The Keyboard Component
The MIT Press eBooks · 2024
In November 2020, "decle" posted a message and video to AtariAge, an online forum for retro gaming enthusiasts: "BIG news, we have gotten a commercial tape working on Ron's K/C!We can now have hours of fun with Crosswords 3." 1 "K/C" refers to the Keyboard Component, which turned Intellivision into a home computer.The news about getting one to work mattered because it is one of the rarest machines in the world of vintage videogames.Only around four thousand Keyboard Components were made, and almost all were destroyed, repurposed, or recalled.In a later video, decle demonstrated software connecting the Keyboard Component to a modem.This allowed posting on the AtariAge forum "a proof of concept that Mattel could have done something similar in the 1980s if the Keyboard Component had made it beyond test marketing."2 Those familiar with Intellivision likely know it only as the Master Component, a videogame system that competed against the better-known Atari.However, from its inception, the Keyboard Component was central to Intellivision's philosophy, development, and marketing.Analyzing hardware and software that sold poorly, or was never released or completed, extends beyond winners and best-sellers to illuminate broader platform dimensions-for example, how second-generation videogame systems were caught up in the emergence of home computing and the platform futures of domestic technology.The rise of home computing in the late 1970s fundamentally influenced Intellivision.As noted in the last chapter, one can detect this influence on the Master Component itself-for example, with the console's complex handThe Keyboard Component