Spectrum Computing

Any thoughts? it's tricky as we've all got different hardware set up. My audacity is set thus... https://i.postimg.cc/rDYHxX97/aud03.png I have realtek drivers but have configured to use Windows Direct sound and the Primary Sound Capture Driver. Also to the right, I increased the input level. If an...

-how do I get the sound onto a laptop? I have a tape player, a mono-stereo jack, and Audacity to record. Do laptops automatically recognise sound input via the jack? -what about channels? Record mono or stereo? -what do I save the .WAV as? Is Unsigned 8-bit PCM correct? Do I need to tinker or ampli...

So I have it sort of working now. I have code at $8000, Graphics Data at $C000 Bank 0, and Draw screen at $C000 Bank 1. OK, I can't quite visualise how that works but you say it does so that's good. I would've thought if graphics data is banked in at $c000 then your screen, in another bank at $c000...

Seven.FFF wrote: ↑Thu Apr 04, 2024 10:18 pm Yea, Zeus is great for 128K coding.

It is, and for this sort of thing...




Clearly I'm not. Should I be?

"Why stop now just when I'm enjoying it"

very nice. All the orange goes with the rest of the retro-room. Full marks.

You could keep bank 7 paged into the upper 16K and keep switching your updating code to draw at $4000..5AFF or $C000..DAFF. Or you can keep your updating code always drawing to $C000..DAFF, and keep switching the upper 16K paging between bank 5 and 7 Ah, yeah - now that's a cunning idea. I usually ...

Hi Protoron, The bank switching is an instantaneous hardware switch so there's no delay. When a bank is switched in, it appears at the area specified so you can read and write to it and the other banks are inaccessible. There are some special banks which when you switch them in, appear elsewhere in ...

R-Tape wrote: ↑Sat Dec 23, 2023 8:19 pm Best technique is to remember that you don't jump when you're walking, so walking on the spot gives you control, and you can walk and pause at the right moment to jump when you like:

aha! sneaky..

I will try again...

I've played through some this afternoon - some great stuff here and I've still got a lot more to play. Jeff's Christmas Tat is supposed to be hard! but not so that you can't beat it. I guess I played it too much. People can always snapshot (bah! cheating!) I see my shooty demo didn't make the final ...

My mate Derek did many of the games in that roundup and I know he spent ages getting the software sprites working well since like the Spectrum, there is little hardware help. I think he used the two colour character mode which yes, does have similar 'attributes'. HELP BODGE is a great puzzle / platf...

Personally speaking, Acolyte (although never commercially released (possibly a good thing)), 1989. Acolyte 2, 2022
So that's 33 years!!

A walkman (other 80's portable tape players are also available) should work well enough. They usually had a 3.5mm jack socket for headphones which is right for the ZX. The walkman will be stereo and the ZX mono but for this I don't think it matters using the standard mono grey/black ZX tape leads. T...

1982, UK, Spectrum 48K purchased from WH Smith. Previously owned a ZX81 (built from the kit). A sentence I could have written. My dad built the ZX81 from a kit. Then it was RAM pack, a better keyboard, wooden box for keyboard and RAM pack - wish I still had all that! Then my dad drove us to the WH ...

having certain numbers bother you when you're asked to provide meter readings...



"oh we gonna rock down to electric attributes..."

For some reason I can remember accidentally doing RANDOMIZE USR 1331

It's probably jumping into the save bytes routine. Who knows what it's saving but it was a novelty back then due to the different border colours.

I recommend Zeus. You can view RAM, watch it update in real time and save/load binary to a file. Single step debugging, breakpoints... for me it nearly has everything I need.

https://www.desdes.com/products/oldfiles/zeus.htm

It has it's own editor but you don't have to use it and I don't.

Hi. Well if it's a standard BASIC program that just calls some code I don't think you need to worry about where you put it too much. I think you can treat it like a 48K machine and place the code high up in RAM, even where the banks are swapped as the ROM takes care of switching things around. I mig...

At the time my mates and I (who used to look at the CPC in the Currys around the corner) didn't see the CPC as an upgrade. Certainly the demo that Currys had running (some awful thing written in BASIC with a ghost on it or something) did nothing to make us think it was an upgrade. It was expensive a...

I could never get anywhere at all with Shadowskimmer. I just seemed to bounce around uncontrollably and then die**. I played it a few times, got cheesed off with it and never went back. I just watched a youtube walkthrough of it - hmm, must've been me then. ** hmm, this could also be my experience w...

I thought Alien 8 but no, you're right, Head Over Heels.

As an aside, does anyone else get Spectrum Music in the Real World? I'm not a Coldplay fan and when I hear a particular track called 'Clocks' (I just had to look the title up), I always think of a game...

There were some poor Amiga games and conversions (if you want to see possibly the worst Outrun conversion, check out the CPC one!) but also some excellent ones such as Wizball, Starglider, Carrier Command and Bubble Bobble. Also the utilities were excellent - such as Dpaint. At that time it seemed b...

I agree that it must be an accuracy of timing issue. The Manic Miner tune is a 'single note at once' tune (if you can call them notes) whereas Fairlight has the two-notes at once effect. In your tune there are some points where the tone is not distorted and it seems to be where only one note is play...

it's the sort of random art you get in a Travelodge. It reminds me of Roller Coaster.

It did get brought up today, but as it was never commercially released, so I can't count it. I did meet the star of the game last year, brought to life by puppeteer Ronnie Le Drew... Neither was Thomas II for the Spectrum, C64, CPC or Atari 8-bit, but annoyingly it was for the ST! Wow- you met the ...

I suppose I must mention 'Sooty & Sweep 2'