TR-DOS - sinclair
Contents
1. 34 3 D technique by Incentive 9 36 PAW publisher 7 37 Justice served Cronosoft style 5 39 According to the AY Riders you are this 5 40 Mystic Spectrum loading aura 7 42 Sami Vehmaa s IDE range 7 43 How a 48K Spectrum accesses 128K 6 44 Highest address used by ZX BASIC 6 DOWN 1 YS Publisher at the end 6 10 3 The Ubiquitous Sinclair title 8 5 The best place for bargains 3 4 4 6 Affectionate term for what the rubber keys feel like 4 5 7 When he s not extending BASIC he s travelling the world and logging in just often enough that we don t forget it 6 4 8 Russian clone with a sting in its tail 8 10 Beginners All purpose you know the rest 5 12 The J word 4 14 Jetman thought they had made him their king 6 16 Sinclair s American partner 5 19 Option five which Amstrad abandoned 4 6 20 The answer to all your initial questions 11 21 Keyboard that shunned publicity 2 7 22 CRASH artist 6 4 24 Final SU editor 4 5 29 The D in Sinclair s new WDU 5 31 Authors of RealX 7 32 MGT s answer to the Interface 1 8 33 The 128 was two computers in one but this feature made it a domestic heating appliance too 4 4 35 Quite a good wizard game apparently 5 38 Bending light to thwart tape to tape mischief 7 41 Before he went skiing he was 6 ZXFO6 11 ZXCF IN A BOX gt CF interfaces available to buy Sami Vehmaa is a bit of2. about last warez zine completed about 50 procents well wait it about january february of 2004 this is max time Brainwave s website still under construction as write will be at www bwteam org so that is probably a good place to monitor ZX RESEARCH gt Online hardware survey Jarek Adamski is a jolly clever chap One only has to look back at last issue s information on the YABUS ZX for the evidence of that Jarek now wants to consult with you ZX user on your needs so that he can expand his online work to suit them which is rather nice of him even if it does sound a bit like the British Labour party but I m sure he s far more accomodating than they are If you feel obliging you can pop over to http nabla yarek com zxq php where you ll be guided through the questions one by one YET MORE NEW GAMES gt Cronosoft new releases Cronosoft s Rough Justice which was launched at the ORSAM show gets a review in load more AND ALL THE REST recently however too late for review unfortunately the all new software label have released two further Spectrum titles Football Glory by Graham Shaw see also this issue s int section and zblast SD by Russell Marks The latter is a four in one compilation of Russell s entries to the 1K and 4K Minigames competition zblast SD Scrolly Stack Dotathon 2 and Soliyawn and is available as both a free download from www cronosoft co uk and also a cass
3. In the charity shop All excited race home with the cassette an obscure title I ve never heard of from a software house I ve never heard of it must be MIA boot up the PC and head straight for the WoS archive and what do find Not only is the tape there in all its perfect TZX glory but there too is its inlay the instructions a link to its review in Crash SU and YS and the AY theme tune ripped for stand alone players In short everything And yet another ZX tile gets added to the box of tapes under my desk that don t quite know what to do with But this felt different Call it intuition call it precognition call it more time than is healthy spent emersed in all this nonsense but somehow knew And this time my search at WoS was rewarded Missing In Action Both of them cannot tell you just how chuffed felt with myself 1 697 titles were listed as known and missing and had just found two of them But the next bit knew would be a problem TZXing the process of turning an honest to goodness plastic and rust cassette into a virtual tape file for an emulator was something had never managed to erm manage Taper verily thumbed its nose at my PC s sound facilities all on board and told me exactly where could stick my Line In signal And MakeTZx Ramsoft s supposed thoroughbred converter MakeTZX now has an amazing feature that guarantees 100 failure proof conversions even in the most di
4. Spectrum and SAM users in Norwich we are not completely dead if they did not want to come it probably showed we were in real trouble Colin Piggot s Quazar Cronosoft and W N Richardson agreed to go as traders while Sintech said they would probably come As both trader and visitors are short in supply at retro computer events neitherare charged The Scouts offered to do a barbecue and wanted numbers as did other people Not having run it before we had no figures to guide us the attempted answer was to run a free prize draw with the winner getting a choice of a SAM game from Quazar or a sound addon from Sintech know a man Derek Williams who runs very successful websites one of his techniques is to keep his site constantly up to date rather than having it out of date or produce a website designed not to date the technique normally use A famous website called NIK just mentioned us in passing as an alternative to a C64 event we can beat the C64 we are not just Linda Barker and Manic Miner quote from CSS even though these are good too the hit count sawed My key helper started to worry that hundreds of people would turn up did nothing to damp things down as was still worried that turnout could be low event if we were packed we could expand next year Then the ideas ran out momentum stopped the hit count hit the floor On contacting Sintech with a week to go they said they could not come this
5. love and likely craziness He was displaying a SAM variant a Spectrum emulation upgrade and a SAM emulation CD This was a love for the numbers kind of project just don t have that kind of brain damage o The German contingent of all the shows was Wolfgang he did have that kind of damage and seemed well impressed It was a pleasure to meet a man of personal charm from Germany had the thought that it would be no displeasure meeting him again hitp website lineone net alchemistresear ch wnr WNR Richardson was giving away surplus stock that included games and joysticks and numerous other Sinclair items An interesting man that I found a pleasure to meet at the show WNR Richardson sells Sinclair Z88 s QL s and other peripherals www nik net This forum had T shirts available through htto www ntkmart com as advertised on a business card An impressive stand of T shirts and self advertising A show that will lead to other things due to the positive nature of the event would like to thank everyone involved including the tea making lady and Tarquin Mills the show organiser 2003 Kevin Bennet ZXF06 40 Solutions Look away if you don t want the fun spolied ddddll4ddddlZ JINA OTYONA TIYMJHLOJHL LIGdOHAHL IWAIASNS SdddiIvdsOVdS WOOd4sOd IHS AIgdVaOS ISJ al SCIOLANV 1d HIVACSOLANV 1d dALSVWOISNW D0 1OddOdD IW INIOQdHOLVW dIHOVAYVW SIUNOVW OdALLVNO LiL AZZIQOINVd DJS JSYHOIWY
