Spectrum Computing

Grab the fixed version of Rommel’s Revenge from my little den of game fixes.

All right, the list has been updated (Italiano) (English).

New incompatibility (and cure!) found: NATO Assault 128K.

Error C Nonsense in BASIC, 50:1 after the third data block.

Fixed by: Nuggetreggae.

Two small updates:

1) Blasteroids has been moved from section 3 to section 1 because the only compatible version of it is the MCM re-release.

2) The entry for Treasure Island Dizzy has been re-edited and now points to Ast A. Moore's bugfixed/corrected version hosted in the SC archive.

Hi [mention]Alessandro[/mention],

What's your stance on games that expect the keyboard to behave like an issue 2 48k Spectrum? I'm unsure what the difference is exactly but these games tend to not respond to key presses on a +2.

I am aware of at least 2 games that do this but there are surely more

Hi [mention]blueowl0708[/mention],

if the issue is not specific to the +2A/+3, it is not going to be added to the list.

If the issue is related to the +2A/+3 and does not affect any other Spectrum model(*), it is added to the list, according to three cases:
1) there is a historical release of the game available, which works correctly;
2) there is no other issue-free historical version of the game available, but there is a "cure" newly made by a user;
3) none of the above, but the issue can be circumvented somehow, such as loading the game under 48 BASIC (as it should be the norm with everything released before 1987 and not 128K-specific), entering USR0 mode etc.

As far as I know the differences between issue 2/issue 3 and later keyboard management are not specific to the +2A/+3 since they surfaced within the first (i.e. not +) Spectrum production run, well before the Amstrad takeover. (I guess you are referring to this.)

I hope that clarifies it all

(*) Notable exception: Three Weeks In Paradise 128, which also does not work on the +2.

Very clear, thanks

Another suspicious case, Run for Gold, the Alternative Soft version. Owned 4 copies and none loaded, and in the emulator does not work either:

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 96&id=4270

Ivanzx wrote: ↑Tue Nov 06, 2018 11:23 am Another suspicious case, Run for Gold, the Alternative Soft version. Owned 4 copies and none loaded, and in the emulator does not work either:

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 96&id=4270

It's already on the list, together with a cure by Nuggetreggae.

Alessandro wrote: ↑Tue Nov 06, 2018 2:27 pm

Ivanzx wrote: ↑Tue Nov 06, 2018 11:23 am Another suspicious case, Run for Gold, the Alternative Soft version. Owned 4 copies and none loaded, and in the emulator does not work either:

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 96&id=4270

It's already on the list, together with a cure by Nuggetreggae.

Oh man sorry, how can I be so dumb... I had not seen it all this time, and I kept buying it once after another time...

Thanks, Alessandro, now I know I can only play it in emulators!

Ivanzx wrote: ↑Tue Nov 06, 2018 3:03 pm Thanks, Alessandro, now I know I can only play it in emulators!

De nada Ivan

On the other hand, did you know you can feed TAP and TZX tape images to a real Spectrum, by "playing" them on a PC through an utility like Tapir? I am sure we already exchanged posts about this. Especially after I found that a common cassette adapter for car stereo works wonders on the +2A. (These days you can find such devices in Chinese general stores for about € 2.00.)

This way you can "load" Nuggetreggae's fixed file and play with the real thing

Two recent games for me that don't seem to work on a +2A, but worked fine on a 128k:

• Bedlam Original GO! release: Game loads, but noticeable graphics corruption on the menu, and crashes when starting a new game. I haven't tried the Sinclair User cover-tape version.
• Guerilla War Original Imagine release: End of tape and the loader is still expecting more data. Even replaying the entire tape doesn't pick up a supposedly missing block. There's a block of data immediately after the loading screen that is skipped by both machines (+2A and 128k) -- in that the loading is red+black instead of blue+black of the other data blocks. I haven't tried the "Battle Stations" compilation version.

