Introduce yourself!

[BuckMulligan_]

After umming and ahhing for far too long, I finally ordered myself a refurbished Spectrum today. Looking forward to reliving my early teenage years, and maybe getting into some programming now that I have 35 years of coding experience to back up my dumb 11-year-old self's ideas. Think I'm going to order a DivMMC too, since it seems far easier than trying to track down a working tape player and buying dozens of cassettes.

[R-Tape]

After umming and ahhing for far too long, I finally ordered myself a refurbished Spectrum today. Looking forward to reliving my early teenage years, and maybe getting into some programming now that I have 35 years of coding experience to back up my dumb 11-year-old self's ideas. Think I'm going to order a DivMMC too, since it seems far easier than trying to track down a working tape player and buying dozens of cassettes.

Welcome! Which model have you got, and is it the same as the one you had first time round? And yes please get coding - there are loads of competitions to enter:

16K summer Jam
25th Crap Games Comp
ZX-Dev Media-Demakes

(and probably a few I missed)

[BuckMulligan_]

Which model have you got, and is it the same as the one you had first time round?

Yes - it's a 48k+ which is what my parents bought for us way back in 1984.

[p13z]

Think I'm going to order a DivMMC too, since it seems far easier than trying to track down a working tape player and buying dozens of cassettes.

Welcome
If you are wanting to use the hardware, rather than emulation, you might want to consider something like a Spectranet over old solutions like DivMMC. Indeed, memory cards are a step up from cassette tapes - but it easy to forget how much of a faff removable media is in general.
( See a new game, take out MMC, put MMC in PC, copy files across, put back in Speccy etc... - as opposed to see new game, download and play, like emulation or Spectranet. Let alone trying to use modern PC based tools to help writing / development ).

[Speccy_Pete]

Hi all,

Made the mistake of watching some retro gaming and repair videos on youtube the other week... yea, yea... wait for it...

Brought back the memories of the rubber keyed 16k speccy I had that rather quickly got upgraded to a 48k and the fun I had messing about with it for hours at a time and the +3 my mate had and how much I wanted one!

oh yea, this is going to cost money!

***I wonder if theres any on eBay I thought***

Nope, too late... no saving him now!?!

So I now have a zx spectrum +3 - spares/repair not working of course - sitting here.

Anyway thats the story so far...

Let the fun begin!

[vintage-mike]

Hi Everyone,
I'm Mike, after a 30 year career in pro-audio (software development, DSP, hardware design, plug-ins etc) in 2020 I found myself
with a little more time on my hands than I expected... So, I decided to go 'back to my roots', get a reconditioned 48K ZX Spectrum,
and dust off my Z80 assembler language skills - only this time with the benefit of modern development tools I could not have
imagined when I was first introduced to these machines in my youth.
Its fair to say that a significant amount of 'mission creep' has set in - I wrote a couple of games for my own amusement,
then an emulator (with CRT emulation) and this year I decided to make them available to a wider audience, through a small business - Vintage Software Systems Ltd based in Oxfordshire, England.
Games are available as audio files for loading into vintage hardware, tzx and tap files for emulators, and also as ready-to-run binaries
for Linux (Ubuntu 16.04 or later). Please feel free to take a look.

Mike

[R-Tape]

Hi Everyone,

Welcome Mike! These games look great. Good luck with the venture.

(I've sent you a PM)

[Zxoldboy]

Hi

I have reached the age of retirement and decided to down size my house so while in my loft recently I discovered a few of my old computer books purchased back in the early 1980's. Among them was a ZX Spectrum user manual. Interested to find out more information about the Spectrum a quick search has taken me to this forum. There is so much information here it take me a while to read everything but it's made me want to buy a ZXSpectrum again.

So hopefully I will find a refurbished rubber keys 48k soon and be able to play my favourite Spectrum games again.

[roganjosh]

Hello,

I've just joined the forum. I'm also roganjosh (and occasionally ajb) on several other computer retro fora. I've got at least 3 of each of 48K, Spectrum+ and Interface 1s plus microdrives, vDriveZX, DivMMC and some SMARD Card V2s. Most of the computers and Interface 1s have been bought as non-working and brought back from the dead. That collection may at least make me a fledgling user in the eyes of some of the gods here. I was involved with ACS Software in the 80s which produced a few titles for the Spectrum. The Ultraviolet assembler was one of mine. I see that's available for download on various sites. Nice nostalgia value but no one is now going to resurrect it and throw away their cross-assembler.