6. Belts for the 3 inch drive 1 each New Loads available Just send a S A E with order to cover postage correct for up to 20 belts Monitor lead to convert 3 2 and 2A to use an Amstrad CTM644 colour monitor 4 each 3 INCH DISCS 3 inch Blank discs Second hand good quality Amsoft or Maxell only supplied All have been reformatted verfied and relabelled 80 pence each or 7 50 for ten Larger quantities available 100 for 65 1000 for 450 Sometimes available new 3 inch discs at 1 each please ask JOHN R P KING 26 GUYSFIELD DRIVE SOUTH HORNCHURCH RAINHAM ESSEX RMI3 7AJ TEL 01708 630477 john pcwking freeserve co uk www pcwking freeserve co uk ZXFO6 23 physical in visual representation With this you see the maturity of a 2003 product that is a new time of developing to add to the older and yet to honour it as a continuation of develooment and the superb amassed collection of the work of the artists of now 21 years The game plays you die you play you die Back again in the first cavern again the theme drives you on to play again will not tell you of your first death it must face all to the amuse ment of Mr Cauldwell Let me tell you though that died in front of him at its launch this very month November Ist Mr gamer of 2 decades plus This review was delayed a little as the team resolved an issue of compatibility you know you have the support and integ
7. a dark horse Very very quietly he s updated his DIY site now at the new address by the way of hitp user tninet se vjz762w to include a boxed version of his ZXCF interface reported on last issue And it s for sale Not quite as stunning as the internal design shown in ZXFO5 the ZXCF Boxed nonetheless features a full megabyte of memory as well as a CompactFlash slot it will run on all Soectrums and costs about 90 For those of you to whom that s a bit steep or don t care about the box there s also an electronics only version consisting of a fully populated PCB lacking only an edge connector 35 for a 512Kb version and 50 for a 1024Kb version More details at Sami s site SID SPECTRUM gt C64 sounds by AY So impressed by this was that played it at full volume at the Micro Mart Fair in November DigiSID is a rather impressive demo containing nearly 15 minutes of simulated SID music using the Spectrum 128 s AY chip Written by Poke the demo was first pres ented at the Zlincon 2003 party It can be downloaded from http raww org Tilez digisid zip Make sure you type USR 0 in 128 BASIC and Enter before loading 43 MINUTES AWAY gt New ZXIF title under development for release in 2004 With Blink now done and dusted and available for purchase from the ZXF website where you can also play it online for free you know and with its very own Wos entry which just has to be the coolest part of
8. actually got built in to a number of Spectrum clones making the floppy disk a much more common form of program storage for the Spectrum than it ever became over here So the TR in TR DOS stands for Technology Research Easy see The operating system itself was stored in the interface s ROM and went through a number of versions the most recent of which seems to be 6 04 TR DOS files come in two formats both of which can be read by the emulators which do handle TR DOS the two use for this are ZXFO06 5 SINCLAIR DISCUSSED gt TV and Radio retrospective Well done to Andy Kavanagh for a sterling piece of ZX PR in September BBC East brought Andy in as a Spectrum spokesper son for both a short TV feature on Sir Clive Sinclair and a follow up phone in radio discussion The mini documentary shown on BBC 1 in the eastern counties as part of the nightly Look East news programme and presented by ex Tommorrow s World presenter Maggie Philbin featured r information on f the C5 the Executive calculator the TV80 and of course the ZX range of computers Mr Kavanagh known by the way to comp sys sinclair regulars as dekay treated viewers to a brief introduction to Spectrum emulation discussed Football Manager the missing gameplay in the current games market and all but named chuntey in a mention of the effect mothers had on games loading in when they walked into your bedroom he later claimed
9. change the existing name of a file opening a stream for a serial random access file read a sector of a file from disk to RAM store data in RAM to a sector of a file writing a serial random access file return to BASIC from TRDOS load and run a program from the disk save a program to the disk verify a program saved on disk go to TRDOS from BASIC call TRDOS commands from BASIC Source Beta 128 Disk Interface User manual Spectrom computing today CHRISTMAS 2003 Issue 6 Thirteen pages of Spectrum news p5 Your views and opinions p18 New spectrum software reviewed p22 Rough Justice p22 Dizzy X Journey to Russia p23 Abe s Mission Escape p24 Minesweeper p25 Retrospective Matthew Harrodine examines 1983 p27 The Oliver Twins p30 The Shaw Brothers p33 What s wrong with Dizzy Paul E Collins discusses p35 Stuff to do whilst the turkey s settling p37 1 697 minus two MIA and TZX procedure explored p41 TR DOS The beginner s guide p44 If you enjoy ZXF and you want it to continue then consider yourself duty bound to let me know this mail cwoodcock co uk or by the feedback form All other feedback will be gratefully received too ZXF now has a voluntary purchase scheme If you have downloaded and enjoyed an issue of ZXF and if you are able to afford to please consider paying 1 for your issue via the Paypal button on at the ZXF website magazine page If you would like to contribute to fu
10. know is that during the mid to late 1980s they were responsible for more than 50 of Codemasters output Classic titles such as Super Robin Hood and Grand Prix Simulator were all the work of The Oliver Twins From humble beginnings as bedroom programmers in the early 80s to today where they are head honchos of their very own dev co Blitz Games www BlitzBames com There s no doubting that the Oliver s have come a long way since their first program was printed in an ancient edition of Computer and Video Games Many thanks for taking time out of your busy schedules to talk to us Many ZXF readers probably won t have heard much from you since interviews with you both appeared in numerous 8 bit magazines back in the 80s We ve been a little under the radar but we ve been here the whole time making games and building up a successful company We now employ over 120 staff and have a huge back catalogue of successful games Check out our website www BlitzGames com A number of internet fan sites seem to be doing an excellent job of keeping the Dizzy flag flying whilst amateur coders many based in deepest Russia are continually churning out numerous unofficial Dizzy adventures Are you surprised by the continued interest gamers have for Dizzy considering it s been such a long time since his last official outing We re always surprised at how long Dizzy s appeal has lasted We re also really touch
