (a great winner with 10 unique games plus the biggest list of games overall)
ITMC MPT05 (not enough data)
Voltmace (5 unique games)
Rowtron (2 unique games)

There might be another family two French systems (Karvan Computer and Occitel OC-2000) but there is nothing but pictures to be found about them.

There is also the Hobby Module add-on (for the APVS only), that added the possibility to program games in Signetics BASIC? and more importantly, to record and load programs from a cassette tape.

Specs are even harder to find than for the main system, but this cart seems to add some RAM (tho, it might just be dedicaced to the tape data and not available for the program itself) and some mention an AY 3-8910 sound chip (a classic sound arcade chip found in so many computers of the 80′s and into some consoles like the Vectrex)

One notable feature of the console, aside from the analog joystick, is how to boot any game.

When powering the system, the screen will display raodom stuff; Reset mush be pressed to get a normal screen.

This is due to the weak amount of CPU RAM. Why so few RAM? Back in 1976, only some types of RAM could be adressed directly by the CPU;this RAM was obviously more expensive than other RAM; (it’s one reason why the Fairchild channel F got only 64 octets and the 2600 128 octets).

To get more RAM, one workaround (that got used also in the Colecovision) is to use few RAM to boot up the system, and load one instruction for the CPU to look in the GPU RAM to load data. The GPU RAM being obviously cheaper, allowing to get more of it.

Tho, probably from bad programming, later games carts not only have more ROM, but also up to 256 octets of RAM.

Most games are pretty typical of the era; Videopac/Odyssey² offer about the same kind of games, with a likely evolution from “basic” games to licenced-like games later in the life of the system, with clones of arcade such as Invaders.

Gallery:

source: atariage.com

Javatari is a new cross platform Atari 2600 emulator designed for the Web.

It’s great for displaying games running inside webpages. You can launch the emulator and load ROMs with a single link. And now you can play Atari 2600 games with touch controls on your Android/iOS device, even when offline!

New in Version 4.0:

• Support for mobile iOS and Android devices
• Finally enjoy Atari 2600 games on your iPhone/iPad!
• Customizable Touch Controls, with Haptic feedback
• Install as a WebApp on iOS/Android/Desktop, then run offline!
• Open files from local storage, iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox, web links
• Higher resolution GUI for high-density displays, Retina displays
• Menu navigation by keys. Easy GUI switches for most used options

Features:

• Cross platform HTML5/JS. Runs in any Browser, tested in Chrome/Firefox/Safari
• Finally enjoy Atari 2600 games on your iPhone/iPad
• Customizable Touch Controls for mobile devices (iOS, Android)
• Real Atari 2600 Console panel for a nostalgic feel!
• Install as a WebApp, then run offline
• Put Atari 2600 games in webpages easily
• Show games running with a single link to the Javatari page
• Drag & Drop system for loading files
• Savestates support. Export and share Savestate files
• Fully customizable Joysticks, Joykeys and Touch controllers
• Adjustable speed, Pause and Frame-by-frame advance
• Screen Capture and Debug modes
• Resizable Screen, Full Screen mode
• Javascript API for loading ROMs and Console control

Download: Javatari.js v4.0.1 (1265)

source: javatari.org

Javatari is now Javatari.js! The emulator has been completely rewritten, and is now 100% in HTML5 and Javascript.

Javatari.js is a multiplayer Atari 2600 emulator written in pure Javascript/HTML5 with no external libs.

Features and Highlights:

• Javatari is now on HTML5/JS! No more need for the Java Plugin.
• Runs in any modern Web Browser. Tested in Chrome and Firefox.
• Real Atari Console user interface.
• All major ROM formats supported.
• Save and load Game States easily, or create a Save Game file.
• Support for Keyboard and Gamepad controllers.
• Full Screen mode.

New in version 0.91:

• Keyboard controls now configurable!
• Starpath/Arcadia ROM format support.
• Full Screen mode bugfix.
• Paddle analog control with Gamepad controllers.
• Audio now mutes when browser tab is not visible.
• Better auto launch mechanism.

Download: Javatari.js v0.91 (2440)

source: javatari.org

Atari 2600 Repair

Defect:

• The second joystick port doesn’t works properly.

Replaced parts:

• Replaced 1 x 6532 RAM-I/O-Timer (RIOT)

Javatari is a multiplayer Atari 2600 emulator written in pure Java with no external libs.

Features:

• Client-Server multiplayer mode. Runs great in low-latency networks such as LANs.
• Drag&Drop and Copy&Paste of ROM files or URLs. Very easy to try ROMs from websites!
• Scanlines and TV screen emulation modes.
• Real Atari console user interface.

