The Ultimate Intellivision Flashback

[pimpmaul69]

5 minutes ago, pimpmaul69 said:

Did you test on both upci ports?

Also just because it works on your intellivision doesn mean it will work on the upci. In this i mean that the controller ports on the system and upci could be making contact in different locations. I recommend trying contact cleaner on the pins on both the controller and the upci. If that doesnt fix it, try using a 9 pin genesis extension cable and see if it makes better contact with that. 

Edited January 25, 2023 by pimpmaul69

[gar0u]

Yes.  Both A and B exhibit the same problem, as do different Flashback controllers.

[pimpmaul69]

41 minutes ago, gar0u said:

Yes.  Both A and B exhibit the same problem, as do different Flashback controllers.

Ok so two things. Hook up a different type of controller and boot it into a different controller mode. Then put it back into intv fb controller mode. Do it on both ports. See if that fixes it. If not i would open the upci and start inspecting for a cracked solder joint. Also make sure you arent somehow modifying the config file for jzintv. 

Edited January 25, 2023 by pimpmaul69

[gar0u]

Thanks for the tips.  I have an old 9pin "Slick Stick" from my Commodore 64.  Will have to check if v2 of the UPCI supports that.

 

I've spent a lot of time tracking down config files in RetroPie, EmulationStation, and jzintv.  Will look at my notes when I do that. 

[pimpmaul69]

1 hour ago, gar0u said:

Thanks for the tips.  I have an old 9pin "Slick Stick" from my Commodore 64.  Will have to check if v2 of the UPCI supports that.

 

I've spent a lot of time tracking down config files in RetroPie, EmulationStation, and jzintv.  Will look at my notes when I do that. 

Yes your commodore stick is the same as an atari 2600 joystick. It will work just fine. 
 

[T-Dizzle]

I really like the theme used in Byte Knights video of his Ultimate Intellivision.  Where can I find this theme?  It doesn't appear to be included in the Ultimate Intellivision files.

[Dadtastic]

Just got my Ultimate Intellivision Flashback down out of its box. Trying to use it and it just keeps rebooting. Sometimes it gets to the main menu but it will ultimately just reboot.

 

Any ideas?  Did the Raspberry Pi kick the bucket?

[pimpmaul69]

On 11/21/2023 at 8:16 PM, Dadtastic said:

Just got my Ultimate Intellivision Flashback down out of its box. Trying to use it and it just keeps rebooting. Sometimes it gets to the main menu but it will ultimately just reboot.

 

Any ideas?  Did the Raspberry Pi kick the bucket?

You probably are underpowering it. Use a better power supply. 

[+tcmultimedia]

I recently bought one of these from another AA user, and it is great. Since I already had a regular Flashback hooked up, I unknowingly just used that power supply since it was coiled thru my wall unit. 

 

The seller did include another power supply with the purchase, and told me you must use that rather than the FB one, fixed the issue.

 

So as previous poster stated, that is most likely your issue. 

[The Master]

I didn't seeing anything about making jlp save game features work. This could because I have an older version of the ultimate flashback that was built back before any jlp roms with save capabilities were available to use, and this feature might already work OOTB with recent builds. Incase anyone else like me has an older build but wants to enable the recent jlp roms from IntellivisionColector to be able to save, I found the easiest way to do this was modify "/opt/retropie/configs/intellivision/emulators.cfg" by adding

 

--jlp-savegame=%BASENAME%.save

 

to the jzintv command line. 

The one draw back with this simple approach is it will create a .save file for every rom you run even if they don't need it. 

Ideally this is something that should be configurable in the rom's cfg file. But as far as I can tell with the latest jzIntv source code it doesn't have a way to set --jlp-savegame via cfg files. maybe with a simple option of just setting enable savegame state and have jzintv default save to the same directory as the rom file. As I could see why it might not be good to set file path info in a cfg file that might be used in LTO Flash carts that have no concept for file paths.

--The Master 

[+fdr4prez]

Thanks. 

 

I don't see the big deal of having a save file created for all non-supported games. 

 

It isn't like there are a lot of games in list. 

 

Alternatively, you can make another game system just for these games. Then it'll have its own emulator.cfg settings 

 

This is what I've done for the ECS games.   They are in a different system that has its own emulator.cfg that enable the ECS. 

[The Master]

I forgot you could make a separate system. That might be a good way to work around the save file issue.

I found out you don't need a separate emulator.cfg for ECS or even Intellivoice games. Just make sure the rom's cfg files are set with "[vars] ecs=1" or "[vars] voice=1" and if they have both then "[vars] ecs=1 voice=1". I redid all the ecs and voice files the flashback came with by using jzintv rom2bin updated their cfg files to add those vars then ran bin2rom and re-added the newly generated rom files to my flashback. Now ecs and/or voice are enabled automagically on a per rom bases. The only other thing you might need is to make sure both ivoice and ecs roms are in /opt/retropie/emulators/jzintv/rom. then add to your command line for jzintv "-p /opt/retropie/emulators/jzintv/rom"

 

[+fdr4prez]

Oh, now that I think about it, I believe it is possible to multiple configurations in one emulator.cfg file, and then when you start a game you can pick which to setting to use. 

