The Official ZX Spectrum Thread I guess

[JetmanUK]

53 minutes ago, shane857 said:

Pyjamarama, a classic arcade/adventure released in 1984 by Mikro-Gen.

 

I never could get anywhere in the Wally games. Complete mystery to me. 🤷🏻🤣

 

They tended to have massive colour clash with no effort to work around it either. 😬🤣

 

Are you any good at this series? 

[JetmanUK]

I collected my Spectrum from Smyths... Amazon pre-order cancelled as I walked back to my car. 

 

I've been working on my bathroom and had a slighty sick daughter, so it's been a full on day. Managed a family trip to see Paddington in all this so I'm afraid the Spectrum remains in its box. Until tomorrow. 😁

 

The reviews look great so far, so a big well done in advance to all involved. 😊🤟🏻

Edited November 23 by JetmanUK

[shane857]

4 minutes ago, JetmanUK said:

I never could get anywhere in the Wally games. Complete mystery to me. 🤷🏻🤣

 

They tended to have massive colour clash with no effort to work around it either. 😬🤣

 

Are you any good at this series? 

eh.....no 😂 Played it today though for the first time in about 40 years, and got much further using a controller compared to the keyboard back in the day..

[shane857]

Gremlins- The Adventure.

An epic text adventure game, released in 1985 by Adventure International..

 

[roots.genoa]

If one of you own the (not so great) joystick Retro Games made for The64 and its other systems, I would be interested in knowing how much it is compatible with The Spectrum. What I mean is USB controllers tend to work (for instance the Competition Pro from Speedlink), but you don't have a Home button like on The Gamepad. I prefer console controllers myself, but since most people played the Spectrum back then with a joystick, for my upcoming review, I'd like to know how that joystick works with The Spectrum. Thank you.

[shane857]

Dandy, a great ZX Spectrum conversion. Released in 1986 by Electric Dreams Software.

I've typed in and used an infinite energy poke/cheat which works on real hardware.

Even though 'The Spectrum' does not yet support poke files, I suppose you could type this in using the Spectrum basic menu

save it as an image, and load it(without resetting) then load the Dandy rom. Maybe it will work 🤔

 

[Bill Loguidice]

On 11/22/2024 at 3:55 PM, chadlung said:

Mine says "Arriving 25 November - 27 November" but hasn't shipped yet so I'm not sure I believe their shipping times.

Mine has now shipped to the US. 

[invisible kid]

Just received my controller via DHL. Awaiting system...

[chadlung]

2 hours ago, Bill Loguidice said:

Mine has now shipped to the US. 

Congrats, thanks for the update. I hope mine will ship tomorrow. Its still in limbo. They did ship the controller today. Amazon U.K is awful on pre-ordering apparently and lack of communication. I have a feeling they oversold what they would be receiving in inventory. I wish I had actually bought from Amazon France as they shipped the controller I ordered ahead of time but I wanted the Smash magazine inside the U.K version.

[shane857]

El Mandarino(The Mandarin) created by Mananuk. A cool action platformer released in 2020..

 

 

Edited November 26 by shane857

[roots.genoa]

So... Even though I got my Spectrum very quickly, it seems Amazon France only ships The Gamepad in 1 to 2 months. 😬 Unfortunately, my PC Engine Mini USB controller doesn't work (well, only one button works and it's the cancel button), though my old, crappy Saturn USB controller works. But of course it doesn't feature either Menu or Home buttons, despite having 9 buttons.

[atariman72]

I noticed something strange when I loaded up an image of Deathchase.  None of the trees were present in the first day or night level.  Tried the same image on a Windows emulator and all the obstacles were there.

 

After reading through the full manual for The Spectrum I downloaded some original Spectrum BIOS files and put them on to my USB stick.  Rebooted and now Deathchase is running fine, complete with trees on all levels.

 

Might be worth considering if anyone else notices some strangeness while playing other games.

Edited November 26 by atariman72

[roots.genoa]

Speaking of manual I find weird they put one in the box while the actual manual is online only. 😑 I may have to check that as well, because there are a few things I still don't understand, like the fact you can load several games at the same time when using ROMs from a USB key. I guess it's meant for games that use several tapes (or at least two sides of a tape).