11. run 99 9 of all software written for the ZX80 ZX81 ZX Spectrum 16K 48K and 128K TC2048 TS2068 even Interface 2 cartridges and Timex cartridges and a decent picture even in 512x192 mode via a video to SCART lead Sounds quite good if a little expensive doesn t it total ZX Spectrum SE owners one I ll leave the rest of David s letter for others to address and try and end on a positive note the ZX Spectrum SE does exist it is fairly well documented in the CSSFAQ and it may be making its first appearance in an emulator in the not too distant future Andrew Owen You see want my Super Spectrum to be a Spectrum It s allowed to look different so long as it retains that Spectrum feel by which mean Sinclair Spectrum feel not Amstrad Spectrum feel Oh sure the 2 3 and 2A have an undeniable niceness to them but never used any of these until my recent rebirth Anyway Andrew uses a Timex machine for his Super Spectrum which links nicely to our next letter In ZXF 3 in article about Spectrum SE Timex TC2048 was mentioned think that this computer isn t well known in many countries so decided to write some words about it hope ZXF readers will find this text useful Timex 2048 is a Spectrum 48k clone with few enhancements better keyboard plastic keys big space bar extra Caps Shift on off switch power on LED built in Kempston joystick port built in composite
12. the whole thing ZXIF ZXF s very own software label is now starting to develop its next adventure game for the 48k Spectrum In 43 Minutes you are an injured CIA agent recovering in hospital following a plane crash which is all well and good until you notice that time appears to be looping every you guessed it 43 minutes The game is set in 60s America in the context of the Cold War If you have written an adventure game for the Spectrum and would like to see it published under the ZXIF label please drop me a line at zxif cwoodcock co uk MINIGAME RESULT gt Silver Joystick to Spectrum entry This year s MiniGame competition is now complete and the 2003 winner was minima Reloaded for the C64 Jonathan Cauldwell s Amusement Part 4000 see last issue acheived a respectable second place earning it the award of Silver Joystick There were 63 games submitted to the competition this year of which 12 were Spectrum titles Not bad at all And if you fancy taking a look at a selection of Spectrum entries from this and previous years competitions Russell Marks has produced a rather clever compila tion which loads no less than 29 Spectrum and ZX81 minigames into a single 128K load http rus members beeb net minicoll html Meanwhile work continues on the 16K remake of Amusement Park character Al in this version is to be upgraded with drunken behaviour and vandalism promised amongst other things Sophisti
13. the US and Barbie Horse Adventures in the US and Europe Coming in the spring we ve got Bad Boys II based on this summer s blockbuster movie starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence then later in the year we ve got a lot of other great games coming that l m afraid we can t announce just yet Finally with the experience of hindsight is there anything you would have changed or have done differently during your early years as programmers knowing what you do now Probably the toughest lessons we ve learnt revolve around employing people In the early days we just hired our mates and while that sounds great it doesn t always do great things for a friendship when you have to start telling people what to do Having said that many of those early staff are still with us now When it comes to business we obviously made mistakes along the way like every fledgling business does the real trick to success is making sure you learn from them and also making sure you turn to the right people to get the advice you need for the future Even mistakes are always valid if you take away the right lesson No regrets A big thank you to yolkfolk com comp sys sinclair and the rllmuk com forumites for supplying a number of the questions that appeared in this article Special thanks go to Theo White Natalie Griffith and of course Philip and Andrew Oliver without whom this article would not have been possible 2003 Robert Hazel
14. viable hate to say it but it s not like the Commodore scene where there are lots of people still actively using their machines for purposes other than gaming who are willing to soend large sums of money on hard drives and other peripherals and pay for new software In fact you can t even give it away on the Speccy With apologies to all those who have supported my efforts there has really been very little interest in SE Basic a big upgrade to Sinclair Basic Unlike its Commodore equivalent it costs nothing but estimate at most it has a user base of about ten people Say you did build a new machine David suggests using standard components like 3 5 floppies PC keyboard PS 2 mouse and SVGA graphics It would be cheaper to buy an old PC and use it to run RealSpec trum than building these components into a new machine The ZX Spectrum SE was my attempt to get around the price problem by using existing hardware Well my first solution was to create a virtual Spectrum machine with lots of new features as suggested by David but no emulator authors were interested in emulating a machine that didn t exist took the most advanced most compatible machine could find the Timex TC2048 and got Jarek Adamski to modify it I d say if you wanted you could probably get the base machine no PC keyboard for about 150 to 200 the collectibility of the TC2048 bumps the price up For that you get a machine which will
15. which won the 2nd European Microcomputer Chess Championship and trounced the previously unbeaten Cray Blitz machine Wow by the end of 1983 your Spectrum could mimic a Cray supercomputer The drama continues when retroSpective covers 1984 in ZXFO7 www museummc org uk 2003 Matthew Harrodine A Correction to retroSpective 1982 Last issue stated that the Oric 1 com puter could render 16 colours In fact the Oric was only capable of 8 same as the Spectrum The error was caused by a piece of creative Oric advertising which claimed 16 colours The copy then states 8 foreground and 8 background although in fact rather cheekily it was the same 8 colours for each ZXFO6 21 www fantasticdizzy co uk see the Oliver Twins interview for more on this Below Sentinel raises the rather novel idea that those of us who enjoy the series might perhaps wish to thank Codemas ters for the hope this offers and as Sentinel points out it is only a hope at this stage for a new Dizzy game in the future have quite a bit to say here and hope you will read to the end You may find you will be glad you did would encourage all Dizzy site owners to add this information somewhere visible on their sites If you don t have a Dizzy site but are a fan and have a website you may want to do so also Everyone else may want to let their friends know and also help spread the word around I ve been speaking with Phi
