Spectrum Computing

Over the few years since I worked on their magazine, I've been helping out the Crafts Council, updating their website ahead of their annual Collect exhibitions. This year, one of the exhibitors in the Collect Open subset is Browning Lewis (aka Dorset-based artists Karen Browning and Jon Lewis), with...

But if you're not worried about all that @Quazar makes a nice modern alternative (although I'm sure you knew that anyway!): Yeah, if the contact cleaner doesn't work and the SAMBus continues to cause problems I may well pick up one of those... Be a bit of a shame, though, as Quazar made me up a 3.5...

I gave it a good blast with some contact cleaner and that seems to have restored it. That's a very good call - hadn't thought of that... which is strange, considering how often someone at the GCC recommends spraying something with contact cleaner. I'll have to invest in some, I think. The SAMBus it...

I recently saw a post in the PixelArt subreddit which featured a piece of 1-bit artwork which had a 'chromatic aberration' filter applied. Due to the appearance of the colour-shift, I put on a pair of red/blue 3D glasses (which I keep handy, because I enjoy making 3D anaglyphs out of photographs), a...

...been thinking about getting one of @Quazar's RC2014 bus interface cards and using an RC2014 SIO/2 serial module to give SAM two proper serial ports. (I still like the idea of getting some use out of the onboard ports though!) Thanks for that - I'll pass the suggestion on to our resident networki...

Really need to play more of these... Keen to play some of these text adventures, as I'm curious to see how I get on with them these days. When I was younger, I didn't have much luck with them, didn't really understand what I was doing. Of course, I had to vote for Ghostly Capers... the other members...

First GCC meet of 2024, and I took the opportunity to open up the new SAM and snap a few photos: https://i.postimg.cc/ZW9xM96Q/IMG-20240104-203546-508.jpg https://i.postimg.cc/DJ8KHPyG/IMG-20240104-203654-096.jpg https://i.postimg.cc/GT4hP1sZ/IMG-20240104-203558-200.jpg https://i.postimg.cc/2V3CgmyJ...

Small supplemental addition: the new SAM user has now also acquired a +D interface for his Spectrums. Since SAMDOS is backwardly-compatible, I might actually end up getting my Empire Strikes Back material onto a real Spectrum, as opposed to having just a MODE 1 demo on the SAM...

dvduk wrote: ↑Wed Dec 20, 2023 11:18 pm Pretty bad form on their part

Especially when the publisher had a stall at RetCon in 2022...

Had a notification the other day that the new SAM owner has put in his order to Quazar : V3 ROM 256K RAM upgrade Floppy interface (planning on installing a Gotek) Mechanical keyboard Replacement PSU It's going to be a lot of fun watching this develop, but I probably won't see any of it till the New ...

It is pretty much undeniable that one of the many things the SAM Coupé gaming scene lacks is a good shoot 'em up... then again, the SAM lacks good examples of all kinds of games... Since scrolling is a huge issue, I started thinking about recent games that work within a flip-screen environment... an...

As an aside to the main SAM recovery/update project, I've taken another few steps with my old ATOM interface. It was originally supplied with a small yellow LED on the end of a couple of long wires, intended to be fed through the drive bay cover plate to show disk activity. I'd never liked it, and s...

I see that Quazar has announced the next couple of issues of SAM Revival magazine, including news that The Lower Caverns will appear on one of the cover disks... TLC is probably my most significant SAM Coupé project to date, and its release is coming after a little over five years' work, during whic...

PeterJ I'm embarrassed to admit that I used to live even closer - my parents are just down the road, and I have dinner with them every time the Club meets - but only learned of its existence from an advert in the Crash 2018 Annual. All the more frustrating, their first RetCon event had been on my b...

One of my friends from the Greenford Computer Club recently acquired a SAM Coupé and, having tested it at last night's meet, will be embarking on an upgrade project. The machine came with no floppy drives, just the stock 256K RAM, a keyboard missing its metal backplate and... ROM 1.0 - AKA the one t...

This should be right up my street, but I'm drawing a blank at the moment... Some form of strategy game would offer the best options: transformation as a gameplay mechanic where you're disguised from humans, if not the enemy. Option to play as Autobots or Decepticons, with a full campaign for each......

Although it was technically their Spectrums rather than mine, I don't recall my parents playing games on them... It's possibly my mother played some of the puzzle or quiz games that required two players, but my father was more interested in utilities than games, despite being a member of a mostly-ga...

I wouldn't compare them. His Next stuff is more like a hobby project, catering to retro tastes. His speccy stuff was his bread and butter, with big projects catering to a large audience wanting the best possible and no need to give any nods to nostalgia. Fair point, and it makes a lot of sense. I s...

A bit off topic, especially if the Next games aren't going to be included in the poll but, given what Bagley achieved on the original Spectrum, his work on the Next so far seems... pedestrian? I mean, I guess he's having to learn the machine from the ground up, just like everyone else, and I'm not s...

Interesting read... I can relate to bits of it, certainly (eg. unease over hair loss) and, on a good day, can kid myself that I feel about as good as I did at 17. I'm at the stage where, looking at myself in the mirror, I can see signs that I'm not as young as I used to be, and sitting on the floor ...

I suspect I'm entirely the wrong sort of person to even think about answering this sort of question but... When and why did 'Collecting' become a pissing contest? It's absolutely not unique to the Speccy community either. I mean, I have probably something in excess of 100 original Spectrum games - m...

Funny thing about Tusker: in most versions, the player sprite does look very Indiana Jones-ish... but the portrait on the Speccy version's panel looks more like Baden-Powell, while the sprite isn't even wearing a hat.

Very well-deserved - it's great to see such a prolific at talented artist topping the chart, however they decide their numbers.

(Hell, I'm #39 on the list, somehow... above Mark R. Jones and ZOSYA??? Wow...)

C.Born wrote: ↑Tue Oct 24, 2023 1:29 am do you now where i can find that parrot ??

Pretty sure that image was part of a software package back in the 1990s, as I remember seeing it at work around that time, and it's used to present examples of colour depth all over the place these days.

Found this one via Reddit

Great to see early signs of Neoplasma 2, sounds like it's going to be awesome. The HP Lovecraft/River City Ransom game looks like it could be fascinating, so I'm going to try to keep an eye out for that. The puzzle game makes great use of colour, particularly with the objects.