• Works with Intellivision I, II, III, Intellivoice, and the ECS
• Fits inside a standard Intellivision Cartridge
• Backwards compatible with the Intellicart
• Reads FAT-16 and FAT-32 formatted MicroSD cards. These are the standard formats for MicroSD cards when purchased, or existing MicroSD cards can be formatted by most operating systems.
• Menu software is user upgradeable.
• Menus and other screens are all controllable using either controller.
• GUI Based Menu Editor/Game Importer for Win32, Linux, and Mac-OS X.

The Cuttle Cart 3 is an Intellivision cartridge that can emulate other cartridges.  It allows you to play the games  on a REAL Intellivision - the way they were designed to be played. Multiple games can be loaded into the CC3, and the games can then be chosen from an on screen menu.Once the games are loaded into the CC3 there is no further need for a connection to your computer. The CC3 is self contained. Just plug it into your Intellivision, pick your game, and play.It can also be used as a development tool and distribution medium for new games, using freely available development software. Or you can download from the various Rom sites listed below.

The Intellivision was developed using General Instruments parts in the CP1600 microprocessor line. This system in unusual in that it uses a common address and data bus. ROM used in Intellivision carts was designed for use in this system (GI ROM). Unfortunately GI ROM is not compatible with the ROM found in most other systems. To work on the shared bus, they must have an address latch built into the ROM. In addition, to reduce the need for external chip select components, each GI ROM can be programmed to respond to a certain range in the memory map. While this is a handy feature if you have GI ROM available, it makes creating a new Intellivision cart without GI ROM rather complicated - and with the CP1600 line no longer supported, GI ROM isn't readily available.

I was looking for a nice project to give something to the classic gaming community, as I enjoy classic gaming and have made use of much of the information provided by other classic gaming fans. After reading about people's wishes for a device such as the Intellicart, I said, gee, that sounds easy enough, let's go for it. Unfortunately, things were much more complicated than I anticipated. The GI documentation available on the web is flawed in several important ways, specifically in the purpose of the ADAR bus cycle. This is a very important cycle which GI kindly listed as being a NOP as far a ROM was concerned. And they listed it that way in multiple data sheets too. It was battling against this problem that lead me to enlist the aid of Joe Zbiciak, Intellivision Guru and creator of the new Intellivision game 4-Tris and the free Intellivision emulator jzintv. Between us and the De Re Intellivision documentation of the T-card, we were able to figure out the details of the Intellivision bus codes, and I believe that Joe is going to be providing all the details in the future so I'll leave that typing to him. Joe provided a lot of help along the way, including all of the Intellivision software to test various parts of the Intellicart, as well as assistance in algorithm development and tuning for use in the Intellicart. Thanks Joe!

Of course several other people helped along the way. Tim Lindner wrote the Mac version of the Intellicart download software, and did an excellent job formatting the manual. Jason Willis wrote the Windows version of the Intellicart download software. Chris Neiman performed the majority of the playtesting of the prototype Intellicart. And William Moeller and Doug Parsons provided background information and support along the way. Thanks to all of the above people for all of your help in making the Intellicart a reality.

Ok, here's a quick photo progression of the Intellicart, at least of the stages I have left. Click on any of the photos to see a larger version.

The first task was to build a cart reader to test how the Intellivision carts responded to various commands. Here's a quick photo of my cart reader. Not directly related to the Intellicart, but since it contains the PIC that I originally planned on using in the Intellicart it's somewhat related.

This is actually the last prototype. Most of the work was done on a breadboard with an old Poker cart used to plug into the Intellivision with it's ROM removed and wires soldered to the former ROM's pads to connect the breadboard to the Intellivision. That went away when I started working with the Intellivoice as I kept getting the strange error of no voice except "Mattel Electronics presents." First I wire wrapped the breadboard circuit to create more sound connections, but still used the Poker cart to connect to the Intellivision. No effect. Joe suggested it was bus loading due to the long leads, so I wrapped it onto the Vector C64 protoboard - still no effect. I THEN noticed that Mattel changed the pinouts in Intellivoice carts. They grabbed two pins that were supposed to be ground and left them open. Those two pins were then connected to two control pins inside the Intellivoice, so any non-intellivoice cart couldn't activate the Intellivoice because they grounded these control pins. The Intellivision is just one annoying little trick or hack after another. Anyways, I opened up those two pins and everything worked fine. A lot of time and effort was wasted on this problem. Numerous routes were explored etc. etc. In the long run it made for some improvements in the Intellicart algorithms, but mostly it was just a large annoyance. I really wish I had inspected the carts earlier, but c'est la vie.

