I got my 1st Speccy!! (+2A) advice on compatibility?

[segasonicfan]

Cheers everyone, I'm new here

I just joined the ZX Spectrum owners club finally! My friend let me borrow his a while back (I made videos of it:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ytx5RaxQnUM) and I immediately fell in love with the peppy colorful computer! Absolutely stunned by the new games coming out, especially with Sanchez behind the wheel! Being in the states meant I had to build quite a lot of custom stuff, but since I design PCBs and 3D print, it wasn't too bad I made a custom VGA adapter board and some other stuff I can show later if there's interest.

Some questions:
- I noticed my 128K +2A cannot load a *lot* of games, or many crash. I've read there are some very big differences in the hardware post-Amstrad buying the company and that the original 48K had an unfinished ROM when it shipped that many game developers exploited. Read this really cool write up here: https://spectrumforeveryone.com/technic ... ty-issues/


But I have seen quite a few modern games (post 2015) that don't work on my system I'd really like to play more Fantasy Zone the Pyramid for example, and Redshift, but both of them crash (using a DivMMC).

Is it very hard to patch games or fined patched games? I found a great link for older patches (https://www.alessandrogrussu.it/plus2A-en.html) but what about newer games? Are game devs of a modern speccy titles making stuff work with the +2A?

or...

Should I just buy a regular Grey +2? Would that work better?

Help this poor yank out so I don't bleed P&P for so many Speccy systems

-Segasonicfan

[Alessandro]

Welcome on the forum

I must admit have a soft spot for the +2A, it is the only historical Spectrum (apart from the old rubber-keyed model) I hold more than one unit of in my collection. At least on my LED TV and VGA monitor, colours are much more vibrant than the previous models and beeper and AY sound are clear and loud as they should be.

Unfortunately the modifications made by Amstrad to the +3 - of which the +2A is a derivative - gave way to many compatibility problems with pre-existent software. I am glad you already found the web page on my website you can download the fixed files from

If you consider buying a DivMMC interface, which is something I higly recommend, there is another project of mine aiming at creating TAP files for those titles that cannot be found in such format on the archive, or when present, is not compatible with said interface. You can find the relevant link in my signature.

Now enjoy your +2A

[AndyC]

I'd be surprised if modern games didn't work on the +2A. As time went on they became a lot more prevalent and the compatibility issues mostly disappeared in my experience. In fact sometimes you'd see it the other way around and 128 games like RoboCop 3 only worked properly on the +2A.

If it's not on Alessandro's extensive list, there is a good chance it is compatible but maybe not with DivMMC. You may have to try old school tape loading first. Might be easier to do in an emulator to see if it should work, they're pretty accurate these days and most +2A related problems will show up there when emulating a +2A model.

[segasonicfan]

Ah so very helpful, thank you!

Ill try to recreate the issues in emulation. Hopefully others here have come across them though...I should start making a list of what doesn't work.

I didnt realize DivMMC (which I got) adds even /more/ compatibility issues, lol. But hey, good excuse for me to look into tape loading the old fashioned way! Perhaps some indie devs do this on purpose to make people buy the tape?

it looks like @Alessandro is one of the super users here, so much great info and help! That's cool to know about the colors and sound! The games do sound and look /really/ nice in RGB on the +2A:))

I also did a full recap and fixed a botched CVBS mod and some corroded trace repair. Gotta replace the belt and service the tape deck, but its a solid unit I think. The +2A really is a nice looking mainboard PCB for its age.

[Alessandro]

I didnt realize DivMMC (which I got) adds even /more/ compatibility issues, lol. But hey, good excuse for me to look into tape loading the old fashioned way! Perhaps some indie devs do this on purpose to make people buy the tape?

No, contemporary games usually come in TAP and sometimes TRD formats, both of them are fully compatible with the DivIDE/DivMMC - the latter if you employ ESXDOS version 0.8.6 and later, which nowadays is the de facto standard for memory card-based interfaces aimed at the Spectrum.

Like @AndyC wrote, it is very unlikely that they will have issues with a +2A. I for one test my ones on that model

[segasonicfan]

No, contemporary games usually come in TAP and sometimes TRD formats, both of them are fully compatible with the DivIDE/DivMMC - the latter if you employ ESXDOS version 0.8.6 and later, which nowadays is the de facto standard for memory card-based interfaces aimed at the Spectrum.

Like @AndyC wrote, it is very unlikely that they will have issues with a +2A. I for one test my ones on that model

Thanks for the info
I have the latest version of EXDOS (0.8.9) from here: https://www.esxdos.org/index.html
Using the fancy case DivMMC I got here: https://www.ebay.com/itm/332223995272

I saw theres a version with 2 controller ports... Is this in case you have mates to play with? I wonder how many Speccy games can handle 2 players, it already seems like games push it to the max