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Z88 USER - Virtual TR-DOS

1. 9 RANDOMIZE USR 33792 WARPING 15 COLL ect ed 01 Time Like in Manic Miner there i a special warp feature which takes you to any room in the H H H H SOLVE THE GRIME The Puzzle of the Pirated Software The idea of this section is for you to deduce who the thief is and give your reasons for your deduction After you have done this read Solve the Crime Solution to see if you were right Here is an extract from the mem oirs of Doctor Watson he various investigations on which was fortunate to accom pany Sherlock Holmes jnr the grandson of the famous detective frequently left me baffled and be wildered though to Holmes the confusion of alibis clues and lies always appeared crystal clear One such instance was the Pecu liar Puzzle of the Pirated Software One April morning Holmes and were summoned to the offices of Classic Software Ltd where a break in had been discovered On arrival we were met on the first floor by Mel Bourne the manager Visibly agitated he led us into his office where the three members of his staff were assembled was first to arrive this morning and discovered the break in imme diately ordered my staff not to touch anything and telephoned you Bourne indicated his desk The locked drawer has been lev ered open and ransacked and you can see how the thief broke in Holmes piercing eyes swept the room taking
2. Q holder Elwro 800 Jr Comes with a disk drive and there also was a version of CP M called CP J for this machine Elwro have a home page but it don t mention anything about their computers Futura 8300 An american clone of ZX81 by Unisonic Probably identical with Lambda 8300 HC 85 A Romanian Sinclair Spectrum clone HCX East German clone Not 1 0 0 compatible because the ULA is simulated with standard IC U885 and U887 and the ROM is changed It was later developed into the Spectral got the information for a site about East German computers The picture above shows one open and one with the case on Hobbit Over 15 000 Hobbits or Hobetas have been produced in St Petersburg since 1993 The Hobbit was mostly used in schools It comes with two 5 25 inch disk drives networking three joystick ports two Sinclair and one Kempston 74 key full size keyboard with programmable function keys built in assembler disassembler Centronics printer port RS232 serial port video output to both composite video TV and TTL EGA and 64K RAM It runs a version of CP M called Beta The language for system messages is switchable between Russian and English and the system font also switches between Latin and Cyrillic The size of the system unit is 12 4 x 7 2 x 2 1 2 inches A second version with a 3 5 drive at the right side a la Amiga was also produced For more info read
3. 8 USER Issue 7 THE NEW MAGAZINE FOR SPECTRUM 799 AND EMULATORS 6570 IN THIS ISSUE New editor drives magazine into the ground Latest Z88 software reviewed Dennis Pipeview Groning interviewed Hacked Off Jet Set Willy Dissected Spectrum clones from around the world Retro computing big business muscles in AlchNews Issue 33 4 5 6 8 9 10 11 15 16 17 18 21 22 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 GONTENTS CONTENTS amp THANKS Details of the articles managed to blag for this issue EDITORIAL A warm welcome to a new magazine NEWS What s happening WORD ON THE WEB Some excellent sites BACK TO BASICS Ken Beer looks at Sound data and logical operators THE 80 LEC ROM A new and feature filled ROM image HACKED OFF JET SET WILLY Celebrate JSW reaching the Z88 by disassembling it SOLVE THE CRIME Can you find the solution to this short mystery RIVAL RAGS A look at other paper based publications you can waste your mo Erm mean invest in SEND IN THE CLONES Thought that the Pentagon and Scorpion were the only Spectrum clones Prepare to be amazed at the ingenuity of Eastern Europeans RETROGAMING What s the future of old computing THE DENNIS GRONING INTERVIEW peek into the life of this remarkable Z88 programmer TRADING POST SUBSCRIPTION and ORDER DETAILS W N Richardson amp Co Advert THANKS An IMMENSE thank you to the following peopl
4. I m sure seen this before C EA ER NM We must perform a Quirkafleeg m iu j 17 UpontheBattlements pum pu qu righ Forgotten Ru a E13 20 Ballroom East mo m Im a L9 ToeK chens MamSurway 2 3 51 T9 West of Kitchen mm 4 35 Master Bedroom uu 2 m me o n Bu M 39 Emergency Generator 1 a0 Or Jones will never believe this mu EE 6 Nu a T nderthe Roo A ut _ _ Fl EE mE pag tte tet SUPE CNET CANALES Bedroom ES 4 5 a 59 TheYacht E 2 4 o nm 60 The Bow Eg 2Sa 4 uou 6 uM Indeed it does make the game a bit more difficult in fact nigh on impossible to be precise Once you visit The Attic the four guardians from The Chapel race off to guard the entrances to The Kitchen West of Kitchen Cuckoo s Nest and East Wall Base So for goodness sake remember to check these places out first and all rooms beyond before you set foot in The Attic otherwise you ll only have to reload the program again and start over Another clever little trick you discover even before getting to indulge in the delights of the game is the way Matthew Smith has chosen to anti pirate his program Using a colour chart you have to type in a code of four colours which you access from the chart via co ordinates flashed on screen This was soon worked around by a simple POK
5. Try this simple program 10 READ a 20 PRINT a 30 DATA 10 Not very exciting but where READ amp DATA statements come into their own is when there is a large number of data items to be entered In each case READ is assigned a letter if the Data items are numeric However the Data can be in string form in which case the a to z sign has to be used for READ items and as usual when using string characters each item must be enclosed within inverted commas Also separation commas both for Read amp DATA statements must follow each separate item The following is an example of numerical characters 10 READ a b c 20 PRINT a 30 PRINT b 40 PRINT c 50 DATA 10 20 30 There must always be the same number of data items as READ items If there is less then the computer will display the Error message E Out of DATA followed by the line number which the error occurred Here is an example of the string form 10 READ a b c 20 PRINT a 30 PRINT b 40 PRINT c 50 DATA HARRY TOM DICK You can of course mix numeric and string providing you obey the rules above e g 10 READ 2a b c d 20 PRINT a 30 PRINT b 40 PRINT c 50 PRINT d 60 DATA FRED 9 TED SPECTRUM SOUND Now am going to talk about the sounds that the Spectrum can produce and how to program it The Spectrum has an inbuilt loudspeaker through which it emits the required sound in response to the program fed to it The
6. built in paralel i8255 interface 40 key keyboard power and bank LED and reset button They all use the original Ferranti ULA Z80A and russian memory lOs The 80 KB RAM consisted of 16 KB base memory as the 16K Speccy with another 32K as the Speccy 48K but instead of just one it had two 32K blocks that was switchable using OUT 127 Because some differences in the system variables it wasn t 10096 compatible with the ZX Spectrum but it was possible to do some pokes and get it almost fully compatible The Gamma was made in three different versions Didaktik Gamma 87 The first one was released in 1987 and was called Gama 87 The bank switching cased some problems in this version If the RAMTOP was above 32768 and you tried switching pages the computer simply C r a S h e d The first ones was made in black plastic but later it changed to the one shown above Didaktik Gamma 88 To correct the memory page error Gamma 88 was released OUT 127 was changed so that if RAMTOP was more than 32768 then the memory from 32768 to RAMTOP was copied to the other bank before switching These computers came in the gray case Didaktik Gamma 89 The Gamma series was ended with Gamma 89 It had a wide charset for both Latin and Cyrillic characters and there were some changes into main computer 2 DIDAKTIK 4 LE or de VIENT x ue E kd val uw 1 Didaktik M Picture by CVM ZeroTeam A slovak
7. lamer Posten Bu om o abe OIM EE Wires A Meali Luke Aus 123 124 NE S 10 31009 KAn E Enli sop am ger nb k Mliirz April Homepage de 2000 Name SPC MAGAZINE Format Bi monthly 5 Price Contact magazine for rates The SPC magazine has been coming to me on a monthly basis ever since first made contact with the group several years ago to exchange PD They supplied us with over thirty disks of software and expanded Alchemist PD tremendously The magazine is in German but don t let that put you off A number of articles are in English and there are plenty of screenshots of the latest software for you to understand what s happening There s a decent balance of material for Spectrum SAM emulators and features regular news slots letters demos and in depth technical articles SPC is a great magazine well presented and an enjoyable read All the best to it s editors Wolfgang amp Monika Haller long may it continue SUC SESSION Das Spectrum Magazin Rechtzeitig vor dem Fest ist die SUC SESSTOM da SUC SESSION Format Bi monthly A5 Price 10DM with SCENE diskzine Name Suc Session is another magazine which has been coming to me along with the SPC Again its German but that shouldn t discourage you The magazine has a very good news page peppered with plenty of pictures There are plenty of tips amp tricks solution
