JZIntv Question

[Fenris78]

Hello to all!

I have just started programming for Intellivision, but i have noticed that some .bas games doesn't works on nostalgia emulator. Reading the "Readmes.txt" the authors recomends to use JZIntv emulator, but i have noticed that i need two files to make them run:

* Executive ROM: Commonly named EXEC.BIN or EXEC.INT.
* Graphics ROM: Commonly named GROM.BIN or GROM.INT.

Where could i find these files?

Should i look for a copy of the Intellivision Lives or Rocks CD in order to take these files? In that case, where can i buy one?

 

[+DZ-Jay]

23 minutes ago, Fenris78 said:

Hello to all!

I have just started programming for Intellivision, but i have noticed that some .bas games doesn't works on nostalgia emulator. Reading the "Readmes.txt" the authors recomends to use JZIntv emulator, but i have noticed that i need two files to make them run:

* Executive ROM: Commonly named EXEC.BIN or EXEC.INT.
* Graphics ROM: Commonly named GROM.BIN or GROM.INT.

Where could i find these files?

Should i look for a copy of the Intellivision Lives or Rocks CD in order to take these files? In that case, where can i buy one?

 

 

Yes, the ROM files should be in any of those discs.

 

    -dZ.

[carlsson]

However doesn't jzintv come with the copyright free miniexec and minigrom? For IntyBASIC purposes it should work out of the box without the original files, but for playing original games you might need them.

[+DZ-Jay]

14 minutes ago, carlsson said:

However doesn't jzintv come with the copyright free miniexec and minigrom? For IntyBASIC purposes it should work out of the box without the original files, but for playing original games you might need them.

I believe it does.  In any case, the IntyBASIC SDK comes with it and the emulator already to run.

 

[carlsson]

The next question is what makes Nostalgia inferior so compiled games can't run. The OP said "some .bas games" which makes me wonder if it is yet another memory map / configuration file matter.

[+DZ-Jay]

2 minutes ago, carlsson said:

The next question is what makes Nostalgia inferior so compiled games can't run. The OP said "some .bas games" which makes me wonder if it is yet another memory map / configuration file matter.

Here's my guess ... I think that when the Intellivision was reversed engineered for initial development, it was understood that the memory map was what Mattel had used for its games.  In fact, all third-party games followed the same.  Some games being larger than others had different memory configurations, but those of similar size followed the same general map.

 

So, it seems natural that tools and emulators were built with such memory maps built in, assuming that if you covered those cases, your are set.

 

Eventually, as the technical understanding grew, people realized that the CPU can address a very large memory map (I think up to 1MB), but that due to the way the Intellivision hardware was designed, only a portion of the entire address space is accessible.  What's more, that portion is splintered into various blocks scattered across many ranges.

 

I think Joe Z. was the first one who came up with a mostly coherent memory map that can support up to 42K words, working around the areas reserved for existing hardware and other features, and picking up as much of the available space as possible.  In the big scheme of things, that's a rather late development.

 

      -dZ.

[carlsson]

I got curious and downloaded Nostalgia 5.0. However for games outside of the menu it doesn't seem to start at all, and even those in the menu only yields a window that flashes by and closes right away. The log file mentions some error in CUSTOMDRAW so perhaps my graphics card isn't compatible with that emulator (just like I'm having serious issues with WinVICE 3.x while the older WinVICE 2.x works fine).

[mr_me]

Jzintv doesn't come with a copy of the miniexec/grom but Nostalgia does.  So you can use the files that come with Nostalgia, with Jzintv, unless your program needs the full exec.  I think Nostalgia does read cartridge cfg files, not all third party cartridges use the standard memory map, it also uses a database of cartridge memory maps.

 

edit:  Correction, Nostalgia does not read the cfg file for cartridge memory maps.  It depends on its database or .rom intellicart format.

 

 

 

 

Edited December 4, 2021 by mr_me

[Fenris78]

I have been doing new tests, but looks like miniexec and minigrom from Nostalgia emulator are not fully compatible with all the games.

 

For the tests i have tried to run the 2018 game entries, but it closes inmediatly with many of them.

Do you know where can i buy any of the CDs?

Edited December 5, 2021 by Fenris78

[carlsson]

Are those entries from the IntyBASIC 2018 competition, and did you obtain them in BIN+CFG format or in ROM format? Jzintv comes with a bin2rom program that most of the time seems to do what you expect from it. If Nostalgia either uses a set of fixed memory maps, or derives it from the ROM file, it might explain why it would not work with BIN files larger or according to memory maps outside the 10 maps for the original games.

 

I doubt it is an EXEC issue, but sure enough the full versions of those files are floating around on the Internet if you look around.

