Spectrum Computing

Thanks again

I keep track of new emulator releases by using an RRS feed of http://www.emucr.com/ which I load into Feedly. Now SpecEmu releases through above website are also included in it.

AY Emul by Sergei Bulba is also able to do this. And with all other supported retro music files it plays such as PT3, ST3 & SQT. Convert files by right-clicking on them in the playlist. In my opinion, anyone fond of retro music should have this player :) https://bulba.untergrund.net/emulator_e.htm

You can use the ZXDB search function for that. Select the magazine under Award. https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/

Wild guess: perhaps anything to do with auto-update functionality?

PeteProdge wrote: ↑Mon May 22, 2023 12:02 pm(Although these tunes are in the pre-playing stage, so not really "game music" in the literal sense.)

I think that difference could be expressed as "in-game music" instead of "game music"? The latter, to me, includes all music presented by the game.

I would like to do an esxDOS version of a game where I can go all out using almost unlimited memory.

I'm hoping that someone will compile the sources of the tunes so we can run it on real hw.

bob_fossil wrote: ↑Mon May 15, 2023 5:57 pmThis would avoid the issue of having to rewind the virtual tape if you needed to reload the file in again.

While native esxDOS loading is nice and thank you for sharing the code, if you use explicit filename loading, aren't .tap files automatically rewinded when reaching the end?

I vaguely remember a player that looked for the least busy channel and played the fx on that. Sorry for not remembering the exact name.

I'm also interested in the utilities. I seem to be unable to find them on the above link, only folders with games in them?

BasinC and Spin both have the option to paste text into the emulator. The Zero emulator has a Basic Importer tool zxplay.org lets you copy in Basic or assembly code and then run it. I think if you setup a login you can save progress to the site, not sure if you can save a TAP back to your PC though...

Is anyone having success with using a controller? Does SpecEmu only support d-input (I'm seeing dinput8.dll in its folder) or also x-input?
It doesn't seem to do anything with my xbox one s x-input controller. It is working in windows games and InkSpector.

(Can anyone hack those pokes into the actual TZX, though? It's a pain having to apply the pokes manually every time and saving 128K multiload snapshots is a bit problematic :( ) (I tried editing the 40K block in ZX-Blockeditor, but it caused an error on loading.) Are you emulating or using real har...

Inky wrote: ↑Fri Apr 14, 2023 12:27 pm It brings all of the Inkspector windows to the top. It's useful when you have a lot of windows open and they're covered by non-Inkspector windows.

Could this be made a toggle? When debugging and such, I keep having to raise them after having switched to another application.

Einar Saukas wrote: ↑Thu Apr 13, 2023 11:10 pm Please let me know if you notice anything wrong or missing:

Software Speech
Currah Microspeech Support
Fuller Orator Speech Support

Thanks!

I didn't do a full check, but at least Nodes of Yesod is missing in the Software Speech one.

Thanks, Inky

My XBOX-S controller wasn't working in 2.0.4 but I thought it might be something with my config that I didn't take the time to investigate yet, but it works now

AndyC wrote: ↑Mon Mar 27, 2023 10:02 am You would be, but you forgot to update your readKey routine to use IN A,(C) rather than IN A,($FE)

Ah, right - good catch. I did mean to use that, as I've used bc, but in my hurry didn't

I also noted your advice regarding self-contained routines. Usually, I try to. Thank you.

I'm sorry if I'm not completely understanding yet things that are very clear to you. I really appreciate your (and the others') persistence in sharing your knowledge and insights. Once again, a port address is a 16-bit (two-byte) value. An instruction like IN A,(nn) actually reads a byte from the po...

It works something along these lines . Right.. That works because it testes all rows, and thus also explicitly row $ef. I could do that. Or something like? waitLp: ld bc,$00fe call readKeyRow ret nz ld b,$ef call readKeyRow ret nz jr waitLp readKeyRow: in a,($fe) cpl and $1f ret

Seven.FFF wrote: ↑Sun Mar 26, 2023 9:00 pm I thought the black plug was for Atari wiring and the grey plug for SJS-1 wiring - matching the grey colour of the SjS-1 and +2?

I asked again, and they were mixed up. The black plug is for Kempston and grey for Sinclair.
So he used the grey plug for the tests.

Ast A. Moore wrote: ↑Sun Mar 26, 2023 6:53 pmOff the top of my head, I’d say the +2 actually expects inputs from ports $effe and $f7fe to register a joystick action.

So how is the keyboard scanning routine in BASIC working? As there the joysticks do produce the expected keypresses 6 7 8 9 0.

See if your routine works when on your friend’s +2 when he presses the number keys on the keyboard, rather than wiggles the joystick. Yes, it does. On my +2B I'm using a Competition Pro and tested with both the Atari-SJS converter from ByteDelight and also with an Atari-SJS converter cable I made m...

The code is as in the 1st post: waitKey: xor a in a,(254) cpl ; as bits are high by default, invert all bits and 31 ; 00011111 Mask off top 3 bits, as only interested in rest jr z,waitKey And waitKey: xor a ; 0 in a,(#fe) ; no key ; 10111111 191 or #e0 ; 11100000 224 ; no key ; 11111111 255 inc a ; ...

Thank you.

Any ideas regarding why the joystick isn't fully registering as a key press?

Can’t think of anything off the top of my head—especially, without looking at the actual code—but it’s easier (and, often, faster) to check joystick states bit by bit. And, with a bit of clever bit checking, you can implement checking for both Sinclair joysticks in the same routine. In the routines...