Just as the cartridge case, box, overlays, and manuals evolved to reduce manufacturing costs, so did the guts of an Intellivision cartridge. The oldest cartridges are noticeably heavier than later runs of the same game because the metal shielding around the PCB was removed. Ultimately, the Intellivision lived long enough to start using surface mount technology, rather than DIP chips.
The earliest games had heavy shielding |
It didn't take long for that expense to be cut... |
Quite a few games have diodes on the PCB |
Guess capacitors and diodes were expensive... |
Surface-mount technology at last! |
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