16. with the children others repair the buildings and yet others deliver goods Every volunteer is special They raise their own money for air and train fares insurance food and electricity and more than half of them do it all over again and go out for a second or even third time Old or young with or without qualifications the combined work and presence of these many different people has had an amazing impact on the children Children with blank unseeing eyes rocking in a world of their own are now healthy laughing and boisterous The accumulative effect of the White Cross volunteers with their mixture of naivety and experience their energy their perseverance their hopes their dreams and their many different ways of showing love has created a rainbow effect of bouncy confident and individual children Fundatia Crucea Alba has helped White Cross Mission with the legalities of purchasing small farms employing assistants and moving children from the mental institutions in order to live a normal family village life We intend that these farms will be the children s homes for as long as they need All their lives if necessary Buying the farms is only the beginning of a lifetime commitment to those children we take out of State care Without a regular financial safety net we would be irresponsible if we established too many homes We do however believe that this is the only way forward and are desperate for substantial funding The Whit
17. IW CQVAYOLNAVST ASSYNOVONI JOVAOHAYONNH SNOZIYOH ONIIASSAODAOVYOH AOLVINWISAACND SAWVD HLJO4 llddlld NOUV INWISLHONMs CNV ISIZDVNOIldS3 SddLVO TSSHLONV OAS LINVSSVASSVEWA SSSAHOSISNAAD SSSHO OV 14d ds dANOAHD LSALOMALLVD SNOUT TAdSAILSVO ODdVD SASL TIVIIdVD SWHLAHAOI NOWWVOAOV SAWV OLAGVHd 1V YIVIONIS Ad JYVMLIOS AZZIQ JOVdSNI ro JHOYNIVJd AJONNANH BE Se EE TE lJ4OSWV 60 Vo RAG 4114Odd O1 02 l 9l vi Cl AOTSNA1 SOVHD ANIS LVSH ANd IOSIC SAIC SAAACd NV IV Addd JIAO OVAYIVIONIS dAlSsl ddV1 XAWIL Sd N Td dYOT OISyYqd NOIdJODS NIMO MJJANY HS3 14 AY4Q JIVS LOO JYO AIGdVAOS ONIHSIHMENd FANLA ym OAO N O NMOQG AOLVINWISKWa dOlddVMsACV 1d LOOASI HOYVISGYOM SAIGOD dOLWVd Yy ONIOVd CV dSVIVXZ CV AALNNHO OV LINGV 6 HONO LE IOSD 9 ddVOSsAsds VE HOVAVG NN Ce Jdvd OE VAIISAOING 8 NJJJO MOTIAA Z SYOLVINWIS 9 NOISd SZ SN 1d aFIWWA ES AWVD AHL AV 1d 81 O90040 qJ13V4d4VJ Zl AOLVINOVLOAdS Sl CAdINS el dsagdvadd NigOd LL OINOALYSLSVW 6 ASNOH ANUNOGTIAW Y SOM Z SSOUDV GYOMSSOUD ZXFO6 9 shows the Spectrum is still alive but we still have found no way to tap these and lots of other Soectrum users While CSS was informed it must be remembered that half the population does not have internet access at home On the plus side there are several well know
18. Richard Jordan coding Graham Goring and John Blythe graphics Matt Simonds music and Carl Murray testing and updates the woeful tale of schoolboy Eric s attempts to stop his report getting to his parents beautifully whilst still maintaining a Spectrum feel Four years old this remake might now be but you will notice it not one iota Everything in it is just right something timeless has been created here Don t know what to do The objective of the game is to get hold of your report which resides on the school computers for which you will need the password to obtain which you need to knock all the sheilds from the walls perfect sense If you want to know more you can download a full bodied novella from the KO99 website http retrospec sgn net users rjo rdan klass index htm Additional nice touches include the ability to edit the text file from which the teachers questions and blackboard lesson titles are taken There are even alternative ready made themed text files to download for extra fun Which it all is Immensley ZXF06 30 THE OLIVER TWINS In his first article for ZXF Robert Hazelby talks fo the brothers who put Codemasters on the map during the Spectrum s later years For most people Philip and Andrew Oliver The Oliver Twins are best known for their classic Dizzy series that ran from 1986 to 1993 and spanned a whole host of computer and console formats What you may not
19. WHITE CROSS After Ceaucescu s death in 1990 over 120 000 children were discovered living in grim institutions In the county of Jud Bihor in Western Romania children who had been assessed as mentally retarded at the age of three were sent to an institution in the country village of Cadea They were housed in old buildings that had broken windows and no heating or plumbing It was dark and dirty and for the majority of the time the children were confined to their cots Most of them were tied to the bars by strips of cloth tied tightly around their wrists and ankles The children were always dirty hungry and cold sixty to seventy died every winter Their original retardation was the result of early illnesses such as pneumonia and bronchitis and years of confinement at Cadea only compounded the problem When they were finally released in January 1991 many could neither walk nor speak All of the children rocked backwards and forwards in their distress their eyes were glazed and unseeing On release many of the children were sent to hospital buildings in the mountain villages of Remeti and Bratca It is here that the White Cross started assisting the local Romanian staff in their care Since the White Cross has been working with the children over 600 people have travelled with the Mission to Romania Some have only been able to give a few days of concentrated work most average two months and one stayed for four years Some work
