LTO Flash! - Intellivision Flash Cartridge Information

[mr_me]

... I don't know what it is, but I really fell in love with Dreadnaught Factor after their episode on it. It's become one of, if not the favorite game of mine on the console. Such a cool mix of shmup and strategy, and you get an advantage of playing on a real console versus emulation because none of the emulators to my knowledge emulate the ship explosion properly. IIRC it was something to do with changing the border color to get that effect and the emulators can't replicate that for some reason. So just another attaboy to Joe for his awesome creation!

Mame does the flashing colour effect correctly; jzIntv produces a solid colour instead. The solid colour effect is actually quite dramatic.

[+intvsteve]

I'm not really sure , I just downloaded ROMs tonight. This is the first for me in all.. lol

 

But was that an upgrade to populate the right hand side automatically. Because manual said to drag rom from left to right side.

That feature was added during beta, but it's likely we had worked out manual text quite awhile before that. Dragging will always work. You can disable "auto-populate".

[+intvsteve]

It really is great. Super easy to setup, don't have to dick around with micro SD cards, easy to switch between games. I have been jealous for years of all the CC3 owners because they could buy ROM only versions of games and I couldn't, or they could play the entire library of games and I had to go on goodwill or ebay to find the carts. I would listen to the Intellivisionaries, for example, their Truckin' episode and I had to just watch YouTube videos to understand what they were talking about, but now I can actually play them instead. I don't know what it is, but I really fell in love with Dreadnaught Factor after their episode on it. It's become one of, if not the favorite game of mine on the console. Such a cool mix of shmup and strategy, and you get an advantage of playing on a real console versus emulation because none of the emulators to my knowledge emulate the ship explosion properly. IIRC it was something to do with changing the border color to get that effect and the emulators can't replicate that for some reason. So just another attaboy to Joe for his awesome creation!

Dreadnaught Factor IMO is absolutely one of the best games on Intellivision! Your reaction to it -- being totally infatuated with a "new" old game -- is one of the best things about NOT having had all the games forever and ever! For me, Worm Whomper was one of those games. When you find it and start playing it, it's a really powerful trip down nostalgia lane to "discover" a box full of fun that you'd never had before.

[+intvsteve]

I'm not really sure , I just downloaded ROMs tonight. This is the first for me in all.. lol

 

But was that an upgrade to populate the right hand side automatically. Because manual said to drag rom from left to right side.

Oh -- also... if you went to one of those ROM download sites... I've noticed that often they have multiple copies of the same game. Usually it seems there may have been multiple contributors. In some cases, there are bad copies of the ROMs, too.

[ITAdvantage]

Mame does the flashing colour effect correctly; jzIntv produces a solid colour instead. The solid colour effect is actually quite dramatic.

I haven't tried it on MAME before, so I didn't realize it works on there. I have jzintv on my Retropie and it changes the ship's colors 3 times then just turns the whole background blue, which is way different than on original hardware. The whole screen changing colors is very cool, it reminds me of Missile Command on Atari 2600 when you lose all of your cities. It really sent the message that the shit was hitting the fan for real.

[ITAdvantage]

Dreadnaught Factor IMO is absolutely one of the best games on Intellivision! Your reaction to it -- being totally infatuated with a "new" old game -- is one of the best things about NOT having had all the games forever and ever! For me, Worm Whomper was one of those games. When you find it and start playing it, it's a really powerful trip down nostalgia lane to "discover" a box full of fun that you'd never had before.

 

You know I've heard a lot about it and I think I messed with it on emulation, but now that I have the LTO Flash cart, I'll give it a try on the real hardware and see how it goes. Those late-release Activition games are the best!

[Rev]

 

LOL. It might be the shrink wrap. That stuff has a bit of an aroma that could easily be mistaken for weed, but I only really notice it when I have a gadzillion of them freshly shrink-wrapped in one spot.

 

Or, there might have been something in the air in Santa Cruz. I dunno, I wasn't there.

When I opened mine some crack nuggets fell out of the cartridge area. :-)

[ITAdvantage]

When I opened mine some crack nuggets fell out of the cartridge area. :-)

 

Hmmm..is that why Level Up Games is OOS?

[m-crew]

Oh -- also... if you went to one of those ROM download sites... I've noticed that often they have multiple copies of the same game. Usually it seems there may have been multiple contributors. In some cases, there are bad copies of the ROMs, too.

no Rom download site, I used both programmer's site.. im sure it was something I did. lol

[mr_me]

no Rom download site, I used both programmer's site.. im sure it was something I did. lol

Some programmers provide both rom and bin versions of the same game.

[+intvsteve]

Some programmers provide both rom and bin versions of the same game.

 

That sounds about right.

[+DZ-Jay]

Removed duplicate post.

[+DZ-Jay]

 

That sounds about right.

I believe the Christmas Carol ROM distribution package includes both BIN and ROM files.

[freewheel]

Mame does the flashing colour effect correctly; jzIntv produces a solid colour instead. The solid colour effect is actually quite dramatic.

