jaybird3rd Posted July 27, 2010 Share Posted July 27, 2010 These "glue chips", are they no longer made? Mattel's original prototype boards used ordinary TTL chips, and nowadays I suppose a PLD or a microcontroller could be used. Either option would require a custom cartridge board, since you cannot simply retrofit the old boards with EPROMs the way you can with Atari cartridges, but this isn't as much of a limitation as it used to be now that Chad Schell has designed new boards for this purpose. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruce Tomlin Posted July 27, 2010 Share Posted July 27, 2010 You misunderstand. That stuff was built into GI's (and Fairchild's) ROM chips, whereas "standard" chips don't have them. I imagine one could be made with a single GAL chip and a couple of latch chips, but I've never taken the time to try. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RangerG Posted July 28, 2010 Share Posted July 28, 2010 I honestly think the Intellivision controllers hurt its popularity. I have started to collect for the system several times. I love the gatefold boxes, game library, and great nostalgia with its rivalry with the 2600. But - those discs and the painful fire buttons just kill the experience for me. The 5200 and 7800 have alternatives if you don't like the controllers - but in all these years, nothing for the Intellivision. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doppel Posted August 3, 2010 Share Posted August 3, 2010 I'd love to try homebrewing on the Intellivision, but I don't see any way of doing that while the hardware remains such an obstacle. I don't mean figuring out how to program it, I mean making cartridges for it, and so on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rev Posted August 3, 2010 Share Posted August 3, 2010 I'd love to try homebrewing on the Intellivision, but I don't see any way of doing that while the hardware remains such an obstacle. I don't mean figuring out how to program it, I mean making cartridges for it, and so on. the guys at beeslife could help you i know for sure. contact them! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisbid Posted August 11, 2010 Share Posted August 11, 2010 the sad part is, at the intellivision keynote they the topic of homebrews came up and they liked what was being done, but wished there were original ideas being developed. they spoke about adding homebrews to their official intellivision compilations, but they could not do that with arcade ports. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
intvnut Posted August 12, 2010 Share Posted August 12, 2010 I'd love to try homebrewing on the Intellivision, but I don't see any way of doing that while the hardware remains such an obstacle. I don't mean figuring out how to program it, I mean making cartridges for it, and so on. This is Joe Z. I have a cartridge design I'm putting into production. I am actively working on making it available to a wide audience so that anyone can self-publish with ease. I don't have the bandwidth to sell these personally as "Left Turn Only", so I'm researching other options. I'll still publish my own games under that banner. As with so many things in this arena, it's a labor of love. I was hoping to be at this point over a year and a half ago, but the economy tanked, work went absolutely nuts, and I had to shelve things. The economy's back now, and there are a bunch of exciting, material developments the last few months. (Not just talk... I've got beaucoup $$$ out there in active production.) Like David mentioned, we're not in a position to announce dates. But, I've moved forward with hardware production, so the rest is just a matter of time. If I can open up the capability to a wider audience, even better. I'm actively pursuing options there so that I'm not the bottleneck. My new design is flash based and in-circuit programmable, which makes it easier to fan out to a large audience. It also supports unimaginably large games (at least in terms of ROM size), so I doubt hardware should be much of a limitation ever again. If it is, I can make a better design. 16K bytes RAM, 240K bytes ROM though should be enough to hold people for a few years.... :-) BTW, I did actually receive a couple entries to my programming contest. Not as many as I hoped, but a couple. Now that I'm moving to hardware production, I can make good on the prizes I wanted to offer. I had wanted to move to production in 2007 originally, slipped to 2008, and then had to totally can things until 2010 due to the economy (all my savings "disappeared") and an oppressive work situation. I'm back now. :-) 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+cmart604 Posted August 12, 2010 Share Posted August 12, 2010 I'd love to try homebrewing on the Intellivision, but I don't see any way of doing that while the hardware remains such an obstacle. I don't mean figuring out how to program it, I mean making cartridges for it, and so on. This is Joe Z. I have a cartridge design I'm putting into production. I am actively working on making it available to a wide audience so that anyone can self-publish with ease. I don't have the bandwidth to sell these personally as "Left Turn Only", so I'm researching other options. I'll still publish my own games under that banner. As with so many things in this arena, it's a labor of love. I was hoping to be at this point over a year and a half ago, but the economy tanked, work went absolutely nuts, and I had to shelve things. The economy's back now, and there are a bunch of exciting, material developments the last few months. (Not just talk... I've got beaucoup $$$ out there in active production.) Like David mentioned, we're not in a position to announce dates. But, I've moved forward with hardware production, so the rest is just a matter of time. If I can open up the capability to a wider audience, even better. I'm actively pursuing options there so that I'm not the bottleneck. My new design is flash based and in-circuit programmable, which makes it easier to fan out to a large audience. It also supports unimaginably large games (at least in terms of ROM size), so I doubt hardware should be much of a limitation ever again. If it is, I can make a better design. 