8. of course that this is where all your prob lems begin HERE WE GO Press Enter and you re whisked from the title page to your first glimpse of Willy s 60 room mansion That s you standing in the bath staring at a flashing tap and a toilet complete with moving seat a la Manic Miner The moral of the game is that virtu ally everything that isn t flashing will kill you should you be foolish enough to walk into it You ve guessed it the flashing objects are the ones you have to collect there are 83 of them in all and the majority are very difficult to find indeed At the bottom of the screen there s an indi cation of time You begin your quest at seven in the morning it must have been one heck of a party and the idea is to get into your bedroom by the hour of midnight No that doesn t mean you ll be sitting at the keyboard for 17 hours although that wouldn t surprise me for Matthew has thoughtfully shortened each minute to around 40 seconds When you begin playing you start with eight lives which at first seems a bit excessive ho ho until you venture past The Bath room It s worthwhile just having a wander around to get a feel for the way Miner Willy handles for example you can get Willy to hang precariously to a surface by what looks like a single pixel before making that important leap and in some cases that s exactly what you ll have to do BATHTIME S OVER oe e a d fae e e ai ia De o tight sgh
9. 200 but this was a rare machine I m talking about ZX 81 s and Spectrums They are being bought for less than 20 and then being sold on for five times that amount To test the theory decided to email two people who regularly advertise in Manchesters Loot the classified ads Paper Both were looking for Old Home Computers ZX80 ZX81 Spectrum Commodore Plus 4 VIC 20 16 64 Dragon Acorn Electron BBC Atom Jupiter Ace Atari 400 800 XL XE Consoles wanted Ataris Sinclairs Super NES Sega Dreamcasts Neo Geos Vectrexs ZX 80 81 or any thing old or new good price paid told them that had a 3 with 3 5 external drive Spectrum with Interface One amp Microdrive units plus lots of books manuals leads and cartridges One never replied but the other a Mr lan Grimshaw said 1 would offer you approx 30 for the lot as long as it all works Can you believe that A 3 on it s own is worth 30 This kind of setup could probably fetch upwards of 100 to a serious collector replied asking if he was taking the p ss and stating current values and revealing my true identity His response was simply This is what they are worth to me wrote back wanting to know a little more about Mr Grimshaw and what he planned to do with this booty but he didn t respond But with an advert like that featured every week this is probably no ordinary fan Genuine users who may stil
10. Rage Hard from Your Sinclair from September 1990 and January 1991 HT 3080C A Hungarian Spectrum clone made by H rad stechnikai Sz vetkezet released in 1986 It was the third computer from the company The two first computers HT 1080Z and HT 2080Z were clones or TRS 80 and were unsuccessful because of the poor graphics features and high price They were both school computers In 1986 in Hungary the school computers have to fulfil new requirements they have to produce high resolution graphics and support the special Hungarian characters That s why the HT 3080C came out and it was both compatible with the previous HT machines as well as the ZX Spectrum You could switch between TRS 80 and ZX Spectrum mode It has a graphics resolution is 256x192 standard Speccy and an AY chip for sound to be compatible with the previous HT machines not with the 128K Speccy ROM 32K Speccy HT ROMs RAM 64K possibly also a requirement for Hungarian school computers because all school computers in Hungary has 64K It has a Commodore serial port so you could also connect perihipals made for the C64 to it for instance the 1541 drive There is a site in hungarian about the computers at http www acsady papa sulinet hu muzeum muzeum magyar ht1080 htm ICL One Per Desk A licensed version of the Sinclair QL with built in phone made as a collaborative project between ICL British Telecom and Sinclair with Psion providing
11. clone of the 48K ZX Spectrum It comes with a reset button marked R monitor output and two joystick ports one Kempston and one Sinclair marked K and S However these joystick ports use non standard connectors Some russian circuitry is used instead of the ULA and it causes the screen to be a square The speed of the computer is different from the standard 48K and there is no difference between fast and slow memory It was manufactured in two models called 90 91 A 3 channel sound interface with ACB stereo called Melodik was also available The Melodik is now being sold for 50 DM by Sintech Didaktik Kompakt The Didaktik Kompakt is a Didaktik M with a built in 3 5 disk drive that uses non standard MS DOS formatted disks at 840 KB It has standard connectors for joysticks and printer and a built in paralel interface using i8255 as in Didaktik Gama All other features are the same as Didaktik M The Kompakt is still being manufactured by Kompakt Services and is being sold for 250 DM by Sintech It can also be bought rebuilt to be compatible with ZX Spectrum 128K minus the sound but that can be fixed by using the Melodik Ella Ra Russian clone of the 128K Specoy with 58 key keyboard disk drive kempston and sinclair joystick It is possible to expand it but it s slightly incompatible due to some ports are changed Elwro 600 Jr A polish clone featuring a full size keyboard and even a paper
12. have a question don t embarrass yourself by asking it or getting serious verbal abuse from nerds who need to be taught a lesson in manners visit this site and download the guide JEREMY SMITH S RETRO READING http members netscapeonline co uk jeremyalansmith level9 Remember when games were games and came in gigantic boxes with 50 pages manuals and in the case of Driller a cardboard planet to asssemble Jeremy Smith has painstakingly transferred the novels that came with games such as Driller Elite and Peter McBride s Level 9 adventure novels YOUR SPECTRUM ARCHIVE http www users globalnet co uk jimg Jim Grimwood s tribute to the finest Spectrum magazine ever MATT WESTCOTT S DEMOTOPIA http www demo eu org Your one stop shop for demos MORE NEXT ISSUE BACK BASICS Ken Beer READ amp DATA Commands Up to now we have been entering data at the keyboard in response to an INPUT command Another way to get data into a program is to store it in a DATA com mand within the program itself and to READ the items of data from these DATA commands Note DATA is obtained by pressing D key when in the extended mode E READ is similarly obtained by pressing key A when in the extended mode Reminder Extended mode press CAPS SHIFT and SYMBOL SHIFT together Each time the computer comes to a READ command it takes an item of data from the data list and assigns it to the variable specified in the READ command
13. in the rifled desk and the broken window behind it Through the smashed pane he could see the fire escape outside littered with shards of glass Interesting he mused Tell me what appears to have been sto len That s just it exclaimed the ex asperated Bourne Absolutely nothing The only thing of value was this and he held up a cas sette Our latest game Our rival Moriarty Micros would pay a small fortune to get their hands on this Perhaps they did interjected and merely substituted another cassette Holmes slapped me on the back Brilliant Watson You have a mind like a rapier suggest we load the tape into the office Spec trum without further ado Bourne s secretary Penny Traitor led the way to the computer room An untidy mound of hardware and software trailing wires and cables covered the table Moving a pile of blank cassettes to one side Holmes idly picked up the Spec trum and put it down again hur riedly It was surprisingly hot get Terry Dactill our program mer to load it for you I m all fin gers and thumbs when it comes to computers Miss Traitor con fessed and she turned to the be spectacled Dactill who placed the cassette swiftly in the tape deck rewound it and began the loading procedure While we waited Dactill related the events of the previous afternoon At about 4 30 had put the final touches to the game and called the others in to se
14. it and keep hold of it in your loft AD THE DENNIS GRONING INTER VIEW Dennis Groning is one of the most leading programmers in the Z88 field His programs have given the Z88 much more power and flexibility allowing for much easier transfer viewing and processing on the PC all at a cost of just his own time Andy Davis finds out more about this remarkable man Tell us a little more about yourself 1 live in Sweden in a typically red wooden house on the country side 20 kilometres northwest of the town S ffle at lake V nern with my wife we are actually not married and our two sons nine and six years old The last five years have worked as a programmer embedded measuring instruments for the pulp and paper industry on Intel 8051 family and Hitachi H8S processors Also supporting PC Visual Basic programs for collecting data showing trends and calibration Before that in reverse order went to university for computer science studies a couple of years worked eight years as a mechanical design engineer at a board mill woodcutter in the forest for a half year repair man and engineering worker for three years in the afore mentioned mill Before getting a family and computers used to keep busy with motorcycles Riding and modifying guess have done about 200 000 km on bikes in Sweden Norway and Iceland All around the year Most notable winter trips to Crystal Rally in Norway 400 km away at 25 C and in a