I came across this forum again today as I've (probably) just finished repairing a toastrack I bought a couple of weeks ago off eBay. It was a typical Spectrum kind of repair but with a wrinkle I'd never come across before. Eyeballing the PCB showed a thick piece of wire shorting C80 in the DC-DC converter. Investigations showed that it'd been done because the DC-DC section was dead (collector-base short in TR4 and a broken coil). Shorting C80 therefore allowed 9V DC to appear on the +12V rail which was just enough to let the TEA2000 (etc) produce a display; a rather dark one via a RGB/SCART/LCD display. I don't know whether that was devious salesmanship or penny-pinching by a previous owner. Anyway replacing TR4/5 and rewinding a new coil after doing a recap got things running properly again. I've applied all appropriate mods and the display is now beautiful.

The only things left to check tomorrow are /M1 (plenty of Z80s lying around if the current one is weak) and also the audio. If, by the way, anyone has a recommendation for a good audio test for a 128 I'd be glad to know. Anyway, it's good to finally have a toastrack, though I doubt I can justify getting any more. Famous last words.


Alan

[davespicer]

Hi,

I'm Dave. I used to work as a software developer during the Spectrum's twilight years. Speccy games by me were Adidas Championship Football, Interchange, Jonny Quest and Sergeant Seymour. Of those, I think Sergeant Seymour is worth a revisit and the others are fairly lousy. Interchange is possibly redeemable and I'll be doing something about that soon.

Other platforms I worked on were Amstrad, ST, Amiga and PC. Amstrad games covered all of the above, plus a bunch of low-tech sports management games for D&H Games. Sergeant Seymour was ported to the ST/Amiga and was never released as far as I know. I think Codemasters decided it was too basic for a 16-bit title. PC games were ports of Steg the Slug and Seymour Goes to Hollywood, back in the days when the base machine was an 8MHz 286 with EGA.

I was also involved in the early years of the arcade emulation scene, releasing one of the first multi-game emulators, Sparcade, in 1996. I'd pimped the emulator to a variety of companies during '95 and was rejected outright by all of them. I kept going with Sparcade for a few years before losing interest when rising CPU speeds made it less of a challenge.

I've been trawling through the archives recently and intend to post some unreleased odds and sods. A tech demo for Xenon 2 was put up on YouTube recently and there's a thread about it on the forum. Sadly, an unused "violent" version of Jonny Quest doesn't seem to exist anymore. Jonny could originally arm himself with a Desert Eagle and was able to kick both enemies and the bunnies running around outside. Kicking the bunnies onto their backs was the only good part of the game! Hey, we had no respect for a poxy cartoon that none of us had ever heard of. Hanna Barbera were "alarmed". I have a bunch of Amiga floppies for the game which may still contain the original graphics. I'll post the contents if I can read them off.

Another interesting oddity could be the improved version of Adidas Championship Football. The game was originally a licensed Liverpool Football Club title, with both player and management sections. Adidas was a quick and dirty hack of unfinished code to get something out for the World Cup. Changes made later were to improve the ball control, bump up the frame rate and fix/improve the AI. Basically the aim was, to quote Nick Taylor at the time, "make it more like Kick Off on the Amiga". Unfortunately, I don't seem to have working source code for LFC or even the Adidas version. When funding for the game was cut, we downed tools almost immediately and I seem to have left the code in a partly-modified and crashing state. Earlier backups of working versions are long gone and I only have the last "live" version of the code. I'll have a play around with it at some point and see what can be done.

My favourite classic Speccy games are Dragontorc, Quazatron, Lunar Jetman and Knight Lore. You can't really go wrong with Steve Turner and classic-era Ultimate.

Dave

[Ast A. Moore]

Welcome to Spectrum Computing, [mention]davespicer[/mention]!

