Introduce yourself!

[PeteProdge]

So . Miss much?

Well, I've been catalogueing a few of your remarks from the Practical Pokes scrollies on the YS tapes in the Covertape Wars series. Oh, and the POKEs themselves. That Graham Mason, eh? Tch.

[Skaepoy]

Hey, it's me, the guy who writes that Finnish Retro Game Comparison Blog that's been irregularly spammed over at WOS forum. Thanks to Alessandro and a couple of others, I finally decided to do something sensible and migrate over to this forum.

[TMD2003]

Hi Peter! How do?

A joke for everyone:

Why is Street Fighter II not set in Yorkshire?

How do, Ryu!

How do, Ken!

AAAAAAAAAAARGH! WHAT'D THA DO THAT FOR, Y'BARMPOT! IT BURNS! IT BURNS!

[HEXdidnt]

Changing the habit of a lifetime and actually introducing myself immediately after registering...

Hi, I'm Gord, and the Sinclair ZX Spectrum entered my life sometime in the early 1980s, thanks to my family having been very keen on computers, generally. We started out with a couple of 48K models (one, I seem to recall, was bought as a 16K kit and later upgraded, while the other was a stock 48K... though both are Issue 2, so I may be wrong). So enamoured was I that, for many years, one of them tended to come on holiday with us, in a dedicated suitcase, and my dad ended up buying a +3 just to have some computer time for himself.

While I spent most of my spare time early on playing games, I soon started having ideas for games of my own. However, I couldn't get the hang of ZX BASIC, let alone anything more advanced, so I had to content myself with graphic design - first by hand, using Pixel Pads we bought at a ZX Microfair, then later using The Artist II. One of my favourite pastimes was adapting arcade game graphics to the Spectrum, sitting at the Speccy, copying pixel-by-pixel from magazine screenshots. The closest thing I have to a claim to fame is that I contributed some graphics for the ZX Spectrum conversion of Reckless Rufus by Alternative Software.

I kept up with the arty stuff, but moved onto the SAM Coupé and, these days, am rather more active on that machine than on the Spectrum. Creating pie-in-the-sky game designs is still a favourite pastime, and I'm still very happily unencumbered with any understanding of the practical (coding) side of things. I've been attached to several SAM Games-That-Weren't at one time or another but, over the last few years, I've also become involved in a couple that may, eventually, see the light of day.

I'm a member of a computer club which, since 2018, has put on a retro gaming event near where I grew up... and I am surreptitiously endeavouring to turn it into a kind of West London SAM Coupé Expo.

Spectrum-wise, my most recent interactions with the old rubber-keyed treasures were replacing the capacitors and applying the Composite Video mod, although my dad took a lot of convincing on the latter.

[Lgodinho]

Hello to you all,

I'm Luís Godinho, Portuguese, but I've been living in Brussels since the early 90's.
In the beginning of the 80's my parents offered me a Sinclair 1000 (clone of the zx81) with 16k of extra memory. At the beginning my brother and I didn't know what to do with the micro computer and we only had one game called "BLITZ". A year later, in 1984 my brother and I bought a second hand ZX Spectrum 48K.
In those days, games were sold without control and the market was flooded with pirated K7's with all kinds of games at unbeatable prices. At the age of 14 I lived a dream surrounded by all this English pop culture and the ZX Spectrum was my first love...
Nowadays I decided to resurrect my good old friend ZX Spectrum 48K and rebuild the machine adapted to current technologies (HDMI, WIFI, USB Ports, Sound Card, Micros SD memory card, etc...).
A moment of nostalgia that took me to this Forum full of magic and friendly people.
You can visit my post under the heading Emulators "RETROPIE on a Pi zero in a ZX spectrum case with rubber keyboard working".

Cheers,
Luís

[oO cozy Oo]

@Lgodinho
Welcome and have fun

[RetroDanuart]

Hi from Spain, I was an amstrad user but I love spectrum too.

I make spectrum and other systems longplays at my youtube channel. Would like to share them with you sometimes if it's not a problem.

See you!!

[psychicparrot]

Ello! I'm a human who's been making games since the 80s. I live in Canada (Ontario) but I moved here from the UK 20ish years ago.