15. s a phrase and a lesser known pop group entitled Pop Will Eat Itself I m not too sure exactly what it means but it can be used to describe something becoming so big or good it will kill itself off Cast your minds back to 1987 possibly the heyday of the Spectrum We had such classics as Renegade and Outrun was shortly to follow It was possibly the best time for Crash magazine without a doubt the leading magazine on the news stands But imagine if it was so good that Your Sinclair and Sinclair User thought Sod this we can t compete and just shut up shop While Crash may then have all the readers it wouldn t have the competition needed to well compete t would be in danger of resting on its laurels and just churning out rubbish rather like when it became a cover tape with half a dozen crap pages attached to it The retrogaming scene is in danger of becoming something similar A few years ago it was great fun There were a small handful of emulators around second hand machines were plentiful and very cheap you could pick up a 3 for twenty quid Things have now become very different and not for the better PRICED OUT OF THE MARKET The advent of on line auction houses has made computer prices shoot through the roof People are snapping up bargains in local newspapers and ad mags and selling them for inflated prices must admit that I am guilty of this for bought a ZX80 for 15 and sold it for
16. user to put applications on EPROMS Also wonder how many have an EPROM eraser Thank you for your time ADVENTURE WORKSHOP Phil Reynolds 36 Grasmere Road OLDHAM OL2 6SR Adventure software house BILL RICHARDSON AND CO EEC 6 Ravensmead CHALFONT ST PETER Bucks SL9 ONB Email wnr compuserve com Web http go to wnr Z88 QL and SPECTRUM hardware Kevin Gurd s EPROM Services 21 Ladycross Road Langdown Hythe SOUTHAMPTON 5045 3JR EPROM hardware designers CRASHED Dave Fountain 11 Camel Road Silvertown LONDON E16 2DE Email Fountainboy_uk yahoo com Web www geocities com fountainboy_uk Bi Monthly A4 Speccy magazine DESERT ISAND DISKS Michael Bruhn Petersnorg 23 6200 AABENRAA DENMARK Email Frankie image dk Web www image dk frankie Bi monthly A4 Speccy games magazine UK ONLY C O Joyce Cook 32 Dursley Road Trowbridge BA14 ONP As above F9 SOFTWARE SAM PD 18 Mill Lane Glenburn Road SKELMERSDALE WN8 8RH Sam Coup software library HACKERS HANGOUT Andy Ryals 29 Dent Drive Eastmoor Estate WAKEFIELD WF1 4JG Email aryals hotmail com A4 Spectrum hack magazine TRADING Pos PCW PD 23 Cleveland Bradville MILTON KEYNES MK13 7AZ PCW and 3 CP M software library QL TODAY The Bank Volt sic 6 Coronation Buildings Ham Road Sussex BN11 2NN Email qbranch qbranch demon co uk Bi Monthly A4 QL amp compats magazine RETROGAMER Keith Ainsw
17. 4 An expressions are allowed between quotes Other forms of MOVE works as usual This syntax seems strange parameters as part of a string but obviously author wants to preserve original syntax of MOVE lt string gt lt string gt Monitor The monitor has following commands all parameters except for command H are hex numbers B Warm exit to BASIC if possible D hex num Displays entered hex number in decimal notation G addr Execute a subroutine at address G RET will return to the monitor H dec num Displays entered decimal number in hex notation M addr Hex and ASCII dump from given address space for exit R View and or change registers AF BC DE HL IX and SP o addr Patch memory from given address using hex editor enter just space to exit hex editor A new interrupt routine The standard interrupt routine is changed so pressing SYMBOL SHIFT SPACE and B simultaneously will enter the monitor except when interrupts are disabled or when IM 2 mode is used without calling RST 56 Also NMI bug is corrected NMI is redirected via NMIADD if lt gt 0 Other changes Changed startup parameters black on white screen keyboard click autorepeat speed A new screen font Corrected CHR 8 and CHR 9 bug Corrected WAIT KEY bug during displaying of scroll message etc Corrected CLOSE bug crash on CLOSE 4 without Interface 1 if stream 4 is not open Shorter delay betwe
18. BEEP command controls all sound pro grams This takes the following form BEEP duration pitch Where pitch is the pitch of the sound and duration is the approximate length of time in seconds that the sound is emitted Note BEEP is obtained by selecting the extended mode E and Symbol Shift and key marked Z As a sampler try these 10 BEEP 1 5 20 PAUSE 15 30 BEEP 1 10 50 BEEP 1 15 60 PAUSE 15 70 1 20 80 PAUSE 15 90 GOTO 10 Or 10 FOR n 1 TO 20 20 BEEP 1 n 30 NEXT n 40 PAUSE 15 We can relate pitch values to musical notes as follows Pitch Note Middle 2 ONOANO OQUPQpTImuoo 1 2 If you are musically inclined you should be able to relate duration to note duration i e Assuming a basic time duration of say 0 5 second Perhaps a Minim could represent 2 time units 1 0 sec Note Time Duration Unit Secs Minim 2 1 Crochet 1 0 5 Quaver 0 5 0 25 Semi quaver 0 25 0 125 And finally a musical scale using the READ amp DATA commands we learnt about above 10 FORK 1TO8 20 READ P 30 PRINT P 40 0 5 50 60 DATA 0 2 4 5 7 9 11 12 wish you luck in making your music now want to talk about decisions which the SPECTRUM can make Up to now the programs which we have been considering have worked through a program list in the order in which it is written However life is full of decision making For example IF you are tired THEN you rest or
19. E Like Manic Miner Jet Set Willy has a charm which sets it aside from virtually every other game on the market On a per 141141 iH HEHBEHHEH EHE HH dH HH HH HE HHH iS T 5 e ee e Tike rovs a sonal level find Jet Set Willy to be infi nitely superior to its predecessor if only because a practised Jet Setter can travel throughout the entire mansion without dy ing Most of the objects cached in Jet Set Willy are attainable but there are some which even when working from carefully scaled maps of each room seem impossible to Master Bedroom E S Tree Root collected 00G Time F retrieve without sacrificing a life For in stance there s a tricky one to get on the third level of the Cold Store a couple in the Wine Cellar and the one in the Nightmare Room this is made even more difficult by the sudden transformation of the Miner Willy character into an awkward flying pig shape But if you really want to set yourself a task try going after the goodies on the Conservatory Roof and see how well you make out If you enjoyed Manic Miner then Willy is going to seem like the proverbial manna from heaven Matthew Smith seems to have incorporated the best of his original creation let none of his apparent fame spoil his wonderful sense of humour and firmly set the blueprint for all other platform games to follow POKED TO DEATH There are ce
20. H modem CMOS clock kempston mouse 2x AY SoundDrive or Covox first soundcards in russia TurboMode for B Disk Interface 2HD format and so on The current standard configuration is a Pentagon 512 Turbo with 2 FDD 5 25 or 3 5 and Kempston mouse is standard Peters MC64 E E Li m aj LAN MT d ma A russian ZX Spectrum clone from around 1993 Size is 14 x 7 2 x 2 inches The name suggest that it has 64 KB of RAM and was made by Peters Plus Ltd that now makes the Sprinter Peters 256 Also russian clone guess it has 256K memory The name suggest that it was made by Peters Plus Ltd that now makes the Sprinter Power 3000 ZX81 clone from Creon Enterprises Identical with Lambda 8300 and PC 8300 Profi Russian clone made in 1990 with up to 1024K of memory It was possible to run CP M and a graphics mode with 512x240 pixels was added to be able to run 80 characters per row It has both parallell and serial ports sound processor and the possibility to use an IBM keyboard In later issues it also had a hard disk interface and turbo mode Ringo R470 Brazilian clone of ZX81 by Ritas do Brasil It has a Z80A at 3 25 MHz 8K ROM and 16 KB RAM It wasn t 100 compatible with the ZX81 Robik A Spectrum clone from 1991 that comes with a full QWERTY keyboard with 55 keys separate EDIT 3 SHIFTS double RESET DEL separate comma and full stop keys It has the possibility to switch
21. Switching and more So far only the HDD controller is produced but the rest exists as drawings All the plans are freely available There is a site about is at http azx germany ms and another one at http www azx 8m com Baltica A russian clone of the 48K ZX Spectrum made with K556PT4 and K155PE3 and running at a higher frequency which made it less compatible Computerphone Souped up Sinclair QL made by Australian Telecom Same as ICL OPD CP200 Brazilian clone of ZX81 from Prol gica It has a Z80A at 3 25 MHz 8K ROM and 16 K RAM CIP Rumanian Spectrum CZ 1000 Argentinian clone of the ZX81 from Czerweny Electronica CZ 1500 Argentinian clone of the Timex Sinclair 1500 from Czerweny Electronica CZ 2000 An Argentinian ZX Spectrum clone from Czerweny Electronica DEF 3000 This is the thing as EMEN t h e Lambda 8300 In t his photo it s has a colour pack installed which gives it colour and high res graphics Delta S 128 Russian clone built in Voronezh Kazan and other cities since 1990 that can run at 7 MHz Comes with kempston and sinclair joystick ports and ports both for TV and RGB monitor It has a printer interface and sound processor As it is a modular design you can add disk controller Didaktik Gamma Didaktik Gamma is a clone of the 48K ZX Spectrum made by the slovak company Didaktik Skalica Ltd All models come with 80 KB of RAM and 16 KB ROM