 

Edit: Ok, I tried to add the full EXEC to the Nostalgia folder and indeed those IntyBASIC games (and other homebrews) start. I strongly had the impression that those were compatible with the Mini-EXEC as well, but perhaps it is Nostalgia which doesn't recognize homebrews and prevents running those without having the full EXEC installed?

Edited December 5, 2021 by carlsson

[mr_me]

37 minutes ago, Fenris78 said:

I have been doing new tests, but looks like miniexec and minigrom from Nostalgia emulator are not fully compatible with all the games.

 

For the tests i have tried to run the 2018 game entries, but it closes inmediatly with many of them.

Do you know where can i buy any of the CDs?

Those CDs have been out of print for a very long time.  Just find the files wherever you can.

[+DZ-Jay]

2 hours ago, Fenris78 said:

I have been doing new tests, but looks like miniexec and minigrom from Nostalgia emulator are not fully compatible with all the games.

 

For the tests i have tried to run the 2018 game entries, but it closes inmediatly with many of them.

Do you know where can i buy any of the CDs?

The miniexec will definitely not work for the old Mattel games and original third-party games, which actually rely on the EXEC framework itself.  The "miniexec" is just a stub that bootstraps the system and manages the hardware interrupt -- it works for home-brews because they completely bypass the EXEC.

 

Like @carlsson, I doubt it is an EXEC issue.  If you are planning to use jzIntv for development, the minexec and minigrom should suffice.  If you are planning to develop in IntyBASIC, I suggest you check out the IntyBASIC SDK, which sets up your environment with all necessary ROMs, libraries, binaries, tools, and other dependencies.

 

By the way, the jzIntv emulator is not only the most accurate emulator out there, it also has a built-in debugger, so there is nothing better for development.  I strongly recommend it.

 

     -dZ.

[carlsson]

26 minutes ago, DZ-Jay said:

Like @carlsson, I doubt it is an EXEC issue.

As I mentioned above, I tested both Nostalgia v4 (full screen) and v5 (windowed mode). With only mini-EXEC "installed" (residing in the respective emulator's folder), I got none of the homebrew games the emulator already doesn't know about to work, but once I copied the full version, all those I tried started right away. It is like the emulator comes across unknown ROMs and just to be safe, it refuses to run those unless you have the full EXEC, instead of trying anyway and possibly crash. Kind of counter-intuitive in that case, in particular if homebrew developers ensure to not use any EXEC routines in order to let their games be playable without relying on copyrighted content, but the emulator blocks it out unless the emulator developer has verified those ROMs are good to play.

[Fenris78]

Mmm... thanks. For now I'm using the Intybasic SDK and nostalgia emulator with my project and it works fine, but in order to watch some homebrew games running (i have tried to run only the .ROM files), i'm going to look for the PC CD too.

 

Keep in touch!

Edited December 6, 2021 by Fenris78

[+DZ-Jay]

23 minutes ago, Fenris78 said:

Mmm... thanks. For now I'm using the Intybasic SDK and nostalgia emulator with my project and it works fine, but in order to watch some homebrew games running (i have tried to run only the .ROM files), i'm going to look for the PC CD too.

 

Keep in touch!

The IntyBASIC SDK comes with jzIntv.  Are you having trouble running it?  I thought the initial problem was that you couldn't find the EXEC ROM for jzIntv, but the SD solves that by including everything that is needed.  

 

   dZ.

[carlsson]

Is Joe Fisher part of AtariAge in order to explain Nostalgia behavior?

 

For that matter, I disabled the full EXEC and tested a bunch of (IntyBASIC) homebrews with jzintv using the MINIEXEC. Those play as expected on jzintv, but as I noted when it comes to Nostalgia that emulator doesn't want to run unknown ROMs without the full firmware. Fortunately the required files are one Google search away, though of course if you want to remain within copyright realms, you should get those from a licensed CD or dump them from your own console.

[bkumanchik]

I'm trying to get jzintv to work on my Steamdeck and I'm getting this error:

 

./jzintv: error while loading shared libraries: libreadline.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

 

thanks for any help

 

Brian

[+DZ-Jay]

I do not know about Steamdeck, but I recently had the opportunity to set up jzIntv running on Ubuntu and encountered the same issue.  Of course, the first and obvious solution is to install whatever package is missing using "apt-get."

 

However, the solution for me turned out to be even easier:  to create a symbolic link to the current existing libraries already installed.  I believe for the case of "libreadline.so.6," there was already a "libreadline.so.5," and I just created a symlink with the new name.

 

Note that there may also be another library missing, which will crop up once you resolve "libreadline."  I believe it is "libncurses.so.*," but the solution was the same:  create a symlink to the latest version already installed, with the new name.

 

It's been a couple of months, so I can't recall exactly everything I did, but I could dig it up if necessary.

 

     -dZ.