Yoruk

Thanks for the links. The first one is interesting, but they didn't share schematics. The second one does share one, and it actually uses "V R/W" signal. I asked the guy from Tynemouth Software a question about the "V R/W" and "C R/W" signals. The answer is quite simple : The initial read signal from the CPU is the "C R/W". The "V R/W" is the same but gated with the clock, so this signal is a bit shorter. For normal designs it's better to use the CPU one. But he also says that for a simple ROM access I simply don't need any reading signal at all, since I'll always read the memory. So all my ROM /OE pins should be tied to ground. Yes of course it's quite simpler any maybe cheaper to get an existing board, but I really do this for learning and educational purposes, so it's not a problem to spend a few hours on this. ? Your advices and help are for sure very helpful for me !

Thanks ! I'll study this.

Well I found here the schematics of a "text interface" that As we can see the "V R/W" signal is NC and the "C R/W" is driving the "/WE" pin of a 2016 (static ram ?). But I don't understand how the /OE signal of the top 2716 chip is created... The input gate D of the U4 7405 (pin 9) is connected to... nothing ? Well I can be interested by some scans... I have some time now and I like retro-analyze PCBs so... It could be helpful ! Thanks.

Thanks guys !

Thanks for this feedback. Great to know that $A000 is an autostart address, it could be very useful. Maybe game cartridges are using this bank too ? Thanks for the explanations about the the read signals, I'll dig into this. Maybe I can put a scope probe on these pins to see the signal...

Well I'm not a huge user of Ebay but yes right now I have issues to find games at a decent price, and not only for the Intellivision. Maybe I should set alerts to make sure that I didn't miss items...

Hello there, As explained in an other post, I do have an PAL Intellivision, but without a lot of games. Unfortunately, it's incredibly hard to find games here in France. Nothing on garages sales / second-hands stores. Games on eBay or similar are quite expensive, and when the game price is correct, the shipping costs are too high ? I have an opportunity to buy a bunch of raw game PCBs (so without the plastic shells, but that's not an issue) in the US, so NTSC games. It seems that there is no difference : http://www.classic-consoles-center.at/intellivision/intellivision-ntsc-and-pal-games-list But can an expert confirm this ?

To quote again intvnut, the Intellicart actually works by uploading the game binary through a serial port into some RAM, the system next loads the game to run it. The CC3 has the same features but can also load games from a micro SD card. Didn't know if is it possible to get one. The "actual" device is the LTO. The "infamous book of Osborne" is a kind of resource book on the TI's CP1600 : http://spatula-city.org/~im14u2c/chips/cp1600_osborne/

Hello there, I am learning assembly language, and I was looking for a way to try programs on my physical VIC20. I love designing boards, so I was lookng for a way to create a simple board for the expansion port with a couples of eproms. I'm not sure to fully understand the memory map. Where can I put like, 8kb of ROM ? On any of the blocks 1 to 3 ? $2000-$3FFF: 8 KB, Expansion Block 1, accessed by BLK1 line $4000-$5FFF: 8 KB, Expansion Block 2, accessed by BLK2 line $6000-$7FFF: 8 KB, Expansion Block 3, accessed by BLK3 line And so I'll just need to use /BLK1 to enable my chips ? I also don't get how the read and write signals on the port are working... 17 V R/W VIC Read - /Write high during read cycle, low during write cycle of the VIC 18 C R/W CPU Read - /Write high during read cycle, low during write cycle of the CPU What is exactly the "read" signal that I should to enable my eproms ? I don't get the difference between these two signals (VIC and CPUà ? Thanks !

@intvnut : Thanks for sharing this answer. A possibility to simplify the design, as also explained by intvnut, is to choose a static memory map for the ROM. Here are some details about the global map of the machine. Is there a wide-used range ($5000 as suggested by mr_me) that could be use for a majority of games ? So, regarding the decoding scheme given by the Osborne book I came up with this : -a GAL or other programmable device handles the BC1, BC2 and BDIR signals, to create the adresses latches signals and ROM chips enabling signals -two 8 bits EPROMS -two 8 bit latches on the bus adresses (like 2*74LS373 ICs) -some decoding circuits (74LS138 or 139) to make sure that the rom is in the good addresses range. Didn't know if this a good start or if I'm completely wrong...?

I got a nice email from Intvnut (his personal mail) ? To sum up the minimal amount of parts needed is : A 16-bit wide memory An address latch and decode logic Some Bus decode logic (16-bit too) From the Osborne book we can find this roughly schematics : Wich confirm the role of BC1, BC21 and BDIR. He also gave me information about the T-card, I'll try to find schematics, just to see how it can be possible to solve this decoding the hardware way ?. But the ultimate solution, as said earlier, is to use software (so a microcontroler or a FPGA) to decode and latch the data. This is more or less the conclusion that I will give to this. Contrary to the VCS2600, the Intellivision cartridges interface is quite more complicated. As you say a lot of project already exists, so it could be a nice solution to extend my games list. Thanks everybody for your feedback on this.

