Intellivision cart flasher

[billyj1285]

Good afternoon everyone. I just had a question and I needed kind of a fast answer so I apologize for posting a question that has probably been asked. Where do you get carts, boards, and a cart flasher for intellivision carts? Are these things avaliable?

 

Thank you,

Bj

[+DZ-Jay]

It's mostly a closed environment in the Intellivision publishing community, since carts require specialized circuit designs, they are gated by the folks who create them. You will have to contact one of the publishers to get access to them. They will probably charge you not only for the hardware but for the "convenience" of burning the ROMs for you as well.

 

I expect someone with the contact information will post it here soon.

[artrag]

Go for an Lto flash! unless you have to produce commercial cartridges to sell

[+DZ-Jay]

Go for an Lto flash! unless you have to produce commercial cartridges to sell

 

Oh, yeah, of course! If all you want is to play your ROMs on a console, then an LTO Flash! will do just fine.

 

-dZ.

[mr_me]

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/264236-jlp-accelerator-support/

 

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/233044-rev2-game-pcb-with-ram-option/page-2

[intvnut]

I have some fairly capable boards, along with matching shells and screws, that I offer for what I feel are reasonable prices. I charge a slight markup over my base costs to cover my time. Some may call it a "convenience fee," suggesting there's some great profit to be made from this, or some other motive. I don't really know.

 

Really, unless you're making about 1000 of these, you're ahead on the deal compared to the equipment you'd need to purchase for yourself.

 

I won't lie: I make a modest profit on each board I make, if you only count raw materials and what I'm charged by the board assembly shop. That doesn't count labor and inventory carrying costs. I'd like to think my time developing the board, tools, etc. are worth something, not to mention the carrying costs for inventory so I can get bulk manufacturing discounts. Assembly shops charge different rates based on volume. I buy in bulk and pass the savings on to my customers. Bulk purchases of boards and shells cost a 5-digit sum every couple years. But, it squeezes another 10-20% out of the cost. I do end up sitting on inventory for awhile, though.

 

I haven't yet had the time to develop end-user friendly mastering and programming tools. It's in my plan. There's some non-trivial engineering involved to make it turn-key and user friendly. So, yes, I still master the ROM and program it onto the boards myself. It's really not my favorite activity. My longer term goal is to get out of that business, and make it so that I can sell "blanks" and let others program their own games onto boards.

 

I'm not there yet.

Edited October 26, 2018 by intvnut

[+DZ-Jay]

I have some fairly capable boards, along with matching shells and screws, that I offer for what I feel are reasonable prices. I charge a slight markup over my base costs to cover my time. Some may call it a "convenience fee," suggesting there's some great profit to be made from this, or some other motive. I don't really know.

 

 

I am not suggesting any of the sort, but if the shoe fit, as they say ...

 

I call it a "convenience fee" because it comes with strings attached: control of production and distribution is maintained by the manufacturer rather than the developer, which involves not only adherence to the manufacturer's timetable and capabilities, but also -- as you have stated many times in the past -- the reluctance to offer services for some projects, mainly those related to unlicensed properties.

 

Now, that is definitely yours and other manufacturer's prerogative, and I do not fault you for this, but it is a prerogative, not necessarily a favor to the developer, and it comes with an additional cost of assemblage.

 

That is, unless you offer the ability for programmers to purchase the hardware from you, including any necessary peripherals for ROM transfer, to use as they please, when they please. If so, then great!

 

I call it a "convenience fee" because in the past this has been painted as some sort of service to the programmer so that he doesn't have to worry about manufacturing; which it is to some extent, but mostly because there is no other option.

 

Your work is very much appreciated, and it and the products definitely have value. However, until there is some option to avoid dependency on more than materials (which is the case today for many reasons), people new to the Intellivision programming community need to understand that they are always dependent on a manufacturer, which then becomes part publisher due to many factors. That is all.

 

-dZ.