[Ivanzx]

Hello,

I've just joined the forum. I'm also roganjosh (and occasionally ajb) on several other computer retro fora. I've got at least 3 of each of 48K, Spectrum+ and Interface 1s plus microdrives, vDriveZX, DivMMC and some SMARD Card V2s. Most of the computers and Interface 1s have been bought as non-working and brought back from the dead. That collection may at least make me a fledgling user in the eyes of some of the gods here. I was involved with ACS Software in the 80s which produced a few titles for the Spectrum. The Ultraviolet assembler was one of mine. I see that's available for download on various sites. Nice nostalgia value but no one is now going to resurrect it and throw away their cross-assembler.

I came across this forum again today as I've (probably) just finished repairing a toastrack I bought a couple of weeks ago off eBay. It was a typical Spectrum kind of repair but with a wrinkle I'd never come across before. Eyeballing the PCB showed a thick piece of wire shorting C80 in the DC-DC converter. Investigations showed that it'd been done because the DC-DC section was dead (collector-base short in TR4 and a broken coil). Shorting C80 therefore allowed 9V DC to appear on the +12V rail which was just enough to let the TEA2000 (etc) produce a display; a rather dark one via a RGB/SCART/LCD display. I don't know whether that was devious salesmanship or penny-pinching by a previous owner. Anyway replacing TR4/5 and rewinding a new coil after doing a recap got things running properly again. I've applied all appropriate mods and the display is now beautiful.

The only things left to check tomorrow are /M1 (plenty of Z80s lying around if the current one is weak) and also the audio. If, by the way, anyone has a recommendation for a good audio test for a 128 I'd be glad to know. Anyway, it's good to finally have a toastrack, though I doubt I can justify getting any more. Famous last words.


Alan

It is nice to have more and more people from back in the 80s of the industry

Hopefully you can repair your Speccies and get back to coding games again

Welcome!

[R-Tape]

Hi,

I'm Dave. I used to work as a software developer during the Spectrum's twilight years.

Welcome Dave. I discovered Sergeant Seymour over twenty years after its release, and it's a bloody brilliant game. I think your top priority should be doing fully pimped version of The Blob.

[R-Tape]

Hello,

I've just joined the forum.

Welcome Alan!

I was involved with ACS Software in the 80s which produced a few titles for the Spectrum. The Ultraviolet assembler was one of mine. I see that's available for download on various sites. Nice nostalgia value but no one is now going to resurrect it and throw away their cross-assembler.

I can't find the link, but there's a guy out there writing a shoot 'em up by directly inputting machine code bytes, so if someone is crazy enough to do that, then I wouldn't rule out your UV assembler!

[p13z]

I was involved with ACS Software in the 80s which produced a few titles for the Spectrum. The Ultraviolet assembler was one of mine. I see that's available for download on various sites. Nice nostalgia value but no one is now going to resurrect it and throw away their cross-assembler.

I can't find the link, but there's a guy out there writing a shoot 'em up by directly inputting machine code bytes, so if someone is crazy enough to do that, then I wouldn't rule out your UV assembler!

A few people, me included, like using native tools on the Speccy. When you have a Spectranet or DivIDE or such, for instant load/save/recovery - it makes a lot of them remarkably usable on real hardware. Sure, there are always more efficient and modern ways of doing things, but that isn't really the point of retro coding

[roganjosh]

I can't find the link, but there's a guy out there writing a shoot 'em up by directly inputting machine code bytes, so if someone is crazy enough to do that, then I wouldn't rule out your UV assembler!

Ah, that's the way the assembler itself was done. I didn't even have a Spectrum of my own at the time. Lots of A4 paper was involved, the mnemonics were then converted to machine code using the appendix of Zaks' Z80 book. I then passed on the machine code to an ACS Software colleague who typed it into his Spectrum using a hex loader. After that the Spectrum was passed to me for a week or so of debugging, then handed back. I can still remember lots of the hex codes for the mnemonics from doing that conversion session.

I couldn't agree more wrt the fun of using native assemblers and getting the full retro experience.

The toastrack didn't need any further repair and is now all singing and dancing. Just to clear up a possible misunderstanding in one of the replies, all my Spectra and peripherals are currently in full working order. Completely correct about me having to get my finger out and get some programming done now though.

Alan

[R-Tape]

Ah, that's the way the assembler itself was done. I didn't even have a Spectrum of my own at the time. Lots of A4 paper was involved, the mnemonics were then converted to machine code using the appendix of Zaks' Z80 book.

