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I'm hooking up the Intellivision.

Trekker4747

Boldly going...
Premium Member
I've got an Intellivision in my closet, and some games. I'm hooking the thing up and having some fun. Some good, classic, 10-bit fun.
 
Intellivision was me first gaming system!

Wonderful system, but I hated when I bent the little cards you slid into the keypad.
 
Damn kids with your newfangled Intellivisions. In my day we only had two knobs and the Y-Axis to work with. That's the way it was AND WE LIKED IT!

Pong.jpg
 
Well, I ended up not hooking the thing up.

Turns out that it's hard to hook-up a mid-80s gaming console to a circa 2002 HDTV without specialized equipment -namely a wonky converter box. And the games for the things must be somewhere in the parents' garage as I have the machine, but not the games. :(

Oh well. The thing is fun to play though.
 
You thought you'd be able to hook up an Intellivision to an HDTV without a converter box? :wtf:
 
Are we getting the terms "TV" and some of the monitors sold over the last few years confused here?

I never had an Intelivision, but what consoles I am familiar with from that period usually had RF outputs that generated signals resembling NTSC. For a while many consumer electronic retailers were selling high definition "HD Ready" monitors (with no NTSC or ATSC RF tuners) that many people were calling TVs. Those monitors would need an external tuner to display the output of a console that was limited to NTSC (approximate) RF output. Many people use such monitors with the HDMI or component outputs of DVD players, Blu-ray players and/or high definition cable or satelite receivers (some with DVR functions)

As the recent US digital TV conversion approached many retailers shifted to selling actual high definition Digital TVs (look for a "DTV" label) equipped with internal tuners capable of receiving NTSC, ATSC over the air AND ATSC cable (QAM). Of course as the changeover recedes into the past the NTSC funtion will likely start disappearing.
 
Damn techies and their LEDs and digital gizmos. Back in my day we had black & whtie TV with two knobs, and bunny ears. Also, just a few channels.

67772008.jpg
 
Are we getting the terms "TV" and some of the monitors sold over the last few years confused here?

I never had an Intelivision, but what consoles I am familiar with from that period usually had RF outputs that generated signals resembling NTSC. For a while many consumer electronic retailers were selling high definition "HD Ready" monitors (with no NTSC or ATSC RF tuners) that many people were calling TVs. Those monitors would need an external tuner to display the output of a console that was limited to NTSC (approximate) RF output. Many people use such monitors with the HDMI or component outputs of DVD players, Blu-ray players and/or high definition cable or satelite receivers (some with DVR functions)

As the recent US digital TV conversion approached many retailers shifted to selling actual high definition Digital TVs (look for a "DTV" label) equipped with internal tuners capable of receiving NTSC, ATSC over the air AND ATSC cable (QAM). Of course as the changeover recedes into the past the NTSC funtion will likely start disappearing.

The problem I have is more basic than that. The Intellivision's RF/convertor is one with the little prongs/forks on the end of it. No such connection on my circa 2002 TV set, so I would need to get convertor to connect between the Intellivision and my TV, or just get the old TV out of my parents' basement.
 
You need a 300 ohm to 75 ohm converter like Radio Shack's $7.99 model 15-1297 converter/ UHF and VHF combiner or $7.69 model 15-1296 converter.
 
Go pick up an old TV from a junk store, or a pawn shop. You can get them cheap as dirt now.

Do you have either of the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons games for it? I never got to play them, but I spent many hours as a kid looking at the ads for those in comic books. I always wondered if they were actually any good.
 
In seriousness though...

We have a little electronics repair shop here, where they fix things like televisions. You might want to checked around and see if any of your local small repair shops have spare parts that do the job for sale.
 
Do you have either of the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons games for it? I never got to play them, but I spent many hours as a kid looking at the ads for those in comic books. I always wondered if they were actually any good.

I had one of them - all I remember is that it came in a red box (I think it was the first D&D game), and that I could never kill the dragon on the highest level. I just couldn't shoot three arrows (which is what it took to kill the dragon) as fast as the dragon could move.
 
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