Spectrum Computing

If it's not obvious from the manual if it can export screenshots, a snap with a mobile phone camera will do. Just so we can look and see how they compare to a working board. Heh - my oscilloscope is a hulking great 1980s CRT beast, so the only way to capture the waveforms is to take a photo. It's al...

I don't suppose you can post pictures of the waveforms on the base of TR3 and on pin 32 of the ULA (ie either side of R24)? Possibly there's a short or TR3 is faulty and the signal isn't being buffered like it should be. If that's the case then it should be possible to see the base sitting at 0V or ...

I wasn't familiar with Zig Zag, so just loaded it up on my Spectrum and yep, I'd say that qualifies

Nah - they're way harder than the first set Did manage to complete the first two and "End of the world" though.

Lots of fun

Level 3 (The end of the world) is proving very difficult for me too. I can do the first two without losing a life now, but I think I definitely prefer the original Menagerie But it's nice to see the variety of alternative levels from the other platforms (no pun intended).

goodboy wrote: ↑Wed Apr 24, 2024 9:36 am Is it possible to show numbers in hex?

You can use the command to change to hex. Setting it to 0 puts it back to decimal.

This is great Bob. Very useful addition to my DivMMC Future
Sometimes it's just nice to be able to break in and see what's going on using a real Spectrum rather than an emulator.

Another 48K with the Sinclair Six pack here. I played Horace and Chequered Flag a huge amount, also Survival, but then got fascinated by Make-A-Chip (probably why I went on to do an degree in electronics 10 years later!)

I recently splashed out on a Creality Ender-3 V3 KE - very impressed so far. From opening the box to completing my first successful print (a 4x2 Lego brick) took about 30 minutes. It's got basically all the options, modifications, bells and whistles for the Ender-3 series built in. Klipper based sof...

Most of my ZX81 and Spectrum tapes, as well as the huge amount of music I bought and copied in the 1980s still play fine. Often I've had to fast forwards and rewind a couple of times to get the tape running freely, but no real issues. I think I've had perhaps three or four cassettes go mouldy or sti...

Load up Booty, then play it for 20 minutes. You'll be glad of a quiet speaker There are times I'd like to add a volume control.

The speaker should be plenty loud enough in a quiet room to be be able to hear the keyboard clicks clearly, and the beeps be easily audible a few metres away.

Check the two IN4148 diodes that form part of the speaker circuit - these would drag the output voltage down if they are failing.

Yeah, just that little 22 pixel wide Sabre Man used all the black bricks I have! I deliberately made it two units thick so I could used 2x4 bricks which I have plenty of compared to 1x1 bricks.

Not all devices have to honour all the different video signals possible on SCART, just the ones they support. So it's likely that the monitor only accepts RGB components and not composite - so there will be nothing connected in the socket for the composite pin inside the monitor. I'm using a 15"...

Without leaving Derbyshire, there's a 'Finders Keepers' furniture shop in Whaley Bridge, and a 'Spellbound' tattoo shop in Ilkeston. Sadly I couldn't find a 'Knight Tyme' in the UK (there is a courier service in Atlanta, USA, though) or a Stormbringer (but there is a DIY shop in northern Poland).

Had a bit of spare time at the weekend so this happened. Most of the Lego I used is probably older than the Spectrum - I stopped getting anything other than the Technical sets after I was about 11 which would have been around when I got my Spectrum.

How about the road bit in Horace Goes Skiing? Yes, it's fun and can be challenging (actually I enjoy it more than the skiing bit). But the game is called 'Horace Goes Skiing' not 'Horace Crosses the Road'. I'd say possibly the way the character accelerates in Sir Fred, but I guess that with enough p...

I don't know why games companies didn't use 4*8 mode. I used to always think there was a reason why it was impossible as a kid, but the idea has been eating at me for 30 odd years! I wonder if (at least in 1983-4), people might think it looks too much like a ZX81 game, but with colour. People were ...

I'm going to park this Spectrum for a bit. I have another that I think needs just a new keyboard connector, so I'll sort that out and come back to this one at some point in the future. Maybe swapping all the components to a new undamaged pcb might be the best option.

Spoke too soon :( It did pass the Dylan Smith diagnostics, and boot normally so I could get my diagnostics card to swap to Brendan Alford's ROM and run that. That also passed all tests. So I turned it off, swapped to my DivMMC and booted into ESXDOS menus fine. However when I selected a tape to load...

Think I've found the problem - the INTL line from the Z80 is getting from pin 16 to the edge connector and the right hand side of R26, so my soldering there is good. However the signal is not getting from the left hand side of R26 to pin 12 of the ULA. Looking along the track I can see where I must ...

I tried swapping the ULA with another one (admittedly I only have a -6 as a spare, and this board has a -7, but I think that it should still work). Sadly the keyboard still doesn't do anything when plugged in. However, one of the tests the diagnostics card I have does after the RAM checks is an inte...

That could be the ULA at fault. Did it respond to the keyboard before? Mark Yes, it was working fine for ages until one day it just refused to boot. I wonder if i have a poor solder joint or break somewhere- after all, I’ve replaced virtually every ic on the board, and broken a few tracks so quite ...

Swapped the Z80 - and now it passes all the RAM tests, and boots to the normal copyright message!

However, it now doesn't respond to keypresses.

I'm sure this Spectrum just doesn't want to live any more...

In a fit of 'I might as well' last night, I desoldered all off the upper RAM chips, repaired the damaged tracks (four in the end) with wires underneath and fitted sockets. I now have sockets for all 16 RAM chips. With no upper RAM fitted at all, I get the same fault - diagnostics card fails on lower...