The Intellivisionaries - Episode 1 - Now Available

[Nurmix]

Yes. SoCal was generous enough to set that up for us! Consider this a public "thank you", SoCal!

[focusrs]

I have to say, this podcast saved my Intelly 2 a horrible death!. I absolutely love Tron Deadly Discs, yet I was getting very irated and my little tron bastard not throwing this disc while I was running.

Then I heard the podcast and learned you cannot press the keyboard buttons while using the disc. son of a @*!%$. But you can use two controllers, bleh.

[rickreynolds]

I never had deadly discs as a kid, so I can't claim to know your pain! As I mentioned in the episode, my pain points were in the much slower paced Night Stalker. When I read that you can work around the problem via using two controllers, I have to admit my first reaction was to laugh! I've never actually tried it to see how difficult it is.

But I've used the trick to effect with keyboard mappings in emulation.

[Nurmix]

Haha!

...amateurs

;-)

[focusrs]

I never had deadly discs as a kid, so I can't claim to know your pain! As I mentioned in the episode, my pain points were in the much slower paced Night Stalker. When I read that you can work around the problem via using two controllers, I have to admit my first reaction was to laugh! I've never actually tried it to see how difficult it is.

But I've used the trick to effect with keyboard mappings in emulation.

I tried it, it sucks time to start hacking my intelly

[Nurmix]

I tried it, it sucks time to start hacking my intelly

Now THAT's a mod I could get behind. Feels like a potential show segment, eh Rick? What do you think, Focus?

[Burgertime]

And I don't think I noticed it back in the day as a hardware limitation. I probably thought it was just how the game was designed in a play mechanics standpoint.

[focusrs]

not being able to run and gun is crap. at least the older atari could do that without using two controllers Been looking at the controller truth tables on the outputs and can see why it wont let you run and gun with one controller. You almost can do it if you run one direction and hit the corresponding key on the pad that adds the one extra bit to fire in that direction (albeit the opposite direction mainly) it still will pause for a second when you hit the button though even in this scenario. the only way to truly run and gun is with two controllers.

The truth table uses a combination of the dial and the keypad so anytime you are moving and depress the keypad a new 8 bit code is generated that the intelly has no idea what it is for, which is why the player stops moving and you cant fire until you release the disc.

going to have to think on this one, a simple y cable will not work as you need part of the disc inputs for the keypad addresses. which is why it works using two controllers as the second controller dial is not being used when a key is depressed on that controller.

[rickreynolds]

I think this kind of cross-controller hack would require monkeying around with the internals of the controllers so that the signals from the physical disc, buttons, and keypad can be intercepted BEFORE they get processed into the 9-pin signals. After the inputs have been encoded into the 9 pins, the input is ambiguous as to what is happening. E.g. the pattern of 1's across the 9-pin connector is exactly the same for (Disc East + Keypad 4) and (Disc East). So you have to interrupt the button press inside the controller before it gets encoded and sent down the controller wire.

Basically, if you could take each controller's input matrix and separate out the keypad portion into a separate set of 9-pin outputs (making the output of the controller 18 pins) then from a single controller you could send the 9-pin action button/disc signal into the inty as controller 1 and the keypad signal in as controller 2. Then you could run-and-gun in games like Deadly Discs and Night Stalker.

[Nurmix]

You are right, Rick. The internal controller circuit matrix is designed in such a way that there are only so many paths the signal can travel. These matrices are 3 layers folded on top of one another. You would have to fabricate something with an additional layer that sent signals down the controller 2 path, say the disc signals, and the original layer would transmit the keypad signals down the controller 1 path. Of course you would have to disable the unneeded function on each layer too. Side button signals could remain on the original layer.

I'm not exactly sure how feasible this would be - nor how easy it would be to make all of this fit within the tight confines of the controller housing.

I may experiment with one of my extra controllers though, as the idea is intriguing.