 

So you can set the jlp games to use the jlp settings, and the standard games will not make the save file. 

 

But I don't recall if Byte Knight's build hides the menu that allows you to set/change the configuration for the game. 

[pimpmaul69]

35 minutes ago, fdr4prez said:

Oh, now that I think about it, I believe it is possible to multiple configurations in one emulator.cfg file, and then when you start a game you can pick which to setting to use. 

 

So you can set the jlp games to use the jlp settings, and the standard games will not make the save file. 

 

But I don't recall if Byte Knight's build hides the menu that allows you to set/change the configuration for the game. 

Yes you can do them all in a single emulator.cfg file. Also i have ivoice enabled for everything so i never have to worry about that because it doesn’t affect non ivoice games at all. So i have a normal game configuration and ecs game configuration. I haven’t updated or gotten jlp games so i know nothing about that however

Edited December 23, 2023 by pimpmaul69

[The Master]

3 hours ago, fdr4prez said:

Oh, now that I think about it, I believe it is possible to multiple configurations in one emulator.cfg file, and then when you start a game you can pick which to setting to use. 

 

So you can set the jlp games to use the jlp settings, and the standard games will not make the save file. 

 

But I don't recall if Byte Knight's build hides the menu that allows you to set/change the configuration for the game. 

Byte Knight did disable the run command menu, which can be enable/disable by running sudo ~/RetroPi-Setup/retropie_setup.sh, and navigating to Configuration/Tools -> Runcommand -> Launch Menu. Then reboot.

Then right after launching a game you have a second to press any key and the Launch Menu screen will popup letting you select which emulator config you want for that specific rom.

the options in the launch menu are created by the values in this file: "/opt/retropie/configs/{SYSTEM_NAME}/emulators.cfg" 

so I copied the jzintv param. and then renamed the copy from jzintv=... to jzintv_jlp_save=...

making sure I added --jlp-savegame=%BASENAME%.save to the command in jzintv_jlp_save.

if you don't want to enable/disable the Launch menu each time a new jlp game with save function is added you can modify "/opt/retropie/configs/all/emulators.cfg" by adding a new line using a specific naming convention.
{SYSTEM_NAME}_{ROM_NAME_SANS_EXT} make sure to remove any spaces or characters that aren't a-z, A-Z, or 0-9.  e.g. "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/intellivision/The Pandora Incident (ECS) (2022) (Elektronite) (by Carlos Madruga and Arturo Ragozini).bin"

Becomes

intellivision_ThePandoraIncidentECS2022ElektronitebyCarlosMadrugaandArturoRagozini = "jzintv_jlp_save"

Doing this will make sure only JLP games with save functionality generate save files.

--The Master
 

Edited December 23, 2023 by The Master

[Crash7]

I have a broken flashback deck if somebody wants it to try and fix it. 

 

I have the controllers that's why I bought it on eBay even though I knew it was broke

 

All I ask is that you pay for the shipping and that you're in the US. Because I can't get to a post office but I can have postal pickup come to my house as long as I'm delivering in the U.S. 

 

DM me your address and I'll take care of it next week. 

[pimpmaul69]

3 hours ago, Crash7 said:

I have a broken flashback deck if somebody wants it to try and fix it. 

 

I have the controllers that's why I bought it on eBay even though I knew it was broke

 

All I ask is that you pay for the shipping and that you're in the US. Because I can't get to a post office but I can have postal pickup come to my house as long as I'm delivering in the U.S. 

 

DM me your address and I'll take care of it next week. 

Message sent

[The Master]

has anyone else run into the problem with the ultimate flashback that when pressing down on the Intellivision controllers or down arrows on a usb keyboard that it sometimes skips over several games instead of going to the next game in the list? If so is there a way to fix that?

[+fdr4prez]

21 minutes ago, The Master said:

has anyone else run into the problem with the ultimate flashback that when pressing down on the Intellivision controllers or down arrows on a usb keyboard that it sometimes skips over several games instead of going to the next game in the list? If so is there a way to fix that?

Yes, it is a known issue of Retropie. 

 

It isn't solely on Intellivision controllers, but it will not occur on normal dpad types 

 

You can head over to the Retropie forums to see if they want to work on it. 

 

I have remapped my controller in Retropie so that I don't use the disc for menu navigation. 

 

I've mapped the keypad so that the 2, 8, 4 and 6 are the directions for menu navigation (dpad directions during the mapping), and now that fast scrolling issue doesn't occur. 

[Crash7]

1 hour ago, pimpmaul69 said:

Message sent

 

I got it, I'll get it out this week and when I ship it I'll get you the tracking number.  

[RetroGamer85]

Is there anyone willing to upgrade my flashback to ultimate? I understand that Byte Knight is not doing it anymore.  

[pimpmaul69]

On 2/12/2024 at 7:29 PM, RetroGamer85 said:

Is there anyone willing to upgrade my flashback to ultimate? I understand that Byte Knight is not doing it anymore.  

Since byteknight no longer responds there is no way to get the ufbi board and without his permission the maker of it wont sell them so there is a lot more work involved in modifying the system so more work involved.