I believe people are more important than money and I'm yer typical jaded old socialist hippie game developer, full-time indie so broke but happy. For 5ish years I worked in a 'real' game studio before utterly hating company politics, hating the company then I was laid off so I went indie. Never looked back. One of my games RC Rush recently launched on Xbox One (it's quite good, I reckon, please do look for it on the xbox shop thingy) but if you have a VR thingy, there's also a VR RC Rush available on Steam.

I've written 4 books about making things with Unity game engine, then switched to Unreal last year. My game company name is Tea Monster Games, but all of my smaller things like my hobby/love games (like my Speccy games Gherbert Groundhog, Chopper Defence, Jack Dragon, Meanie Golf etc.) go out under the name I've used online since online first started to exist... PsychicParrot. I love VR, retro gaming and I'm obsessed with any and all racing games so in my spare time, you'll usually find me attached to my steering wheel or making games in one form or another!

I started programming in the early 80s at a computer club at Marconi in the Wirral, on BBC' Bs. The family got a Sharp MZ-80k (don't ask where it came from because I still think it fell off the back of a lorry!) then I eventually got myself a ZX-81 (saved up my pocket money to buy that!). I was late to the Speccy and only got a 48k one myself just as they started selling 128k ones. Despite being a bit jealous of my mate's 128, I never had a 128 so, to me, all Speccy games should sound bleepy bleepy and AY tunes never existed until modern computers

[PeterJ]

Welcome @psychicparrot.

[MustardTiger]

Hi, I'm Pete. I've been lurking around since January and finally got around to registering. I'm really enjoying this Spectrum community, the nostalgic old games and all the great new games people are still making.

I had a Spectrum 48K way back in 1983 and recently got interested in them again when I decided to write a game for it. I used to program Amiga/ST & PlayStation professionally but always wanted to make a Spectrum game, something a bit more ambitious than the old ZX Basic games I made as a kid. Hopefully I'll share more when it's furthur along.

[R-Tape]

Welcome @MustardTiger. Hope you finish your game and share it.

[kingius]

Hi there, the forum says 'introduce yourself' so here I am. I'm a software engineer that started to program as a kid on the Spectrum 48k! Recently my wife, unexpectedly, bought me a Spectrum +2 with Robocop and a few other games. In my collection I already had the Bards Tale from years prior, picking it back up just to display it on a shelf. Now however we are both busy working our way through the sewers on that classic game, and I'm also now building a fresh party based dungeon crawler, in the vain of the Bards Tale (but with some smoothed off edges) and have working first person exploration code. Adding to the capability of the basic engine are levers and portcullises, so sort of like Dungeon Master and later games. I need to add an inventory system, messages, party classes and management, and a combat engine to the mix. This is all targeting a 48k Spectrum and is about 7.5k in machine code size +data and graphics, so I think I'm in the memory budget so far and I had to use a few tricks to get the codebase down to this size. Development is occurring on the Spectrum itself, but with the addition of one of those SD card readers so I have a really reliable and quick load and save mechanism. Thanks to some old retro Spectrum magazines I found on eBay I have a few bits of useful code libraries as well, such as one for 42 character text which my little game is using. Anyway, that's me and what I'm up to.

[R-Tape]

Welcome @kingius (thread merged with the main intro thread). Hope to see your game released into the wild sometime.

Development is occurring on the Spectrum itself,

Masochist!

[kingius]

Welcome @kingius (thread merged with the main intro thread). Hope to see your game released into the wild sometime.



Masochist!

Thanks for the kind words, I work on the game every day so will get it done... and really it's not that bad to develop on the Spectrum... fewer distractions!

[Barrakan]

Hi I guess I’m here because I’m a jaded gamer

I would like to thank all n sundry for all the info in this community, ie leaps in tech and getting old tech working with current gear.

Let’s see I started out on the 48k+ Speccy. Many years later I went onto the PC and got caught up in the technological arms race culminating in spending pretty pennies on Alienware kit.
Years passed and I noticed that I was fixating more on having the latest kit than having fun gaming so when my current setup could no longer run Elite Dangerous I left the so called master race and became a console peasant. I loved the PlayStation 4 Pro and it’s lack of driver updating and compatibility fiddle-de-ness, same goes with the Xbox Series X that I picked up last year in anticipation of Starfield dropping, which it still hasn’t.
So in search of fun I’m hanging up my console controllers for the rest of the year and I’m going to spend my time on a 48k Spectrum +

I’ve got me Speccy, ZX-HD, divMMC Future and half a dozen or so games on tape for when I want that retro feel all ready to go when I get the chance. Kinda busy at the mo

All the best
Barra

[kingius]

Welcome to the group!