Changelog:

• New concept: Savestate Cartridges!
• Store emulator state as Savestate Cartridge files to disk any time (press F8)
• Savestate Cartridges can be distributed and loaded as normal ROMs.
• Savestate Cartridges can also be embedded as auto-load ROMs.
• Support for Starpath/Supercharger Tape ROM format.
• Bugfixes and improvements.

Download: Javatari JAR v4.1 (Needs Java 6 or greater) (1143)

source: javatari.org

Autopsy:

The HS2 is a joystick adapter to improve the playability (like a Arcade/Coin-op). The adapter is compatible with the consoles ColecoVision & Atari 2600.

Autopsy:

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This version of Coleco Vision SECAM (Péritel/Euroconnector) uses a PCB 91162 REV D which differs from the classical version with PCB 91209 because integrates an internal video encoder from Y (BY) (RY) to RGB which is separate from the motherboard.

This makes think that in theory all PAL versions that use the VDP 9929A with PCB 91162 REV D and RF output can be modified to have a RGB output signal by adding this external video encoder.

from Wikipedia homepage:

The ColecoVision is Coleco Industries’ second generation home video game console, which was released in August 1982. The ColecoVision offered near-arcade-quality graphics and gaming style along with the means to expand the system’s basic hardware. Released with a catalog of 12 launch titles, with an additional 10 games announced for 1982, approximately 145 titles in total were published as ROM cartridges for the system between 1982 and 1984. River West Brands currently owns the ColecoVision brand name.

In 2009, IGN named the ColecoVision their 12th best video game console out of their list of 25, citing “its incredible accuracy in bringing current-generation arcade hits home.”

Coleco licensed Nintendo’s Donkey Kong as the official pack-in cartridge for all ColecoVision consoles, helping to boost the console’s popularity. By Christmas of 1982, Coleco had sold more than 500,000 units, in part on the strength of its bundled game. The ColecoVision’s main competitor was the arguably more advanced but less commercially successful Atari 5200.

The ColecoVision was distributed by CBS Electronics outside of North America, and was branded the CBS ColecoVision.

Sales quickly passed 1 million in early 1983, before the video game crash of 1983. By the beginning of 1984, quarterly sales of the ColecoVision had dramatically decreased.

Over the next 18 months, the Coleco company ramped down its video game division, ultimately withdrawing from the video game market by the end of the summer of 1985. The ColecoVision was officially discontinued by October 1985. Total sales of the ColecoVision are uncertain but were ultimately in excess of 2 million units, as sales had reached that number by the spring of 1984, while the console continued to sell modestly up until its discontinuation the following year.

In 1986, Bit Corporation produced a ColecoVision clone called the Dina, which was sold in the United States by Telegames as the Telegames Personal Arcade.

source: wikipedia

Javatari is a multiplayer Atari 2600 emulator written in pure Java with no external libs.

Features:

• Client-Server multiplayer mode. Runs great in low-latency networks such as LANs.
• Drag&Drop and Copy&Paste of ROM files or URLs. Very easy to try ROMs from websites!
• Scanlines and TV screen emulation modes.
• Real Atari console user interface.

Changelog;

• Full support for the upcoming Java security requirements.
• Both all-permissions and sandboxed deployment options.

Download: Javatari JAR v4.0 (Needs Java 6 or greater) (1005)

source: javatari.org

Javatari is a multiplayer Atari 2600 emulator written in pure Java with no external libs.

Features:

• Client-Server multiplayer mode. Runs great in low-latency networks such as LANs.
• Drag&Drop and Copy&Paste of ROM files or URLs. Very easy to try ROMs from websites!
• Scanlines and TV screen emulation modes.
• Real Atari console user interface.

Changelog;

• Support for Harmony/Melody Cart flash memory and .cu images.
• Star Castle Arcade highscores now working.
• General performance tuning.

Download: Javatari JAR v3.40 (Needs Java 6 or greater) (1089)

source: javatari.org

Autopsy:

from Wikipedia homepage:

The Intellivision is a video game console released by Mattel in 1979. Development of the console began in 1978, less than a year after the introduction of its main competitor, the Atari 2600. The word intellivision is a portmanteau of “intelligent television”. Over 3 million Intellivision units were sold and a total of 125 games were released for the console.

In 2009, video game website IGN named the Intellivision the No. 14 greatest video game console of all time. It became Mattel’s first video game console, though it was their only console until the release of the HyperScan in 2006.

The Intellivision was developed by Mattel Electronics, a subsidiary of Mattel formed expressly for the development of electronic games. The console was test marketed in Fresno, California, in 1979 with a total of four games available, and was released nationwide in 1980 with a price tag of US$299 and a pack-in game: Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack. Though not the first system to challenge Atari, it was the first to pose a serious threat to Atari’s dominance. A series of advertisements featuring George Plimpton were produced, that demonstrated the superiority of the Intellivision’s graphics and sound to those of the Atari 2600, using side-by-side game comparisons.