[+DZ-Jay]

I haven't yet had the time to develop end-user friendly mastering and programming tools. It's in my plan. There's some non-trivial engineering involved to make it turn-key and user friendly. So, yes, I still master the ROM and program it onto the boards myself. It's really not my favorite activity. My longer term goal is to get out of that business, and make it so that I can sell "blanks" and let others program their own games onto boards.

 

 

I think that would be the ideal situation. I do understand that it is not trivial, though, but it is a little disappointing that none of the board manufacturers have made any inroads towards this goal.

 

That's not to put blame on you or anybody, or to suggest any nefarious motivations at all -- this is mostly a hobby to everybody. It's just a fact, and it is disappointing regardless of the reasons and motivations.

 

-dZ.

Edited October 26, 2018 by DZ-Jay

[mr_me]

Is there a non-user-friendly way for someone to program the jlp boards themselves. Given that they may have to purchase some programming equipment. I think that is being done with the other board.

 

With some of these projects, once you factor in labour and carrying costs, the project could be operating at a loss.

Edited October 26, 2018 by mr_me

[intvnut]

Is there a non-user-friendly way for someone to program the jlp boards themselves. Given that they may have to purchase some programming equipment. I think that is being done with the other board.

 

With some of these projects, once you factor in labour and carrying costs, the project could be operating at a loss.

 

Well, the JLP board's features are largely defined by firmware that I wrote. You could program any PIC24H firmware you want to onto that board with a standard PIC24H programmer. I brought the necessary pins out to a header, even.

 

So... this is extremely user friendly for the sort of person who likes writing the necessary PIC24H firmware and wants a development board that'll let them develop the necessary firmware. It's a super convenient dev board for that user. For everyone else, it's rather super inconvenient.

 

The firmware on JLP isn't deeply surprising, but it is non-trivial. JLP's behavior is almost entirely software defined. Without the firmware, it's basically a brick.

 

It's rather unlike 5-11under's boards whose behavior is largely hardware defined (aside from a CPLD, IIRC). I think the one other major design out there I'm aware of is similar. At least with those CPLD-based designs, the necessary CPLD programming is theoretically pretty straightforward to work out. (The reality may still have some "gotchas.")

Edited October 27, 2018 by intvnut

[mr_me]

If you sell someone the board, would you not sell them a copy of your firmware, so they can program it themselves along with their intellivision program. Does the firmware need modification to work with the user's intellivision program.

[+5-11under]

Good afternoon everyone. I just had a question and I needed kind of a fast answer so I apologize for posting a question that has probably been asked. Where do you get carts, boards, and a cart flasher for intellivision carts? Are these things avaliable?

 

Thank you,

Bj

 

If you're looking to just play the games, the LTO is the way to go.

 

If you're looking to make a bunch of the same (or different) boards to sell or give away or make for yourself, I also have boards for that. These are relatively "simple" boards, i.e. just ROM (and sometimes RAM) and logic to manage the memory - intvnut's boards have some extra features (save games, faster multiplication - because these boards have a microcontroller that manages the memory).

 

Setting up the memory locations takes a bit of work, and connecting the board to my EPROM programmer requires a bit of hardware, so so far I've been doing all of the "flashing" of the boards myself (people send me ROM files, I send them boards that are ready to play).

[+DZ-Jay]

Setting up the memory locations takes a bit of work, and connecting the board to my EPROM programmer requires a bit of hardware, so so far I've been doing all of the "flashing" of the boards myself (people send me ROM files, I send them boards that are ready to play).

 

Would you consider making your EPROM programmer and the necessary connective hardware available to developers? For a fee, I suppose, if it is custom built. If it is off-the-shelf hardware, then perhaps you could guide others on how to acquire their own (although I strongly suspect it's custom stuff).

 

This could allow those who want to handle the work themselves treat your product as mainly materials, and give them more control over manufacturing and distribution of their games. I know that when I am ready to publish my next games, I would like to purchase the materials in bulk and "flash" the carts and assemble the parts myself as necessary for whatever purpose I require. Without the additional dependency on (much) labour and effort from other teams across the world, one could then serve the publishing demand at one's own pace.

