ULAplus - A new group dedicated to the enhanced ULA replacement
Posted: Thu Apr 25, 2019 2:08 pm
www.facebook.com/groups/ULAplus
What is ULAplus?
ULAplus is an enhanced video controller plug-in for the ZX Spectrum, developed by Andrew Owen and other core members of the ULAplus user group. It is an extension to the original Spectrum ULA specification and has now become a widely adopted hardware modification that features 64 colour output from a 256 colour palette and is supported through emulation, compatible hardware clones, and in commercial products such as the ZX Spectrum Vega, ZX-HD, and the SLAM+48/SLAM+128 drop-in board replacements from Zaxon. Supported emulators include ZX Spin, BASin, Zero, FBZX, JSpeccy, RVM, Fuse, SpecEmu, Spud, UnrealSpeccy, ZEsarUX and Zeus.
A rapidly growing collection of utilities and software is available including many AGD games, demos, and pre-created palette files to re-colour existing games, graphic conversion tools, art packages and palette editors. You'll find many great examples of artwork, picture conversions and games created by community members.
How does it work?
ULAplus acts as a 64-colour GRB332 palette that assigns colours to attribute values normally fetched from the ZX Spectrum's display memory. As such it does not address colour clash but does improve on the limited colour palette and use of available on-screen colours. It also runs independently of any specific graphics resolution and currently supports the additional inclusion of the SLAM+ Timex Hi-colour mode using 8x1 attributes @ 256x192 resolution, and 2 colour Hi-res mode @ 512x192 resolution.
This site focuses on the use of the ULAplus video controller and additional the additional Timex video modes found in the SLAM+ board for new games, graphics and hardware on the ZX Spectrum. If you are interested and want to find out more then please join the group to help support ULAplus and promote the standard further as a community.
What is ULAplus?
ULAplus is an enhanced video controller plug-in for the ZX Spectrum, developed by Andrew Owen and other core members of the ULAplus user group. It is an extension to the original Spectrum ULA specification and has now become a widely adopted hardware modification that features 64 colour output from a 256 colour palette and is supported through emulation, compatible hardware clones, and in commercial products such as the ZX Spectrum Vega, ZX-HD, and the SLAM+48/SLAM+128 drop-in board replacements from Zaxon. Supported emulators include ZX Spin, BASin, Zero, FBZX, JSpeccy, RVM, Fuse, SpecEmu, Spud, UnrealSpeccy, ZEsarUX and Zeus.
A rapidly growing collection of utilities and software is available including many AGD games, demos, and pre-created palette files to re-colour existing games, graphic conversion tools, art packages and palette editors. You'll find many great examples of artwork, picture conversions and games created by community members.
How does it work?
ULAplus acts as a 64-colour GRB332 palette that assigns colours to attribute values normally fetched from the ZX Spectrum's display memory. As such it does not address colour clash but does improve on the limited colour palette and use of available on-screen colours. It also runs independently of any specific graphics resolution and currently supports the additional inclusion of the SLAM+ Timex Hi-colour mode using 8x1 attributes @ 256x192 resolution, and 2 colour Hi-res mode @ 512x192 resolution.
This site focuses on the use of the ULAplus video controller and additional the additional Timex video modes found in the SLAM+ board for new games, graphics and hardware on the ZX Spectrum. If you are interested and want to find out more then please join the group to help support ULAplus and promote the standard further as a community.