Mattel Intellivision SECAM Motherboard:

source: wikipedia

Autopsy:

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from Secret Weapons of Commodore homepage:

Introduced CES 1978
Hardware 6504 CPU (28-pin 6502, 8K addressable memory, on-chip clock, IRQ line only) @ 1MHz, 6530 RIOT (64 bytes RAM, 1KB ROM, 2 I/O ports, 8-bit timer), 6332 ROM. Two ROM sockets; the 6332 is occupying only one of them. The 6504 is socketed; the remainder are soldered directly to the board.
Graphics and Sound If you can call it that. Four 7-element LED displays for the timers and four dome indicator LEDs. Piezoelectric beeper.
Eventual Fate Released summer 1978 in USA, UK and West Germany.

This chess machine is an 22 x 16 x 5cm (rear, approximately 8 x 6 x 2 inch; front is 3.5cm/1.2 inches high) machine, off-white (similar to early VIC-20s), with a dark brown base. The 7-element LEDs are in groups of two, one labeled “FROM (Time white)” and the other “TO (Time black)”; the four dome LEDs are labeled “Check”, “CHESSmate LOSES”, “CHESSmate IS PLAYING WHITE” and “CHESSmate IS PLAYING BLACK”.

The “keyboard” is a membrane setup (similar to the Sinclair ZX-80) with 19 keys (A-H, 1-8, NEW GAME, CLEAR, ENTER), but only 11 matrix lines (A-H and 1-8 share lines). A-H are also, respectively, labeled WHITE, BOARD VERIFY, CHESS CLOCK, DISPLAY TIME, STOP CLOCK, SKILL LEVEL, GAME MOVES, and BLACK. The rear plate reads: “Commodore International Limited / Power supply: AC adaptor model C160 / Power rating: AC 10V 600 mA / CHESSmate, 201490 01, made in Hong Kong / CAUTION: DO NOT OPEN MACHINE. UNAUTHORIZED SERVICE VOIDS WARRANTY.” This is printed in English, French and German. On the internal view, the ICs are, from left to right, the 6530 RIOT, the 6332 ROM (next to the empty socket for the option ROM), and the 6504.

The Chessmate was developed by Peter Jennings, the original author of KIM-1 Microchess, under contract to Commodore in 1977. The Chessmate’s hardware is in fact based on the KIM-1, but the ROMs are of course filled with Microchess 1.5, not the KIM’s monitor. This was the same version released for the PET; the empty ROM socket on Martijn’s board was intended primarily for upgrades to the chess program. The keyboard mapping is dissimilar to the KIM as well; some of the ports were actually used for sound, and Commodore made some rearrangements to the unit for ease of manufacture after Peter released the unit to them. While simultaneously released in the USA, UK and West Germany, it was significantly more popular in the latter country than in the others (presumably due to greater interest in chess there). Peter received a royalty for each unit produced, and still owns a first-production Chessmate (sadly non-functional) and the original KIM-1 used to create Microchess and develop the Chessmate’s custom version.

As mentioned, the Chessmate has very different ROMs from the KIM-1, and part of this difference extends to the RIOTs. The 6530 and 6532 RIOT “ROM, I/O and Timer” chips, a series of custom multifunction chips developed by MOS Technology, were designed as integrated-design cost cutters, reducing the chip count on the board as it gave the functionality of several chips and didn’t cost much more to manufacture than a regular ROM. Unfortunately, this has one important consequence: RIOTs are rarely transferable between units, because of differing CS logic between models, differing ROM contents, and some versions use fewer CS lines to get additional I/O lines.

This means that the RIOT you find in your Atari 2600 (yes, VCSes have Commodore-designed chips!) is not swappable with the RIOT you would find in a Chessmate, or in a KIM-1; even the KIM-1 by itself is bad on this point, since it had several revisions alone (my unit is Revision D). Martijn’s Chessmate has a RIOT labeled “6530 024 3279″, meaning produced on the 32nd week of 1979; this is one of the last 6530 RIOT production runs known, unfortunate because the later MOS 6532 RIOT is not pin-compatible with the 6530. The “24″ is also worrisome: this means there are no less than 24 6530 RIOT versions floating around in various units, and to the great despair of anyone wishing to repair a moribund representative of these intriguing units, virtually none of them are compatible with any other.

Download:

• Microchess (KIM-1) HTML Manual by Peter Jennings
• Chessamate Commodore Schematics & Manual (582)

Video:

source: floodgap.com/retrobits/ckb/secret/

Autopsy:

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The RGB cable of  Schneider (radiola/philips) VG-5000 computer is compatible with the VideoPac G7200.

from Wikipedia:

The Magnavox Odyssey², known in Europe as the Philips Videopac G7000, in Brazil as the Philips Odyssey, in the United States as the Magnavox Odyssey² and the Philips Odyssey², and also by many other names, is a video game console released in 1978.