22. age the odd review and then tons of technical data The last issue nine featured the compete history of software protection systems used with TR DOS There are also regulars such as letters POKEs BASIC listings hacked adventure passwords reader adverts and a comprehensive guide to all back issues QL TODAY Format Bi monthly A4 Name Price Contact magazine for details QL Today first came into my hands courtesy of Bill richardson to give me a bit of background information for a QL show in Manchester that was to attend And was quite amazed at how far the QL has come was an owner back in 1986 but soon sold it because of it s poor support and expensive microdrive cartridges But things have changed since then a 3 5 floppy drive is now de rigueur The magazine consists of sixty very high quality pages and covers the QL QL clones and QL emulators for many machines The magazine was a little too technical in places and many references were given to machines and hardware that had no idea were A section for new users would be invaluable especially those who may have owned a machine in the past and have now returned to the scene with an emulator That aside this is a feature packed magazine with no lulls in the in depth information F r alle Spectrum und SAM Freunde na F2 1 PEE Hamid 2 m baer Yorn Paari a
23. ails in the next issue of this and all other magazines eBAY TO START CHARGING One of the best auction sites eBay is to introduce a fee for using it s service from the 4th July 2000 eBay has become very popular with the on line Sinclair community for it features dozens of Sinclair items for sale on a daily basis from single cassette games to boxed Spectrums and ZX 81s in pristine condition However it has also received criticism with its greedy sellers asking extortionate prices for equipment which can t even be seen or inspected eBay claims that introducing the charges will attract more buyers looking for quality items What it will do is put off people from auctioning small items such as the odd game since the fee will have to be deducted from the final auction price See the article on retro gaming later in this issue for more details CRASHED 32 IS BEST EVER Big congratulations to Dave Fountain Z88 DK V1 32 The latest version of the Z88 Development Kit by Dominic Morris is now available for download on z88dk sourceforge net The latest version renders a couple of bugs fixed and support for new machines PAUL WHITE IS BACK l m not usually one for stalking but by chance was in Wetherby at the end of June so thought l d drop in on missing magazine editor Paul White to see how he was Unfortunately but lucky for him he wasn t home but he did email me shortly after Paul s been away from th
24. azine number 30 in Spectrum buffoon In Trouble Again reports that Paul Sneesby author of the excellent PCG desktop publishing software package has been incensed to find that his software has been illegally sold for years Paul claimed that Mr Sherwood is a rip off merchant pure and simple Paul now wants anyone who has purchased the package from Mr Sherwood or any of his companies to get in touch You can contact Paul via the Crashed address or email PSNEESBY FSMAIL NET Legal action against software piracy has been much heavier than in the past A rap on the knuckles has now been replaced with huge fines confiscation of equipment and even prison sentences Mr Sherwood has previously been accused of illegally selling a number of programs including AlchNews and the work of Miles Kinloch and was severely criticised for running a poor software service which led him to become a social outcast in the Spectrum community THE SHOW S NOT OVER Until the fat bird sings And there are none in site That couldnt be a more obscure link to Spectrum shows Following a half decent QL show in Manchester in May ANZU and a small group hope to revive the NSS Shows with one being hosted in the same area as the Horwich show before the end of the year venue has been considered and is available all that s needed now is a lot of support and some DEFINETE promises from people to actually turn up We hope to have concrete det
25. between Latin and Russian fonts It has built in Kempston interface and cursor keys that works as this joystick as well It has no edge connector and video output is RGB on a 5 pin DIN same as the Pentagon or on a 8 pin DIN for connecting to HERCULES or EGA monitor no composite video and all I O ports are 5 and 7 pin DINs Inside the case there is a male 64 pin connector you can map to the standard edge connector Information comes from an article at http polbox com r rules zxland robik html SAM Coup Even if the SAM Coup if a computer of it s own it still can be seen as some kind of Spectrum clone Santaka 002 A clone of ZX Spectrum Plus produced in 1990 in the Soviet Union It has Russian symbols instead of capitalized English and is reported to be a good and reliable machine because it was produced by military plants as a part of conversion program Scorpion ZS 256 A Russian clone by Sergey Zonov author of Leningrad 48k It comes with 256K of memory unofficially expanded to 1024K a 5 25 drive serial and parallel ports and full size keyboard It also features integrated Shadow Service Monitor It can also run CP M The current version of 25256 has HDD PC 101 key keyboard 3 5 FDD modem and so on It has a modular design so there is much hardware you can add like a MIDI interface and sound card See their homepage for further information A new mainboard for the Scorpion called GMX Gra
26. blishing system and access to thousands of fonts is a very daunting thought had to come up with a basic design layout and small set of fonts that are easy on the eye and dont make the magazine look jumbled or tacky Thankfully my partner Linzi is more experienced in these matters Being a teacher she is used to knocking up flyers and handouts all the time will desperately miss the electronic version of the magazine but it was extremely time consuming to create t had thousands of readers who downloaded it for free from the Internet hope that many will take the plunge and subscribe This magazine is intended for ALL Sinclair machines but with a strong emphasis on the Z88 Spectrum emulators The emulation scene is very popular for those with little space for all those classic beasties and gives you a dozen machines for just a few pounds The Spectrum scene is now very small with most new programs projects and ideas for the Z88 and Pentagon machines so we must look to these areas if we don t want a magazine of empty pages This is where YOU come in It s been said many times before that any magazine is your magazine and we need your input but it s true We need to hear what you re doing with your machines and what you d like to see One thing AlchNews wasn t able to accommodate previously was pictures So lets have the magazine brightened up by as many pictures and diagrams as possible Contributi
27. d ghee ager Ayi gz Bat collected aaa Time LEE EER One step out of The Bathroom and you re thrust into the thick of Matthew Smith s fertile imagination and what a place that must be You can forget all about malevo lent space invaders and greedy Pac persons here the baddies are Swiss Army knives razor blades mini chefs grotesque faces wobbling jellies rolling eggs ballet dancing gerbils a Monty Python foot and need go on That s not all you have to watch out for The program has a nasty habit of thrusting you on screen in a room you ve just lost a life in leaving you powerless to prevent all the remaining lives being eaten up in the same way Try making some of the leaps across The Orangery for instance Should you miss your footing you re likely to end up falling down into The Swimming Pool and dying The rest of your lives will then automatically be swallowed up in the same way leaving you impotent with rage and uselessly hitting every key in sight in a vain atttempt to prevent the inevitable Another strange quirk is the way in which the rooms have been laid out The top floor seems to have more rooms than the floor below and the basement has even fewer For instance if you go from The Wine Cel lar into the next room you ll end up in The Forgotten Abbey which according to my calculations is right over the other side of the mansion You can also reach some strange p