Thanks for your feedback. Here are (I think) the signals combination that I was looking (to get the data and the bus) : BDIR BC2 BC1 Mnemonic Name Description 0 0 0 NACT No ACTion During this stage, no device is active on the bus. DB0 through DB15 are allowed to float, with their previous driven value fading away during this phase. 0 0 1 ADAR Address Data to Address Register This bus phase is issued by the CPU during a Direct Addressing Mode instruction. Prior to this phase, an address will have been latched in a device by a prior BAR or ADAR bus phase. Then, during this phase, the currently selected device responds with its data on the bus, and at the end of this phase, all devices should latch this address as the address for the next memory access (DTB, DW, or DWS phases). The CPU asserts nothing during this phase -- rather, it expects the currently addressed device to inform the rest of the machine of the address for the next access. 0 1 0 IAB Interrupt Address to Bus This bus phase is entered during interrupt processing, after the current program counter has been written to the stack. It's also entered into on the first cycle after coming out of RESET. During this phase, an external device should assert the address of the Interrupt or RESET vector as appropriate. The CPU then moves this address into the program counter and resumes execution. 0 1 1 DTB Data To Bus This phase is entered during a read cycle. During this phase, the currently addressed device should assert its data on the bus. The CPU then reads this data. 1 0 0 BAR Bus to Address Register During this phase, the CPU asserts the address for the current memory access. All devices on the bus are expected to latch this address and perform address decoding at this time. 1 0 1 DW Data Write The DW and DWS bus phases initiate a write cycle. They always occur together on adjacent cycles, with data remaining stable on the bus across the transition from DW to DWS. During these phases, the data being written is available for external memories to latch. The CP-1600 allows two full CPU cycles for external RAM to latch the data. 1 1 0 DWS Data Write Strobe 1 1 1 INTAK INTerrupt AcKnowledge The CPU enters this bus phase on the first cycle of interrupt processing. During the phase, the CPU places the current stack pointer value on the bus as it prepares to "push" the current program counter on the stack. Devices are expected to treat INTAK similarly to a BAR bus phase. Indeed, on the Intellivision Master Component, only the 16-bit System RAM sees the INTAK bus phase. It uses this bus phase to trigger a special bus-copy mode as well as for latching the current address. For all other devices in the system, INTAK is remapped to BAR by some discrete logic, and so is processed as a normal addressing cycle elsewhere. A microcontroler can for sure helps dealing with this. Unfortunately I couldn't manage to find deep details about the old Intellicard and CC3 projects, only manuals. And the LTO Flash project looks discontinued too... I'll try to contact the author of this project, as he's also the writer of the web page shown earlier.

I found some information here : http://spatula-city.org/~im14u2c/intv/tech/master.html Looks like that the data and addresses bus are multiplexed. So can a latch circuit helps to get the proper data and addresses signals ? I don't understand which control signal is use to separate them...

Hi all, I have the first Intellivision, bought from a yard sale. Works fine after a quick restoration, but unfortunately I didn't have a lot of games. ? I tried to see if it was possible to create simple homebrew cartridges (something like a simple eeprom on a PCB, like we can do for the VCS2600...) but it looks like the cartridge slot is a bit complicated to use like this. So I don't know if there is simple cartridges schematics that I can use ? I'm not really looking for a complicated sd-card multigame cartridge project, really something simple, that I can product for cheap. (I have various eproms in stock...) Thanks ! ? (PS : I hope that this post is in the good forum ?)

Hello there, I just wanted to share a tool that should help designing things : the Java Ascii Versatile Editor (link). It's a program dedicated to draw ascii-art, but some integrated features could be useful when programming games : it can import/resize pictures to create sprites, make transformations, it have some animation features, and a nice collection of ASCII fonts to draw titles. I used that to create the title screen of my WIP game : It may not change your life, but I think that it's a good tool to keep somewhere... ? It could help designing sprites or backgrounds.

Made some improvements... Added sound, enemy color sprites and animation for the main player. It's really easy once you get the basic instructions and commands ! ? I don't really like putting a lot of "goto" instructions in my programs but in this case it's a bit hard to avoid them... Too bad also that I can't enable the "no blank line feature", as I need one player color and one missile... helico.bas.bin

Got it, thanks ! By the way, how did you manage to get such an amount of PCBs ? ? It's incredible !

Hi, By any chance, are these PCBs still available ?

Works fine, many thanks ! I started from an example online, thanks also for cleaning / updating labels names. More easier to read now... ?

I changed to this : NUSIZ0 = $10 and missile0height = 4 But I still have a straight line going up...?

Ok I made some improvements... My final kernel options are player1colors pfcolors I wanted to use no_blank_lines but I don't want to lost my second missile, so I'll keep it like this now. Here is the actual concept : I want to use the helicopter to shoot enemies. ? Everything works as expected, but I have some issues with the missile. When I shoot, I only have one vertical straight line : And I want an horizontal one, going to the right side. Here is the code of the missile part : if missile0x<250 then goto skip rem missile animation missile0x = missile0x + 2 goto draw_loop skip rem starts missile position if joy0fire then missile0y = player0y - 3 : missile0x = player0x + 8 As you can see, I increment the missile0x value, after setting the initial position when shooting, but why the missile is going in the Ydirection ? Regarding the sample "ex_sprite_with_missile.bas", the missile direction should works by increment the missile0x value... Attached is my full code. Thanks ! helico.bas

Many thanks ! I works now. I also added player1colors playercolors pfcolors to have both my players in color. I can now focus on my game engine. (Also, very nice avatar ? ) @Random Terrain : yes I was reading through this and the examples attached (still reading). Got some issues to download the page, it was very slow here in France...?

I am studying "Multicolored Sprite" sample that comes with the manual. It does have sprite color, and use only player1colors as kernel. I'll compare this program with mine to see what are the differences...

Hello, I'm studying batari Basic and I have strange color issues. I created the attached code with VisualbB, but when running I didn't have my player colors, and the first line of the playfield doesn't use the color defined in the pf color area. (other playfield colors are ok) I'm using player1colors and pfcolors kernel options. I understand that the cost for this is the missile 1, but I don't see why the defined colors are not on the screen. I am doing something wrong ? (Last question : do you prefer to have the code attached as a file, or pasted here ?) Thanks ! default.bas