Dev Kit with Mainline Computers of the 80s?

[First Spear]

 

Wondering if anyone had heard of or seen Intellivision development that could be done on an Apple II or equivalent 8bit or 16bit computer of the day, like could be done with the 2600. http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-2600-vcs-frob-26_29983.html?fbclid=IwAR3dSsLoPMCke9Ur9J26At-wIi4WBJ63dZnvRh1Zxy1VwP_YY1q5SYZm2k4
 

 

Yes I am aware of the extreme platform differences. 
 

Thanks!

[Bruce Tomlin]

The 2600 had so much Apple II development specifically because it used a 6502 variant, so there were plenty of assemblers. Colecovision used a Z-80, but that was also a popular add-on for the 6502, and Z-80 assemblers were common too.

 

The CP1610 was obscure other than in the Intellivision, so an assembler would have to be written from scratch. (I've written a multi-CPU assembler and never felt the need to support CP1610!) Also it had a "weird" bus (as in not Intel-style or Motorola-style) which needed bus phase decoding to use regular ROMs and I/O chips, so the hardware necessary to download code to it was not trivial. Being 16 bits wide (even if code only needed 10 bits) also didn't help. (The F8 had an even weirder bus which IIRC needed a program counter in every chip!)

[+nanochess]

So far I think all development in 80s was using PDP-11 or DEC computers, as documented by @decle see his thread with the PDF document (pages 39 and 40) https://atariage.com/forums/topic/259003-intellivision-development-back-in-the-day/

 

Later by INTV times some development was carried on PC machines.

 

Edited September 27, 2020 by nanochess

[mr_me]

In the INTV Corp days they used IBM PC to develop their intellivision cartridges.  They created a cross-assembler and built a ram cartridge emulator in an isa card with a ribbon cable that plugs in to an intellivision.

[decle]

Unfortunately, there are no contemporary, commercial devkits along the lines of the Frob-26 for the Intellivision that I'm aware of.  Technically, there is no reason that something like the Frob could not have been put together to run on a disk based home computer like the Apple II. However, as @Bruce Tomlin said, owing to Intellivision idiosyncrasies it would probably have been more complex to do than the 2600, and access to documentation of the EXEC is likely to have been problematic.  In practice, the Frob does not seem to have been a commercial success, so given the significantly smaller number of Intellivisions sold and greater devkit complexity, it is perhaps unsurprising that no Inty equivalent appeared.

 

As @nanochess has said, each of the 3rd parties had their own in-house devkits.  These were typically based on a PDP-11 or VAX mini-computer, which were popular small, 16-bit multi-user business systems of the time.  Both Mattel and APh used them for Intellivision development, so if you were poaching developers they would be familiar with them .  GI also sold a commercial CP-1610 assembler/linker for the PDP-11, which would have been a leg up.

 

@mr_me is also correct that during the years of INTV releases (1985-1989), they used a PC based system put together by David Warhol and Scott Robitelle.  This is perhaps the closest system to what you are looking for.  The old Intellivision Productions Magus-II page might give a hint as to the specs of this system:

 

https://web.archive.org/web/19980613190636/http://www.makingit.com/intellivision/magus.shtml

 

We can see that the requirements were for an "IBM-compatible PC (286 or better, DOS 3.0 or better) with an available 13-inch PC board slot".  This suggests an IBM PC/AT class machine with 16-bit ISA slots, which just happens to have been released about a year before the first INTV title (the IBM Model 5170 launched August '84 with DOS 3.0).  Such a spec was very outdated when the MAGUS-II was being put together in 1997, so perhaps this is really a reflection of the target platform for the original INTV devkit?

 

If anyone has more information it would be very cool to expand the documentation of both the INTV devkit and the cancelled MAGUS-II to the development systems documentation.

 

[mr_me]

I think the playcable guys used an ibm pc to do bumpnjump in 1982/83.  I don't think they used the exec.

 

Most third party cartridges didn't use the exec.  I think imagic used a pdp-11 but we don't know what the guy that did congo bongo used or the interphase guy or whoever did the coleco and parker brothers cartridges.  General Instruments had a pdp-11 cross-assembler but the imagic guys wrote their own.  They all would have built their own ram based cartridge emulator.  Creating these tools didn't seem to be much of an obstacle.

 

 

[1980gamer]

I used a PDP11/23 in high school ;)  Wow, that was a long time ago!

 

They also used the "Blue" or "Black" Whale at some point.  I am certain it is on the website.  But watching football in a minute!

 

[First Spear]

Thanks all. I'm aware of the chip similarities between the VCS and Apple II, and also about the PDP and "blue whale" and "black whale" info. I guess what I was looking for, but didn't know how to articulate, was the stuff that Mr. Me and General Decle shared. Seeing a conventional PC doing development, or reading more about it, would be super-cool. 

