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LTO Flash! - Intellivision Flash Cartridge Information


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For the Linux users in the audience:

 

I can confirm there are easy-to-use (for Linux users anyway) CLI tools. I didn't try the WIndows GUI in Wine or a VM, because I generally have low success with USB in those environments - especially the type of USB driver involved here.

 

Once things settle down (both personally, and within the toolchain itself) I plan on taking a good crack at whipping up some simple scripts to automate the CLI stuff. If the official creators don't beat me to it first!

Cool! icon_thumbsup.gif

I suspect most Linux users can access a Windows machine anyway...

CLI tools are just another cool feature in the LTO FLASH!

 

I would like to thank intvnut, intvsteve, Voltron, Games for your Intellivision, freewheel and everyone who helped this amazing project beeing released.

Thank you all very much! icon_thumbsup.gif

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On the Linux side, as freewheel mentioned, I do have a CLI tool that's fairly low level. I used it to poke and prod at the guts of Locutus LTO Flash! while it was in development.

 

I currently have a C tool named locutus_tool that allows low-level manipulation of the device. It's not the cleanest code or the friendliest interface, but it's getting the job done. I suppose I can clean that up slightly and release it. It's the tool that freewheel's seen and used. Among other things, I used it to stress test the filesystem, test firmware upgrades, perform RAM production tests, and download games from the command line.

 

I'm working on a cleaned up C++ version of the tool that I'll for sure release as open source. (Dual-license BSD 3-clause + GPLv2+.) It aims to be a bit friendlier than the tools freewheel's already seen, at for least common actions, such as "Download & Play" and firmware upgrades. For example, if you want a build script that builds your game and immediately loads it on the unit, that'll be very straightforward. The code will have a complete reference implementation of the communication protocol, so anyone who wants to hack on their unit's filesystem is free to do so. It'll also be a nice framework if you want to have your game communicate with a PC/Mac/whatever over serial. You can build up whatever you like on top of that.

 

Someday, it might be nice to bring the GUI to Linux also. We didn't want to risk the Windows and Mac versions adding a third GUI version to the launch. But, I believe most of the code intvsteve's written should also compile on Linux. He can correct me if I'm wrong. Once we get these units out there, if someone would like to help us tackle a GUI on Linux, let's talk. :)

 

The main communication layer is just plain serial. 2Mbps, 8-N-1, hardware flow control. There aren't any dependencies on exotic drivers or anything else. FTDI has drivers for Linux, Windows and Mac, and most systems should "just work." With the drivers installed, it's "just a serial port." My Linux box at home, which was built 6 years ago, did need a new VID/PID pair added to its list (I use the new FT230X chip), but then I was still using a 2.6.x kernel on that machine, to give you an idea of how out of date it was.

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So how does the menu creation etc work on Windows? I'm hoping it's fairly simple. My job involves coding but the stuff above is outside my realm, though I imagine it is more straightforward for Windows users. All my flash carts so far use SD cards, so this is new to me.

Edited by Hastor
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To add to my earlier comments regarding a UI for Linux… Anyone up for schooling me on GTK#? Although it's also available on Mac, I opted for the more native MonoMac. Over the course of this project, Microsoft purchased Xamarin, and has, last I heard, made Xamarin.Mac free. There are some huge advantages to migrating the UI to Xamarin.Mac, but that is not a task lightly undertaken.

 

All the core modeling and protocol is platform-agnositic -- I tried to decouple the UI as much as I could from the rest of the app so that porting it mostly requires learning / mastering the UI part.

 

A few things do pop up where MONO and Microsoft's reference .NET differ, in areas like serial port enumeration and a few other OS-specific behaviors. Those are also isolated in the code so (fingers crossed) the Linux port won't be *too* terrifying.

 

The *huge* majority of the time spent on the cross-platform work has been in the UI -- which is really as it should be.

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So how does the menu creation etc work on Windows? I'm going it's fairly simple. My job involves choosing but the stuff above is outside my realm, though I imagine it is more straightforward for Windows users. All my flash carts so far use SD cards, so this is new to me.

I really do need to find / remake the movies...

 

The simplest verbal description of the process and most common workflow is probably something like this:

 

a) You already have your ROMs stored somewhere on your system. Let's just say:

c:\ROMs\Intellivision\...

 

Personally, I arrange them by publisher (Mattel\network, Imagic, Activision, etc.)

 

I just drag the 'Intellivision" folder into the main work area, tell it to make a menu for me, and that's it. It'll use your on-disk organization as the organization for the menu layout on LTO Flash!.

 

if you want to change anything, just drag and drop things in the UI.

 

EDIT: Here's the original UI movie post. Some minor changes may have happened (rearranged a few elements) but it gets the point across.

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So how does the menu creation etc work on Windows? I'm hoping it's fairly simple. My job involves coding but the stuff above is outside my realm, though I imagine it is more straightforward for Windows users. All my flash carts so far use SD cards, so this is new to me.

