Spectrum Computing

R-Tape wrote: ↑Sun Apr 24, 2022 9:52 pm With 1290M you've gone proper oldschool with the keys too.

True!
Then again we're talking wild west 1983 where so much was experimental. Weird key choices were clearly no exception!

I had Repulsar “back in the day” and absolutely loved it. Great to hear! Games were pretty simple back then and it goes to show sometimes a quick and simple blast is all you need :D Cosmic Swarm is definitely in the "simple" game category with its basic gameplay and character-based moveme...

In keeping with today's 40th anniversary celebrations , Cosmic Swarm is a simple little 16K game that I wrote in 1983 alongside Megapede, Robon and Repulsar. The game was submitted for publication, but as far as I know never released and has been considered MIA, though it did appear in a few magazin...

Happy Birthday ZX Speccy!! How lucky we were to be born when we were to experience this charming machine. Agreed! It was the combination of being alive at our impressionable ages to experience the introduction of this wonderful machine - with its seemingly magical abilities, and at such a relativel...

Thanks @uglifruit. It's very much appreciated. It's certainly a very challenging time, with many mixed feelings. However, I'm confident in my heart, that I'm doing the right thing. I takes courage to do what you've done but I applaud you for following your heart to where your true passion now lies....

Clearing out the loft! Selling my Crash magazines as a lot. 14 issues between 37 (Feb 87) and issue 59, in very good condition: 37,38,39,40,41,43,45,46,48,49,50,53,56,59 £100. Buyer collects (UK: Surrey area). PM for details. Thought I'd put it up here before listing elsewhere! (Also selling my Amig...

No, but I did feel a bit duped by it since the glossy 1982 Spectrum prelaunch brochure made no mention of it, only highlighting how well the machine's hires graphics stacked up against the competition, and its 15 "vivid" colours. Only when I began drawing criss-crossing coloured lines did ...

I recently came across a bunch of old Spectrum tapes and encountered the same wobbly audio you described. And this is after changing the belt in the walkman! Playing back the tapes straight into the emulators in realtime just wouldn't work. If you sample the tapes' audio into wav files and convert t...

Yeah! Merry Christmas to all!!

ok, thank you... ive looked at the assembly listing of this and it doesnt really do what i want it to do. i want it to draw line by line from the top to the bottom of the screen. i slowed it down using the halt instruction and its just drawing the way that the screen memory is laid out... i know th...

I would say definitely! The limitations and relative simplicity (compared to more modern systems), combined with the nostalgia factor add up to a really enjoyable development experience. I'd half forgotten how much fun it is to program the Z80 in the Spectrum until relatively recently. I say half fo...

Yeah, I couldn't get it soon enough! I had the ZX81 and enjoyed learning to program it and make basic games, but once I saw that incredibly alluring Sinclair brochure for the Spectrum - in all its glossy full colour glory - I was immediately sold and quickly mail ordered one as soon as I could affor...

Yeah, I mail ordered the original rubber keyed 16K Spectrum and it arrived summer 82 - great stuff! I got the internal RAM upgrade to 48K for Christmas 82. I think it was sold by 'East London Robotics'. When the Spectrum+ was released I ordered the 'upgrade kit', but as I've noted here before, I was...

For playing games, the rubber keys felt superior over other keyboards to me, and were better than the joystick options of the day. A lot of handheld games of the time had mushy rubber buttons, too. The keys in the + model and later feel shifted to the right and I struggle to hit the correct keys. D...

I did have a look at Zeus, but that seemed very odd as well, and the inbuilt emulator/debugger didn't seem great either - maybe I just need to give that more time. Yeah, I tried Zeus too but it wasn't very intuitive to me and didn't seem to gel with the way I think. I've had great success with this...

The same for me. I fiddled with Z80 back in the 80's ... but progress was speedy because I already knew the Z80 instructions and didn't have to learn them first. I'm still learning z80 programming. I can't compare it as I had never tried assembly in my youth, only different BASICs and compilers. So...

With high level languages, I have a harder time getting into. There are so many commands to learn, complicated API interfaces and syntax which one has to get used to and remember. Yeah, not having to faff around learning more complicated modern systems - where you never really know exactly what's g...

I have a soft spot for Z80 programming - especially on the Spectrum! I still really enjoy it and it feels very natural and "homely" to me. Other contenders would be the 68000 and 6809. But thinking about it, despite not programming in Z80 assembly since the early nineties, then picking it ...

I purchased the regular Quadron on physical cassette a few months ago but I was unsuccessful in converting it to a TZX file. Is there a way I can download the TAP file if I can prove that I purchased the physical release? Same with the games Gamex and Izzy Wizzy. Yes, I think if you contact Cronoso...

Ivanzx wrote: ↑Mon Feb 15, 2021 9:34 pm Is it compatible with th +2A models?

Yes, +2A/+3 compatible since version 1.22 (thanks to Ast A. Moore here, helping point out compatibility gotchas between these models and the 48K)

Quadron Deluxe is back in stock at Cronosoft after having been released in time for Christmas and then promptly selling out! The Deluxe edition features the same game and comes on a special edition sparkly cassette in a double jewel case, and also includes a mini CD of extras: * TAP emulator file of...

Nice, thanks for all the suggestions :) Hadn't heard of lvllvl.com before and will be checking that out further next. It looks pretty versatile and should fulfill what I was looking for (and more!). As a side, I always have this nagging reservation about online tools (rather than downloadable/instal...

I'm looking for a UDG/character set redefiner tool that'll allow me to edit (at zoomed magnification) multiple character sets. During editing, I'd also like to preview (at normal magnification) graphics built from various arrangements of characters, so I can see the final effect in realtime. The gra...

Interesting reading. So the general consensus is: ditch the FLASH bit in favour of having more colours or separate INK/PAPER bright bits.

TBH, even back in 82 and 83 I only (occasionally) used FLASH because "it was there". I wasn't particularly impressed with it back then either

As we all know, the topmost bit of the colour attributes byte for each character denotes whether it's FLASHing or not. Since I hardly ever use the FLASH option, I've often considered this wasteful and a bit of a missed opportunity. Presumably the hardware would have been easily and cheaply modified ...