Spectrum Computing

stupidget wrote: ↑Mon Mar 04, 2019 11:34 am
Get yourself one of these:

https://www.bytedelight.com/?product=di ... ck-edition

Plugs into the back of the Speccy and allows you run games from an SD Card!!! They're ace!!!!

Thanks for the link. I'll add one to my hardware wish list!

For now I've found an 3.5mm jack to cassette adapters to be a nice interim fix, in that I get the retroness of a tape-like load but with less faff. OTLA helps with load times too, though I've only just started playing with that.

Next jobs are to fix the terrible audio and an odd blink I get on the video out. I'm assuming this is a feature of using SCART. It could be by TV too but I don't think other sources are showing the same symptoms.

bigjon wrote: ↑Thu Feb 28, 2019 8:43 pm

R-Tape wrote: ↑Mon Feb 25, 2019 8:42 pm This is the official welcome to @bigjon, and also—bloody well check your PMs lad!

I want to get my hands on your 30 minute machine code tutorial

Howdy folks, I'm just an occasional dabbler in Speccy-related nostalgia at the moment. The 30-minute machine code tutorial I wrote 10 years ago is still available, kindly hosted by Arjun at https://chuntey.wordpress.com/2010/01/1 ... 0-minutes/

Great guide I’ll be returning to it again once I finish my “beta” basic game. It’s while writing this that I realised I needed machine code but I never quite [mention]bigjon[/mention]

Thanks again

Hello!

About 28 years ago, I wrote a couple of text adventures for the Spectrum that John Wilson was kind enough to publish.

Feeling a little nostalgic a couple of weeks ago, I dug my old +3 out of the garage, and also began to have a play around with Spectaculator on my PC. As can happen with these things, this set me off down a rabbit hole where I ended up deciding to see if I could edit / improve one of the adventures. Playing it today, it's clear that, in addition to everything else that's wrong with it, I had to make compromises with the game due to running out of memory in The Quill. After a few days messing around with WinPaw (unsuccessfully), UnQuill, UnPaws, and The Quill and The Press, I had a version that I was a little happier with.

On the same day that I finished my editing, the lead turned up in the post so I could finally plug my +3 into a TV again. Searching through my disks, I was a little annoyed to discover that 21-year-old me had reached the same conclusion as 48-year-old me with the original game. There on one of the disks was a program to create a master for a "remix" version of one of my games, Deek's Deeds. I'd obviously been able to get my hands on a copy of The Press and had sought to fix some of the issues with the original release.

After yet another lead from Amazon, and some tinkering around with Audacity and MakeTZX, I was able to create a TZX file of the unreleased 1991 "remix" of Deek's Deeds, which I'm happy to make available.

During my editing of the now no-longer-needed version last week, my elderly eyes were having a little trouble with the scanned pdf of the manual for The Press, so I ended up creating a copy in Word. Docx and RTF versions are included in the zip file containing the TZX, in case anyone finds them useful or at all diverting.

These are the stories we love to hear

Welcome here!

Hello, everyone! I don't think I've ever done one of these "introduce yourself" things before so I'll try not to ramble. But I know how some of you enjoy these stories, so it might go on a bit.

My name's Jim, I got a Spectrum in late 1984 following a summer of incessantly going around to my mate Steve's house to play games and write really bad BASIC programs on the Spectrum that he already had. I pestered my parents so much about it and under the auspices of it being a joint birthday and Xmas present, they eventually gave in! "Nine-day wonder", said my dad, but I got an unbelievable amount of use from it over the next five years, so much so that I had to replace the keyboard membrane twice. I got an Amiga in about 1989, so the Spectrum inevitably saw less use after that, but I remember taking the Speccy to university to mess around on in 1992-3, so I was still using it regularly almost ten years later. Unbelievable value for money, really.

In 1987 I wrote a game (using PAW) called Homicide Hotel that was - according to Derek Brewster in his CRASH review - the first PAWd game that he'd seen. Very generously he gave it 84% (and I mean very generously, because the game isn't really very good at all and has a highly unsatisfactory ending). I remember getting a complimentary copy of that issue of CRASH (no. 44, I think) through the post a good week before the magazine was out in the shops, which I found really exciting at the time. The game sold just short of 50 copies (mail-order at £2.75!) and I think my overheads were 40p per tape, 10p per jiffy bag and about 20p postage, so I reckon I made about £100 all in. Ironically, I'd had a phone call from some guy shortly after the CRASH review was published (I really wish I could remember which software house he said he was from) offering me £120 for the game, but I kind of wanted the adventure of doing it myself (plus I was still only 15 and wary of being ripped off) so I said "no". No regrets though! I really enjoyed the experience and wouldn't change it for anything.

Now it's 2019 and I've recently got back into the whole Spectrum scene, really glad it still seems to be so active and I'm amazed at some of the games that have since appeared (Buzzsaw and splATTR in particular are just phenomenal, but there's plenty of others). It's so cool that people are still producing this stuff, and to such a high standard.

Hey, [mention]Fahnn[/mention]! Welcome to SC!

Welcome [mention]Fahnn[/mention]

Great to have you on board.

Hi Jim! Welcome aboard

And if you ever wished to do some more programming on Speccy, there are friendly people here who will always help you with advice.