 

Ever make a playlist in iTunes or similar? It's easier, and better than that.

 

I'm like you; my multicarts generally use SD/CF or their own internal structure, but at the core they're just files and folders to me. So that's what I'm used to, and what I prefer. But the LTO GUI is pretty slick, even for someone like me that prefers the old fashioned way. It's basically drag-and-drop.

 

And as Steve mentions, if you do keep them organized on disk, it'll basically respect that if you tell it to. Hard to describe, but let's just say I expected to hate it - as I generally do, with newer style data managers. This one, I found pretty intuitive.

 

Steve, are people able to download the software independently of the release? Or are you guys waiting for the big reveal :D

 

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I apologize as I have not read through this thread at all . I am not to familiar with the Intellivision homebrew scene but are released roms available so they can be put on this flash cart ?

 

There are some roms available, as others mentioned in their posts, but also take a look through the posts here:

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/250019-home-brews-published-in-cartridge-and-now-freely-available-to-download/?p=3461717

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<snip>

 

Steve, are people able to download the software independently of the release? Or are you guys waiting for the big reveal :D

 

 

I haven't hooked the link up to the live site yet. I want to push one more small update before doing so. I do plan to have that go live in the next few days.

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Need to wait for an SD card capable version myself.

 

Have a FLASH cart for Jag and just don't use it enough. Cables and flashing are a pain.

 

Great looking cart, box and art though!! I'm sure all produced will happily go to good homes. Kudos to those involved in the project.

Problem with the Jag cart (the only one I know of) is that it only holds one game at a time. This one can be loaded with every game out there, and should be just as useful as one with an SD card. Likely once you put games on it (every game out there will fit in 32MB at the same time currently), you'll forget whether it has a flash card or not, and only need to modify it on occasion when a new homebrew comes out or something. If it only held one game, or even 5 games, at the same time, I'd wait for an SD card version myself, but currently, since this can hold the entire library, including homebrew, all at once, I don't see a big difference between this and an SD card based one.

 

If by some chance in the future all the games can't fit in 32MB, for one, it will be great that the Intellivision has gotten that much attention, and second, you'll probably be able to identify enough games you never play to make room for the ones you want.

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Problem with the Jag cart (the only one I know of) is that it only holds one game at a time. This one can be loaded with every game out there, and should be just as useful as one with an SD card. Likely once you put games on it (every game out there will fit in 32MB at the same time currently), you'll forget whether it has a flash card or not, and only need to modify it on occasion when a new homebrew comes out or something. If it only held one game, or even 5 games, at the same time, I'd wait for an SD card version myself, but currently, since this can hold the entire library, including homebrew, all at once, I don't see a big difference between this and an SD card based one.

 

If by some chance in the future all the games can't fit in 32MB, for one, it will be great that the Intellivision has gotten that much attention, and second, you'll probably be able to identify enough games you never play to make room for the ones you want.

 

 

Hastor, thank you for that context. The Jaguar cart sounds closer to the Intellicart, with only one game at a time. (Although, the Intellicart was worse in that it didn't keep it after power-down.) LTO Flash! is more like the CC3, in that once you've loaded your entire library on it, it's all there for you. It helps that Intellivision games are slightly smaller than Jaguar games. ;)

 

My motto with LTO Flash! has been "set it and forget it." I want everything to "just work" as much as possible, so that once you've got it set up and plugged into your system, you don't have to fiddle with it again if you don't want to. Obviously, when new games come out, you'll need to do something to get them on the unit, but that's true regardless of whether it's SD-card based or not.

 

For example, we track which games are incompatible with the ECS unit, and work around the incompatibility transparently at run time. So, while Pac-Man (both Atarisoft and INTV releases) won't ordinarily work when the ECS is attached, the Pac-Man ROM will work when run from LTO Flash!. For other games like Astrosmash, it bypasses the extra title screen the ECS adds by default. (You can still have the ECS screen come up, if you want to use ECS BASIC or ECS synth mode.) With those features, you can leave your ECS plugged in all the time.

 

You don't have to plug/unplug peripherals all the time. Set up your system once, and you're set.

Edited by intvnut
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If by some chance in the future all the games can't fit in 32MB, for one, it will be great that the Intellivision has gotten that much attention, and second, you'll probably be able to identify enough games you never play to make room for the ones you want.

 

Or buy a second one. ;) ;) ;)

 

If nanochess releases an Extended IntyBASIC that leverages the full 1MB RAM on the LTO Flash!, I may need to work on an LTO Flash 2: Electric Boogaloo! that has more storage. But if freewheel's estimates hold, that won't need to be out before the Intellivision's 50th anniversary.

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The UI does have a simplistic menu backup / restore feature. So in a pinch, you could make a bunch of different menu layouts and just "restore" the one you want.

 

There are some tweaks that would make this a little friendlier, like being able to give those backups a friendly name, but that's what updates are for! (Right now, they're all just identified by date/time of backup.)

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