20. achines with differing ROM versions The different versions were released out of necessity as Oric tried to resolve the problems As a result image destroying return levels were high These problems gave Sinclair the chance to reduce the price of the Spectrum to 99 16Kb and 129 48Kb which matched the Oric 1 Oric s problems allowed Sinclair to do this without allowing their hitherto higher prices to have a negative impact on Spectrum sales in the early part of the year Oric brokered deals with W H Smith and Boots to sell the Oric next to the Spectrum but it did not help their cause people trusted Sinclair Dragon whilst optimistic in the first half of 1983 began to suffer problems in the latter part of the year as they turned their attention to the US market and the upgraded Dragon 64 They got their sales forecast horribly wrong and started to have financial difficulties from which they would never really recover Despite the Dragon being on the shelves next to the Spectrum and Oric it couldn t compete on price and Dragon could ill afford to do anything about that Prices tumble For the duration of 1983 it seemed computing just kept getting cheaper Commodore s VIC 20 was a revelation just two years earlier as the first sub 200 colour computer but now both Sinclair and Oric along with others had blown it away not just on price but on features aswell By 1983 the popular VIC was looking very limited T
21. and playing a game on the original hardware Do you ever dust off your Speccies for the odd blast here and there or have they now been firmly resigned to the loft We d love to but to be honest we both have young families now and very demanding jobs so it s hard to find the time to play alll the excellent new games out there never mind time to crawl around the loft and drag out the old stuff After many years of producing games for Codemasters could you tell us briefly why your partnership with the Darlings finally came to an end That s all water under the bridge now We were all young and wanting to move onwards and upwards to better things and we realised that we could achieve more in the future if we broke away and did our own thing They gave us a great break and in return we gave them some top selling games that helped establish their company so we all gained from the experience The two of you are now enjoying continued success as Blitz Games with a combination of licenses Barbie Frogger Chicken Run etc and original titles Glover Fuzion Frenzy Zapper What are your plans for the next year to 18 months We ll continue to mix licensed games with original ones but it gets harder and harder to get publishers to actually buy an original product because it s much higher risk than working with a proven license This Christmas we re releasing Fairly OddParents based on the Nickelodeon TV show in
22. bbed by BASin s UDG editor Here they can be edited and stuck straight back into the code The time I spent on these environment by far in which to develop a Spectrum BASIC program Recently there has been discussion about how the program will be developed further all can say is can t wait until Release 10 PS How about a BEEP sequencer Dunny Spectaculator Spectaculator 6 0 is very nearly complete this version will mark the end of this program s life as a freeware emulator That s right Version 6 0 is to be a Shareware release But fear not those of you without the money to pay for a full price emulator my understanding is that version 5 3 the last update to version 5 will continue to be freeware It will no longer be distributed from www spectaculator com however it will continue to be available from other websites in all its freely distributable glory Version 5 3 is of course an extremely comp etant emulator so what makes Version 6 0 worth parting with money fore The main and most significant addition if you hadn t heard already is the emulation of the Russian Pentagon 128 and Scorpion ZS 256 clones Pentagon support was actually built into version 5 from the point of view of timings however that was without TR DOS support a rather essential aspect of the Pentagon which is added in now and if you don t know much about TR DOS by the way check out the beginners guide this issue I
23. by The Oliver Twins ZXFO6 17 http usuarios lycos es hoh2 uk For those of you who don t know Head and Heels are highly trained spies each of them very able in their own right but together a particularly impressive combina tion Head with his wings is able to jump high and guide himself as he glides back to the ground Heels with his powerful legs can t jump very high but can run rather quickly The two can combine their powers by sitting one on top of the other And their purpose is to recover the lost crowns of the four planets enslaved to the Blacktooth Empire Yes HOH is simply superb in every respect You can t help feeling as you play that you must be in breach of a law somewhere to have got hold of this for nothing And that by the way you can do at http retrospec sgn net morning Head examines a reincarnation fish whilst on Safari A rather handy creature this fish will enable you to be reincarnated at the plaice sorry place at which you ate it KLASS OF 99 Klass of 99 has been around for a while of course since 1999 in fact but now it s available in a Windows version which seems a good enough excuse to me to slap it up and have a rave about it KO99 is the game that put Retrospec yep it s them again we re not really surprised are we on the map so to speak This remake of the 1985 Microsphere classic Skool Daze has been lovingly transferred to the PC by
24. cated or what RETRO GOES MAINSTREAM gt New magazine to hit newsagents It s been the topic of discussions for ages could there be a market for a dedicated retro computing magazine Aside from Shaun Bebbington s excellent Retro Mart column every week in Micro Mart and the retro section in Games TM we have yet to see a mag azine devoted in its entirety to old computing platforms that you can pick up from your local WHSmith This might all be about to change Live Publishing publishers of mag azines such as PC Extreme and Playstation Gaming are looking to launch a retro title somewhen in the new year Currently planned as a quarterly publication the as yet untitled magazine will be aimed at getting the mainstream back in touch with their computing roots and carry both nostalgia and current events articles Keep your eyes peeled at www livepublishing co uk ZXFO6 36 altogether A bastardised Dizzy Prince of the Yolkfolk made an appearance on Nintendo s NES console as Dizzy the Adventurer and the Sega Megadrive got Fantastic Dizzy a commendable 16 bit update with subgames and beautiful graphics but regrettably based on puzzles from the earlier games Beyond that nothing Had reviewers enthused about Dizzy to the bitter end Well yes more or less Linda Barker Your Sinclair adored Spellbound Dizzy calling it big bold and beautiful Jon Pillar thought otherwise as illustrated by a brief Dizzy deba