The other obvious part of the prototype is the microcontroller connected by all of those little wires. Let me give some advice on that right now: If you ever consider soldering individual wire-wrap wires to a fine pitch smd - DON'T DO IT. That was a complete pain. I had my friend with far more stable hands help me accomplish that, but it was a long frustrating process and in the end almost made the part unusable. Why did I do it you ask? Well because the silly little part is in a 52 pin PQFP package, and since that's a very uncommon package sockets cost around $70.00. I later found one for $30.00, but still, $30.00 for a socket? Anyways, that's why the Intellicart now resides on a PCB.

This is the hopefully final version of the Intellicart, outside of its shell. The heart of the card is under the heatsink. The two 8-bit RAM chips used in the prototypes have been replaced with a cheaper 16-bit RAM. I decided to take advantage of the new range of parts made available by printing a PCB. (Parts that were only available as SMD.)

What is the Intellicart?

The Intellicart is an Intellivision cartridge that can emulate other cartridges. It is designed to work with the Intellivision Lives and Intellivision Rocks CDs available from Intellivision Productions. It allows you to play the games on those CDs on a REAL Intellivision - the way they were designed to be played. It can also be used as a development tool and distribution medium for new games, using freely available development software.

Simple to use!

The Intellicart is simple to use. Just connect the Intellicart's serial cable to your computer's RS-232 Serial port (the standard serial port on PCs), plug the Intellicart into the Intellivision, and turn on the Intellivision. You'll see the Intellicart "Load Image" screen shown above. Now start the included loading software on your computer, select the game you wish to play (by selecting the .bin file which contains the actual code which makes up the game) and press the download button. The game is loaded into the Intellicart, and your Intellivision resets itself ready to play the game you just loaded. Now the Intellivision will act just like the cartridge of the game you've chosen is inserted until you turn the Intellivision off. When you wish to play a different game, simply turn the Intellivision off and back on. The Intellicart "Load Image" screen will reappear and you can select and download a different game.

Features:

• Software included for Windows 95/98/NT/2000 and Mac OS 8.1 or higher.
• Simple to use.
• Works with Intellivision I, II, III, Intellivoice, and the ECS.
• Same size as a standard Intellivision Cartridge.
• Individually digitally numbered.

*Newer Macs do not have the necessary RS-232 serial port, a USB to RS-232 adapter is required (not included.)

Advanced and technical features for developers of new games or download programs:

• 64K of 16-bit RAM - Enough to cover the entire Intellivision memory map.
• Emulates both GI ROM and 16-Bit GI RAM.
• Bankswitching to allow programmers access to the full 64K for new games.
• CRC-16 Error detection on ROM downloads.
• Auto baud rate detection - 2400, 4800, 9600, 14400, 19200, 38400, or 57600 baud.
• Sample source code included for development of loading software for other platforms and operating systems.

Known Limitations of the Intellicart

The Intellicart will not properly emulate games that use 8-bit RAM. The games known to contain 8-bit RAM (and thus known not to work correctly with the Intellicart) are Chess, Land Battle, and Triple Challenge (it contains Chess.)

The ECS game World Series Major League Baseball will not work correctly as it uses a type of bankswitching not used in the Intellicart. (This was not known at the time the Intellicart was created.)

Bonus - Free Games!

Compliments of the people at Intellivision Productions, the Intellicart shipped with six free Intellivision games - all ready to play using the Intellicart and Intellivision: Astrosmash, Deep Pockets: Super Pro Pool and Billiards, Night Stalker, Skiing, Space Spartans and Utopia!

Sold Out

The Intellicart is now sold out and no longer in production. 134 Intellicarts were sold directly by Schell's Electronics from 6/29/00 to 8/12/01, although one was lost by the USPS. After that retail sales were handled by Rob Mundo, who sold another 100 Intellicarts during 2002, for a total of 234 Intellicarts produced.

The Intellivision Lives and Intellivision Rocks game collections are still available through Intellivision Productions. So if you're looking for some Intellivsion fun pick them up and enjoy the games through emulation.