Keyboard Components for everyone!...

decle · July 16, 2022

...well, kind of

Work on Jack Lalanne has been stalled owing to some household bits and bobs. So I've filled the time with some other K/C related fun, and this is something that everyone join in. It seems it's not widely known that, thanks to Frank Palazzolo, MAME can partially emulate the K/C. It doesn't include a simulation of the tape drive, so it can't run most commercial software, but it can run BASIC programs. Instructions on how to do this can be found at the end of this post.

First up, I've ported the version of the game Hexapawn published in David Ahl's book "BASIC Computer Games" to the K/C.

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This program is interesting as it's an early and simple example of machine learning through reinforcement. Initially the program doesn't know how to win, but as it is rewarded and punished for its play it improves. The code for this port can be downloaded from here...

http://decle.org.uk/intellivision/whale/basic/hexapawn.bas

Next we have a couple of graphics programs. On page 22 of the K/C Owner's Book, there are a two images.

These were probably made using the K/C's "SCREEN" mode, so it's unlikely there was any code to create them. Of course, that doesn't mean there couldn't be! BASIC programs to generate these can be downloaded from here...

Finally, the K/C BASIC manual also has a number of programs in it. These have been typed in and checked. Now before you get your hopes up, these programs are not very complex or interesting. Heck, I've tried to accurately represent the code in the manual, so they're not even very polished, but they do all run.

Page 17 - Painter version 1 - http://decle.org.uk/intellivision/whale/basic/017-painter1.bas
Page 22 - Painter version 2 - http://decle.org.uk/intellivision/whale/basic/022-painter2.bas
Page 25 - Painter version 3 - http://decle.org.uk/intellivision/whale/basic/025-painter3.bas
Page 34 - Vacation Planner - http://decle.org.uk/intellivision/whale/basic/034-vacationPlanner.bas
Page 43 - One For The Road - http://decle.org.uk/intellivision/whale/basic/043-oneForTheRoad.bas
Page 53 - Bank Statement Checker - http://decle.org.uk/intellivision/whale/basic/053-bankStatement.bas
Page 57 - Interest Calculator - http://decle.org.uk/intellivision/whale/basic/057-interest.bas
Page 60 - Poem Creator - http://decle.org.uk/intellivision/whale/basic/060-poem.bas
Page 65 - Random Number Generator version 1 - http://decle.org.uk/intellivision/whale/basic/065-random1.bas
Page 65 - Random Number Generator version 2 - http://decle.org.uk/intellivision/whale/basic/065-random2.bas
Page 67 - Multiplication Drill - http://decle.org.uk/intellivision/whale/basic/067-multiplication.bas
Page 68 - Dice Roller version 1 - http://decle.org.uk/intellivision/whale/basic/068-dice1.bas
Page 69 - Dice Roller version 2 - http://decle.org.uk/intellivision/whale/basic/069-dice2.bas
Page 75 - Recipe Calculator - http://decle.org.uk/intellivision/whale/basic/075-recipe.bas
Page 89 - Football Game Forecaster - http://decle.org.uk/intellivision/whale/basic/089-footballForecaster.bas
Page 99 - Tape Index - http://decle.org.uk/intellivision/whale/basic/099-tape.bas

So there we are, perhaps not the most inspiring set of software, but another 18 Intellivision programs preserved and shared for all to enjoy.

Cheers

decle

Instructions to use these programs in MAME:

Once you've downloaded and installed MAME, you need to acquire the intvkbd.zip file containing the Intellivision and K/C EXEC ROMs and put it in the MAME ROMs folder (no need to unzip the file, MAME does this for you). The power of Google is probably your friend in finding this file. We also need kbdbasic.bin, the K/C BASIC ROM, which can be found as one of the "orig" files within the msbasic project on Github. We just download and save this to our machine.

To start up the K/C emulation in MAME we open a command window in the MAME folder and use the following to give us a decently sized window:

mame.exe -window -resolution 800x600 -nomouse intvkbd -cart2 kbdbasic.bin

Hit RETURN a couple of times, and once the Intellivison splash screen appears type "B" to start BASIC. Now, if we copy the BASIC code for one of the programs we can then paste it into MAME, as though we typed it in (complete with bleeps and bloops). Each time we want to paste something, just press the "Scroll Lock" key on your keyboard to enable UI controls, and then "SHIFT + Scroll Lock" to start pasting.

You will find that the paste starts straight away. This is a pain as it means holding the SHIFT key will cause the start of the first line to be "shifted", corrupting the line number. To fix this I've added a blank line to the start of each program with some spaces on it. SHIFT space is still space and is ignored by the K/C, and the space characters gives you enough time to release the SHIFT key before the first line of code. So, just include that "blank" first line in the code you copy and all should be fine.

The copy and paste method is quite slow (but much faster than typing) and forces all characters to upper or lower case. This is nothing to worry about, K/C BASIC is case insensitive, it just looks a bit weird.

Once the paste operation finishes, just type RUN to start the program.

Edited July 16, 2022 by decle

mr_me · July 17, 2022

Nice! Also, pressing F10 in Mame toggles speed throttling so it pastes faster.

In my version of Mame (220), it stills screws up the minus '-' character. If I use notepad to do a search and replace with underscore '_', it ends up being the correct minus character.

Do you have a text listing, or know anyone that has a text listing of Geography Challenge, any of the Crosswords, or Family Budgeting?