[pastbytes]

A few months ago I made a ZX Spectrum version of one of my programs, InDev Tester, which allows you to test the keyboard and different types of joysticks. During the development I had to examine several sources of information, and although the available documentation is complete, I felt that a quick reference was needed. Some time later I wanted to connect an Atari joystick to the RPi to use it in ZXBaremulator, so I took the opportunity to make a schematic showing the connection of a Spectrum keyboard and Sinclair joysticks. As I have done in recent years, I designed the schematics so that they could be viewed on 8-bit machines, in this case the Spectrum. The 256x192 images can be seen on my website: https://www.pastbytes.com/zxb
I also made a version that can be viewed directly on the ZX Spectrum, which can be downloaded from that same site, in .tap format
It's a very simple program, but maybe like me, someone else might be interested in viewing that kind of content directly on the Spectrum.
Here you can see a short video of the program in operation:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/azDPhFDGq4I

Edited November 27 by pastbytes

[chadlung]

18 hours ago, roots.genoa said:

So... Even though I got my Spectrum very quickly, it seems Amazon France only ships The Gamepad in 1 to 2 months. 😬 Unfortunately, my PC Engine Mini USB controller doesn't work (well, only one button works and it's the cancel button), though my old, crappy Saturn USB controller works. But of course it doesn't feature either Menu or Home buttons, despite having 9 buttons.

That sucks, sorry to hear that. I pre-ordered the controller and Spectrum from Amazon U.K and then ordered an additional controller from Amazon France. Strangely, both controllers shipped and France even sent it ahead of the release. The Spectrum isn't expected to ship until January. So I have two controllers and no Spectrum 

 

It seems like Amazon Europe overall is unreliable with any concept of what a "pre-order" means. I've heard from lots of U.K folks that pre-ordered controllers and Spectrums in August/Sept. and haven't gotten them yet and were told it would now be January. Seems likely as well the first run of Spectrums wasn't enough to handle the pre-order demand. Just my own speculation here of course.

Edited November 27 by chadlung

[shane857]

12 hours ago, roots.genoa said:

Speaking of manual I find weird they put one in the box while the actual manual is online only. 😑 I may have to check that as well, because there are a few things I still don't understand, like the fact you can load several games at the same time when using ROMs from a USB key. I guess it's meant for games that use several tapes (or at least two sides of a tape).

Cool how the VIP releases of 'The Spectrum' had an actual full page manual like the online one.

Apparently they are giving people the option to purchase this at a later date..

[shane857]

5 hours ago, chadlung said:

That sucks, sorry to hear that. I pre-ordered the controller and Spectrum from Amazon U.K and then ordered an additional controller from Amazon France. Strangely, both controllers shipped and France even sent it ahead of the release. The Spectrum isn't expected to ship until January. So I have two controllers and no Spectrum 

 

It seems like Amazon Europe overall is unreliable with any concept of what a "pre-order" means. I've heard from lots of U.K folks that pre-ordered controllers and Spectrums in August/Sept. and haven't gotten them yet and were told it would now be January. Seems likely as well the first run of Spectrums wasn't enough to handle the pre-order demand. Just my own speculation here of course.

Amazon in general, is usually unreliable. From my experience anyway..

I no longer purchase 'expensive' items from them.

[shane857]

9 hours ago, pastbytes said:

A few months ago I made a ZX Spectrum version of one of my programs, InDev Tester, which allows you to test the keyboard and different types of joysticks. During the development I had to examine several sources of information, and although the available documentation is complete, I felt that a quick reference was needed. Some time later I wanted to connect an Atari joystick to the RPi to use it in ZXBaremulator, so I took the opportunity to make a schematic showing the connection of a Spectrum keyboard and Sinclair joysticks. As I have done in recent years, I designed the schematics so that they could be viewed on 8-bit machines, in this case the Spectrum. The 256x192 images can be seen on my website: https://www.pastbytes.com/zxb
I also made a version that can be viewed directly on the ZX Spectrum, which can be downloaded from that same site, in .tap format
It's a very simple program, but maybe like me, someone else might be interested in viewing that kind of content directly on the Spectrum.
Here you can see a short video of the program in operation:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/azDPhFDGq4I

Very cool. 

[shane857]

Batman. Released in 1986 by Ocean Software.

Personally one of my favourite isometric adventure games for the ZX Spectrum.

You have to first collect the 'Bat Boots'  before you can actually jump..

