1983: Mattel Electronics Intellivision Computer Module Part 2

Everything plugged in and set up!

So first, it has been a while since my last blog, I had to focus on my studies and, well, I haven't got any new retro stuff lately!

Now I want to finish off my blog on the Intellivision ECS. It's actually the 50th anniversary of the BASIC computer language, invented in 1964 as a beginner's programming language that anyone could use. It was the primary software on almost all 80s computers, the most popular version was made by Microsoft. It slowly phased out of use with the introduction of more versatile programming languages, and better computers that didn't require the user to program anything. It's descendant still used today is Visual Basic.

This is all you get!

When you first start the Intellivision with the ECS, you get a choice to run the game cartridge, use the music keyboard, or run BASIC. If you click basic, the above picture is what you get. A blinking box, no Start menu, no launcher, no icons, no mouse, that's it! Just your keyboard and a blinking box for $450 (over $1000 in 2014!). And my god, look at the color! Black text on puke green background...who knows why they chose this color scheme.

The real power lied in writing and loading programs. The Intellivision loads and saves programs to cassette tapes, and you have to type in a command and go through an interesting process to load a program

Loading a program

Loading and saving a program, including the time it takes to line up the cassette tape in the right place, can take from 2-5 minutes, depending on the size of the program. Also, the ECS was actually a very limited and primitive version of BASIC since the ECS itself was the product of a frantic rush to appease a lawsuit. It didn't include as much as a full-blown home computer. By the way, I didn't misspell "Hello," 4 characters is all you have to name a program.

Displaying and running a program

By issuing commands, you can write, view, edit, and run programs Programs are written like this:

10 PRIN "HELLO"
20 PRIN "THIS IS A TEST"
30 PRIN "OF THE ECS"

The BASIC software reads the program in numerical order. You use multiples of ten when first writing the program so that it's easy to add lines later. Say you wanted to clear the screen before the program runs. You could add:

05 CLR

at the end, and it would read it first since 5 is less than 10.

I've done some experimenting with having a modern Windows 8 PC communicate with my old ECS. Obviously there was no networking or internet, so the only way they can communicate is by sending and receiving BASIC code. The videos I've made are of successfully sending a program written on the ECS to my PCS, and of a program generated by my PC being successfully recognized and loaded on the ECS. My goal is to be able to type out a program in a text file (because the ECS keyboard is hard to use, and the software is very primitive and tedious to edit programs), convert it into an audio file the ECS can understand, and load it into the ECS.

You can try writing and running BASIC programs yourself with emulators found on the internet today! It was an easy programming language to use, people could program a way to balance their checkbooks, do math homework, and do other simple tasks that PCs and phones have built in today.

Thanks for reading, hopefully I'll have something new for you soon!