I tried this method a few years ago for this short, and very bad Crap Game Comp entry (the .jpgs of the scribbled notes is in the source code under 'additional file downloads').

It was quite fun, and a good way to torture the competition host that year. It's astonishing that Skool Daze was coded in such a way though. Ouch.

[PeteProdge]

Well, this isn't so much an introduction, as long-time folk already know me. I tend to block out spend much of a Sunday creating and replying here.

Just to say I'm back from a holiday... well, a series of holidays, some centred around my other hobby (running). And so, those game polls will resume and I'll be, um, narco'ing some of the threads I've missed over the past two months.

I started out with a trip to Jersey - spending 23 hours on the island, so I could do a parkrun 2 weeks before that weekly event returned to England. I had a frantic scramble to be double-vaccinated in time and to get a negative PCR test certificate prior to flying. Had never been to the Channel Islands before, it's like a chunk of Cornwall has been thrown out next to France. I quite enjoyed it, wish I could have spent more time there.

But then I had kept some cash ready for the next weekend, doing a parkrun over in Northern Ireland (notching up another one before it came back to England). I've been to Belfast twice before, this time I spent a couple of days in the city. For a first, I decided to try out drinking in the, er, sectarian areas (in the daytime, of course), so I got to have a wander round Falls, then Shankill. That's quite an eye opener. I returned to the centre for lunch and shopping. (Oh and got a really decent time in the run too.)

Then, after 'freedom' *cough* day in England there was a weekend almost back at home, where I was at a two day festival for VW-loving petrolheads - Bug Jam at the Santa Pod raceway. I'm no car enthusiast, I just happen to be friends with one, and I agreed to attending it while rather drunk some weeks back. That said, there was loads of music and other things going on, so it's not just for the engine tinkerers. I had to to make a temporary exit on Sat morning for the first post-pandemic parkruns in England, which meant having to run six miles TO the event. Oh, and attending my first ever rave. About 2,000 of us in an massive indoor tent - no masks, not much social distancing... (I was pretty surprised when I tested negative the following day.) Still, that was my first post-pandemic taster of live music.

Oh yeah, the following weekend was the start of the first full week I've taken off work in three years. I planned to spent four days in Scotland - and NOT to go to the Edinburgh Fringe this time, so it was my first time into the northern reaches of Caledonia - followed by the usual four days in Blackpool (a wonderfully craptastic seaside resort where it pays off to hunt for the decent things in amongst acres of charmless tat), so that kicked off by an overnight stay in Newcastle (no Scotland parkruns at the time, so managed this on Sat morn <-- contains ACTUAL ZX SPECTRUM RELATED CONTENT, yes, really), then the following nights in Dundee; Aberdeen; Inverness and Glasgow. I'd never been to those cities (except Glasgow) before and it's awesome to drive beside lochs and in between mountains. Did the following weekend's parkrun over in Fleetwood. Oh, and there's a slightly-less-than-legal retro arcade cabinet in Bispham. And a wonderful Speccy-related moment at the Blackpool Tower Ballroom...

https://twitter.com/ReheatedPixels/stat ... 3962797057

The last few weekends have been a bit of a blur. I think I had a normal one two weeks ago, then last week I was over in London's Alexandra Palace for an event about the history of yer actual television, so that's a lot of John-Logie-Baird-centric video showcases with a lot of starchy announcements read out in the Queen's English.

Right, back to the chunky neon pixels of the Speccy.

[R-Tape]

Just to say I'm back from a holiday... well, a series of holidays, some centred around my other hobby (running). And so, those game polls will resume and I'll be, um, narco'ing some of the threads I've missed over the past two months.

Nice to have you back Prodge. This all sounds like quite an adventure, especially for a non-adventurer like me. Maybe your next odyssey could be a Spectrum one. Plenty of pointers here!

[SteveSmith]

Crikey, you do get about. Makes me feel like a right Billy Stay-at-Home. Do you stay in hotels?

[PeteProdge]

Just to say I'm back from a holiday... well, a series of holidays, some centred around my other hobby (running). And so, those game polls will resume and I'll be, um, narco'ing some of the threads I've missed over the past two months.

