Spectrum Computing

Well, did you, punk?

At first, no. Then of course eventually, when trying to LOAD back in, got the dreaded tape loading error…

So then, I SAVEd my masterwork twice (on the same tape), then went back and verified the first copy.

Till I got lazy…

Mark

To clarify: this sounds like "did you keep backups?" BUT that's not what I mean.

SAVE "x" (insert tape 2) SAVE "x"
This is just general keeping of backups (or, as they probably called it in the 1980s, 'father' and 'grandfather' copies).

That is different from SAVE "x": VERIFY "x"
That one suggests that you don't even trust the damn tape you are writing to.

I hate that a token slot was wasted on the VERIFY keyword. They should have done it like LOAD "x" VAL and it could have printed 0 for good and 1 for bad. Or vice versa. Then we'd have a spare keyword available for something really important, like BAND (binary and): have you tried to read the keyboard properly in BASIC, ouchie! (Also, squandering a UDG on the awful SPECTRUM keyword on 128s was idiotic, when you can do it with LOAD-SAVE, but that's another rant. lol)

equinox wrote: ↑Mon Oct 02, 2023 10:55 pm That is different from SAVE "x": VERIFY "x"
That one suggests that you don't even trust the damn tape you are writing to.

ah yes... microdrive...

Rarely, but I had a good quality tapedeck and reasonable blank cassettes (both WHSmith branded which was surely a sign of quality).

I don't really remember having issues loading things back. Well until I had a microdrive, because they were crap.

equinox wrote: ↑Mon Oct 02, 2023 10:40 pm Well, did you, punk?

Nope.

Just once to see what it did, then never after that.

equinox wrote: ↑Mon Oct 02, 2023 10:40 pm Well, did you, punk?

LOAD "yeschad" SCREEN$

equinox wrote: ↑Mon Oct 02, 2023 10:55 pm I hate that a token slot was wasted on the VERIFY keyword. They should have done it like LOAD "x" VAL and it could have printed 0 for good and 1 for bad. Or vice versa. Then we'd have a spare keyword available for something really important, like BAND (binary and): have you tried to read the keyboard properly in BASIC, ouchie! (Also, squandering a UDG on the awful SPECTRUM keyword on 128s was idiotic, when you can do it with LOAD-SAVE, but that's another rant. lol)

If there was a BAND, then there'd at least need to be a BOR as well (and probably a BXOR). As it's possible to make all five other logic gates from NANDs, then BOR and BXOR could be done with a series of NOT BANDs strung together in a DEF FN, but (a) would you want to write that and (b) how slow would it be?

SPECTRUM at least had more uses on the +3 and even more still on the Next, so... I can live with 19 UDGs. Besides, you need more, define a new character set instead and use that. Or write two or three banks of UDGs and a bit of really rudimentary machine code to LDIR each one in place as required. (Not that I could have done that until I was in my 40s, but still...)

If you ask me, I'd only verify stuff when it's important not to lose it, like some of the type-in stuff.

I wouldn't verify any of the game tapes obviously.

I'd say there's no point of verifying things if there's nothing important in them. Because that would just costs too much time for nothing.

I used to , with things I was writing. Most of the time at least.

A decent tape deck and half decent tapes (I used to use mainly the Boots yellow/back C15's) seemed to go a long way towards reliability.

I never really can recall having many (any?) issues loading commercial tapes most of the time either.

The 'rebranded' Dixons unit (I do somewhere have its actual 'real' name***) similar to one of the Acorn units was extremely reliable for me.

EDIT... OK...

Acorn ANF03


Alba R170


Dixons TR30 (the one I had)


They are all more or less the same with minor internal differences and port changes. Possibly different AGC as the Acorn one I tried once was not good at all (on the Speccy or a BBC)

Van_Dammesque wrote: ↑Tue Oct 03, 2023 10:30 am Just once to see what it did, then never after that.

lol, reminds me of ****ing up the new nice PC, then thinking "oh god, it has a hard drive, and now it's stuck in 16-colour mode forever" ( somehow i broke the 256 colours)
...
we speccy nerds thought that hitting the reset button would solve everything.