 

I understand that this wouldn't be for everybody. Some developers would be quite happy to let someone else take care of these things for them.

 

-dZ.

Edited October 27, 2018 by DZ-Jay

[+5-11under]

 

Would you consider making your EPROM programmer and the necessary connective hardware available to developers? For a fee, I suppose, if it is custom built. If it is off-the-shelf hardware, then perhaps you could guide others on how to acquire their own (although I strongly suspect it's custom stuff).

 

This could allow those who want to handle the work themselves treat your product as mainly materials, and give them more control over manufacturing and distribution of their games. I know that when I am ready to publish my next games, I would like to purchase the materials in bulk and "flash" the carts and assemble the parts myself as necessary for whatever purpose I require. Without the additional dependency on (much) labour and effort from other teams across the world, one could then serve the publishing demand at one's own pace.

 

I understand that this wouldn't be for everybody. Some developers would be quite happy to let someone else take care of these things for them.

 

-dZ.

 

Yep, that would be possible.

 

For the EPROM programming, I use an off-the-shelf "TSOP48" adapter on top of the programmer, then a custom-made adapter (I could easily make more) that is basically re-routing connectors. The bin file needs to be massaged to get the data in the correct location (for example for a small game, the data at $0000 in the file needs to go to $5000 in the programming software). I also need to flip the lower 8 bits with the upper 8 bits because my programmer is weird. Cost for the adapter all in is less than $40 - would also need a TL866CS programmer (cheap) too.

 

I'd probably keep doing the CPLD programming myself. However, for 95% of the games, I use the same format for ROM locations (42K plus most locations at $8xxx and $9xxx). Maybe it's actually 100% for ROM-only games (I've had a couple of games where RAM was in non-typical locations).

 

Note: after programming and testing, there's a pair of little solder points that need to be shorted out with a bit of solder. It's easy, but you need a soldering iron and only a bit of soldering skill.

[+DZ-Jay]

 

Yep, that would be possible.

 

For the EPROM programming, I use an off-the-shelf "TSOP48" adapter on top of the programmer, then a custom-made adapter (I could easily make more) that is basically re-routing connectors. The bin file needs to be massaged to get the data in the correct location (for example for a small game, the data at $0000 in the file needs to go to $5000 in the programming software). I also need to flip the lower 8 bits with the upper 8 bits because my programmer is weird. Cost for the adapter all in is less than $40 - would also need a TL866CS programmer (cheap) too.

 

I'd probably keep doing the CPLD programming myself. However, for 95% of the games, I use the same format for ROM locations (42K plus most locations at $8xxx and $9xxx). Maybe it's actually 100% for ROM-only games (I've had a couple of games where RAM was in non-typical locations).

 

Note: after programming and testing, there's a pair of little solder points that need to be shorted out with a bit of solder. It's easy, but you need a soldering iron and only a bit of soldering skill.

 

Sounds good. Perhaps the BIN file memory alignment could be automated or abstracted somewhat with a quick post-assembly program, or perhaps the specific memory map for your board could be standardized and somehow added to the IntyBASIC compiler to support it directly, I don't know.

 

By the way, what you mean by "I'd probably keep doing the CPLD programming myself"? What does "CPLD" stand for? (Sorry, I'm not very good at these things.)

 

-dZ.

Edited October 27, 2018 by DZ-Jay

[+5-11under]

 

Sounds good. Perhaps the BIN file memory alignment could be automated or abstracted somewhat with a quick post-assembly program, or perhaps the specific memory map for your board could be standardized and somehow added to the IntyBASIC compiler to support it directly, I don't know.

 

By the way, what you mean by "I'd probably keep doing the CPLD programming myself"? What does "CPLD" stand for? (Sorry, I'm not very good at these things.)

 

-dZ.

 

Memory alignment could be done automatically fairly easily (by some people, I'm sure, anyway).