25. d some kind of interactive feel to the game so added a telephone icon People would contact you including managers from another team and you may ring them to make offers on their players With the possibility of many people playing together that function could make for an interesting social element How about a pro motion with beer vouchers o It would be more of a social experiment If you could find another 31 willing people to play the game with Considering the amount of time this would take between turns the beer vouchers would come in handy and maybe a few food parcels It will be very interesting to see what kind of play simulation is offered to have a visual element of the unfolding of the different game characteristics Was this a specific concern of the game design have designed the results service to be as realistic as possible The outcome of the games is weighted heavily towards players characteristics and game tactics The game itself can be seen as a text match commentary or a direct result service By selecting the In Directors Box option the game is shown on the results service By selecting the Stand In Dug Out option the game is shown in a full match commentary During this com mentary the scrolling can be toggled between normal and fast If the ball goes out of play or during half time then you will be able to bring on a substitute and change game play tactics At the end of the
26. e Cross Mission is a Charitable Trust Registered in England No 1021176 52 Gwel an nans Probus Cornwall TR2 4ND United Kingdom Tel 44 0 1726 884344 Fax 44 0 1726 884345 Mob 44 0 7775700893 Email wcm whitecross org uk www the white cross ndirect co uk Spectrum computing today i a ay ZXFO6 46 choose from and hit ENTER to start browsing your disk files To get back to Sinclair Basic from the TR DOS command line all that s needed is a RETURN command The single keypress tokens work here just like 48K mode even though this is a 128K machine being emulated therefore the Y key is the one we need here So then the OS commands This is where the nice surprise comes for someone who thought this was all going to be terribly complicated the commands are actually very straight forward We can start with a CAT command to find out what s on our disk which is a SYMBOL SHIFT 9 in extended mode in Real Spectrum SYMBOL SHIFT equates to the Ctrl key and extended mode is obtained by pressing Ctrl and Shift together CAT clears the screen and prints up the title of the disk and the number of files it contains as well as details of the individual files themselves CAT by itself assumes you are referring to the first drive if you re using more than one to look at the contents of other drives it has to be suffixed with b c or ds that s including the quotation marks Selecting a pa
27. e has their email getting bombarded with email directly This could be an annoyance Philip Oliver and Bill Everiss head of Codies PR agree that an inbox of full of Dizzy mail might annoy the Darlings who need to get on with more important matters of theirs Though your message of will get to them and you never know you may even get a reply So please things are looking brighter and if you have signed the petition and you want Dizzy back then you will find it rewarding in the long run to express thanks to Codemasters If you haven t signed please do As both have accepted the petition started as the proper way to show you want Dizzy back If it s good enough for Matthew Smith you read correctly Just my suggestions as how to approach them You may find it s a good idea to say good things about them other than this aswell as this whatever that may be 1 how you enjoyed them when you grew up with your old computers 2 how you like their games now and wish them much future success etc And don t say this as a pretense but quite honestly am very happy to see Codemasters have been nice enough to let the Olivers show us what a new Dizzy game may look like It Undoubtedly means they see the production of a new Dizzy game to be a probability and we SHOULD BE THANKFUL When you write it may be better to keep emails to a minimum Still this is upto you individually A nice paragraph or two sho
28. ed by it It s genuinely humbling to see people still so into something we created nearly 20 years ago and it s also great that people are still getting pleasure from it The Dizzy titles have many cunning puzzles littered throughout each game as well as an amusing background story Did you plan out the map and tale for each game before starting work or instead make everything up as you went along Most of the time we d plan out the bulk of the map before we started We ve still got big long rolls of paper in the loft with the original maps and plans on them Games obviously change and evolve as you work on them so we d sometimes change things as we went along but it was always important to have a plan in place that we could refer to or we d have gone mad trying to keep track of what we d done and where we d got to One of the trademarks of a Dizzy game is the vast array of characters you can interact with during the course of an adventure Where did you dig up all the names for the various characters have reason to believe that Wizard Theodore is currently living on the outskirts of Bristol and that another character was named after a neighbour s dog One of the hardest things to do is to come up with good names for characters in games At one point we even had the embarrassment of buying a baby name book to get some inspiration Theodore used to be one of our neighbours though and we did name the wizard i
29. en coins to collect and other characters to interact with Locating a snorkel meant that Dizzy could go underwater and explore a whole new world of sunken ships and hostile marine life Treasure Island Dizzy remained in the software charts for over two years selling more than 250 000 copies It was a little game with a big smile and it helped to confirm the place of Codemasters then two words Code Masters as the big shots of budget software a sort of upmarket Mastertronic with some kind of quality control between inbox and production line The arcade games are worth a passing mention Fast Food was a fun snack themed maze game with some nice touches Kwik Snax its sequel was a Pengo clone Bubble Dizzy had the egg jumping between rising bubbles Panic Dizzy was an uninspired shape matching puzzler and Dizzy Down the Rapids was a slow and tiresome shoot ZXFO6 15 Delve a little further and you find a rather well implemented debugger and assembler Not that know all that much about such things mind Version 2 3 is already in develop ment and could well be released by the time you read this and will include fast and reliable multicolour effects support One to watch this go to http bonanzas rinet ru BASin Not an emulator in the strictest sense of the word we discussed this last issue but increasingly BASin is becoming something of a killer ZX app like this program very much indeed Re
