[Is there an official name/model for the cartridge port of the Colecovision/Adam?]

It is an Amphenol (now Amp) 30-pin dual connector .1" spaced.

 

I bought a pair in January of this year for my Colecovision on a breadboard.

 

5530841-2-ND
CONN EDGE DUAL FMALE 30POS 0.100

 

I just checked in Digikey and it isn't currently in stock (I should have bought the 14 they had). Probably it is available somewhere else.

 

 

 

[Bankswitching, And Could It Have Saved Coleco?]

Spy Hunter was 32 kilobytes, released in 1984. And Intel just introduced the EPROM 27256 in 1983!

 

Bank-switching was applied to Atari because it only could access 4K of ROM, and 8K memories appeared around 1980 (also probably the cause that the IBM PC BIOS was 8K). An Intel manual for 1981 shows only memory capacities upto 8K.

 

Bank-switching couldn't save Colecovision at the time, because it was designed to support 32K of ROM directly without bank-switching. The problem was that memory was pretty expensive!

 

I mean a game like Mecha-8 requires 128K of ROM, that is FOUR 32K EPROM memories. At the prices of the eighties, it would have been prohibitive.

 

Coleco upped the RAM memory as it was going down in costs, but still tried to go with tape as it was the most inexpensive, but disk was entering fast to the market.  It was a perfect storm, all looked like perfectly good decisions, but things changed too fast.

 

[Upcoming book on Atari 2600 programming (now available)]

On 8/4/2023 at 12:57 PM, davyK said:

Just bought 2 copies - one for me and one to give as a gift. Really nice job.

 

5 hours ago, nadir said:

Almost a year later since this was posted here, but I have finally ordered the book.    Kept thinking about it and wanting it, but finally am able to spend the money!  Looking forward to it!

Thanks for your support!

 

I'm pretty glad people still sends me histories about their success learning Atari 2600 programming with my book.

 

Thanks! I feel blessed 🙏🏻

[Putting new ROM games on my Intellivision Ultimate Flashback]

I don't have used your Retropie variation, but ROMs should be located in RetroPie/roms/Intellivision or something like that.

 

Use "cd" to navigate each directory.

 

Use "ls" to list directory.

 

Notice case is important. It won't recognize uppercase instead of lowercase or vice-versa.

 

https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Transferring-Roms/

 

 

 

 

[Upcoming book on Atari 2600 programming (now available)]

17 hours ago, bent_pin said:

Is it available for kindle?

None of my books, because the kindle breaks assembler code formatting and apparently there is no way to control it.

[Faulty statement that works "correctly" but gives compiler warning]

27 minutes ago, DZ-Jay said:

 

Hmm ... Sorry if I'm being dumb, but I am a little confused.  

 

It looks like the CS_ADVANCE flag is being set by that PRINT statement, so it is doing something with it.  That's the part that confuses me -- I wasn't expecting it to work (adding + CS_ADVANCE), but it does.  Maybe you are explaining it to me and I am not understanding it ...

 

 

No, it is not generated.

 

Maybe you put it there with another statement.

 

Here is a wall of code for your enjoyment:

 

	;FILE test1.bas
	;[1] 	CONST CS_ADVANCE = $2000
	SRCFILE "test1.bas",1
	;[2] 	CONST CS_RED = 1
	SRCFILE "test1.bas",2
	;[3] 
	SRCFILE "test1.bas",3
	;[4] 	PRINT AT 0 COLOR CS_RED, "\95" + CS_ADVANCE
	SRCFILE "test1.bas",4
	MVII #512,R0
	MVO R0,_screen
	MVII #1,R0
	MVO R0,_color
	MVI _screen,R4
	MVII #760,R0
	XOR _color,R0
	MVO@ R0,R4
	MVO R4,_screen
	;[5] 
	SRCFILE "test1.bas",5
	;[6] 	PRINT "HELLO"
	SRCFILE "test1.bas",6
	MVI _screen,R4
	MVII #320,R0
	XOR _color,R0
	MVO@ R0,R4
	XORI #104,R0
	MVO@ R0,R4
	XORI #72,R0
	MVO@ R0,R4
	MVO@ R0,R4
	XORI #24,R0
	MVO@ R0,R4
	MVO R4,_screen

 

[Faulty statement that works "correctly" but gives compiler warning]

28 minutes ago, DZ-Jay said:

I get that, but it also evaluates the expression by adding the advance bit, which is the weird part.  I would expect that such invalid characters would be ignore, no?  If they are evaluated, then they are not invalid.

 

Or perhaps I'm missing something?

 

    dZ.

