Spectrum Computing

I've used #SIM a lot for my Booty disassembly and can confirm that everything appears to work identically to the 9.1 version. I don't see any differences, and the build time is roughly a third less. Glad to hear it. SkoolKit - saving energy and the planet since version 9.2. :D For my own part, I'm ...

In case anyone wants to keep using SkoolKit 9.2b1 for a bit, the (updated) manual can be found here . I should have mentioned that the new Z80 simulator is used by default wherever the old one was, so it's not only trace.py that's faster now - tap2sna.py , #AUDIO and #SIM also get a speed boost. Try...

I don't usually announce pre-releases of SkoolKit anywhere - mainly because I don't usually publish pre-releases of SkoolKit - but I'm making an exception for 9.2b1 because, unlike all previous versions, this one contains C extension modules (for faster Z80 simulation), and I'd like to make sure the...

Two other games where the RZX has inexplicable waiting are Robin of The Wood and Hungry Horace . Having watched the Hungry Horace RZX replay dozens of times recently (while developing the RZX player that will appear in the next version of SkoolKit), I don't think the waiting is inexplicable. <pedan...

martingzzz wrote: ↑Mon Feb 19, 2024 11:03 am Around 60% (7369 out of 12329) of the "undetermined" downloads are tap files, meaning they have standard loaders.

Not necessarily. Some games in TAP files have custom loaders that happen to use the standard ROM timings. Removal Deluxe is a good example.

Another ZXDB version is available! This version fails to build the database from ZXDB_sqlite.sql. It gives the following error: Parse error near line 565472: near "CHARACTER": syntax error TABLE IF NOT EXISTS prefixes ( text varchar(10) CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE u error here ---^ Parse e...

Let me know if that works for you! Thanks! I've converted that for SQLite thus, which seems to work (though I need to do some further checking): create table libraries ( title varchar(300), library_title varchar(300) ); insert into libraries select title, '' from entries group by title; insert into...

IMPORTANT: Columns "entries.library_title" and "aliases.library_title" are now removed in this release... Ouch! I've been bitten by that change. What's the quickest way to get "library_title" back (for software only, if that makes it easier) in a lookup table? I'm usin...

Fairlight 1 and 2 (128k versions) load and run on emulators but not on real hardware. 8BitSC , presumably you opened an issue on GitHub? I'm afraid I have no idea how the DIVMMC Enjoy Pro loads Z80 snapshots, so I can't even guess what's going wrong. Perhaps someone who has knowledge of that hardwa...

SkoolKit 9.1 has been released . TL;DR version for the initiated: Improved support for 128K disassemblies, plus simulated memory and I/O contention. For the uninitiated: SkoolKit is a suite of tools that can be used to create a disassembly of a Spectrum game (or any other piece of software), in HTM...

And it's here.

The tape for Olympia (Olympia.tap in Olympia.tap.zip) is actually a copy of the tape for Pathway (Pathway.tap in Pathway.tap.zip). (I think these tapes are both new in ZXDB 1.0.182, but I might be mistaken.)

What I meant to say: instead of "just" feeding it a TAP and hoping it can figure out how to load and start everything... I haven't used this tool, but from the documentation it looks as if you can feed it Z80 snapshots as well. Presumably its success rate is much better with snapshots tha...

dfzx wrote: ↑Fri Jan 26, 2024 12:39 pm You would have always expected that, though, would you not?

"Feared" would be a better word. The amount feels like a kick in the face, too.

And now I have an import duty/customs clearance bill of over $100 to pay before I can receive the package.

SkoolKid wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2024 7:26 pm So I hear they're shipping now. I haven't got a tracking number yet, though. <drums fingers>

The drumming did it! I now have a tracking number.

So I hear they're shipping now. I haven't got a tracking number yet, though. <drums fingers>

Apologies in advance to anyone who might have wanted to use --sim-load to produce a pristine snapshot of Gold Mine : It definitely won't work for the foreseeable future. Good news for anyone who might have wanted to use tap2sna.py to produce a pristine snapshot of Gold Mine from the original TZX: i...

Not entirely relevant, but still interesting:

• RTC Kings Cross (Ashley Greenup)
• RTC Kings Cross (Dee-Kay Systems)

These two BASIC programs are definitely different.

From what you're saying, this looks like a bug in Fuse to me. Or I'm misunderstanding. Fuse exhibits the same behaviour when the HALT is at 0x7FFF, i.e. PC+1 is 0x8000, in uncontended memory: 14335, 14345 ( pc:4 for the HALT, as expected), 14353 (implying pc:4 ), 14361 ( pc:4 again), 14369, 14377.....

Only the first fetch of the HALT itself. Then it executes NOPs internally, with PC already being PC+1. (So it's not like it keeps executing itself similar to LDIR, which is what people originally believed.) Are the contents of PC+1 continually fetched (with contention pattern pc:4 there too) while ...

it is basically NOP, but without advancing the PC. so it's the usual... I'll take that as a yes. Fuse seems to go with pc:4 , so I will too. On an unrelated note, I didn't realise until now just how much an instruction can be delayed when it's located in and/or accesses contended memory. Take CPIR ...

After i posted, I looked up your HTMLWriter extension docs, and it looks like that's probably the way to go. An HtmlWriter extension would be one way to go, but ...there is no established public API for mangling labels before they're rendered, so whatever modified writer you come up with may not wo...

lexi wrote: ↑Tue Jan 16, 2024 3:20 pm I'm running into a couple of issues with how to best handle labels for subroutines...

I'm not really sure what you're asking here, so I won't attempt an answer, but I have to ask: Are you assigning labels to instructions that aren't jumped to or called from anywhere else in the code? If so, why?

I've recently been looking into how memory contention affects Z80 instructions, using the Contended memory page of the Sinclair Wiki as my main source. However, one instruction that's missing from that page is HALT. Based on what I've already learnt, I'm guessing that HALT's contention pattern is si...