30. ette version for the 128K Spectrum at the knock down price of 1 50 Football Glory will set you back the usual price of 2 99 p amp p And it s not all ZX at Cronosoft Recently there have also been releases for the C64 and the BBC gt Space running out much still to tell LCD has been working on an update to his extremely comprehensive graphics convertor BMP2SCR this one will add in SAM Coupe graphics modes to the enormous array on offer The place to watch is http members inode at chmielewski leszek bmp2scr htm There s a new graphics utitlity coming to town the Spectrum Graphics Suite by Tony Thompson Part of it is a tile editor called Spectrum Tile Editor Utility Rolls off the tongue Haven t had time to check it out yet myself but it s now at www geocities com aralbrec tidbits tidbits htm until a more suitable home can be found for it Hungarian coders Weird Science Software are working on a new game with which to follow up their 2003 release Flash Beer which rather liked but am still nowhere near to completing Watch out for it at www c system hu edy wss Ever heard of The Italian ZX Spectrum clone project You have now Only photos at the moment but http aticatac altervista org might well place you in a trace like state What would a Sinclair mobile look like http b3ta com board 2304043 There s what looks like a rather cool new PDF Retro mag online at www merseyremakes co uk retroactive ret
31. fficult cases simply sat and blinked a confused cursor at me as the Spectrum loading noises cruised on by Everyone else could hear it as 3 lt lt TA s d mi Aep avO1 ug wit Ti adjusted volume controls ever upwards my wife downstairs trying to watch TV the neighbours the cat from number 12 wondering what new tom had wandered into its territory everyone but MakeTZX that is Loading tones What loading tones Apparently I m not the only one who has experienced such difficulties TZXing has been likened somewhere forget now where read this to a black art that some achieve with ridiculous ease whilst others never get close to even the faintest whiff of success The really infuriating thing about it was that could get tapes to load into Spectaculator via the Line In port no problem at alll same 3 5mm stereo socket same on board sound card same mono jack cable and same Sony cassette player into the emulator it all went without so much as a squeak of protest But Spectaculator does not make TZX files so whilst this was an excellent solution to the problem of preserving some of my old BASIC programs it was no good whatsoever for preserving MIA titles since the requirement is by WoS that TZXs submitted are exact copies of the original tapes in all aspects for example the lengths of the silences between tones in the recording The MakeTZX documentation advises against sam
32. he official opening Quazar produced a neat display of their hardware and borrowed a Philips RGB Scart monitor of mine they could not take one on the train The hardware included a compact flash interface that am using on a Q60 CF adapters were evident on many SAMs during the course of the day The traders got power from double sockets in rooms adjoining the main hall Cronosoft chose the table to the right of Quazar using one table for their crates of old cheap games and a table with 2 Soectrums a 2 and 2A On these you could play their games including Rough Justice released for the show cool See the review for more details was looking for 2 player games and bought the classic Bubble Bobble which brings back memories With costs escalating didnt buy as much as should at all the stall however will buy more next year and get some things via mail order that slipped the net Being a trader at show bring indirect sales such as a USA users buying SAM Coup s from Quazar Everyone traders included were shuffled out so that the councillor could cut the green ribbon he was surprised to find the venue hidden right in the city He was then shown round including a demonstration of the Quazar Surround Sound System running a pop video a pity Quazar only had the 2 speakers Can the size of the picture be increased while keeping the frame rate and sound up ACCUS members Arnold Clarke and myself manned the stal
33. he growing microcomputer industry s next price challenge came in October from across the Atlantic Mattel enters the fray A popular large and reputable US toy manufacturer with bags of cash to invest in a computer system seems like a good bet to succeed At just under 80 the price alone for Mattel s new colour Aquarius system would have sent a shockwave through the market Thankfully for Sinclair anyway the machine was woefully under specified with only 4Kb of RAM and probably did the by now heavily discounted VIC 20 more harm than anything else Trivia fans may be interested to know that the Aquarius was manufactured by Hong Kong s Radofin who also made a Dragon branded MSX machine for Eurohard after Dragon Data s final collapse Software The Spectrum software market continued to grow with some famous software houses beginning to get involved notably Ultimate and Imagine However it was yet to explode and Sinclair continued releasing new titles under the Sinclair brand One particular advert from the summer of 1983 shows six new titles across a range of genre leisure programming and productivity These were produced for Sinclair by Psion and Melbourne House Titles included Computer Scrabble Cyrus Chess Small Business Accounts and even the Forth programming language which was becoming briefly popular at least on the BBC Micro The advert claims that Cyrus Chess is based on the Cyrus program
34. hing like as well supported in software as cassette tape was and now that we have flash loading options for TAP and IZX files on emulators the whole disk thing seems a little pointless unless you re into real hardware of course Of course many of the 3 releases were actually available also on cassette so the main advantage of obtaining a version on disk or snapshotting your tape versions to disk was simply faster loading times And this let s be honest is why most of us bought a disk system Indeed what better reason could there be Take a brief look at the WOS archive and you ll find that there are actually more TR DOS disk images listed there at the moment than there are 3 disk images Unlike the 3 disks however these are not games you can also get hold of on tape or in tape files That s 400 odd titles and titles which won t necessarily load into your favourite emulator either ZX32 does not support TR DOS and neither do vbSpec SPIN or Spectaculator at the moment to name just a few The TR DOS format is also very popular within the demo scene over 350 titles being listed at Demotopia www zxdemo org at present You ll also find TR DOS downloads at such sites as Power of Sound www pos fmshop ru and Scenergy scenergy natm ru including games and disk based magazines such as Adventurer And there are literally thousands of TR DOS downloads at Virtual TR DOS hittp trd speccy cz Basical