16K bytes RAM, 240K bytes ROM though should be enough to hold people for a few years.... :-) BTW, I did actually receive a couple entries to my programming contest. Not as many as I hoped, but a couple. Now that I'm moving to hardware production, I can make good on the prizes I wanted to offer. I had wanted to move to production in 2007 originally, slipped to 2008, and then had to totally can things until 2010 due to the economy (all my savings "disappeared") and an oppressive work situation. I'm back now. :-) Exciting news Joe! Thanks for the update. I suspect you'll find there are a lot of us who are very happy to support whatever future projects you come out with...OK let's face it, we INTV fans are a bit jealous of the 2600, 7800 and CV homebrews that have been coming out. Not sure if you noticed a copy of Space Patrol just went for $202 and an LTO 4-tris went for $228 about a month ago so clearly there are folks out there who appreciate what you do. It's a bit embarrassing how many times I've said Space Patrol is a fantastic game and is simply one of the best INTV games that have been made period....and now I've said it again. Please keep us updated. Cheers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
intvnut Posted August 12, 2010 Share Posted August 12, 2010 (edited) the sad part is, at the intellivision keynote they the topic of homebrews came up and they liked what was being done, but wished there were original ideas being developed. they spoke about adding homebrews to their official intellivision compilations, but they could not do that with arcade ports. I was actually there when Keith made that remark after someone else asked about Space Patrol. It was kinda surreal, I must say. :-) I will say this: Game design is hard. I have a lot of skills as a programmer and an engineer, but not so many as a game designer. This is why I value having David on my team so much, since it he's got a much better eye for it than I. Plus, there are some really good games I wanted to see on this system. Some of them are here now. :-) I'm starting to work on some new game concepts myself. I'm hoping that making my cart design accessible to a larger audience will inspire others to bring their game concepts to Intellivision, including even ports of unique homebrews from other systems. Someone else commented that Intellivision is harder to program than Atari. I forcefully disagree. The programming model for the Intellivision is closer to the Colecovision, since you need not write a "kernel" or time all your code tightly to display refresh. The STIC handles display refresh for you much as the VDP does in the CV. You also have a more powerful CPU (16 bits with 6 general purpose 16-bit registers) that, while not popular in its own right, has about as generic and approachable an instruction set as you could hope for. Here's a 100% complete "Hello World!" that doesn't rely on any EXEC functions for anything other than ISR dispatch (which is hardwired and unavoidable): ORG $7000 START: PROC MVII #$2F0, R6 ; Set stack pointer DIS CLRR R4 ; MVII #$360, R1 ; \_ Clear memory, STIC, PSG CALL FILLZERO ; / CALL PRINT ; Print Hello World! DECLE $7 ; white DECLE $200 + 6*20 + 4 STRING "Hello World!", 0 MVII #ISR, R0 ; \ MVO R0, $100 ; |_ Enable display SWAP R0 ; | MVO R0, $101 ; / EIS DECR PC ; Done! ENDP ISR PROC CLRR R0 MVO R0, $20 ; Enable display MVO R0, $28 ; Black background MVO R0, $2C ; Black border MVI $21, R0 ; Color-stack mode JR R5 ENDP FILLZERO PROC CLRR R0 ; Start out with R0 zeroed for FILLZERO FILLMEM MVO@ R0, R4 ; Store R0 out at R4, and move along DECR R1 ; Keep going until our count runs out BNEQ FILLMEM JR R5 ; Return to the caller. ENDP PRINT PROC @@FLS: MVI@ R5, R1 ; Load format word from invoc. record @@LS: MVI@ R5, R4 ; Load ptr to display loc from invoc record @@S B @@1st ; Get first char of string @@tloop: SUBI #32, R0 ; Shift ASCII range to charset SLL R0, 2 ; Move it to position for BTAB word SLL R0, 1 ADDR R1, R0 ; Merge with color info MVO@ R0, R4 ; Write to display @@1st: MVI@ R5, R0 ; Get next character TSTR R0 ; Is it NUL? BNEQ @@tloop ; --> No, keep copying then JR R5 ENDP That said, if bAtari wants to bring something like bAtari BASIC to Intellivision to simplify things further, I'm all ears. :-) We do lack those sorts of toolkits, and I think having them would add to the number of homebrews. Edited August 12, 2010 by intvnut Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doppel Posted September 19, 2010 Share Posted September 19, 2010 I'd love to try homebrewing on the Intellivision, but I don't see any way of doing that while the hardware remains such an obstacle. I don't mean figuring out how to program it, I mean making cartridges for it, and so on. This is Joe Z. I have a cartridge design I'm putting into production. I am actively working on making it available to a wide audience so that anyone can self-publish with ease. I don't have the bandwidth to sell these personally as "Left Turn Only", so I'm researching other options. I'll still publish my own games under that banner. As with so many things in this arena, it's a labor of love. I was hoping to be at this point over a year and a half ago, but the economy tanked, work went absolutely nuts, and I had to shelve things. The economy's back now, and there are a bunch of exciting, material developments the last few months. (Not just talk... I've got beaucoup $$$ out there in active production.) Like David mentioned, we're not in a position to announce dates. But, I've moved forward with hardware production, so the rest is just a matter of time. If I can open up the capability to a wider audience, even better. I'm actively pursuing options there so that I'm not the bottleneck. My new design is flash based and in-circuit programmable, which makes it easier to fan out to a large audience. It also supports unimaginably large games (at least in terms of ROM size), so I doubt hardware should be much of a limitation ever again. If it is, I can make a better design. 16K bytes RAM, 240K bytes ROM though should be enough to hold people for a few years.... :-) BTW, I did actually receive a couple entries to my programming contest. Not as many as I hoped, but a couple. Now that I'm moving to hardware production, I can make good on the prizes I wanted to offer. I had wanted to move to production in 2007 originally, slipped to 2008, and then had to totally can things until 2010 due to the economy (all my savings "disappeared") and an oppressive work situation. I'm back now. :-) That's a shot in the arm for those of us like myself who aren't so hardware-inclined. :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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