Sure, I’ve cloned TI TMS99xx-based systems before. There’s the ColecoVision and the Sega SG-1000. But those were all Z80s, and it’s important to diversify my interests a little bit. Luckily, VTech released a little 6502-based system called the CreatiVision, and let the schematics get out.
As always, we don’t do things because they are easy, we do things because we thought they would be easy.
What is the CreatiVision?
The simplest explanation is that the CreatiVision is a video game console. It was developed by VTech, and released under tons of other names worldwide, in no particular order:
- Dick Smith Wizzard;
- FunVision;
- Hanimex Rameses;
- VTech VZ2000;
- Educat 2002;
- Telefunken CreatiVision
These are all PAL systems, but there was an NTSC release in Japan as well, presumably under the name VTech CreatiVision. Dick Smith was an Australian/New Zealander chain of electronics stores, seemingly equivalent to an Oceanic Fry’s Electronics.
There were also some divergent branches on the family tree. Salora in Finland produced the Manager computer, VTech themselves turned it into the Laser 2001, and it seems like there may even be a Sanyo variant kicking around somewhere out there.
Salora, Dick Smith, and VTech had teamed up to offer badge-engineered systems before, with Oceania’s beloved VTech Laser 200. That in itself is a pretty interesting computer, and I hope to get to one of those eventually, but it is totally unrelated to the CreatiVision.
I am eliding a lot of the fascinating history of the CreatiVision in order to get to the cloning faster. If I’m missing something or have some facts wrong, please let me know.
The Control Scheme
Anyway, as I have implied a few times here, the controller “paddles” double as gamepads. Like the ColecoVision, they are meant to be operated in a sort of portrait orientation, with a joystick and two fire buttons. There’s also a membrane keypad on each paddle.
And if you put those paddles back into the case, they combine to turn into a membrane keyboard. That’s right, the keypad is complex enough on each to form an entire keyboard for BASIC programming and other computer shenanigans. Extremely cool – split keyboards are not just a modern mechanical keyboard fad after all.
Of course, they also sold an optional standalone keyboard accessory, which seems like the ideal way to use this machine.
On the side is a cartridge slot, which you can install a bunch of peripherals into. The CreatiVision offered parallel-port expansions, memory expansions, and even a floppy drive. There’s also a connector for a cassette tape deck, for saving and loading BASIC programs.
What’s interesting about the hardware?
Well, to me, it’s a novel machine, one that never reached North America in great numbers. I’ve certainly never seen a CreatiVision in person before. And with the keyboard, it’s a computer-like console, which means that it could run general-purpose programs like BASIC. That’s pretty much the reason why I embarked upon the SG-1000 clone, so that’s enough justification for me on its own.
Technically, I figured that the clone would be relatively simple. Like I said earlier, I have already made several TMS9918A-based systems, and the CreatiVision schematics are public.
However, those previous systems were all Z80, and this gave me a chance to cross the railroad tracks and play with the bad MOS kids from the other part of town. My only prior experience with the 6502 came from writing some Apple II assembly programs, and I certainly have never wired up its bizarre “Φ2” machine cycle stuff for decoding.
What’s good to play on it?
Good question! I had absolutely no idea, so I went to YouTube. For whatever reason – likely cultural imperialism or Australia’s well-documented video-camera-killing-rays – there wasn’t much footage of the system’s games. Highretrogamelord, of course, has a playlist of games. A lot of them appear to be clones of popular arcade games, which is okay in my book. Many games, like Auto Chase, offer some smooth scrolling, which is definitely hard to do on the TMS9918, and indicates some competent programmers at play.
It was harder to figure out from the videos if any of them were good, so I decided to try Crazy Chicky, a Pac-Man-alike, in MAME.
Not bad. Okay, let’s get started.
Why a clone?
Primarily, I didn’t have one of these, and I doubted I would be able to get one. Canada never got a release, as far as I could tell, and eBay prices were – as one expects – silly.
Sure, I could have hunted for awhile to find a working one, but the hardware isn’t the best quality. Being a cut-rate machine assembled in a low-end factory, the original Creativision motherboard had a lot of flaws: bad vias, poor-quality sockets, a flimsy board that breaks traces, a flimsy power supply, and case screws that short out data lines if you tighten them too much. Cheshire was dealing with a large number of these problems, which is part of why he asked me to take a look at it.
He’d also been dealing with the controllers themselves: together, they turn into a sort of split keyboard and otherwise are an enormous membrane. That membrane was wearing out after decades of hand-borne contaminants, and so his controller PCB reproduction was born.
As a bonus, I’m not at all the first person to be dumb enough to try this. Someone else already cloned the Funvision on a breadboard using the same schematics and a CMOS 65c02. Looks like it went really well in that case, and can’t possibly go wrong for me, right?