 

The CPLD is a "Complex Programmable Logic Device". You need circuitry to manage the address and data bus on the Intellivision (the bus is common, that is, there is only one of them, and there are a couple of "bits" that tell the system what is happening, such as sending address, reading data - a key part of the circuitry is to latch the address data). Rather than have a handful of dedicated logic chips for the circuitry, it all gets programmed into the CPLD, which then acts like those chips all the time. The CPLD is pretty much a small FPGA that doesn't need a memory chip to load from at each start-up.

[+DZ-Jay]

 

Memory alignment could be done automatically fairly easily (by some people, I'm sure, anyway).

 

The CPLD is a "Complex Programmable Logic Device". You need circuitry to manage the address and data bus on the Intellivision (the bus is common, that is, there is only one of them, and there are a couple of "bits" that tell the system what is happening, such as sending address, reading data - a key part of the circuitry is to latch the address data). Rather than have a handful of dedicated logic chips for the circuitry, it all gets programmed into the CPLD, which then acts like those chips all the time. The CPLD is pretty much a small FPGA that doesn't need a memory chip to load from at each start-up.

 

Ah, gotcha! So that's similar to the "firmware" that intvnut was talking about in his JLP boards, right? Sure then, I guess if you were to offer this option to someone interested, you would need to program the CPLD first. Is this custom-programmed per game, or is it a singular, general program that you can just create once and program into all boards equally?

 

I guess if you were to offer this option to programmers, you would have to program the CPLD on the boards you sell them, but as the community matures, if this becomes the most common option chosen by programmers and publishers, you could just manufacture your boards that way and have them ready in your inventory.

 

Of course, I don't know much about the intricacies of these things, so the above is just my superficial and naïve view of things.

 

-dZ.

[+5-11under]

 

Ah, gotcha! So that's similar to the "firmware" that intvnut was talking about in his JLP boards, right? Sure then, I guess if you were to offer this option to someone interested, you would need to program the CPLD first. Is this custom-programmed per game, or is it a singular, general program that you can just create once and program into all boards equally?

 

I guess if you were to offer this option to programmers, you would have to program the CPLD on the boards you sell them, but as the community matures, if this becomes the most common option chosen by programmers and publishers, you could just manufacture your boards that way and have them ready in your inventory.

 

Of course, I don't know much about the intricacies of these things, so the above is just my superficial and naïve view of things.

 

-dZ.

 

Firmware: yes, similar. I think for intvnut, the bin file gets embedded (using your PC) into a firmware file, and you upload that whole thing into the microcontroller chip (which basically includes the logic and memory all in one). For mine, logic and memory are separate, so the CPLD (logic) is programmed separately from the ROM chip. I program the CPLD with a file that I named "2456789ABCDEF.jed" - I'm sure you can figure the file name out, and see that 95% of the games would work with this configuration. I program all the boards with this same configuration, unless otherwise required. Later, when someone wants a board, if it fits within that configuration, I just need to program the memory chip with the massaged bin file. So yes, if someone wanted blank boards, the simplest method is for me to load the generic firmware file for the CPLD, send it off, and you would just have to program the memory chip.

[+DZ-Jay]

 

Firmware: yes, similar. I think for intvnut, the bin file gets embedded (using your PC) into a firmware file, and you upload that whole thing into the microcontroller chip (which basically includes the logic and memory all in one). For mine, logic and memory are separate, so the CPLD (logic) is programmed separately from the ROM chip. I program the CPLD with a file that I named "2456789ABCDEF.jed" - I'm sure you can figure the file name out, and see that 95% of the games would work with this configuration. I program all the boards with this same configuration, unless otherwise required. Later, when someone wants a board, if it fits within that configuration, I just need to program the memory chip with the massaged bin file. So yes, if someone wanted blank boards, the simplest method is for me to load the generic firmware file for the CPLD, send it off, and you would just have to program the memory chip.

 

OK, sounds great. I will definitely keep it in mind, as I'm sure others around here.