 

A little off-topic, but I'd love to know more about this - what triggers it? I'm eyes-deep in a few effects that "behave like they should" in an emulator, but not on real hardware. This sounds like the reverse, at least for jzintv.

 

[+DZ-Jay]

Some programmers provide both rom and bin versions of the same game.

Perhaps this is an opportunity to improve the GUI. How about taking a "fingerprint" of the game which is agnostic to its format. That way, say, "xmas_carol.ROM" and "xmas_carol.BIN" are treated as one instance and only copied once to the device.

 

Also, accepting a ZIP archive of a game and scanning it to extract the appropriate ROM image (like what MAME does).

 

dZ.

[+intvsteve]

I put .zip-friendliness on the TODO list a long time ago, so yeah - would be a nice improvement! Just haven't had the opportunity to explore it.

 

The UI does a bit of work to try to avoid pure duplicates of ROMs, but it's a tricky thing. For example, the exact same .bin can actually be two very different things depending on the contents of their companion .cfg files. It accounts for that. (Example: two copies of Dreadnaught Factor - one w/ the PAL fix in its .cfg, one the "standard" .cfg file)

 

With a .bin/.rom pair, this can still be tricky… One approach would be, when comparing ROMs, work out a 'canonical' ROM comparison. E.g. if comparing a .bin to a .rom, convert the .bin to a .rom and compare the two .roms.

 

 

It turns out comparing ROMs has a lot of subtleties. For now, the UI tries to strike a balance between performance and accuracy in this area.

[m-crew]

I'm sure that's what happened. For us less technical -what is the difference between a bin and s rom file.

So is it better to flash a bin or rom file.

[+intvsteve]

Nutshell:

• .bin + .cfg is really flexible and can describe extra features a game might use - and is the "original" format
• .rom was invented for Intellicart and also used for CC3 - it includes the info from .cfg file into the .rom file so the firmware on those carts didn't need to know how to interpret .cfg files

EDIT: Which is better? Doesn't really matter.

 

For those who like to tinker w/ their ROMs, though, the .bin+.cfg format works better. Also, for games that may use JLP features / JLP flash save -- that info is described in the .cfg and not represented in the .rom format at this time.

[m-crew]

Nutshell:

• .bin + .cfg is really flexible and can describe extra features a game might use - and is the "original" format
• .rom was invented for Intellicart and also used for CC3 - it includes the info from .cfg file into the .rom file so the firmware on those carts didn't need to know how to interpret .cfg files

EDIT: Which is better? Doesn't really matter.

 

For those who like to tinker w/ their ROMs, though, the .bin+.cfg format works better. Also, for games that may use JLP features / JLP flash save -- that info is described in the .cfg and not represented in the .rom format at this time.

Thanks for the clarifying the difference.

I'm a little smarter now.

At least that's what I tell myself.

Lol

[accousticguitar]

 

EDIT: Which is better? Doesn't really matter.

 

 

Is one more widely used than the other? Which one is generally released when a new game is made?

[intvnut]

Is one more widely used than the other? Which one is generally released when a new game is made?

 

BIN+CFG is what Intellivision Lives and friends use, as well as Carl's INTVPC emulator. I think Bliss may also only support BIN+CFG. (BIN shows up as ".INT" and ".ITV" some places, IIRC.) I forget if IntvWin supported both or only .BIN. (JohnPCAE would know.) I think it only supported BIN, with a CRC lookup file to determine memory map. Emulators such as jzIntv and INTVPC also support patching BINs via the CFG file.

 

Interestingly, the original Intellicart tools (from which .ROM originates) only supported BIN+CFG; Chad hadn't intended .ROM to be an interchange format. His tools converted to ROM under the hood. A later upgrade to the Intellicart downloader allowed taking a .ROM directly. The fact .ROM "escaped the lab" was my fault.

 

Some games can only be represented in BIN format due to Mattel-style page-flipping, which isn't supported by .ROM.

 

So far as I know, no devices or emulators require .ROM. All that I'm aware of work with BIN+CFG (or some cases just BIN plus a built in "known games" CRC table).

 

Otherwise, they're more or less interchangeable. AS1600 will generate both in one go if you ask it to, and your game can be represented as both. (Recent versions of AS1600 warn when you try to do something that either doesn't work or isn't well supported.) I generally advise folks to provide both versions if possible for new games, just in case. .ROMs are marginally more convenient because you don't have to include the separate CFG file.

 

In your own game collection, it shouldn't really matter if you have a mix of types as long as the games all play on your chosen platform(s). If you had to pick one format as "canonical", the BIN format is the only format that can represent all features.

Edited September 27, 2016 by intvnut

[+DZ-Jay]

I put .zip-friendliness on the TODO list a long time ago, so yeah - would be a nice improvement! Just haven't had the opportunity to explore it.