28. e BILL RICHARDSON for getting me to finally move to a paper production didn t want to but it s too late now PAUL WHITE for launching an excellent magazine for me to copy Excpect legal action forcing us to close DARREN BRANAGH for starting the Z88 magazine for me GARRY LANCASTER and DOMINIC MORRIS for their outstanding contributions in keeping the Z88 alive KEN BEER for his excellent programming series and DENNIS GRONING for allowing me to protrude into his personal life Thanks to everyone else who had a hand in this magazine and a big thank you for buying it and keeping the faith in the magazine the Spectrum amp Z88 and me EDITORIAL ELCOME This is a gigantic step for me Not only have taken on both editing and publishing the world s leading Z88 magazine but have ended AlchNews my long running electronic Sinclair magazine It was a tough decision but think it has helped save both magazines 1 always wanted AlchNews to be a paper magazine so that readers had the flexibility of reading it anywhere but didn t want to tread on the toes of other Sinclair publications and didn t have the DTP facilities Now there are only a small handful of magazines all covering widely different areas and have a fantastic DTP set up so if it looks crap it s entirely down to my poor visualisation skills I ve spent all my years doing an electronic magazine that could not be changed very easily having a powerful pu
29. e it The four of us played it for almost an hour It s very addictive I m proud to say Ill second that added Horace Goezski the public relations man It s a kind of snakes and ladders thing called Lord of the Rungs Damnably tricky too was hope less at it Dactill took up the story again At 5 30 we decided we had better go home and after rewinding the cas sette gave it to Mel for safe keeping The others followed him into his office and stood chatting while unplugged the equipment in here Bourne nodded That s correct locked the cassette in my desk normally use the safe but as we were late put it in the top drawer and removed the key Terry joined us and we all left the building together Penny locking the main door behind us The cassette had finished loading by this time and within minutes of running it was clear that it had not been altered in any way As the game ended the hi score chart was displayed It read MEL 11073 TER 9912 HOR 7231 PEN 654 Holmes took out his pipe and lit it as he was accustomed to do when he had found the solution to a crime One final question he said W ho has keys to the building Myself and Terry replied Bourne Why do you ask It seems we have been wasting your time as nothing appears to have been taken after all Sherlock Holmes looked up and said gravely l m afraid you re wrong A theft has occurred and I m confident that at
30. e scene because there s been so little happening He has promised to return with a second paper issue of Z88 Gamer before the magazine becomes a web based affair And we d all thought he d done a Matthew Smith Z88 FAQ LAUNCHED Most old computers have them so what better time to launch the Z88 FAQ a simple text file of frequently asked questions relating to the Z88 Compiled by myself with help from all the leading NEW ROMCOMBINER A new version of that old favourite ROMCombiner now at version 2 01 Don t expect any major advances just a few bugfixes and a couple of minor improvements but definitely worth dumping names in the Z88 world the FAQ aims to cover every general aspect of the Z88 without treading on the toes of the already established Z88 Source Book by Tim Swenson The FAQ can be downloaded from our web site http go to alchemistresearch and will be published in the next issue WORD ON THE WEB THE WORLD OF SPECTRUM http www void jump org index html Without a doubt the first place to go for anything Spectrum Daily updates on emulators software tools and news A big campaigner in getting old commercial titles placed in the public domain your old version for It s at http www z88forever org uk PHILIP KENDALL S THE SINCLAIR SPECTRUM http www ast cam ac uk pak spectrum index html Philip maintains the Sinclair FAQ a comprehensive guide to the Spectrum on the internet If you
31. ed to maintain a Spectrum flavour and the other half was lifted from an old Crashed The contacts section is severely out of date there were no new games featured and no new demos mentioned These are the facts ladies and gentlemen and that rod is sticking out so far you could hang a weeks washing on it If it wasnt for the embarrassing self promotion PD Power would be a gentle if all too thin on actual content innocent stroll for those who didn t know any better This fanzine needs an awful lot of work to keep current readers interested to encourage new ones No one else has reviewed the magazine If anyone would like to review PDP in the next issue that s if you are not prevented so by Mr Sherwood we d love to hear from you SEND IN THE GLONES A comprehensive guide to all Speccy clones ATM Its Russian ZX Spectrum clone that existed in three version 1 2 and Turbo It wasn t a very successfull clone because the port adresses and ROM are bad so it didn t was quite unpopular AZX Monstrum The AZX Monstrum Project is an open project to build a Spectrum compatible computer The CPU is Zilog Z380 a 32 bit version of the good old Z80 capable of running at 40 MHz it has it s own graphic adapter AT keyboard own BIOS and extended BASIC ROM and RAM memory expandable up to 4GB linear The computer is supposed to be compatible to 98 Standard devices of are HDD controller DMA vs IRQ controller ROM Task
32. en header and block during saving ZJ HAGKED OFF Without a doubt the finest game not just of the 80 s but ever is most certainly Jet Set Willy Mention a Spectrum to anyone and that it one of the games they ll recall along with it s predecessor Manic Miner Now it s been ported to the Z88 what bet ter way to celebrate than to hack it apart again Every now and then there comes a pro gram that somehow prevents reviews from being written in a hurry simply because tapping typewriter keys is cold comfort after you ve negotiated the perilous journey up The megatrunk or collected the goodies from The Forgotten Abbey or entered The Chapel and lived or Press ENTER to Start rr Star of the Speccy screen Matthew Smith delivered his follow up to Manic Miner and it s every bit as good and refreshing as the original The story line is as weak as ever amp some nonsense about Willy having thrown a party and the guests having left lots of champagne glasses strewn about his man sion altered slightly in the production ver sion The aim is for him to collect all of these because his housekeeper won t let him into the bedroom until he has Weak it may be still it s the game itself what mat ters JET SET WILLY The game is colourful fast and ingenious The controls are simple you can move left or right and you can jump effortlessly into the air And that s all there is to it except
33. f the English language is remarkable and you d be very hard pressed to find grammatical errors The second is the amazing fact that it s printed in full colour How many other home grown magazines past or present can boast this The main content of D D is games both past and present a small smidgeon of news articles from well known names such as St John Swainson POKEs solutions and Spectrum internet information At 2 DID is a little more expensive than other publications But you pay for the quality and presentation and that is high STOP PRESS Dave Fountain reports that the magazine has closed We were unable to confirm this at time of going to press CONTENTS FOR ISSUF 9 HACK HANGOUT AXIICL PAGE TW A PERS TUst on Av TUBAE FECTED LAND vo am va Mm D TLE PLAS OS u Die wns AMAZDW HOC A Imm WAT 1 KO TSGUE F Titers Margnut e NECS nn Name HACKER S HANGOUT Format Infrequent A4 Price 2 50 for THREE issues Now here s a magazine which couldn t be more different than D D Hacker s Hangout is all out quantity than presentation With no less than forty single sided A4 pages it is a complete tech fest The editor Andy Ryals gives unbelievable value for money Despite the name HH isn t just a hacking magazine It contains a small news p
34. go to bed IF you are thirsty THEN you make a cup of tea etc etc Decision making is one of the most useful tasks that the computer can fulfil and is of the same form as the example shown above i e the BASIC command for the instruction is IF some condition THEN take some action The IF THEN command The form that the SPECTRUM uses is to look to see if some particular condition is TRUE or FALSE It does this by employing the following symbols which obviously means equals gt which means is greater than lt which means is less than gt which means is greater than OR equal to lt which means is less than OR equal to lt gt which means is not equal to Let us now put this to use in a simple pro gram Let us assume that there is a class of boys with ages ranging between 7 and 12 years of age and only those under 10 years may participate in a particular func tion You want the computer to tell you which ages are permissable 10 7 12 20 PRINT a 30 IF a lt 10 THEN PRINT This is young enough 40 IF a gt 9 THEN PRINT This is too old 50 PRINT 60 NEXT a Incidentally did you notice that the print outs were not aligned vertically This is because 7 8 9 are single digits but 10 11 and 12 have double digits This can easily be corrected by using the TAB function Change line 20 to read 20 PRINT a TAB 3 Now let us play Guess the number game for 2 p
