All,

Some time back I posted some scans I made of TI's document SPPU004, the VDP Programmer's Guide.  In case you missed it, you can get a ZIP file with individual page scans here:

http://spatula-city...._prog_guide.zip

I could have sworn someone helped me convert those scans into a PDF, but if they did, I can't find it.  In any case, a couple people contacted me about scanning Appendix E, which contains programming examples for a few different microprocessors of the era (6502, 8088 and 9995).  I managed to talk my wife into scanning this appendix for me, since I've been so busy lately. This scan is actually a PDF, owing to the fact she scanned this with newer software.  :-)  While it might not be directly useful to the 99/4A community, I figure there is a bit of overlap.

Also, so that this post isn't a complete waste of time, be sure to check out Karl Guttag's TMS9918A and 9900-series brain dump here:  http://spatula-city....14u2c/vdp-99xx/

I posted that brain dump quite some time ago, but it never hurts to get another reference out there, I suppose.  Feel free to mirror anything from there.  I'm pretty sure Karl was sharing with the world, not just me, when he shared that history.

--Joe

Just a quick heads-up:  The big moving day is finally here.  The last few weeks, I've been sorting and purging and packing and sorting and purging and packing.  I've been interleaving that with a day job and shipping game orders.

Now the big day is finally here.  That means I need to take down the network tonight.  We should be back up Thursday or Friday, depending on how quickly AT&T gets our Internet connection back up and how quickly I get the Left Turn Only Information Services Department back up and running.  (Well, ok, just the web server—an aging AMD Duron system—but still...)

Anyway, I've asked dZ to kindly host the ordering page for me, so you should still be able to order Christmas Carol.  And, since I'll be off work for the rest of the year starting Saturday, your orders will go out quickly.  However, my domains— http://leftturnonly.info/ , http://spacepatrol.info/ , http://spatula-city.org/ , and so on—will be offline for the next few days.  We're coming back though once everything's good on the other side.

Thanks for your patience!

I'm in the process of moving the Left Turn Only World Headquarters from Arlington, TX to Farmer's Branch, TX.  In the meantime, I thought I might share some photos of various neat Intellivision related items that were kicking around the World Headquarters and are either now packed, or will be shortly.

I apologize for the blurry photos.  I didn't really take my time snapping them.  Still, you get a pretty good idea....

Hmmmm...   eBay Auction -- Item Number: 270849765539

I put a couple files up on Google Docs that might help people trying to get binaries working with jzIntv.

Instructions:

• If the file's name has any spaces, consider removing the spaces.  jzIntv has no problems with spaces in filenames, but the same can't be said of all the other software in the system.
  
• If the binary file is an odd number of bytes, it's probably a .ROM file.  (Exception:  If it's a multiple of 4096 plus one byte, it's a .BIN file that came from a particular website that added a mystery byte to their ROM images.)
  
  • Rename to with the extension .ROM and try the file.  If it works, stop there.
    
  • If not, let's try it as a .BIN, and rename the file's extension to ".bin"
• Look up the game title in the config list spreadsheet here:  Intellivision Game Memory Maps  Make a note of the memory map number in the rightmost column.
  
• Copy the corresponding configuration file from this set of generic configurations to the same name as the game, only with .cfg as the extension.

Example:  You're trying to get diner.bin to work.  Looking at the file size, it's 32768 bytes, so it's a .BIN file.  Looking it up in the spreadsheet, you see it takes memory map #2.  So, copy "2.cfg" from the ZIP file to "diner.cfg" et voila!  It should start working.

Example 2:  You're trying to get diner.bin to work, but its file size 32829.  That's most likely a .ROM file someone had renamed .BIN.  Rename it to .ROM and it should start working.