ppelleti

My experience, on Mac OS X and Linux, with the four dri_n.txt files that come with jzIntv, is that iconv successfully converts all of the CP437 characters that are above the ASCII range (i. e. those with the hi bit set). In my experience, iconv does not convert the characters below the printable ASCII range (i. e. control characters), even though those are printable characters in CP437. This is why I pipe the output of iconv into tr: iconv -f cp437 -t utf-8 dri_6.txt | tr '\020\021\036\037\026' '><^v-' > dri_6-utf8.txt The five characters in question are four arrow heads, plus "black rectangle". I replace these with ASCII characters, rather than Unicode characters, because the suggested Unicode replacements (at least the ones given on Wikipedia) are double width characters (►, ◄, ▲, ▼, and ▬), which would mess up the formatting. So, I used ASCII characters, since those are single-width. That's cool! Personally, I prefer having a text file I can view in Emacs, or with "less" on the command line. But I can see how HTML would be a useful format for many people.

Then I guess I'm not understanding your post. I'm using "iconv -f cp437 -t utf-8" and it sounded like you were using "iconv -t utf-8 -f cp437".

Does it really matter which order the "-t" and "-f" arguments come in? Seems like it would be the same either way.

A slight update: My original command missed a character used in drawing the Centronics parallel port in dri_6.txt. So, my new recommended command is: iconv -f cp437 -t utf-8 dri_6.txt | tr '\020\021\036\037\026' '><^v-' > dri_6-utf8.txt

mr_me already touched on this, but one of the big factors is ROM size. Early Intellivision games were 4K x 10 bits, 6K x 10 bits, or 8K x 10 bits, with some of the later games getting up to 16K x 10 bits. Most of today's homebrews (especially the good ones) are much larger than that. For example, Sydney Hunter and the Sacred Tribe is 41K x 16 bits, and Christmas Carol vs the Ghost of Christmas Presents is 36.5K x 16bits. ROM used to be expensive, and now it's not, so games can be better. Not that a game has to be big to be fun. I still consider Night Stalker to be one of the best Intellivision games, and it's only 4K x 10 bits. Another possible factor is that people today have seen modern video games, so the bar has been set higher. Back when video games were new, people didn't know what they were missing.

And here is "The Stars and Stripes Forever". It also requires the ECS. TheStarsAndStripesForever.rom

Here are a few more songs. These were generated from MIDI files with my inty-midi program. The arrangement of "Oh My Darling, Clementine" is from Wikimedia Commons and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license. The other three songs are from public domain MIDI files. (See the ROM metadata for more info.) "The Entertainer" requires the ECS; the other three do not. Canon_in_D.rom Clementine.rom Greensleeves.rom The_Entertainer.rom

Words & Serpents - The sequel to Swords & Serpents. Slay the dragon by beating it at Scrabble! You start with the letters "BPD".

Night Talker - You must negotiate with the robots to find a diplomatic solution.

Yes, you're both right. If I press CLEAR, it asks for a game number again. I hadn't remembered it ending so unceremoniously, but maybe modern games have changed my expectation for what a game ending should be like.

I've been having problems with Stampede freezing after a minute or two of play on my Intellivision II. I thought maybe I had a bad cartridge, so I bought another Stampede on eBay. It freezes, too, in the same way. I dumped the cartridges, and got the same ROM image from both. It has md5sum e39a9065388384cf439dc1484013d993. When I try playing the ROM image on jzIntv, it freezes too, in the same way. Any idea what's going on here? I swear that Stampede worked when I was a kid!

I'm curious what cartridge technology these rereleases will use. JLP, or something else?

Diner 2049er, where you run a restaurant 30 years in the future.

Then how about Space Petrol, where you are a British astronaut trying to get your moon rover to the next gas station?

This isn't technically starting from a game name, but I'd love to see a Henry XIII-themed game called Tudorvision. Or another one would be Spice Patrol, where you explore Caribbean islands in search of the right seasoning.