35. hink about it carefully it will become clear to you A good example of AND NOT and OR can be found with the program MAKE A CHIP A truth table is a helpful thing to explain this more clearly If we set Logic 1 TRUE and logic 0 FALSE then we get the following relationships OR FUNCTION AND FUNCTION NOT FUNCTION 0 0 AND 0 0 1 1ORO 1 1 AND 0 0 NOT 1 0 0OR 1 1 0 AND 1 0 1OR1 1 1 AND 1 1 KB THE S0 LEG ROM Disassembled by Zeljko Juric This is yet another ROM file the source of it is unknown to me but this is a list of features discovered using the disasembler Startup menu After startup a menu appears with following options BASIC Enter the basic MONITOR Enter the monitor see below BOOT Load and run run file from the microdrive Detokenized keyboard This ROM has detokenized keyboard input The tokenizer routine is good keywords may be entered both in capitals and lower letters and a space between GO and TO in GO TO command or GO SUB DEF FN etc is not necessary Space is not necessary after a command so PRINT1 is acceptable except when the argument begin with letter e g PRINTA is not acceptable If you prefer tokenized keyboard you can turn detokenized keyboard input off using basic command FORMAT The same command given again will turn on tokenized input again This is controlled via bit 7 in FLAGS2 address 23658 Extended editor Du
36. ites like EBAY Before this second and Z88s were worth about 10 to 20 UK pounds now they can be four times that Do you think that these people are pricing genuine users out of the market Not necessarily Those low prizes at car boot sales indicates to me that many Z88s didn t find a buyer and got thrown away The prices at eBay are still generally cheaper then buying at a commercial price from say Rakewell or WNR and considerably less than the original prices We re shortly to be running an adventure special focusing on GAC Have you ever been tempted to pen your own adventure game No not so interested in games Lemmings is my favourite Do you have any words of wisdom for our readers What can they do to keep the scene alive Show interest in produced programs and information My inspiration for new or improved programs comes very much from prospective users comments and wishes There are regretfully few responses to well working programs The tomorrow syndrome maybe In fact have my own favourite theory about why there are so many bugs in software It goes like this Programmers are generally a lonesome kind of people The only contact with people they get is when someone complains about a bug So the programmer s subconscious makes him put bugs in the code Something for alt conspiracy For us programmers we could make more BASIC mcode versions of our applications It is too complicated for the average
37. l have a Spectrum and found it broken can t get a cheap replacement because of these profiteers So if their Speccy 48 has gone to Silicon Heaven and are faced with having to pay out 100 for a new one they re going to think Bugger it thats another valuable user gone one less magazine reader and supporter of the Spectrum scene Ok you can use an emulator but that means buying a PC And if you re eighty years old on a meagre pension pretty likely if you live in the UK are used to a Spectrum and can afford several hundred pounds for a machine then there is a very big difference had a hell of a time last month trying to explain to a 2 owner who had just bought a PC that it wasnt necessary to plug in a tape deck to the PC to load games TAP files and snapshots were just beyond him Looking on Ebay while writing this article found an Interface 2 with a couple of cartridges for 67 a 2 for 100 Sinclair pocket telly for 122 hundreds of games from 1 to 6 even broken machines fetching up to 20 THE FUTURE don t think it s going to get better Old machines are only going to appreciate in value and the real users are going to get priced out of the market People will keep snapping up bargains and hoarding them before they flog them on bet half of them dont know how to turn a machine on never mind using it and supporting the scene So if you see a cheap machine for God s sake buy
38. laces by getting to the highest point of some rooms and jumping up The first experience of this came after a timely leap from Res cue Esmerelda which sent poor Willy headlong into the floor off Ballroom East Also if you try jumping off most of the other rooms on the top floor Willy ends up in The Off Licence Whether this just shows Mat thew Smith s alcoholic sense of humour I ll probably never know but after a few hours of Jet Set Willy it turns out not to be a bad suggestion at all The main approach to mapping out this LER R vast playing area was simply one of striking out with eight meagre lives in an attempt to find all the rooms Having located around 45 of them there is a bug each time you walked into certain rooms Willy lost all his lives Alan Morton of Software Projects said That s just a little something we put in to make it a bit more difficult A bug or a feature Methinks Alan Morton gave lessons to Bill Gates ROOM NAME m The Ort Licenco ee ee M er the aTree Foot of the MegaTree _ pm o umm ju ae TheDnve i 3 MM AM wm RB RR Ln 6 X Entranceto Hades Iud 2 EN qu 8 X insidethe MegaTrunk ttt HS 9 wvO0naBranchOvertheDrive 1 P 4 mud 9 P re Fontboor 5 5 a H _13 Qutona limb SSH ERG
39. layers 10 REM Guess the number 20 INPUT Enter a number a CLS 30 INPUT Guess the number b 40 IF b a THEN PRINT That is correct STOP 50 IF b lt a THEN PRINT That is too small try again 60 IF b gt a THEN PRINT That is too big try again 70 GOTO 30 Note CLS in line 20 clears the screen to prevent the other person from seeing the secret number IF THEN may used with other instruc tions other than PRINT and one of the most common uses is to make an Un conditional Jump to another line an exam ple of which is shown below 10REM Count to seven 20LET counter 1 30 PRINT counter 40 Let counter counter 1 50 IF counter lt 7 THEN 30 MORE DECISIONS There is a feature of Spectrum BASIC which not all computers have There are the special expressions known as logical operators These are OR AND NOT From these we get a result which is once again TRUE or FALSE for example in 30 IF i 10 OR j 20 THEN GO TO 66 The meaning of OR is something OR something is TRUE if either of the somethings are TRUE This includes the case where both somethings are TRUE When the AND operator is used this means something something is TRUE only when both somethings are TRUE Finally when the NOT operator is used this means NOT something is TRUE when the something is FALSE and vice versa hope that this doesn t sound too much like Double Dutch but believe that if you t
40. me new users will come from retrominded Spectrum and QL users Very few other new users will come What projects do you have under development Z88 External console for Windows XY Modem for the Z88 should be updated as should Z88 Xport for Windows to incorporate the Ymodem protocol go with XY Modem XY Modem is actually about ten times faster than most other transfer programs for the Z88 and five times faster than its closest rival ZCP If web site space permits might scan all the Z88 PipeLine and Z88 Fax News issues and put them online like Keith Richards is doing with the 788 EPROM newsletters What would you like to see appear on the Z88 A new Swedish OZ without the Ram and PrinterEd bug More and more Spectrum titles are making their way to the Z88 After the introduction of Garry Lancaster s Romcombiner and Dominic Morris s development kit do you think there ll be a Spectrum emulator or Spectrum program developers kit allowing users to convert their own Spectrum programs No don t think it can be very automated What s your favourite Z88 program after Pipedream BBC BASIC for those 5 of things you can not do in PipeDream Of external programs Richard Russel s BASIC Patch Gunther Strube s Z80asm and Zprom Dominic Morris Z88DK with Small C and some of Garry Lancaster s Forever compilation programs What do you think of the retorogaming scene the big auctions of old computers on s
41. more information have a look at the homepage of Peters Plus Ltd A new version and even faster version of the Sprinter is now available It has Z85 inside and run at 28 MHz Timex Computer 2048 A Spectrum clone sold by Timex of Portugal This is the same as the Timex Sinclair 2048 Timex Sinclair 1000 Not e a done but a version of the ZX81 made by Timex in the USA It came with 2K RAM instead of only 1K Timex Sinclair 1500 A ZX81 clone that had 16K memory and a Spectrum style keyboard Timex Sinclair 2000 This never existed except as a project name for the 2048 2068 Timex Sinclair 2048 The 2048 was never released in the US but it was made for sale by Timex of Portugal as Timex Computer 2048 Timex Sinclair 2068 The American version of the ZX Spectrum It came in a silvery case and with hard keys It also featured a cartridge bay extra memory various graphics modes joystick port a sound chip and so on This made it very incompatible with the standard Spectrum This could however be fixed by either inserting a cartridge or using a ROM switch By using an adapter it was also able to use hardware for the ZX Spectrum TK 82 A Brazilian clone of ZX80 from Microdigital It comes with a joystick interface and the tape speed can either be 300 bps or 4200 bps It has 4 KB ROM and 2 KB RAM expandable to 16KB TK 82c As TK 82 but has 8 KB ROM TK 83 A Brazilian clone of ZX81 fr