 

P.S. Thanks for responding! 👍🏻

It doesn't evaluate the expression. Once it detects a lexical component "String" it parses the string, and calls a standard function to check for end of line.

 

Any extra character on a line is flagged with a warning.

 

This way the programmer can detect parts of code that aren't compiling in any way.

 

[Faulty statement that works "correctly" but gives compiler warning]

There are only two things that the compiler does on a PRINT statement:

 

1. Is it a quoted string? Process the quoted string. Warn of anything else on the same line.

2. Anything else is processed as an expression.

 

So to answer your question "\95" is processed to put \95 on the screen, and then it warns of the remaining invalid extra characters.

[What are the best fully original homebrews for the Colecovision?]

1 hour ago, jgkspsx said:

We have Princess Quest in the INTV version already, as well as Zombie Madness which seems related to the Zombie Incident?

Zombie Incident is a completely different game.

 

This is Mecha-8 for Colecovision:

 

 

And this is Mecha-9 for Colecovision:

 

 

 

[I just finished my first game - what to do with it?]

Congratulations on finishing your first game! 👏👏👏

 

[Mystic Castle]

3 hours ago, fdr4prez said:

as mentioned above, it was NEVER available as CIB

Or more clearly, you bought the PCB cartridge board, put a case yourself, and get the box, label and manual from different people.

 

Probably all these things are sold out since a while.

[I can haz sauce code]

On 7/15/2023 at 11:08 PM, Thomas Jentzsch said:

I don't think so. Let's ask @nanochess if he agrees.

I'll think about it.

[1 Million point highscore in Aardvark, what I learned.]

Wow! Amazing! I never thought someone could make it so far!

 

Congratulations!

 

 

 

 

[Skiing & Horse Racing]

I'm pretty surprised I didn't see this thread at the time.

 

Kudos for the incredible Skiing 83 visual effects!

 

Good work!

 

[New Rom Available at IntellivisionCollector.com!]

Congratulations @Brian's Man Cave!

 

[Castle of Death]

10 hours ago, Lathe26 said:

I beat the game on the 4^th of July!

 

 

Amazing! Probably you are the first one to come out alive from the Castle of Death!

 

Congratulations!

 

🥳🎉

[Any interest in a game like Jet Set Willy for the Atari 2600?]

Do it!

[recommend an INTV emulator]

I just noticed someone forgot to put the link to jzintv http://spatula-city.org/~im14u2c/intv/

 

[The updated and revamped Intellivision Homebrew Release Schedule]

Silly me, I thought this was the schedule for upcoming homebrews, and it is an old thread from 2012!!!

 

I was still a lurker

[In depth look at MEXICAN INTELLIVISION VARIATIONS]

At last! I've scanned the Mexican manual for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.

 

It was translated as Monstruos y Cavernas, predating the more common Calabozos y Dragones.

 

https://nanochess.org/intellivision_advanced_dungeons_and_dragons.html

 

[Video Chess level 7]

33 minutes ago, SoundGammon said:

You mentioned that there could have been bad ram or something causing the bug. Could be. Back in 1979, on my 2600, Star Ship, I could NOT land on the moon playing the variation Lunar Lander. I brought my cart to the store and the guy put it into the display 2600 and it worked fine! Also, on Blackjack, I could always double-down and NOT bust! Sent the console to Atari and they sent me a new one!

It would have been great to test Video Chess on your buggy Atari 2600.

 

[Video Chess level 7]

Well, here it is. My article about the disassembly and commenting of Video Chess.

 

Enjoy it!

 

https://nanochess.org/video_chess.html

 

[Video Chess level 7]

1 hour ago, Tempest said:

Does this apply to Computer Chess as well?

I don't have idea. Someone would have to disassemble it, and compare against my findings.

[Video Chess level 7]

I've been going over the code for a while, and I cannot see anything resembling a bug.

 

My hunch proved to be wrong, and so far it looks like the stack cannot overwrite important data. I even measured the depth of calls (JSR instructions).

 

On the other side I determined the depth variable cannot exceed the limits of RAM.

 

If there is a bug probably it is triggered by very special conditions, but without a screenshot of the bug it would be hard to find a clue.

 

Anyway, I'll proceed to write the article based on what I've discovered in the Video Chess ROM.

 

[Donkey Kong, Jr. Question]

I can remember Jennell Jaquays interview saying they played the arcade, recorded videotapes of the gameplay, and used stopwatches to measure timings in order to recreate the game.

 

So in fact they didn't reverse engineered the game, but reimplemented it based on the visuals and behavior of the arcade while playing it.

 

https://www.retrovideogamer.co.uk/rvg-interviews-jennell-jaquays/