Entertainment Computer System


The Entertainment Computer System was an add-on peripheral for the Intellivision. It was Mattel Electronics' second attempt at creating a peripheral to upgrade the Intellivision into a home computer, and was rushed into production to appease the Federal Trade Commission after they began fining Mattel for false advertising following consumer complaints about the repeated delays in releasing the originally planned Intellivision Keyboard Component add-on. The ECS includes the Computer Module, Music Synthesizer, and additional hand controllers; each sold separately. Any Intellivision Master Component is compatible and a requirement to use the system. A second requirement is a cartridge plugged into the ECS, although any ECS or Intellivision cartridge will do; pressing anything on the Intellivision hand controllers will then bring up the three-option menu of BASIC, CARTRIDGE or MUSIC.

History

When Mattel Electronics originally released the Intellivision in late 1979, they advertised that the Intellivision — unlike its primary rival, the Atari 2600 — would be upgradeable to a fully functional home computer via a hardware add-on accessory called the Keyboard Component, internally sometimes called the "Blue Whale" or the "Intelliputer". Many potential buyers were excited by the notion, and many bought Intellivisions on that basis alone.
The planned Keyboard Component would have offered a 16kB of RAM, built-in cassette storage for programs and data, an optional 40-column thermal printer, and a secondary CPU to run all of these expanded features independently of the Intellivision's CP1610 processor. Unfortunately, while the planned Keyboard Component was an ambitious design, it had some reliability problems that proved difficult to overcome, and it was far too expensive to manufacture and sell. The Keyboard Component — originally planned for a 1981 release — was continually delayed and pushed back as Mattel's engineering group, headed by David "Papa Intellivision" Chandler, kept going back to the drawing board trying to find ways to overcome these problems.
Eventually, complaints from Intellivision owners who had chosen to buy the Intellivision specifically on the promise of a "Coming Soon!" personal-computer upgrade caught the attention of the Federal Trade Commission, which launched an investigation of Mattel Electronics for fraud and false advertising. Mattel tried to claim that the Keyboard Component was a real product that was still being test-marketed, and even released a small number of Keyboard Components and a handful of software titles to a few select retail stores in order to support this claim. The FTC was not impressed and finally, in mid-1982, imposed a fine of $10,000 per day until the promised computer upgrade was in full retail distribution.
Mattel Electronics already had a "plan B" in progress. Increasingly concerned that the Keyboard Component division might never actually produce a sellable product, in mid-1981 Mattel Electronics' management set up a competing internal engineering team headed by Richard Chang. Ostensibly, this group was working on a low-cost add-on called the BASIC Development System, or BDS, which would be sold as an educational device to introduce kids to the concepts of computer programming via a simplified color-coded BASIC interpreter and an inexpensive keyboard. Only a few people within Mattel knew the team's real mission: to either fix the Keyboard Component, or replace it.
Chang's "Design & Development" group eventually came up with an alternative to the Keyboard Component. Originally dubbed the LUCKI, it lacked many of the sophisticated features envisioned for the original Keyboard Component: instead of a full 16kB of RAM, it only offered a mere 2kB ; the cassette interface was stripped down to the bare essential needed to save and load data, and there was no secondary CPU. Still, it fulfilled the original promises—turn the Intellivision into a computer, make it possible to write programs and store them to tape, and interface with a printer—well enough to allow Mattel to claim that they had delivered the promised computer upgrade and, it was hoped, to get the FTC and its $10,000/day fine off Mattel's back.
On the plus side, the ECS did include a built-in BASIC that was somewhat functional, if idiosyncratic and occasionally buggy, and a second AY-3-8910 sound chip which expanded the system's audio capabilities to six-voice synthesized sound and, when paired with the optional 49-key Music Synthesizer keyboard, could potentially turn the Intellivision into a polyphonic synthesizer for playing, recording, or learning music. It would also allow two additional hand-held Game Controllers to be connected in place of the alphanumeric keyboard, which opened up the possibility of four-player games.
In the fall of 1982, the LUCKI—now renamed the Entertainment Computer System, or ECS—was presented at the annual sales meeting, officially signaling the end of the ill-fated Keyboard Component project. promptly sued Mattel for $10 million claiming breach of contract, fraud, and nonpayment for the last 1,300 units. At least a number were modified A new advertising campaign was hastily rushed onto the air in time for the 1982 Christmas season, promising once again that a home-computer upgrade was just around the corner, and the ECS itself was shown to the public at the January 1983 Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas. A few months later, the ECS hit the market, and the FTC agreed to drop the $10K/day fines.
By the time the ECS made its retail debut, an internal shake-up at the top levels of Mattel Electronics' management had caused the company's focus to shift away from hardware add-ons in favor of software, and the ECS received very little further marketing push. Further hardware developments, including a planned Program Expander that would have added another 16kB of RAM and a more sophisticated, fully featured Extended-BASIC to the system, were halted, and in the end only a half-dozen titles were released for the ECS.