42. mpatible 2K expandable to 16 or 32 K sound and joystick port Runs with a Z80A at 3 25 MHz Identical with PC 8300 and Power 3000 Leningrad 1 In 1989 came Leningrad 1 a clone of the 48K which came to be the cheapest of the mass made clones They attempted to make the design as simple as possible and more compact The only addition was a joystick port It was designed by Sergey Zonov who later went on and created the Scorpion Leningrad 2 A russian clone that came in 1991 The joystick was changed to Kempston compatible and the keyboard was much improved It sold in great numbers Merlin Tonto Souped up version of Sinclair QL made by British Telecom Same as the ICL OPD Master K11 A russian clone of the ZX Spectrum made in Ivanovo in 1991 48K RAM 16K ROM and built in Kempston joystick interface The size of the system unit is 14 x 8 x 2 1 2 inches the weight is 1 5 kg approx MicroAce A clone of the ZX80 with possibility to expand the memory to 2K Got sued by Sinclair and the MicroAce was later only sold in the USA in kit form Mistrum Russian clone of the 48K ZX Spectrum This is also a is a hardware design so they may look very different The illustration above is from an article about how to build one from the Czechoslovak amateur radio magazine Amat rsk Radio nr 1 89 The article is scanned and can be downloaded from http www minsky demon co uk mistrum zip ap
43. om Microdigital It comes with a joystick interface and the tape speed can either be 300 bps or 4200 bps It has 8 KB ROM and 2 KB RAM expandable to 64 KB TK 85 m ee T RE Eum T 1 nap ii qb A Brazilian clone of ZX81 or rather the Timex Sinclair 1500 from Microdigital As you can see on this picture got from a tribute page it looks more like a Spectrum It comes with a built in joystick interface and the tape speed is either 300 BPS or 4200 BPS It has 10 KB ROM and 16 KB RAM TK 90X A Brazilian clone of ZX Spectrum from MicroDigital There is no NMI ROM error and there is no dot crawl just like the 128K Speccy It s also has two more instructions TRACE and UDG and all the messages are in Portuguese The modified ROM caused some compability problems It comes with a built in joystick port Interface RETROGAMING Il compatible TK 95 Also a Brazilian clone of ZX Spectrum or rather of Timex Sinclair 2048 A development of the TK 90X that is more compatible with the original ZX Spectrum and has a full size keyboard ZX Next A russian clone also known as XX Frium2 It was designed with two Z80s one was used as video processor It wasn t a big success Comes with RS 232 port turbo mode IBM keyboard 10 Mbps local network and a graphics mode with 640x200 CGA Next issue unknown clones THE FUTURE Looks BLEAK There
44. ons are welcomed on all formats and we will return anything you send and credit you with a free issue for your efforts l d also like to hear your comments on the name 88 User is not as long established as AlchNews and we don t wish people to think we are a Z88 only magazine but unfortunately all the best names have been taken with the exception of Spectrum News amp Spectrum World What do you think A few years ago AlchNews merged with a Dutch magazine with the unusual tile of Uncle Clive amp Uncle Sam The editor wanted us to keep that name but readers wrote in their hundreds demanding that the AlchNews name be kept This led to a bit of consternation between us both and we sadly parted company shortly after AlchNews returning to it s old format The magazine is scheduled to be bi monthly This is attainable if we receive enough material lf not it will revert to a quarterly publication The price hope will represent good value for money It s not my intention to make money from it already have a good well paid job just want it to break even run a well enjoyed magazine and well respected in the tradition that AlchNews was for almost ten years So here s to the next ten of ANZU or whatever name you decide is best Andy Davis Editor amp Publisher NEWS MARTYN SHERWOOD IN TROUBLE What better way to launch a new magazine with a fresh attack on Martin Sherwood Heh heh only kidding but CRASHED mag
45. orth 52 Kingfield Road LIVERPOOL L9 3AW Bi Monthly A5 all formats retro magazine SPECTRUM PROFI CLUB WOMO Im Tannenforst 10 D 51069 KOLN GERMANY Email womoteam t online de Web www womoteam de Spectrum amp SAM A5 monthly magazine SINCLAIR USER CLUB SINTECH Rainackerstrasse 4 70794 FILDERSTADT GERMANY Email sintech online de Web www online de home sintech Spectrum SAM and MB 02 A5 magazine TRADING POST Victoria Road SHIFNAL TF11 8AF Eight bit hardware and software Z88 Emulator Jeroen Van Den Bilt Keteldiepstraat 22 7523 PM ENSCHEDE THE NETHERLANDS Z88 emulator for the PC Z88 USERS CLUB SOFTWARE LIBRARY lan Braby 1 Butts Cottages Copse Road St Johns WOKING GU21 1SU Extensive Z88 software library SUBSGRIP TIONS AND PURGHASES ITEM PRICE UK PRICE ELSEWHERE MAGAZINES Single Issue 1 50 2 Back issues None available yet 12 Month subscription To be confirmed when issue frequency established Separate Cover disks PC D 0 50 1 SOFTWARE World Of Z88 Software CD 5 8 World Of Spectrum 2 6 CD 5 8 AlchNews back issues per disk 1 1 50 AlchNews CD oollection 2 3 Alchemist emulators collection 5 5 features dozens of emulators amp games ADVERTISING discounts for multiple bookings Mention in TRADING POST section FREE FREE Quarter page 5 5 Half page 8 8 Full page 10 10 Double page spread 12 12 Centre fold p
46. pals sidecar to the winter fair in Jokkmokk at the polar circle 1400 km at down to 32 C have enjoyed grinding the footpegs of the XL500 at various roadracing tracks on many riding days arranged by our motorcycle club Mix t MC in S ffle in which am the treasurer Our riding days have in fact even been mentioned on BBC radio in UK still have four bikes a 1979 Honda XL500 have ridden 115 000 km on this one alone 1986 Yamaha TT350 1976 Honda TL125 and a 1974 Yamaha RD125 but have ridden them very little the last few years What computers do you have Sinclair Spectrum with an Interface 1 and two Microdrives Cambridge Computer Z88 with Swedish OZ version 2 5 AMD K6 2 400 PC 386 SX 16 PC Commodore 286 Tulip 486 DX2 66 Tandy Radio Shack TRS 80 Model 100 portable Computer Remarkably similar to the 288 could swap this one for a spare Z88 When did you get interested in the Z88 and why When it started to appear in ads and articles in 1987 88 The portability and functionality of the inbuilt software was appealing used to bring it in a backpack both to my work as a mechanical design engineer for technical calculations documentation and to the motorcycle club for book keeping members lists and newsletters What future do you see for the Z88 The interest will rise a few more years while those who used a 288 in its heydays gets connected to the internet and finds new 288 resources So
47. phic Memory eXpander is available It comes with 2MB of RAM and can emulate Pentagon and four another Spectrum variants It also has a new graphics mode 640x200x16 Also you can switch off everything extra and it will be a vanilla Speccy Sever Nord 48 002 Another russian clone of ZX Spectrum This was made in 1990 and comes with 64 KB RAM and 16 KB ROM The size of the system unit is 12x8x2 1 2 inches the weight is 1 5 kg Spectral East German clone of ZX Spectrum It comes with built in joystick interface and either 48 or 128K RAM It was sold in kit form by Hubner Elektronik Spektr 48 29 ee rmm E an art Ss Another russian clone of the 48K ZX Spectrum don t know much about it but it looks like it uses a membrane keyboard and has both latin and cyrilic letters Sprinter The fastest Spectrum clone l ve heard about It was released in 1996 and comes with a Z84C15 running at 21 MHz It also comes with 4 MB RAM SIMM 128 KB ROM 256 KB video RAM upgradeable to 512 KB 3 5 drive IDE AT hard disk controller 101 keys AT keyboard MS Mouse port and two ISA 8 PC slots for extension cards The sound is either AY 3 8910 or COVOX 8bit x 4 channels Except for the standard Spectrum video mode it also has 320x256 256 colours and 640x256 16 colours Video output is either composite video TV or RGB For
48. programs He s not afraid to say what he thinks and regularly dedicates part of the magazine to porn For any other magazine this would be instant death but works for Crashed and Crashed alone Another remarkable point to note is that Crashed is created entirely on a Spectrum While this is noticeable with the screen pictures all text is clear and very easy to read If you ve never read it then shame on you Crashed is required reading for the Spectrum and should be the first choice of subscription for any user still remotely interested in the scene Desert Island Disks Issue 5 April 2000 Price 2 The Fanzine that takes Speccy games seriously FULL SOLUTION IN POKEWORLD PLUS FOOTBALL FRENZY THEY STOLE A MILLION amp ANDY RYALS FPOKE WORLD PORES Speecy Tour 2000 Desert Island Deka The ultimate Sooccy JON RITMAN tells games borna ta which games ment More nforma weld take with h 1o a deseried sland The Speccy eatebes om Spectra They Stole a m your im BOING Shut Your Mouth Top amp Cavelon rom CD Page 16 10 amp reviews Reviewed j Name DESERT ISLAND DISKS Format Bi Monthly A4 Price 2 UK Desert Island Disks or DID as it s known to lazy typists is a relevant newcomer launched in mid 1999 by Michael Bruhn This magazine has two incredible strengths which make it stand out First it has a Danish editor His command o