 

[+Cheez26]

@cheveron I do have some questions regarding the hardware of TheSpectrum:

1. Would it be capable of running a firmware with something like a SpecNext OS on it?
2. Would you even accept 3rd-party firmware for TheSpectrum as well?

Thanks in advance for your hard work.

[invisible kid]

Got my system today(USA EST), but keeping unopened until Christmas...

[JetmanUK]

On 11/27/2024 at 9:16 PM, shane857 said:

Batman. Released in 1986 by Ocean Software.

Personally one of my favourite isometric adventure games for the ZX Spectrum.

You have to first collect the 'Bat Boots'  before you can actually jump..

 

Yeah I always liked this one too. Batman actually had a hell of a run on the Spectrum. Licensed games are often thought of as a terrible cash grab, not so here, or in most Ocean software licensed games.

 

There was this one, then the comic book style one, then the amazing Batman the Movie. All very good games. 

[+Cheez26]

Just a heads-up, the Spectrum Next team is having some issues selling their product...if anyone here really cares about them anymore...but there was so much demand after the Speccy Next itself was put on sale, that the website went down last night.

[cheveron]

On 11/29/2024 at 11:13 PM, Cheez26 said:

@cheveron I do have some questions regarding the hardware of TheSpectrum:

1. Would it be capable of running a firmware with something like a SpecNext OS on it?
2. Would you even accept 3rd-party firmware for TheSpectrum as well?

Thanks in advance for your hard work.

There are some things to unpack here.

• The Spectrum hardware: I've heard that the main CPU is a 1Ghz dual-core ARM Cortex-7. It might be able to emulate an Amiga 4000, but that's nowhere near powerful enough to emulate a fantasy computer like the SpecNext.
• SpecNext OS: The Spectrum doesn't support any disk systems. In theory it could support +3DOS, but it's not included because Comcast could change the emulation license for using the ZX ROMs at any point and RGL could be caught out by it. There's no unencumbered alternative (unlike with the BASIC ROM, where they have their own ROM called TokenSE). Also I'm not entirely sure what you mean by SpecNext OS. If you mean the OS layer, then that's +3DOS, IDEDOS, the esxDOS 0.8.5 API emulation and whatever else Garry has put in there. Crucially, it's all proprietary closed source and can't legally be used on anything other than an original SpecNext (yes XBerryPi and NGo are illegal).
• Firmware: There's the actual firmware including the emulator. You're not supposed to be able to change that, although people have managed to sideload RetroArch on the A500mini.

Here's what I think is posisble from a hardware and licensing point of view:

• divMMC support using a handler system like ZEsarUX running the UnoDOS 3 fimrware (which is open source).
• Timex video modes.
• SE BASIC 4 running on the Universal model.
• SAM Coupé emulation.

I'd love to see full Chloe support, but even that might be a bit too much for the hardware. But while all this is possible, none of it is on the roadmap. For now, I'd expect bug fixes and a few emulator enhancements.

 

In terms of custom ROMs, you can load any 16K ROM as an IF2 cartridge.

For 32K ROMs, store them as /THESPECTRUM/roms/128-0.rom and 128-1.rom.

For 64 ROMs, store them as /THESPECTRUM/roms/plus3-0.rom, plus3-1.rom, plus3-2.rom and plus3-3.rom.

I'd recommend using DerbyPro for the 64K set because it has the original BASIC and a fully debugged 128 BASIC with all the features from the original Spanish version that were removed from the UK version, plus a PALETTE command for ULAplus.

For the 128K / Universal model, I'd recommend using the original ROM as BASIC and a patched version of the UK128 editor to work with it (change the byte at $0240 to $11).

 

I'm tempted to do a 128-only version of SE BASIC 4, but there's not tape support so you'd have to use snapshots to LOAD and SAVE programs, and you'd only be able to use 40 column mode.

[cheveron]

17 hours ago, Cheez26 said:

Just a heads-up, the Spectrum Next team is having some issues selling their product...if anyone here really cares about them anymore...but there was so much demand after the Speccy Next itself was put on sale, that the website went down last night.

I think there might be some renewed interest in the SpecNext due to the halo effect of The Spectrum. But it's a hobbyist machine and I don't think people are going give them another million quid to wait another three years for KS3 to be delivered when you can go buy The Spectrum in shops today. Also, based on reports I've heard, they cheaped out on the molds (aluminum instead of steel), which means they'd probably need to tool up again to do a KS3, which would increase the cost even more.