Intellivision II Exec Dump

[+KylJoy]

I am trying to get the Intellivision II Exec so I can test some things in jzintv, etc. Can someone give me a CLUE how to go about dumping it from one of my kabillion (OK, three) physical Intellivision II systems I have laying over here?

 

Thanks!

[Games For Your Intellivision]

Essentially, you have to build your own rom dumper. Here is some information posted below. We built custom hardware to dump the GROM and EXEC back in the 90s (The same images that were released on Intellivision Lives!) We plugged the ECS into the dumper to get the ECS EXEC. I think that we even got some of the Intellivoice rom the same way if I recall correctly. I don't think we did the Intellivision II Exec however. Obviously, our dumper is now obsolete as the parallel port was used to interface the dumper. Nevertheless, the following excerpt gives some information on the issues.

 

 

Dumping GI ROMS - Cart, Exec and Grom.

 

The GI-ROMs used in the intellivision are very different from the standard ROMS used in most other computers. This means that common ROM readers can not be used to dump the content of these ROMS. One approach to getting at the content of the ROMS is to build some hardware to accomplish the task.

GI-ROMs interface to the 1610 bus directly, they do not require additional external circuitry for address decoding or determining the
bus phase. They take the 16 address lines and 3 bus control lines, (and a reset line) raw, exactly as presented by the CPU, and where
appropriate return a 8, 10 or 16 bit value back out onto the multiplexed data/address bus.

Reading GI-ROM's requires hardware capable of simulating the address lines and bus control signals of a 1610 CPU, as well as capturing the
data that is presented on the address/data bus by the ROM.

The hardware requirements for such a circuit are at a minimum 20 output lines. 16 of these lines that will be used to form the
bi-directional data/address bus must be able to be "tristated" - disconnected - so that they do not interfere with the data emitted by
the ROM.

In addition, circuitry must be provided to latch the state of the data/address bus so that it can be displayed or otherwise manipulated.

The circuit shown later in this section performs these functions, and is designed to connect to a standard PC parallel port. This in itself
requires some explanation.


Interfacing to the PC parallel port

The PC parallel port provides 8 bits of parallel output, as well as 4
additional output lines intended for printer control. 4 inputs are also
provided for returning various printer states.

The 20 output lines required for the cart reader are obtained by
expanding the PC's 8 bit parallel printer (data output) port to 24 bits
through the use of 3 octal latches. Two of these latches are used to
generate the 16 bit address and the third is used to create the various
bus control signals.

The 16 bits of data emitted by the ROM are read back into the PC by
latching the data into two 8 bit parallel-to-serial shift registers and
shifting the data one bit at a time into the PC through two of the 4
input bits on the printer port.


DRIVER SOFTWARE

The programs that drive the above hardware are provided below.

The address range of the data that will be read are contained in the
constants SADRS (Start address) and EADRS (End address). With the range
read being SADRS to (EADRS -1).

The address of the parallel port used is contained in the variable
PPORT.

Once a cart has been read and varified it is dumped to STDIO in hex
format. Conversion to binary is a simple matter of redirecting the
output to a file, and converting the file to binary with the TOBIN.BAS
program (also provided below).

Note: GI-ROMS can map into more than one address range, with different
data in each address.

[mr_me]

The file is out there. Search for "ro-3-9506-010.ic6". I don't know if jzintv emulates Intellivision II. MAME does.

[intvnut]

The file is out there. Search for "ro-3-9506-010.ic6". I don't know if jzintv emulates Intellivision II. MAME does.

 

jzIntv does emulate the Intellivision 2.

 

It appears, looking at the MAME source, that MAME's ROM file is in the opposite byte order from most Intellivision ROM images. Compare the EXEC vs. EXEC2 loading lines:

 

ROM_LOAD16_WORD( "exec.bin", (0x1000<<1)+0, 0x2000, CRC(cbce86f7) SHA1(5a65b922b562cb1f57dab51b73151283f0e20c7a))

 

ROM_LOAD16_WORD_SWAP( "ro-3-9506-010.ic6", (0x400<<1)+0, 0x200, CRC(dd7e1237) SHA1(fb821a643b7714ed4c812553cd3f668766fd44ab))

 

If you do find this particular file, you can use it with jzIntv if you byte-swap it. In Linux or MacOS you can do that with the following command:

.

dd if=ro-3-9506-010.ic6 of=exec2.bin conv=swab

.

That'll create a file named 'exec2.bin' that jzIntv will recognize as the Intellivision 2 EXEC.

 

Dunno what your best option is in Windows.

[freewheel]

When the hell did MAME start emulating consoles? lol. I'm out of touch again, I suspect.

[intvnut]

When the hell did MAME start emulating consoles? lol. I'm out of touch again, I suspect.

 

I think it's technically MESS, not MAME, but they share much of the same source tree as I understand it.

 

EDIT: Oh hey, check out the commit message on intv.c: "Move MESS into MAME."

Edited October 22, 2015 by intvnut

[+KylJoy]

MAME is a monster and MESS is moreso... So they are gonna squish 'em together?

[+intvsteve]

MAME is a monster and MESS is moreso... So they are gonna squish 'em together?

A Monster Mash! 'Tis the season!

[mr_me]

I much prefer dedicated emulators, but MAME/MESS does emulate the Keyboard Component. It warns that it currently doesn't work, but it does start. I don't see a way to load a program cartridge/tape, the normal MAME keyboard commands seem to be completely taken over by the Intellivision keyboard. The ECS emulator does the same thing so maybe I don't know what I am doing.

[Games For Your Intellivision]

I much prefer dedicated emulators, but MAME/MESS does emulate the Keyboard Component. It warns that it currently doesn't work, but it does start. I don't see a way to load a program cartridge/tape, the normal MAME keyboard commands seem to be completely taken over by the Intellivision keyboard. The ECS emulator does the same thing so maybe I don't know what I am doing.

 

There is a lot of data from the keyboards that has been collected but not publicly released yet. I've been encouraging the person who captured the data to do it for YEARS but no joy yet.

[rd80sguy]

is it possible you could give schematics for this old rom dumper?