Mike Davies wrote: ↑Sun Nov 18, 2018 7:00 am Two recent games for me that don't seem to work on a +2A, but worked fine on a 128k:

• Bedlam Original GO! release: Game loads, but noticeable graphics corruption on the menu, and crashes when starting a new game. I haven't tried the Sinclair User cover-tape version.
• Guerilla War Original Imagine release: End of tape and the loader is still expecting more data. Even replaying the entire tape doesn't pick up a supposedly missing block. There's a block of data immediately after the loading screen that is skipped by both machines (+2A and 128k) -- in that the loading is red+black instead of blue+black of the other data blocks. I haven't tried the "Battle Stations" compilation version.

Unless I know for sure there are noticeable differences between releases, I don’t bother re-making fixes for them. That said, Bedlam’s re-release by IBSA works fine on the +2A, so an official fix already exists.

Not sure what you mean by the issue you describe with Guerrilla War. Works fine for me on both machines. I think I needed to reload the last block for the +2A (a tape loading error, clearly), but the loader is self-recovering, so it wasn’t an issue.

Edit: The first block after the loading screen is meant for the 48K version, so the 128K version skips it. Inelegant, I agree, but that’s how they decided to do it.

The list has been updated with the inclusion of Bedlam in group 1 (Italiano) (English).

List updated with no new corrections, but a couple of incorrect links fixed. (Italiano) (English).

Update: I made a fixed TAP file version with music for Top Gun. (Italiano) (English).

The fix for Top Gun has been updated. I made a compatible version with music, in both TZX and TAP format - the former is based on the Erbe re-release, the latter on the file downloadable from the archive.

I've tried the new version of Top Gun on my +3, after a few mins of play it crashes, not sure if it is just my machine or not. The Erbe one is fine though.

TomD

Hi Tom, do you mean the .TAP file? In this case, I played it on SpecEmu, +3 emulated (don't have the real +3 here at the moment) for about half an hour and nothing strange happened. Did you load the file off an interface or played it through another source (PC, multimedia reader etc.)?

The SpecDrum software doesn't work with the 2a. In 128 mode it crashes on load, and in 48k mode no sound comes out of the SpecDrum device.

Alessandro wrote: ↑Sat Jun 01, 2019 8:35 am
Thanks for the info. However:
- The SpecDrum software is not a game. This is a list for games only;
- There are incompatibilities between the +3/+2A and some older peripherals due to a slightly different design of the multi-purpose edge connector - some of the signals are not placed where they were on the previous models. This might be the case.

No worries. It might be a hardware thing, in which case I'll have to work something out. If it is a software thing, is there a similar list for non-games?

Actually there isn't any, since (almost) no one these days uses real Spectrums other than for playing games, or watching the odd demo. Development of newer software is carried out on PCs so there is really no need to do things the old way.

I'm having a problem getting Gremlin's M.A.S.K to load on a +2A Spectrum. Today I've tried the Byte-Back version which looks to use the same loader as the original Gremlin release. It's the green & black stripey loader, where the loading screen loads line by line from the bottom upwards.

The Byte-Back version crashes/resets on encountering the loading-screen block -- the first of the green & black stripey segments. I vaguely recall the original Gremlin one failing at the same point. The Gremlin one did work on either a toast-rack or Spectrum+.

It’s likely the malformed TZX file. There are a few floating around that prose problems loading on real hardware. Incidentally, M.A.S.K. is one of them.

We get into a long discussion and make a few experiments here (I’m “Nicholas Naime” there). Check it out; it’s quite informative.

Ast A. Moore wrote: ↑Sat Jun 22, 2019 10:17 pm It’s likely the malformed TZX file. There are a few floating around that prose problems loading on real hardware. Incidentally, M.A.S.K. is one of them.

This is loading the original cassette. I know for sure the original Gremlin cassette fails on the +2A, and worked okay with a Sony TCM 939 cassette recorder on a Spectrum +.

I'm seeing the same issue with the Byte-Back release version on a +2A this weekend. I'll try it on a Spectrum + next time I have it out and see if it works on there.

Thanks for the link to the fuse-emulator thread, it confirms a few observations when loading from cassette too: The rare occasions when the +2A actually loads the first few vertical lines of the loading screen before crashing.