 

Thanks!

 

[+nanochess]

1 hour ago, First Spear said:

Thanks all. I'm aware of the chip similarities between the VCS and Apple II, and also about the PDP and "blue whale" and "black whale" info. I guess what I was looking for, but didn't know how to articulate, was the stuff that Mr. Me and General Decle shared. Seeing a conventional PC doing development, or reading more about it, would be super-cool. 

 

Thanks!

 

If it serves anyhow, it would be interesting to see how older can be a PC to run jzintv and as1600.

 

Maybe a Pentium III and Windows XP? That could be retro enough?

 

Also it would be able to run IntyBASIC

 

Although no thing prevents from writing a CP1610 assembler for even older PC like the XT/AT class, for the classic taste it would be amazing if someone preserved the PC software used by INTV Corp.

[BSRSteve]

1 hour ago, nanochess said:

IMaybe a Pentium III and Windows XP? That could be retro enough?

 

Windows XP is newer than the Intellivision Lives CD, and is therefore fast enough for emulation of at least most games.

 

Windows 95 came out SIX YEARS after Spiker, and ran on a 386.

 

The original IBM PC came out in August 1981 (Running DOS 1.0), which was after some Intellivision games, though all third party games were later than that, and I didn't start at Mattel until a couple months later myself.

 

All Mattel development was done on DEC machines, either the PDP-11s or eventually the VAX. The Blue Whale was used instead of the Magus boards to upload game data for testing without having to burn EPROMS. It was not used to compile code.

 

[+DZ-Jay]

2 hours ago, nanochess said:

If it serves anyhow, it would be interesting to see how older can be a PC to run jzintv and as1600.

 

Maybe a Pentium III and Windows XP? That could be retro enough?

 

Also it would be able to run IntyBASIC

 

Although no thing prevents from writing a CP1610 assembler for even older PC like the XT/AT class, for the classic taste it would be amazing if someone preserved the PC software used by INTV Corp.

I run and test the IntyBASIC SDK on an emulated installation of Windows XP, on a Parallels virtual machine.  The virtual hardware specs are also low as well.

[intvnut]

11 hours ago, nanochess said:

 

Although no thing prevents from writing a CP1610 assembler for even older PC like the XT/AT class, for the classic taste it would be amazing if someone preserved the PC software used by INTV Corp.

@Carl Mueller Jr's DOS based emulator (INTVPC) and dev kit ran just fine on high end 386 and 486 hardware, from what I recall.  (Not sure if it pulled a full 60Hz on 386s.)  It directly made use of the VGA's unchained planar memory mode (look up "Mode X") to get hardware pixel doubling for free as well.  That's still a notch above XT/AT class, though.  His assembler would likely move easily to anything Turbo Pascal can compile for though.

 

jzIntv and even as1600 probably don't scale down that far at this point.  I'd have to take some effort to trim the fat that's accumulated over 20 years.  Don't get me wrong: jzIntv is quite fast, but it's quite fast using techniques suited to modern hardware.  AS1600 has gained a bunch of features, but at the expense of memory bloat.  I've focused increasingly on making the modern experience reasonable.

 

@Carl Mueller Jr has taken Intellivision emulation to even smaller environments as I understand it.  I'll let him talk about those if he wants.

 

[First Spear]

On 9/27/2020 at 3:13 PM, First Spear said:

Thanks all. I'm aware of the chip similarities between the VCS and Apple II, and also about the PDP and "blue whale" and "black whale" info. I guess what I was looking for, but didn't know how to articulate, was the stuff that Mr. Me and General Decle shared. Seeing a conventional PC doing development, or reading more about it, would be super-cool. 

 

Thanks!

 

I think one of the best parts of the MAGUS ad is "check usenet if you want Intellivision hardware".  

[decle]

11 hours ago, intvnut said:

@Carl Mueller Jr's DOS based emulator (INTVPC) and dev kit ran just fine on high end 386 and 486 hardware, from what I recall.

Yup

11 hours ago, intvnut said:

jzIntv and even as1600 probably don't scale down that far at this point.

But possibly they did in the past?

 

On 9/27/2020 at 8:13 PM, First Spear said:

Seeing a conventional PC doing development, or reading more about it, would be super-cool. 

You mean a bit like this?...

 

 

Clearly this does not address how you would test your game once it is assembled using a mid 80s, 286 class machine.  To do this would require a hardware test harness like the MAGUS or Blue Whale.

 

Edited September 28, 2020 by decle

[BSRSteve]

2 hours ago, decle said:

Yup

But possibly they did in the past?

 

You mean a bit like this?...

 

 

Clearly this does not address how you would test your game once it is assembled using a mid 80s, 286 class machine.  To do this would require a hardware test harness like the MAGUS or Blue Whale.

 

Or an eProm burner and a T-Card......