Hardware

Initially, at least a half-dozen ECS-supporting software titles were slated to roll out along with the ECS, with more to follow. Unfortunately, as noted above, by the time the ECS made its retail debut in 1983 a new management team had taken over at Mattel Electronics which was no longer interested in selling or promoting hardware add-ons, which they viewed as money-losers that had tied up too much of the company's capital for too little return. The Marketing and Applications departments were also not particularly enthusiastic about the ECS unit, since it really didn't add any revolutionary features to the system and it was a struggle to come up with game ideas that would justify requiring the user to have one.
As a result, the ECS was not well-promoted, and few of the planned software titles were released before Richard Chang's "Design & Development" group was closed down in August 1983, effectively halting further work on ECS-supporting titles. A very few titles that were already well in progress were eventually completed, but none of them made it to production before Mattel Electronics ceased operations in January 1984.

Released Titles

Melody Blaster was the only title ever released for the Music Synthesizer add-on unit.
Mr. BASIC Meets Bits 'N Bytes plays without the ECS Computer Module with BASIC commands support disabled.

Unreleased Titles

Number Jumble plays without the Computer Module.
Super NASL Soccer was eventually released as World Cup Soccer by Mattel Electronics' French division, which reformed under the name Nice Ideas when Mattel Electronics was shut down. World Cup Soccer was sold as a standard Intellivision cartridge but does support ECS 4-player with the Computer Adaptor and extra game controllers.

Keywords in ECS BASIC

The BASIC keywords built into the ECS, discussed at length in the manual, are a maximum of four characters long. Some ECS BASIC keywords are simply a truncation or abbreviation of the standard BASIC terms, e.g. "print" becomes PRIN, "input" becomes INPU, and "gosub" becomes GSUB. The ECS will display help menus covering its commands: type MENU 0 for monitor commands, MENU 1 for BASIC keywords, MENU 2 for BASIC functions, and MENU 3 for BASIC routines.
Eight sprites at a time may be SHOWn or GRABbed from a storehouse of such images in each individual Intellivision cartridge, and such sprites can then be manipulated by changing their colors, doubling their height or width, flipping their shape to a mirror image, creating motion sequences, and so forth. However, the sprites are only "borrowed" and cannot be integrated into the user's own program unless the same cartridge is onboard when the program is run.

Video

In BASIC mode, the display on the ECS is 20 columns across, and any text is shown in all capital letters. The normal text color is black against a green background. Color codes are used by the ECS to mark different elements of a program as each line is entered or executed. The color-coding scheme, which is explained in the back of the manual or can be discerned from direct observation, is useful in determining how the ECS understood any command. As to graphics, the background screen is composed of 240 "cards", in a choice of one of 16 colors. Eight sprites at a time may be SHOWn or GRABbed from a storehouse of such images in each individual Intellivision cartridge, and such sprites can then be manipulated by changing their colors, doubling their height or width, flipping their shape to a mirror image, creating motion sequences, and so forth. However, the sprites are only "borrowed" and cannot be integrated into the user's own program unless the same cartridge is onboard when the program is run.

Interfacing

For 600-baud cassette tape recorder access to load and save programs, the ECS has jacks marked OUT TO TAPE, IN FROM TAPE, and REMOTE. While almost any recorder with similar ports can be used, Mattel marketed the Aquarius Data Recorder for use with the ECS, and that unit has the appropriate sockets. To attach to the ECS, three straight-through cables are needed, two with mini-plugs on both ends and one with sub-mini-plugs on both ends. Tape access on the ECS is supported by BASIC keywords for loading, saving and verifying. The Intellivision hand controllers are pressed to advance through the SET-GO-SAVE/LOAD/VERF sequence. While programs can be saved and accessed without file names, file names up to four characters long are supported, and the computer will search for the named program to load or verify.
The printer interface, being the AUX jack, is the same as on the Mattel Aquarius: a mini-stereo socket with just 3 lines. The Aquarius printers could be used with the ECS, and came with their own cables. However, the ECS like the Aquarius used standard RS-232C serial signals, so it was possible to interface many RS-232C serial printers. The ECS/Aquarius used a 1200 baud rate, 8 data bits, 2 stop bits, and no parity; the printer needed to be set to these selections with no line feed, and Busy/Ready instead of X-on/X-off. Typical serial printers had DB-25 interfaces; some had DE-9 interfaces; and, some Radio Shack printers had round 4-pin female DIN connector serial interfaces. The proper cable for connecting such a printer is as follows:
MINI-STEREO PLUG DB-25 DE-9 RS FUNCTION
Tip/Center of Plug Pin 3 Pin 2 Pin 4 Data to Printer
Middle of Plug Pin 20 Pin 4 Pin 2 Printer Busy/Ready
Base/Outside Pin 7 Pin 5 Pin 3 Signal Ground
To access the printer, the command sequence is:
D=-1
CALL OUTP
and to cancel the access:
D=1
CALL OUTP