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LTO Flash! - Intellivision Flash Cartridge Information


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The question is how anyone will be able to send items to Brazil without the items disappearing in incoming post. In particular an item that has some serious street value like the LTO Flash! has. Perhaps it could be shipped in three parts: Flash memory on its own, circuit board on its own and packaging on its own, and then assembled by the buyer, assuming the individual parts would not be equally valuable to make disappear.

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The question is how anyone will be able to send items to Brazil without the items disappearing in incoming post. In particular an item that has some serious street value like the LTO Flash! has. Perhaps it could be shipped in three parts: Flash memory on its own, circuit board on its own and packaging on its own, and then assembled by the buyer, assuming the individual parts would not be equally valuable to make disappear.

 

How do you propose that the flash memory is removed from the circuit board?

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I haven't had a closer look inside the one I bought, but if it sits in a PLCC socket or something similar, it should be possible to lift and reinsert.

 

Edit: Then again when I look at the images, obviously it doesn't, which makes disassembly harder. It could also be that I exaggerate the risks about Brazil post.

Edited by carlsson
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I tried to buy the LTO FLASH but I gave up. Paypal is not accept. Level Up and Retrogameshop do not shipping to Brazil. Western Union do not send money to P.O BOX, the seller needs to get the money in one of "collection points" near to his residence (I did not like this solution, my english not very good to understand this transaction). Man... How much difficulty!!! if HIVE has the same problem with Paypal...

 

I think that will wait a brazilian friend living in USA buy the LTO or HIVE and I will order one to me.

 

I can give you my full street address if Western Union needs it. The reason I have a P.O. Box is that I have relocated several times in the last year, and expect to relocate at least once more. I have no problem picking up money at a Western Union collection point, either. There are several near me. I've done this already for others buying LTO Flash. I'm perfectly happy to do that.

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Thanks for all the responses and info.

Sounds like a great deal afterall.

This is fully tested with no bugs is what we are saying. I ask just so I know what I would be getting so I will not complain later if there is known problems.

Should maybe get for my 40th birthday in January.

I always sent money paypal as a gift and added a couple bucks on top to cover any other inconveniences.

 

Looks like a great product!

 

It is heavily tested in a real system, and so far we've found the cartridge to be rock solid.

 

The board is field-upgradable. If we ever do discover an issue, or add new features, I can publish a firmware update. Firmware updates install in seconds. There is also protection against "bricking:" If a firmware update fails, the device automatically rolls back to the factory firmware. The device has sufficient storage to hold both the original factory firmware as well as the upgrade firmware. The upgrade images are protected against corruption with checksums.

 

The GUI has had a few hiccups when we first rolled out. intvsteve has updated it, though, and that's in pretty good shape as well.

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It is heavily tested in a real system, and so far we've found the cartridge to be rock solid.

 

The board is field-upgradable. If we ever do discover an issue, or add new features, I can publish a firmware update. Firmware updates install in seconds. There is also protection against "bricking:" If a firmware update fails, the device automatically rolls back to the factory firmware. The device has sufficient storage to hold both the original factory firmware as well as the upgrade firmware. The upgrade images are protected against corruption with checksums.

 

The GUI has had a few hiccups when we first rolled out. intvsteve has updated it, though, and that's in pretty good shape as well.

 

During development - firmware and UI - Joe and I - and then later the beta testers - threw TONS of firmware updates at the board. We even did really evil things during those updates. Joe's testing is *brutal* and the result is a truly rock-solid cart!

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Joe's testing is *brutal* and the result is a truly rock-solid cart!

 

I certainly don't recommend anyone doing what I did to the LTO Flash! Or to the Intellivisions I used for testing either, for that matter. Let's keep your systems healthy! That includes all sorts of crazy stuff like yanking the cable during massive downloads, or worse, hot-plugging/unplugging from the Intellivision in various situations. I also left a filesystem stress test running for weeks on one board, racking up several lifetimes worth of filesystem activity, with no errors found. Despite the beating, the flash still performed like new.

 

I also had some uniquely skilled beta-testers that found a few really obscure things that even I hadn't.

 

It's been rather thoroughly pummeled. Everything we've found is addressed in the production firmware.

 

In the unlikely—but certainly not impossible!—event someone does find a new issue, the unit will generate a specialized crash dump that I can analyze to determine the cause.

 

With the field upgrade capability, installing new firmware is painless and quick. So painless and quick, in fact, that I used it as the primary mechanism for developing firmware through most of the development process. That code path is very well tested.

Edited by intvnut
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Is There a new Firmware for the LTO Flash? If so where can I get it? If not where do I check to see if there are any upgrades to it?

 

I do not believe there have been any updates to the firmware since the initial public release.

 

The UI software has had a few updates, and it includes the latest firmware. If you connect your cart to a computer and run the UI software, it checks the firmware on the cartridge and compares to the one it included.