49. prox 5 MB Moskva 48K Mocba Moscow Moskva was the first mass produced clone of the 48K Spectrum in Russia It was first made in 1988 Moskva 128K A faithfull clone of ZX Spectrum 128K with built in printer interface joystick TV RGB port but without sound processor and disk drive It was first made in 1989 NE Z80 Brazilian clone of ZX80 from Nova Elect nica Prol gica It has a Z80A at 3 25 MHz 4KB ROM 1 KB RAM NE Z8000 from Nova Elect nica Prol gica with 2KB RAM and 8KB ROM Brazilian clone of ZX 81 PC 8300 ZX81 clone from China with rubber keys joystick port and monitor port Identical with Lambda 8300 and Power 3000 Pentagon 48 A russian clone that was available during the same time as the Leningrad 1 This was the first Spectrum clone that came with betadisk interface on the motherboard The design is very similar to Moskva 128 an has the same drawbacks It lacks RGB port but improved speaker circuitry Pentagon 128 The Pentagon 128 is also a Russian design but unlike the Scorpion it s not a brand name but a hardware design made in 1989 This means that a Pentagon can look and be very different The one here is my Pentagon but have also seen pictures of Pentagons in desktop cases The Pentagon uses TR DOS which makes it possible to use up to four disk drives Standard RAM size is 512K but it s possible to have up to 4MB Some has TurboMode 7MHz Z80B or Z80
50. ring editing a long line it is possible to move cursor up and down 80 K support This ROM has extended BASIC command MOVE for supported Spectrum expanded to 80 K see below don t know which is producer of supported expansion but it seems that it is not the most usual 80 K expansion in which upper 32 K of RAM is paged Namely in according to ROM dissasembly it seems that in this expansion FIRST 32 K is paged address 0 32767 using bit 7 of port 253 with following meaning b0 0 standard configuration 0 16383 ROM 16384 32767 standard RAM 0 1 0 32767 extra 32K RAM Extra BASIC commands This ROM has 4 new BASIC commands more precise a new meaning of existing ones CAT CAT without parameters enter the monitor else works as usual FORMAT FORMAT k turns on or off tokenized keyboard other forms of FORMAT work as usual ERASE ERASE i erases extra Interface 1 variables extended channels etc without affecting the BASIC program in memory other forms of ERASE work as usual MOVE This is the most complex extra command with the following syntax MOVE lt src_code gt lt src_addr gt lt src_len gt lt dest_code gt lt dest_addr gt This will move lt src_len gt bytes from src gt to dest addr src code and dest code may be r with meaning standard ROM RAM and d with meaning extra 32K RAM Try for example on the emulator MOVE r0 6144 r1638
51. rtainly no shortage of POKEs and cheats for Jet Set Willy Here are the most popular 34785 x 1 X lives maximum 32 35899 0 Infinite lives 34795 x Start room normally 33 See prev page 41983 256 x Number of objects to collect normally 83 34275 10 Warp anywhere 41983 255 Collect only 1 item 59900 255 Fix attic bug m n M THE ALTERNATIVE SPECCY FANZINE 11 CAMEI road Silvertown London E16 2de game To acces it go to the First Landing and get to the lowest level Then type in WRITETYPER making sure that Willy doesn t wander up the ladder Then pressing the combination of keys in the table on the previous page will take you to that room You can also enable this cheat with the Warp Anywhere POKE featured in the list MeHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHENEHE TATE EOE HEE TOE EE AE HEE EEE OE TEE HEE EEE TEE TOE BEE HEE HE ET Emergency Generator There are quite few more POKEs out there including one which turns the pen knife into a top hat I ll leave those to you coLL ect d Time zz 36545 0 Banyan Tree easier 36358 0 Super jumps 36477 1 Fall from any height 37982 0 Walk though monsters 34480 195 34481 202 By pass colour code 34481 135 If you don t have a Multiface and if you have Z88 that is definetlly you you will need to use a loader Just add your pokes after line 3 1 CLEAR 32767 2
52. s and reviews 165 also backed up by the might of the Sintech business large organisation dedicated to selling hardware and software Prices are very reasonable and you d be hard pressed to get such gems as a Multiface or MB 02 disk interface so easily from elsewhere in this day and age Name PD POWER Format Bi monthly A5 Price 1 70 can hear the gasps from here AlchNews reviewing PD POWER you cry Sadly not but it was only fair to mention it We ll rely on the recent reviews from Dave Fountain The Millennium issue came filled with text lifted straight from the internet in a half arsed attempt to disguise the fact that PD Power is creatively dead from the eyebrows up down The Gary Barlow of the Spectrum world indeed Calling itself the UK s No 1 mag the best value mag and the best read on the Speccy scene really is making a rod for its own back It will come as no surprise that PD Power fails on every count in a very glorious foot shooting exercise for it is currently limping in last place and would be fourth if Hackers Hangout was an applicable all rounder PD Power sucks ass Issue 35 weighed in at 40 A5 pages eight whole pages were advertisements eight more taken up by software lists 5 pages featured how to vaguely build your own anemometer no missus don t all orgasm at once two pages were lifted from a very old issue of Outlet reviewing the TK50 toolkit half the news struggl
53. the software It has improved keyboard and microdrives are more robust also the software is not fully compatible It also has added features such as extra ports and built in comms The same machine was sold by British Telecom as Merlin Tonto and by Australian Telecom as the Computerphone Inves Spectrum 48k A clone of Spectrum from Investronica Released after Amstrad bought Sinclair Research Ltd Looked much like a normal 48 It has compatibility problems with some games Bombjack Commando Top Gun etc Kay 1024 A Russian clone of the ZX Spectrum that came in 1998 and has 1024KB of RAM and was a a rival of Scorpion ZS 256 and has a slightly lower price It has controller for PC keyboard and HDD but not for floppy although it was available as a extension card It s very easy to connect General Sound Has turbo mode at 10 MHz Kvorum 64 A russian clone guess it has 64K memory Kvorum 128 A russian clone with built in tests memory monitor and copying in ROM Possibility to run CP M and TR DOS betadisk Kvorum 128 As the Kvorum 128 but comes with built in 3 5 drive Krasnogorsk 1990 A russian clone which used PZY K573PF2 5 to produce the TV signal It was never made in as many copies as the Leningrad 1 Lambda 8300 ZX81 clone from Lambda Electronics Limited Well not really a clone as the original ROM is a new one but it could be fitted with a ZX81 ROM and become Comes with co
54. this moment Moriarty Micros is duplicating Lord of the Rungs by the thousand Good grief Holmes spluttered How on earth do you know that Holmes turned to me and in the manner of one speaking to a child said Elementary my dear Wat SOn Answer next issue Now That AlchNews is a paper magazine we are entering an arena with a handful of others Never one to put others down unless they are really shit and deserve a beating we felt it only fair to let our readers know what other magazines are available ll TLE Gasmans Slovakian trip Tips to Improve PD games Codemasters catalogue Win a PlayStation games 24 pages of Sinclair fun Name CRASHED Format Bi Monthly A4 Price 1 50 UK Crashed has been around for years Currently on issue 32 and it s fourth editor previously Stewart Skardon Mark Sturdy twice and Allan Clarkson Dave Fountain has taken the magazine to new heights by dedicating far more time and energy than the previous editors were able to put into it The magazine has become to the Spectrum what OUTLET was to software Its strengths lie in not taking itself too seriously In fact Dave openly admits to spending the subscriptions on beer and fags well he does to me Unlike other magazines which blatantly just rip POKEs RIVAL RAGS articles and information from the internet Dave goes out of his way to find exclusive news and
55. ullout 15 15 Back page 20 20 GEE USER amp AlchNews Editor Andy Davis Alchemist Research 1 Lichfield Avenue ASTLEY Greater Manchester M29 7WW Email alchemistresearch lineone net Web http go to alchemistresearch 288 User is the original brainchild of Bill Richardson and Darren Branagh and was taken over by Andy Davis amp Linzi Hunter in June 2000 and merged with the electronic Sinclair magazine ALCHNEWS Readership figures were approximately 1500 but since the magazine is no longer free on the internet is now sadly approximately 600 Address all correspondence submissions comments and complaints to the above address email ll WN RICHARDSON amp CO CJ 6 Ravensmead Chalfont St Peter Buckinghamshire SL9 ONB ENGLAND Telephone Fax 01494 871 319 Mobile 0850 597 650 Email wnr compuserve com Web http go to wnr Cambridge Z88 V3 CambridgeZ88 V4 Reconditioned Z88 32k RAMPACK 128k RAMPACK 912k RAMPACK 32k EPROM Pack 128k EPROM Pack 256k EPROM Pack EPROM Eraser opecial Z88 QL Serial lead Import Export Software PClink Kit for Pcs Z88 to MAC Kit Z88 to BBC Kit QL Transfer Kit Parallel Printer lead Serial Printer lead Mains Adaptor 230vac 6V 500ma Topper protective cover Hard plastic carry case

Z88 USER - Virtual TR-DOS

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