Nice to have you back Prodge. This all sounds like quite an adventure, especially for a non-adventurer like me. Maybe your next odyssey could be a Spectrum one. Plenty of pointers here!

Well, I'm heading over to London again, this coming weekend for Digitiser Live, then maybe going up to Blackpool for Play Expo in October.



...I've done a commendable effort of covering much of Britain this year, but I've yet to venture into Wales and the south west. I'm trying to think of a reason to do so.

Crikey, you do get about. Makes me feel like a right Billy Stay-at-Home.

Well, after about 17 months of pretty much staying in my county (save for a few days when I went to London, Shrewsbury and Welshpool), I vowed I'd properly get out and about as soon as it was legal (and financially viable) to do so. The Channel Islands and the Scottish highlands have always been on my bucket list, so, parkrun and the huge downsizing of the Edinburgh Fringe gave me excuses to go off to these 'new' (to me) parts of the British Isles.

Do you stay in hotels?

I did! I threw a huge chunk of disposable income at it, and hence now I've calmed down a bit.

I suppose those nine nights of different hotels was how rock stars feel.

[Karl_G]

Hello! I'm Karl. I'm from the U.S., so I didn't grow up with a ZX Spectrum. However, my first computer when I was young was a Timex Sinclair 1000 (apparently equivalent to the ZX-81), and I loved it. I had wished that I could upgrade to a more capable successor, but I didn't really have that option. Everything I know about the ZX Spectrum is just from my own research as an adult.

I heard about the ZX Spectrum Next recently, and I'm hoping to pick one up once they are generally available, both as a hobbyist and a retro game developer (my current development platform is the Atari 2600).

[happycactus]

Hello! I'm Federico, I'm from Italy. I have a degree in electronics engineering, First time trying to fix a 48k spectrum.
I felt in love with computers back in '86, when the dad of a girl at school offered to teach programming, but I was the only one accepting. And I learned on a Spectrum plus, but never owned one, because my parents didn't want to buy one. I had to write programs on paper and test them on his computer when at lesson!

A few years later I finally had an Olivetti PC128 (clone of Thompson), then a Philips XT, then a portable PS/2... fast forward till today, when I design electronics and software for embedded systems.

Finally, a few years ago I bought a 48k, with the idea of repairing it, but unfortunately I had not the time.

A few days ago I decided it was time to try again, and here I am.

Bye

[seeker]

Morning all (*please adjust for your personal time and location),

Well this is a nice surprise, a busy Spectrum talk area without that pesky "real names" facebook lark! Just like the imperial phase of WoS and comp.sys.sinclair, both of which I used to frequent.

First brought into the Speccy fold as a child of six, the classic 48k model. So many happy hours. Early on, it was whatever games my dad brought home - so I started with Psion's Space Raiders but in time I started acquiring my own. I think my final purchase was Smash TV, in the Boots half-price sale when they said goodbye to 8-bit machines. Moved to a PC in the early nineties, but one of the first things I got for it was a Spectrum emulator

Gaming as a whole fell by the wayside for me after about 2005. I completed TLoZ: Wind Waker on the Gamecube and... somehow... that was it. Gaming after that was an occasional pastime rather than A Hobby. Just recently, I thought the Next would reel me back in - and I do think it's a great machine - but I just wasn't using it, so sold it on to an appreciative buyer and put the money into non-Spectrum-related pursuits.

Work and life stayed busy. I stopped thinking of myself as someone whose hobby is, or even was, videogames. Had I moved from lapsed to just plain gone from a hobby that had brightened my entire youth? There was still *something* there, mind; I listened to the odd podcast (Our Sinclair being a favourite), and I was in a bunch of FB groups... but in the last couple of years I'd had them all on mute... Was it time to move on?

Then Sir Clive Sinclair died. And it kicked down a door in my mind.

I started lurking on the FB groups again.

Last week I listened to a whole bunch of Our Sinclair episodes on consecutive dog walks.

Two days ago I was on YouTube looking up actual play videos.

Yesterday I found this forum!

Hello, looks like I might be back in

[R-Tape]

Hello, looks like I might be back in

Welcome seeker. All interests wax and wane - in fact I'm most puzzled by people that never left the Spectrum at all! Seeing Micromen and Manic Miner dragged me back. Are you still playing speccy games?