Ralf wrote: ↑Fri Mar 29, 2019 8:52 pmAnd if you ever wished to do some more programming on Speccy, there are friendly people here who will always help you with advice.

I'll almost certainly do that. I've recently recovered all the other games I wrote from my old tapes (was kind of amazed they were still readable, but there doesn't seem to have been much degradation at all, as far as I can tell). They're all rubbish of course but it's got me thinking about writing more stuff. I tried to learn how to handle machine code back in the 1980s but never really progressed beyond the rudiments; maybe it's time for another attempt now I'm older and more patient.

And thanks everyone for the lovely welcome. You don't get that on most internet forums!

Hello and greetings from .fi.. Started with Speccy in mid -80s and now after many years of being lost in other platforms the circle is closing and back on Speccy. Today I still have +2A, +3 and few FPGA ones. I do occasional crappy coding on Z80 when I need a break from daily working life

Welcome [mention]mr.spiv[/mention]

mr.spiv wrote: ↑Fri Apr 12, 2019 7:37 pm Hello and greetings from .fi.. Started with Speccy in mid -80s and now after many years of being lost in other platforms the circle is closing and back on Speccy. Today I still have +2A, +3 and few FPGA ones. I do occasional crappy coding on Z80 when I need a break from daily working life

Moi Mr.!

Mita kuuluu? Welcome here, it is good to have people from Finland here, my kids are half finnish

Here goes
Hello from North Wales near to the supposedly sunny Rhyl anyone from my neck of the woods remembers the local computer shop Joe Micro? long gone

I never had a Spectrum growing up and sorry to say I never gave the machine a chance, this was my loss. By the time I even heard about ZX Spectrum I was using a Commodore 64 and with it came a lot of unnecessary childish snobbery which I would later experience myself having owned the ATARI ST sadly this continues with the AMIGA.

But in hindsight what made all these machines great for me was they were the equivalent to a good book or listening to a radio station, they made you think about what you were trying to do, from getting it to print or playing a game. No drag and drop no fancy film footage within a game, just your own imagination that produced the backdrop this being intensified by the likes of Zapp and for the spectrum user its relative Crash.

School holidays and staying up into the early hours with my parents completing bubble bobble and wizzball in shifts. Happy times that I doubt will be relived on any XBOX or PlayStation.

Anyway I want to try and experience not just the ZX spectrum machine but also the community. I hope that I can one day have a special place in my heart for the spectrum that I hold for the C64 and ST.

Jon

zack4mac wrote: ↑Sat Apr 13, 2019 2:17 pm Here goes
Hello from North Wales near to the supposedly sunny Rhyl anyone from my neck of the woods remembers the local computer shop Joe Micro? long gone

S'mae, Jon. Did you know the history behind Jo-Micro? https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north- ... fe-2845843

Also, I believe one of the Jo-Micro staff set up Broadsword Computers in the town too.

Hello I never met the man himself and had no idea about his interests, fascinating. I can vaguely remember a bloke named Chris who originated from London, was running it not long before it closed. I cant remember the year but it was when the Atari Falcon, A1200 and Amstrad GX4000 came out, in fairness the independent computer shop could not compete with the like of Dixons and Currys who cut deals with manufacturers direct. I take it you know the locality?

Jon

zack4mac wrote: ↑Sat Apr 13, 2019 3:09 pm I take it you know the locality?

I'm based in Hawarden, so yeah, I know Rhyl fairly well. Not somewhere I used to go for computer stuff, though.

I also tend not to shop in Rhyl, like most places not like it used to be!
Nice talking with you mate

Dear all, I just joined today, another Speccy-a-holic guy!
Recently I started to make some simple games for fun.
A pleasure to meet you!!


***Topic merged by PeterJ***

Hi there! Welcome!
You're the author of Rade Blunner right?

Edit: just saw your reply on the New Games thread

Hi Iadvd! Feel yourself at home and visit often

Hi there!

I was looking for somewhere relaxed, away from Facebook groups to continue the eternal discussion of all things ZX Spectrum. I sort of accepted the Kings Shilling almost two years ago to help create a new ZX Spectrum computer and ever since then, life has been a bit crazy. I have not had time for any of my retro passions. Atari, Acorn, and the main one, Sinclair. Hoping to have some interesting discussions and to learn and maybe impart some knowledge too!

Hi and welcome, Mikecad!

My opinion is that Facebook groups don't compare to good, old forum. Yes, it's easy to browse on phones and to post images, and if you are an admin to maintain it. But it's a wall of text, constantly scrolling, with 10% of valuable content instantly getting buried under 90% of low quality babble. And it's also everything mixed with everything so even if you are interested only in gaming, you end reading about soldering and capacitors.

So if you want some good discussion, definitely go to a forum. This forum

Hi to all, greetings from sunny Portugal

Decided to join this forum as I believe this is the best we have with new stuff, other forums are slowly dying out.

Hope to learn with everyone here and maybe I can actually help with something

Best regards and see you all around

alban lusitanae wrote: ↑Fri Jun 28, 2019 1:59 pm Hi to all, greetings from sunny Portugal

Decided to join this forum as I believe this is the best we have with new stuff, other forums are slowly dying out.

Hope to learn with everyone here and maybe I can actually help with something

Best regards and see you all around

Olá Alban, nice to see you around here! Bem-vindo!

It's always great to see an old WoS friend joining SC! Welcome!