Spectrum Computing

Completely agree with @AndyC. No one in their right mind would ever think about making a profit out of Spectrum games - apart from the proverbial pack of Rolos (or whatever candies you fancy, Ricolas and Golias in my case).

Hi segasonicfan , if you wish to know everything about Spectrum file formats, I cannot but recommend you my Spectrumpedia. You will find all the information you need written in a concise and exhaustive way in Vol. 2, Chapter 2, pages 229-246. The link to download a free PDF copy is in my signature. ...

What for? There are lots of people here who cut their teeth on the keyboard, including yours truly

Welcome on the forum :) I must admit have a soft spot for the +2A, it is the only historical Spectrum (apart from the old rubber-keyed model) I hold more than one unit of in my collection. At least on my LED TV and VGA monitor, colours are much more vibrant than the previous models and beeper and AY...

Wizball was and still is one of my favourite games of its era on the Spectrum, and I never found its beginning that difficult. Just, as Jason wrote, bounce very slightly and acquire left-right movement, then full directional movement. The rest should be rather straightforward. On the other hand, Ka...

Same for me. Windows 10 x64, no option present.

Not something I shall miss anyway, I already made a TAP file out of it following the instructions, and played it on real hardware through the DivMMC.

... that I found while playing Atic Atac: This is the starting room: https://i.postimg.cc/Kz8BMwwp/ROOM.jpg If you see the ACG helmet down left, we can see it has the letters ACG printed on it, but in a way according to the perspective of the whole screen, but if we turn the screen around, the helm...

Hi @Bolton80, try this file of Side A. I am not familiar with this game so I cannot tell whether it runs as expected or not.

http://disegnareconlaluce.altervista.org/Rats-test.zip

Interesting... I should mention this in the third edition of the Spectrumpedia in 2032 :) Maria Teresa Ruta states in the interview that the computer is fed data about the matches to be played next Sunday(*), then the program elaborates a system for the Totocalcio pool prediction contest(**). This l...

Some PSS strategy games, namely Theatre Europe, Tobruk, Battle Of Britain and Bismarck, contain some simple, and in some cases optional, arcade sequences alongside the main strategic part.

They will work if you load from 48K mode. However, this will obviously leave you without the AY music (which will please @equinox's dad at least). Again, the Musical 1 re-release will play AY music in the background. A TAP file of it will soon be added to the collection for the DivIDE, in the next ...

In 1993, after nine years of honorable service, the voltage regulator failed and fried the RAM.

On a side note, all Spectrums in my collection were purchased on Ebay in the 2010s.

(Edited: nine years instead of eight)

The original Firebird release of Bubble Bobble won't work on the +2A/+3.

The Hit Squad re-release will, but without background music. The Musical 1 re-release runs with background music.

(See the +2A/+3 incompatibilities and corrections list in my signature)

My knowledge is very poor when it comes to Sam Coupe and I decided to improve it a bit today :) Sam Coupe could run Zx Spectrum games and other programs, right? So did it have a copy of Spectrum ROM? I guess that without ROM memory a lot of programs would crash. If so, how did they deal with copyri...

Sad news. Rest in peace, Zzoom alone gave me so many hours of fun back in the day.

Thank you @WhatHoSnorkers

However, the Nationalist flag in the first page is historically inaccurate. Could you please substitute it with this one:

https://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/es1936.html

I gave it a try on the LMN128 and the Omni and it worked flawless without any snow. many thanks @Alessandro ! I played the game a lot over the years and without saying it definitely I had the impression that this version runs a tiny bit smoother than the original. Offloading the sound from to the s...

Versions with AY music and effects in the TAP collection are taken from "unofficial" fan-made mods (or better said, cracks), with such content taken from other versions (usually for the Amstrad CPC), as specified in their description. My policy is not to consider mods where original (i.e. ...

Agree, cracks and mods should be kept out of the archive. There's a whole lot of such files around if you know where to look for them.

I recently made TAP files out of two of them for my DivIDE/DivMMC TAP file project, but I would never add them to the archive myself, or ask them to be added.

Ahem :roll: Let's get back to the topic... The TAP file will be added to the DivIDE/DivMMC collection in the next update. The already present TAP file of the original Firebird release will be kept for those who wish to play the game the traditional way on the 128 and later models. Of course, there w...

At last, I found the missing piece. Bob's suggestion of a POKE at address 43673 led me towards the correct path. The TAP file should now work on all Spectrums and play AY music and sound effects on the 128 and later models without "snow" on the 128/+2. Download link is unchanged (see first...

I never saw the "Italian" box. All 16/48K Spectrums I ever saw here came in the standard UK box.

bob_fossil : Yes, I loaded the snapshot on an emulated 128 with DivIDE on SpecEmu, and it happened as you wrote. The same snapshot ran without problems on a +2A. However, those addressess are not useful (i.e. there is no actual code there) when the TAP file ends loading and code is started at 24576...

Good finding. I noticed this little-known and interesting title a long time ago.

https://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/ ... ion/35535/

No other light has been shed on it until now, though, so any more news/documentation etc. are welcome.

bob_fossil : I loaded the TAP under 128 emulation and placed a breakpoint at 24576, then tried substituting all the LD A, 17 instructions just before the bank switching ones with LD A, 20, but at the title screen, the program jumps somewhere around 62247 and finds nothing there, so the computer res...