jzintv help

[Sir Jay]

I am new to emulation. I have a Mac and downloaded jzintv and GUintv. I have successfully run GUintv with jzintv, exec.bin, and grom.bin inside of it and GUintv seemed to find the files okay. I downloaded a rom from intellivision.us, for example 4-tris. I opened the 4-tris folder and grabbed the .rom from it and put it in jzintv's rom folder. I went to Open and tried to open the 4-tris rom in the jzintv rom folder, but it wouldn't work. I guess I am looking to find out what I might be doing wrong. Thanks.

[GroovyBee]

You'll probably need to find yourself a GROM.BIN and and an EXEC.BIN too. They are ROM dumps from the "BIOS" in the Inty.

[Sir Jay]

You'll probably need to find yourself a GROM.BIN and and an EXEC.BIN too. They are ROM dumps from the "BIOS" in the Inty.

I already found them. I put them and the jzintv folder into the GUintv folder (recommended in the GUintv readme file). The GUintv asks you to map the location of those folders and I did that and that part seems to have gone well. It even told me that I needed the ecs.bin if I wanted to play ecs games but that I didn't need it for other games. The GUintv instructions then say to go to file, open, and then open a "game". I assumed that meant to click on a rom file in the rom folder in the jzintv folder. If I do that a window tells me that whatever I clicked on is a "directory" and doesn't do anything. Ideas?

[GroovyBee]

Are you trying *.rom files or *.bin+*.cfg files? Have you tried any BITD games?

[intvnut]

I'd like to help, but I'm not really familiar at all with GUIntv. Do you have a pointer to it? The issue seems to be less with jzIntv and more with the GUI wrapper.

[Sir Jay]

I'd like to help, but I'm not really familiar at all with GUIntv. Do you have a pointer to it? The issue seems to be less with jzIntv and more with the GUI wrapper.

Have you used jzintv on a Mac? Do you have a suggestion for a different program/wrapper? I'm hoping to have some time to mess with this between now and New Years.

Edited December 27, 2015 by Sir Jay

[intvnut]

Have you used jzintv on a Mac? Do you have a suggestion for a different program/wrapper? I'm hoping to have some time to mess with this between now and New Years.

 

Of course I have... I'm the 'jz' in jzintv. And, a few years back, I actually bought myself a MBP. I'm typing this message on that MBP, actually.

 

But, I'm a hard-core command line guy, even on the Mac, so I've never tried any front-ends. Is this the right GUIntv? http://emulationrealm.net/downloads/file/3214-guintv

Edited December 27, 2015 by intvnut

[intvnut]

Ok, I was able to get GUIntv 2.1 running just now. Here's roughly the steps I took:

 

• Open the DMG for GUIntv and drag GUIntv21 to Applications.
• Open GUIntv folder in Applications, and create a new folder named jzintv.
• Download jzIntv from the website ( http://spatula-city.org/~im14u2c/intv/). I used the latest development version. I recommend the Stable Dev Version at the lower right to everyone now.
• Drag the file 'jzintv' from jzintv/bin/jzintv in the archive to Applications/GUIntv21/jzintv/.
• Copy exec.bin, grom.bin, ecs.bin, and your game ROMs into Applications/GUIntv21/jzintv/

When I launched GUIntv, it asked me to point to the folder holding the EXEC, etc. I pointed it to Applications/GUIntv21/jzintv/. Then, when it came time to launch a game, I navigated to the same directory and double-clicked on one of the game binaries.

 

I did notice that the preference for the game folder didn't seem to work; I had to navigate to the game folder each time.

 

I don't think it's necessary to throw the game binaries in the same directory as jzintv, exec.bin, grom.bin. I just did that as a quick one-off test.

[mthompson]

That's strange that GUIntv isn't holding the location for your game files. My copies do that just fine.

 

Joe is right, of course. Your games can be stored in any folder. In fact, when someone here posts a new version of a game being developed, I just navigate from the default folder to Downloads to give it a quick try.

[PuzZLeR]

Although I too am a CLI hardcore, I did get around to trying this particular, albiet non-official, front-end for jzIntv, and never had much success with it. Many issues on my end, even to which folder it was installed in, or this, or that, (don't remember now) so I stopped using it. Personally, I don't think it's well made. You'd be much better off running jzIntv as is, and better off learning to put together batch files if some form of GUI feel is desired.,

[Sir Jay]

Alright. I have cleaned off a pc laptop with Windows 7. I want to get emulation running so I can take a shot at learning some programming, and those tools seem to be easier to access on a pc vs my mac. I downloaded jzintv, grom, and exec and have them in the same folder. I didn't know how to "run" jzintv, so I googled installing it. I went to intellivision.us and found a installer. It installed it, but I believe it did so with a GUI produced by Arnauld. In the GUI I created paths for the exec and grom and then tried to click on a .bin that was included in the install or in jzintv (not sure which) and it says, cannot write 'start.bat'.