 

Also, thanks for offering so much detail. Some of it goes over my head, but still it's good to know.

 

-dZ.

[mr_me]

So the cpld is basically a reduction of the old t-card memory mapping/addressing logic, minus the dip-switches, in a compact ic. Reconfiguring for a different memory map would require hardware ic skills and a tool to implement it. Flashing the rom with the intellivision program is seperate.

 

With the jlp board the memorymap and addressing logic is simulated in software and along with the intellivision program written to the microcontroller firmware together. That's if my understanding is correct.

Edited October 28, 2018 by mr_me

[+DZ-Jay]

So the cpld is basically a reduction of the old t-card memory mapping/addressing logic, minus the dip-switches, in a compact ic. Reconfiguring for a different memory map would require hardware ic skills and a tool to implement it. Flashing the rom with the intellivision program is seperate.

 

With the jlp board the memorymap and addressing logic is simulated in software and along with the intellivision program written to the microcontroller firmware together. That's if my understanding is correct.

 

Thanks for the additional detail.

 

Pardon my ignorance, but how did Mattel do this bus-addressing logic in the old cartridge boards? I guess it wasn't driven by micro-controller. Just hardware circuitry?

 

-dZ.

[mr_me]

I could be wrong but I think 5-11under's board doesn't have a microcontroller.

 

The mattel cartridges had special gi rom chips that had the memory mapping built-in. Those chips were designed for that cpu address/data bus. The mattel t-cards did it with external logic hardware.

[+DZ-Jay]

I could be wrong but I think 5-11under's board doesn't have a microcontroller.

 

Sorry, I guess I meant a "controlled by software," like the CPLD or the JLP firmware, as opposed to logic in hardware circuitry. That said, you answered my question below:

 

The mattel cartridges had special gi rom chips that had the memory mapping built-in. Those chips were designed for that cpu address/data bus. The mattel t-cards did it with external logic hardware.

Ah! So, would it be impractical to implement something similar to that GI ROM chip for modern times with a standardized memory map? I mean, it seems like it would surely streamline production if the boards come with a built-in chip containing all necessary logic, and all you had to do was "flash" the EPROM with the game ROM -- provided it adhered to the expectations of the board, which I imagine wouldn't be too hard. Most home-brewed games follow the same memory map, and in any case, it could be standardized in the toolchain.

 

I wonder why we don't strive for that approach rather than the more (apparently) labour-intensive one of having to accommodate addressing software tailored for each game on each cart, which seems to preclude at some level being able to just offer parts-manufacturing as a supplier service.

 

Again, based on my uninformed views.

 

-dZ.

Edited October 28, 2018 by DZ-Jay

[mr_me]

The cpld is hardware, but it's reconfigurable. You could have a static ic chip manufactured but it would be far more expensive and you'd have to have different ones manufactured for different memory maps. The cpld is relatively inexpensive because it's s general purpose part. If you were manufacturing a hundred thousand cartridges having a custom static ic chip made could be more cost effective.

[+DZ-Jay]

The cpld is hardware, but it's reconfigurable. You could have a static ic chip manufactured but it would be far more expensive and you'd have to have different ones manufactured for different memory maps. The cpld is relatively inexpensive because it's s general purpose part. If you were manufacturing a hundred thousand cartridges having a custom static ic chip made could be more cost effective.

 

OK, I understand. The memory map to me is a non-issue. There is no reason why a single cartridge board couldn't devise a memory map that became "de facto" standard and all games adopt it.

 

Sure, this limitation may preclude some inventive new features in some games, but I think I rather see the barriers to production and publishing reduced and get more games out there, than cater for some theoretical future feature which may or may not come, and which could be addressed by other means if or when it did.

 

Then again, it's very easy for me to say, since I don't have any skin in the game. I am not trying to tell the manufacturers what to do, just trying to understand how it all works and perhaps offer some ideas on how we can move the needle forward for the betterment of the community.

 

Thanks to all for the information.

-dZ.

Edited October 28, 2018 by DZ-Jay