 

The UI does a bit of work to try to avoid pure duplicates of ROMs, but it's a tricky thing. For example, the exact same .bin can actually be two very different things depending on the contents of their companion .cfg files. It accounts for that. (Example: two copies of Dreadnaught Factor - one w/ the PAL fix in its .cfg, one the "standard" .cfg file)

 

With a .bin/.rom pair, this can still be tricky One approach would be, when comparing ROMs, work out a 'canonical' ROM comparison. E.g. if comparing a .bin to a .rom, convert the .bin to a .rom and compare the two .roms.

 

 

It turns out comparing ROMs has a lot of subtleties. For now, the UI tries to strike a balance between performance and accuracy in this area.

I understand all that. What I would suggest is not to concentrate on "$INTERESTING_TECHNICAL_CHALLENGE" and instead focus on actual practical use cases from customers. For instance, for all the clever name and menu managing, a built-in automatic alphabetical sorting of ROM names in the output would have been very useful to most.

 

Likewise, I would suppose that for more than 90% of the cases two files with the same name (regardless of extension) would actual be considered a duplicate by the owner; whether the ROM exists twice in his collection, or he inadvertently dragged it again onto the GUI. In either case, i imagine most people would like to flag it somehow, or have the application notify them so that they may confirm their intentions (e.g., "you are adding a ROM with the same name as an existing one, are you sure you want to do this?").

 

It'll never be perfect for every case, but it may cover most of them. When in doubt, offer it as an option.

[+DZ-Jay]

 

BIN+CFG is what Intellivision Lives and friends use, as well as Carl's INTVPC emulator. I think Bliss may also only support BIN+CFG. (BIN shows up as ".INT" and ".ITV" some places, IIRC.) I forget if IntvWin supported both or only .BIN. (JohnPCAE would know.) I think it only supported BIN, with a CRC lookup file to determine memory map. Emulators such as jzIntv and INTVPC also support patching BINs via the CFG file.

 

Interestingly, the original Intellicart tools (from which .ROM originates) only supported BIN+CFG; Chad hadn't intended .ROM to be an interchange format. His tools converted to ROM under the hood. A later upgrade to the Intellicart downloader allowed taking a .ROM directly. The fact .ROM "escaped the lab" was my fault.

 

Some games can only be represented in BIN format due to Mattel-style page-flipping, which isn't supported by .ROM.

 

So far as I know, no devices or emulators require .ROM. All that I'm aware of work with BIN+CFG (or some cases just BIN plus a built in "known games" CRC table).

 

Otherwise, they're more or less interchangeable. AS1600 will generate both in one go if you ask it to, and your game can be represented as both. (Recent versions of AS1600 warn when you try to do something that either doesn't work or isn't well supported.) I generally advise folks to provide both versions if possible for new games, just in case. .ROMs are marginally more convenient because you don't have to include the separate CFG file.

 

In your own game collection, it shouldn't really matter if you have a mix of types as long as the games all play on your chosen platform(s). If you had to pick one format as "canonical", the BIN format is the only format that can represent all features.

 

Then, in the interest of simplicity and portability, I propose to the community that we define a new portable format to be supported by all currently maintained tools and devices.

 

For the sake of illustration, let's call this an "IGF" or "Intellivision Game Format." The IGF format it's just a ZIP package containing a BIN file and any number of CFG files (to be prioritized by tools according to commonly accepted rules.).

 

We could have tools like the LTO Flash! GUI automatically package files as such to keep a collection neat and tidy; and unpackage as necessary when transferring to the device.

 

Likewise, jzIntv could be modified to support this new packaging format, so that the user wouldn't have to deal with any of the complexity of BIN+CFG files.

 

Tools like the GUI could also "fix" the packages if they are missing their CFG counterparts, or convert ROM files automatically.

 

I know this may not work with older tools, but the community is alive and thriving, and current and new tools are actively being maintained, so we can push forward with a new format.

 

My idea is not to re-invent the wheel by defining a new data-encoding format, but a portable packaging mechanism for users to be able to share ROMs without having to care about the actual file requirements.

 

Thoughts?

dZ.

[Kiwi]

I use .bin+.cfg since my file association is set up to open Nostagia Intellivision emulator for quick testing. I compile a new build of a game I'm making each little change I make. When testing on the real Intellivision 1, LTO Flash detects when the ROM are different than the one on HDD. So I can click on send to LTO Flash to replace the .bin build with a new one. That way, I don't have to move my game back from the bottom of the menu to the top.

 

.rom format is great for sharing on the forums for Intellivision ROM size over 15.5 KB. That build don't get replace often. So I was able to test the old build of Mad Bomber on TV to see how multiplexing bombs looks. It was harder to see the bombs in that version than the none multiplexing version. And I changed one of the bomb color from Olive to black. It was hard to see with a green busy background.

[+-^CrossBow^-]

Really enjoying my LTO Flash! But I do have a few questions:

 

Does the MTE 201 diagnostics NOT work on the LTO? I'm asking because I have the rom Image but cannot get it to show up in the LTO Flash program to copy it to the LTO itself? In fact none of the diagnostic roms will work and just show the title screen followed by a crash back to the LTO menu?

 

PONG is another game that refuses to appear in the LTO menu for me to copy over?