This project is a sample firmware for a KB2040 Adafruit board that makes it possible to use an old Intellivision 1 controller with an emulator running on a PC or any other emulation platform.
The hardware is very simple. You just need a KB2040 and one original Intellivision controller. No soldering, nothing else is required.
Just connect the original connector aligning it to the lower strips, as shown in the pictures.
The brown wire on the controller connector is Ground and must be connected to pin 5 of the KB2040 board.
Load the sketch in Arduino IDE. You need to install the "Raspberry PI RP2040 boards" package, use the board manager to install it. Then select the Adafruit KB2040 board, compile the sketch and load it.
Also the "Adafruit NeoPixel" and "Adafruit TinyUSB" libraries are needed, you probably need to install them from the Tools / Libraries menu. Finally, select "Adafruit TinyUSB" as USB stack from Tools / USB Stack.
Refer to the Adafruit page for more informations.
Once flashed, the controller appears as a HID device (keyboard). You must map the keys to the Intellivision emulator. With this repository a Keyboard hack file for jzintv is provided. Refer to the emulator documentation on how to use it.
In the firmware, a very simple mapping is used:
- The keypad is mapped to keys from "0" to "9" digit plus "s" and "r" for clear and enter respectively
- The disk is mapped to keys from "a" to "o", in clockwise direction: "a" for N, "b" for NNE, "c" for NE, and so on, up to "o" for NNW.
- The side keys are mapped to "x", "y" and "z"
Instructions can be found here, see the section "Configuring jzintv".
TL/DR: from the command line, edit /opt/retropie/configs/intellivision/emulators.cfg, add --kbdhackfile=/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/intellivision/hackfile.cfg after -q or --quiet, copy the hackfile to the path, and enjoy.