 

If / when a firmware update is published, I'm sure Joe will announce it far and wide, and I'll probably push a UI update, too. If the update fixes a bug, it's likely a quite obscure one, given that LTO Flash! has been out "in the wild" now for several months.

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There have been 3 production firmware releases total, but the vast majority of LTO Flash! owners have the latest firmware (2386) as their "primary, factory firmware." Release history, in reverse chronological order.

.

==============================================================================
    Firmware 2386
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 -- Fix a cosmetic number display issue in 'Flash info...' screen.
 -- Further harden journal writes against power glitches when the
    Intellivision is powered up during a filesystem download.

==============================================================================
    Firmware 2360
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 -- Correctly handle dangling 'ARG' entry in filesystem journal.
 -- Make reformat command reset the journal by forcing an early log-wrap.
 -- Add additional sanity checks to filesystem journal.
 -- Pump wire protocol while displaying "Error loading manual" screen.
 -- Reduce rate at which file-info screen pumps wire protocol to match
    rest of firmware.

==============================================================================
    Firmware 2130
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Initial production release.

.

A few devices went out with Firmware 2130. These boards should already be field-updated to Firmware 2386, thanks to the GUI. There was an intermediate Firmware 2360 release that only a handful of people saw.

 

Basically, we discovered a minor issue due to the code used to program completely-new boards, so I fixed that and added some code to address existing boards in the field. It turns out this glitch affected about 3 boards out of the entire run. A small race condition during production programming could result in a corrupted filesystem. I fixed that, and re-programmed all the boards that hadn't shipped. I also added code that would fix the specific corruption that we saw on those 3 boards. Only 1 board in the field had the actual issue, as far as I can remember; the others were found here in the factory before they shipped and reprogrammed.

 

I also found a cosmetic number-display issue that would display the number of block erasures incorrectly if the number was very large (between 65,536 and 99,999, if I remember correctly), and an issue where the GUI could temporarily lose contact to an LTO Flash! in a powered Intellivision if you happened to trigger an error while loading a game manual. (Contact automatically restored if you dismiss the error screen, even before that fix. Ordinarily, this isn't even possible unless you had also interrupted a filesystem download.) I also added some good ol' fashioned paranoia/hardening that wasn't strictly necessary, but was cheap and easy to add.

 

You can check what firmware revision you have by going to the Device Info... screen in the cartridge menu, or by pulling up the device information within the GUI while you have the LTO Flash! attached.

Edited by intvnut
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Well I will definitely buy come January.

For my 40th. The intellivision should have a rom thread pinned in this section like the 7800 has.

About how many freely available games are there?

And how much do downloadable homebrew games sell for?

I do not intended on stealing from active homebrew programmers who wish to sell their roms.

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Well I will definitely buy come January.

For my 40th. The intellivision should have a rom thread pinned in this section like the 7800 has.

About how many freely available games are there?

And how much do downloadable homebrew games sell for?

I do not intended on stealing from active homebrew programmers who wish to sell their roms.

All the original games and many protoypes can be found as rom files. But alot of Intellivision 'homebrew' games are only available in cartridge format. Here are the ones available as rom files. There's also some mods/hacks of original games out there as well.

 

Free:

[4-Tris](http://spatula-city.org/~im14u2c/intv/4-tris/);

[stonix](http://knox.ac.free.fr/index.php/inty/roms?title=stonix);

[space Patrol: teaser edition](http://spatula-city.org/~im14u2c/intv/spteaser/);

[Christmas Carol](http://www.carolvsghost.com/pg_game.html#download-rom);

[sameGame & Robots](http://www.gooddealgames.com/More_Stuff/Intellivision/SameGame_Robots.zip);

[Minehunter](http://www.intellivision.us/roms/minehunter.zip);

[Dnky Kng Arcade](http://intellivision.us/roms/Donkey%20Kong.zip);

[Ms Pc-Man](http://www.carlmuellerjr.com/2016/06/ms_22.html?m=1);

[Copter Command](https://atariage.com/forums/topic/246481-the-official-2016-copter-commandos-high-score-competition/);

[istar](http://atariage.com/forums/topic/173559-intellivision-homebrew-istar-wip/);

[intellipongola](http://atariage.com/forums/topic/190962-intellipongola/?p=2417125);

[Clowns and Balloons](http://atariage.com/forums/topic/222175-wip-clowns-and-balloons-made-with-intybasic/);

[blue Sydney](http://atariage.com/forums/topic/223155-my-first-steps-into-making-intv-gfxs/?p=3285913);

[inty Basic 2015 contest](

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/248593-and-the-winner-is/)

 

Pay:

[space Raid](http://www.scubbly.com/store/nanochess-digital-store/);

[Princess Quest](http://www.scubbly.com/store/nanochess-digital-store/); [DK Arcade](http://atariage.com/forums/topic/257895-instructions-for-ordering-d1kd2k-rom/); [D2K Arcade](http://atariage.com/forums/topic/257895-instructions-for-ordering-d1kd2k-rom/)

Edited by mr_me
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