In the early 1970s, Magnavox was an innovator in the home video game industry. They succeeded in bringing the first home video game system to market, the Odyssey, which was quickly followed by a number of later models, each with a few technological improvements (Magnavox Odyssey Series). In 1978, Magnavox, now a subsidiary of North American Philips, released the Odyssey², its new second-generation video game console.

In Europe, the Odyssey² did very well on the market. In Europe, the console was most widely known as the Philips Videopac G7000, or just the Videopac, although branded variants were released in some areas of Europe under the names Philips Videopac C52, Radiola Jet 25, Schneider 7000, and Siera G7000. Philips, as Magnavox’s Dutch parent company, used their own name rather than Magnavox’s for European marketing. A rare model, the Philips Videopac G7200, was only released in Europe; it had a built-in black-and-white monitor. Videopac game cartridges are mostly compatible with American Odyssey² units, although some games have color differences and a few are completely incompatible. A number of additional games were released in Europe that never came out in the US.

Download: Philips VideoPac G7200 Schematics (1588)

Playing Munchkin game:

source: wikipedia

Autopsy:

1234►

from Wikipedia:

The Texas Instruments TI-99/4A was an early home computer, released in June 1981, originally at a price of US$525. It was an enhanced version of the less successful TI-99/4 model, which was released in late 1979 at a price of $1,150. The TI-99/4A added an additional graphics mode, “lowercase” characters consisting of small capitals, and a full travel keyboard. Its predecessor, the TI-99/4, featured a calculator-style chiclet keyboard and a character set that lacked lowercase text.

The TI-99/4A’s CPU, motherboard, and ROM cartridge (“Solid State Software”) slot were built into a single console, along with the keyboard. The power regulator board is housed below and in front of the cartridge slot under the sloped area to the right of the keyboard. This area gets very hot so users commonly refer to it as the “coffee cup warmer”. The external power supply, which was different according to the country of sale, was merely a step-down transformer.

Available peripherals included a 5¼” floppy disk drive and controller, an RS-232 card comprising two serial ports and one parallel port, a P-code card for Pascal support, a thermal printer, an acoustic coupler, a tape drive using standard audio cassettes as media, and a 32 KB memory expansion card. The TI-99/4 was sold with both the computer and a monitor (a modified 13″ Zenith Color TV) as Texas Instruments could not get their RF Modulator FCC approved in time. The TI-99/4A did ship with an RF Modulator.

In the early 1980s, TI was known as a pioneer in speech synthesis, and a highly popular plug-in speech synthesizer module was available for the TI-99/4 and 4A. Speech synthesizers were offered free with the purchase of a number of cartridges and were used by many TI-written video games (notable titles offered with speech during this promotion were Alpiner and Parsec). The synthesizer used a variant of linear predictive coding and had a small in-built vocabulary. The original intent was to release small cartridges that plugged directly into the synthesizer unit, which would increase the device’s built in vocabulary. However, the success of software text-to-speech in the Terminal Emulator II cartridge cancelled that plan. Most speech synthesizers were still shipped with the door that opened on the top, although very few had the connector inside. There are no known speech modules in existence for those few units with the connector. In many games (mostly those produced by TI), the speech synthesizer had relatively realistic voices. For example, Alpiner’s speech included male and female voices and could be quite sarcastic when the player made a bad move.

Playing Alpiner Cartridge:

source: wikipedia

Javatari is a multiplayer Atari 2600 emulator written in pure Java with no external libs.

Features:

• Client-Server multiplayer mode. Runs great in low-latency networks such as LANs.
• Drag&Drop and Copy&Paste of ROM files or URLs. Very easy to try ROMs from websites!
• Scanlines and TV screen emulation modes.
• Real Atari console user interface.

Changelog;

• Applets can now be detached from the browser window.
• Once detached, all features are available including Full Screen.
• Full Screen is now multi-monitor aware.
• Updated, cleaner looks.

Download: Javatari JAR v3.30 (Needs Java 6) (1069)

source: javatari.org

Javatari is a multiplayer Atari 2600 emulator written in pure Java with no external libs.

Features:

• Unique Client-Server multiplayer mode. Runs great in low-latency networks such as LANs.
• Cheat and turn off Collisions. Finally discover the ending of River Raid!
• Complete Save State/Load State functions.
• Scanlines and TV screen emulation modes.
• Real Atari console user interface.

Changelog;

• Console Panel now shows the inserted Cartridge.
• Customizable, dynamically rendered Cartridge Labels.
• Built-in ROM information, based on Rom Hunter’s collection.
• Better auto-detection of Paddles and CRT modes per ROM.

Download: Javatari JAR v3.20 (Needs Java 6) (993)

source: javatari.org