[J. Pirés]

Hello everyone,

Greetings from the northern region of Spain!

I hope you're all doing well.

I'm excited to be here today, joining this retro computing forum. While I may be a new face to some, I have been quietly observing this community for quite some time, marveling at the wealth of knowledge and expertise present here.

Having familiarized myself with the forum's discussions and activities, I've recently taken a more active role, driven by my involvement with ZXDB, a comprehensive database dedicated to preserving and cataloging software titles for the ZX Spectrum. It's a passion project that has allowed me to contribute to the preservation of our computing heritage and explore the rich history of this beloved machine.

I must admit that my English is far from perfect, so I apologize in advance for any grammatical errors or language mistakes that may occur. Please bear with me as I strive to communicate and share my thoughts to the best of my abilities.

Growing up in the era of retro computing, one computer holds a special place in my heart—the ZX Spectrum. It was the first computer I ever owned, and it left an indelible mark on my life. Even to this day, I'm deeply enamored with its unique character and the memories it has given me.

As a self-taught enthusiast, I've dedicated considerable time and effort to learning and honing my programming skills. Retro computing, particularly with the ZX Spectrum, has been a lifelong journey of self-discovery, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to delve into the fascinating world of technology on my own terms.

In this forum, I'm eager to contribute to thought-provoking discussions, share valuable insights, and learn from the experiences of fellow retro computing enthusiasts. While my participation may be intermittent due to other commitments, I'm excited to engage in specific topics that align with my areas of interest and expertise.

Let's celebrate the wonders of retro computing, nurturing our shared passion while fostering innovation.

Thank you.

[R-Tape]

Welcome! I thought I noticed a new name being very busy with the preservation tools :–)

I must admit that my English is far from perfect...
Thank you.

It's better than mine mate!

[chupocro]

The usual story - got Spectrum 48 in the early 80s and started learning Z80 assembly from computer magazines when I was about 11, a few years later started using 6502 too, the next steps were 16F84 (and other PICs) and ATmega8 (and other AVRs), all up until today's ESP8266s and ESP32s.

When I got Spectrum I didn't know anything about m/c but I soon noticed there are things that couldn't be done in Basic (which I learnt by typing the programs from magazines on my friend's computer before I had mine) and one day there was a short 2 channel sound routine in one of the magazines which was written in assembly and not in a form of POKE in the loop and DATA lines. It was then when I saw the assembly instructions for the first time but I didn't know how to enter that program into the computer.

There wasn't any literature and I didn't know anyone who could tell me that I need an assembler but one day, on one of my tapes I discovered Zeus assembler and somehow managed to type, assemble end start the program from that magazine (it was just a simple loop with XOR #10 and OUT (#FE), A triggered by two counters) and there was a about one second long 2 channel sound similar to the sound of menu screen music from Moon Alert :-)) That was like magic and only then I started to understand what those op codes besides ASCII codes in the Spectrum's manual mean.

Soon I could write 20 to 30 bytes machine code routines directy in hex, without looking at the manual or loading the assembler. Then I discovered GENS, MONS (I had them too on the tapes but didn't know what they are :-) ) and Spectrum's ROM and the rest is history :-)

The other thing that I noticed isn't possible to do in Basic was fast drawing of circles (like in Elite) and I learnt quite a lot when I was trying to write my own PLOT, DRAW, CIRCLE and FILL routines but I learnt even more when trying to understand standard SAVE and LOAD routines and when I was later analysing various loaders.

[R-Tape]

Welcome @chupocro. May I complement you on an excellent signature :–)

[TMD2003]

That signature even made me write a small and simple hexloader for the Spectrum, just so I could see what it did. Usually, hexloaders are the domain of the ZX81, so I made sure to use all the VAL and NOT PI techniques to see if it could be crammed into an unexpanded ZX81's memory. It can, and it error-checks all the inputs before poking each byte.