 

Am I doing this right, or should I not be using the gui and running jzintv in a different way? any advice or help is appreciated. I am excited to get this up and running. Thanks.

[Kiwi]

I use Nostagia for quick testing. Then use a front-end 'jzintv Launcher' to boot and start jzintv to verify that my game is working properly.

[Sir Jay]

I use Nostagia for quick testing. Then use a front-end 'jzintv Launcher' to boot and start jzintv to verify that my game is working properly.

 

Ok. I just thought from the sound of it that everyone was using jzintv. Does Nostagia have an interface for using it or is it command line stuff? I'm looking for whatever is easier for a newbie to emulation with an eye to using it for testing in the future. Sounds like you are using both. Do you run jzintv from prompts? Or do you use some sort of GUI?

[Kiwi]

Nostagia is an Intellivision emulator. It have a GUI. However, it not accurate since I did run into issue it doing stuff that the real intellivision would have problem. Like it could load into odd card number slot or is it that sprite could use odd number card while it is set in 16 pixel mode, I don't remember. Also doesn't lock up the controller when the noise channel output input bits are turned on. With jzintv, it would show what it would look or act like on an Intellivision.

 

I use a front end jzIntv Launcher which is a GUI interface that it will help you set up jzintv and launch jzintv. Once you set it up, it'll remember your setting and launch your ROM.

[freewheel]

Ok. I just thought from the sound of it that everyone was using jzintv.

 

Most people do. It's by far the most accurate emulator - and really, the only one that's even remotely close to updated these days. So it supports certain features that modern homebrew is coming out with (save games, etc).

 

Running it is pretty simple: you need to put the EXEC and GROM files in a specific folder. Then just open a command prompt where jzintv is located and type "jzintv" and press enter. It will give you instructions for how to specify a hundred options, which you can safely ignore for now. Generally you can get a game going by typing "jzintv game.rom" and press enter.

 

I find that people spend an inordinate amount of time struggling with these GUI installers and front ends, because those programs make all sorts of assumptions as to how your computer is laid out that are generally not true for the average person. You end up having to troubleshoot the installer/program just to make the damned things work. Given that you need to understand where your files are stored anyway, and how to navigate around your folder structure, opening a command prompt isn't exactly rocket science to add to the process Give it a try! If you run into anything more than basic errors, you're going to get into this level of nitty-gritty anyway, so you might as well do it from the start.

[Sir Jay]

Nostagia is an Intellivision emulator. It have a GUI. However, it not accurate since I did run into issue it doing stuff that the real intellivision would have problem. Like it could load into odd card number slot or is it that sprite could use odd number card while it is set in 16 pixel mode, I don't remember. Also doesn't lock up the controller when the noise channel output input bits are turned on. With jzintv, it would show what it would look or act like on an Intellivision.

 

I use a front end jzIntv Launcher which is a GUI interface that it will help you set up jzintv and launch jzintv. Once you set it up, it'll remember your setting and launch your ROM.

Thanks for the info. I think I will try jzintv first and go from there.

 

Most people do. It's by far the most accurate emulator - and really, the only one that's even remotely close to updated these days. So it supports certain features that modern homebrew is coming out with (save games, etc).

 

Running it is pretty simple: you need to put the EXEC and GROM files in a specific folder. Then just open a command prompt where jzintv is located and type "jzintv" and press enter. It will give you instructions for how to specify a hundred options, which you can safely ignore for now. Generally you can get a game going by typing "jzintv game.rom" and press enter.

 

I find that people spend an inordinate amount of time struggling with these GUI installers and front ends, because those programs make all sorts of assumptions as to how your computer is laid out that are generally not true for the average person. You end up having to troubleshoot the installer/program just to make the damned things work. Given that you need to understand where your files are stored anyway, and how to navigate around your folder structure, opening a command prompt isn't exactly rocket science to add to the process Give it a try! If you run into anything more than basic errors, you're going to get into this level of nitty-gritty anyway, so you might as well do it from the start.

Yes. It is not like I have no experience with a computer and file systems, so I agree that I might as well work through it now because I figured it is knowledge I will need when I start learning programming and trying to run betas through the emulator. I will give this a try and see if I can make it work. Thanks.