Code: Select all

  10 CLEAR VAL "32767": LET z=CODE "2": POKE VAL "23658",VAL "8": PRINT AT NOT PI,NOT PI;"HEX LOADER","  RAMTOP = ";PEEK VAL "23730"+VAL "256"*PEEK VAL "23731"
  20 INPUT "Starting address? ";a: LET d=a
  30 IF a<VAL "32768" OR a>VAL "65535" THEN BEEP SGN PI,VAL "-12": GO TO VAL "20"
  40 LET c=NOT PI: PRINT AT NOT PI,NOT PI;"Enter ""X"" to stop",AT VAL "2",NOT PI;"ADDRESS HEX DEC"
  50 INPUT "Hex byte for address ";STR$ a;"? "; LINE b$
  60 IF b$(SGN PI)="X" THEN GO TO CODE "SCREEN$ "
  70 IF LEN b$=NOT PI THEN BEEP SGN PI,VAL "-12": GO TO z
  80 IF LEN b$=SGN PI THEN LET b$="0"+b$
  90 IF LEN b$>=INT PI THEN LET b$=b$( TO VAL "2")
 100 LET h=CODE b$(SGN PI)-VAL "48": LET l=CODE b$(VAL "2")-VAL "48"
 110 IF h<NOT PI OR (h>VAL "9" AND h<VAL "17") OR h>VAL "22" THEN BEEP SGN PI,VAL "-12": GO TO z
 120 IF l<NOT PI OR (l>VAL "9" AND l<VAL "17") OR l>VAL "22" THEN BEEP SGN PI,VAL "-12": GO TO z
 130 IF h>VAL "9" AND h<VAL "23" THEN LET h=h-VAL "7"
 140 IF l>VAL "9" AND l<VAL "23" THEN LET l=l-VAL "7"
 150 LET b=l+VAL "16"*h: POKE a,b: PRINT a;TAB VAL "8";b$;TAB VAL "12";b: LET a=a+SGN PI: LET c=c+SGN PI
 160 GO TO z
 170 PRINT ,," SAVE ""file""CODE ";d;",";c

674 measly bytes, that took. It'd be a lot more than than without all the VALs and NOT PIs. A 1K ZX81 version would be shorter, and would need to get shot of the error traps to be anywhere near useful. But there were plenty of those published in the magazines back in t'old days when everything, not just the ZX81, was in black and white.

[Morkin]

60 IF b$(SGN PI)="X" THEN GO TO CODE "SCREEN$ "

Hehe, thought that bit was nice...

[chupocro]

Welcome @chupocro. May I complement you on an excellent signature :–)

Thank you very much! I thought someone would once notice it but didn't expect it would be the very first day :-)

[chupocro]

That signature even made me write a small and simple hexloader for the Spectrum, just so I could see what it did.

Nice hexloader :-)

As for the signature - it's more about how it works than what it does. The routine contains the data but it should work regardless of the address where it was loaded so the address of the data can't be hard coded.

[Gorky 99]

Hello from South Africa,

I am a long-time lurker, and used to be at WOS under the same username.

I never posted much there, and probably won't post much here either. I still visit WOS occasionally, but SC is where I read regularly.

I wanted to say the amount of work that has gone into ZX Spectrum (and Sinclair-related) preservation over the years is incredible. I saw this project starting in the mid-1990s, from a university computer lab in Johannesburg, when I also learned what an emulator was and how to get one. The lab, mainly open for students to type and print essays, was where I first encountered the internet, ever.

So, what can I give back to Spectrum emulation and preservation, which has given so much to me?

Not that much, beyond this: I will post a few things about the ZX Spectrum (and Sinclair-related) in South Africa (and its neighbours), and so make a (quite modest) contribution to understanding the international impact of these amazing machines.

I previously, many years back, made a very small contribution to this end, by shipping my precious set of the "ZX Mushroom Club" newsletter to someone on the WOS boards who lived in the UK. This person kindly scanned and uploaded the set. I apologise for forgetting his name: this was probably in the late 2000s.

Its SC mirror is at https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/magazin ... hroom_Club, the glories of my coffee stains and scribbles on the newsletter now preserved forever(ish).

The "ZX Mushroom Club" newsletter was a South African publication from Pretoria, South Africa, and not from the UK as the current listing says.

Thanks for listening.

Bye.