35. in CSS that he did actually use the term but the harsh BBC censors cut it out the blighters Ms Philbin concluded the film with a surprisingly passionate call for Sinclair to be taken more seriously 1 4 we p ien aa A l Personally think it s a tragedy that a man like Sinclair is now remembered for his failure and is derided as a figure of fun by people who don t posses an ounce of his creativity or vision Put her in a glass case and throw sugar at her that s what say And how did the radio presenters hosting the subsequent phone in show follow these rousing words remember getting the Sinclair spectrum the ZX Spectrum and it was 200 And if you look at the graphics they were rubbish Lucky then that Andy came back to put the record straight on the issue of cost as well as going on to discuss CSS the Speccy Tour and even the Crap Games Competition The radio programme also featured a call from Peter an otherwise anonymous Sinclair Radionics quality assurance engineer around in the time of watches and calculators Telling the presenters that he supposed he should be hanging his head in shame Peter talked about the well known quality control issues ie lack of at Sinclair Demand was always exceeding supply he explained there was never enough stuff that was actually at the required quality to go around Production was al
36. l near the entrance We sold books donated by the Bramerton Computer Club and W N Richardson and prize draw tickets ACCUS could not give away my paper based RPG on retro computers as it was not ready for public consumption The table however was dominated by the RiscPC that this and the game is being written on It printed signs and at Diana Mills suggestion enlivened the hall to the sound of Darren Salts Manic Miner remake for RISC OS until she demand it be stopped seem to remember my mother had the same problem in the 80s though am now much better at Manic Miner The ZXF06 38 THE BIG ZX CROSSWORD Stuffed too full of turkey Unable to move from the settee Put that remote down and start hunting down ZX solutions ACROSS 2 Where would we be without it 3 4 Ozzie publisher 9 5 9 1 99 range 12 11 Co author of original manual with Steven Vick ers 5 8 13 At the last second that ROM cartridge is snatched from under your nose Sorry pal you ve been 6 15 Top emulator from Jonathan Needle 13 17 Hewson s star programmer Cybernoid Exolon etc 8 5 18 Ultimate intention 4 3 4 23 Latest offical Spectrum 7 4 25 A Sinclair software partner later got organised 5 26 Codemasters published lots of these 10 27 Colours two and three of the four 6 5 28 Sandy white scored hit with this company 10 30 Overused ebay adjective 4 32 Cuchulainn s second outing 3 6
37. lease 9a was released in early September with the most visible update being the UDG User Defined Graphics editor mentioned last issue Back then the option was greyed out on the tools menu teasing us with its promise well Paul Dunn has now delivered on this promise And UDG Charset Editor File Edit Grab Send As BASIC Data 4 he s delivered on it handsomely The UDG editor is a simply brilliant little applet In it you can design your characters with an almost obscene ease click the grid cells to toggle INK on and off whilst buttons down the side of the main grid allow you to flip rotate and invert in an instant When youre finished you can send the finished characters straight into BASIC as ready typed DATA statements You can of course also perform the inverse take any BASIC program with UDGs defined within and in a second they re ripped and ready for editing The only way this fantastic utility could be expanded on usefully would be to include some sort of enlarged grid for designing larger sprites on which could then be split into 8x8 cells and assigned to UDGs available It s a tiny and insignificant request because this really is about as close to perfect as it gets And BASin is now without question the best and the easiest To Current Location e Humber of Chars 21 From Address Gab Now Send 65365 Close ZXF s Crap Games Competition 2002 entry gets its UDGs gra
38. lip Oliver over the past few days if you haven t yet seen www fantasticdizzy co uk lately you should go now there s also a link to the petition there so you can either link to that and the petition or just that site but please remember to tell people to click on WHAT S THIS after watching the teaser and one thing he told me is that their relationshio with Codemasters is much better now Codemasters gave the okay for them to make a sample of what a new Dizzy game might look like guess they are having second thoughts Maybe the 1500 signatures on the petition so far has something to do with it Whatever the reason we d be getting Dizzy back and that s what matters asked Philip Oliver if it would be a good idea to email Codemas ters and tell them thanks for what they let Blitz Games do and he is all for it but would like to remind everyon that the teaser doesn t mean there is a Dizzy game being developed now although it could be the start of things If we would all show Richard and David Darling our appreciation for letting Blitz Games make the teaser it would make them happy and the interest we will show is an incentive for them to finally let go of whatever reason they haven t allowed a new Dizzy to come to fruition To write them please use the email provided which will be forwarded to them to get your message The reason for this is don t want them to feel imposed on and feel like everyon
39. ly a whole new dimension to Spectrum computing then And quite a refreshing one too because the ideas and presentation in these programs are often quite different from that of the western software with which we are familiar TR DOS then is the input system of choice of the vast majority of Russian Spectrum clones of which there are many In case you re unaware these machines came about as a result of two main factors price an original Spectrum would have cost several years salary in Russia and the technology export controls of the Cold War A few Spectrums got across the Iron Curtain and then got reverse engineered so functionally equivalent but cheaper machines could be built The results were rarely visually attractive many of the clones were produced as designs rather than actual computers you could buy off the shelf so it was up to you what your completed Pentagon looked like for example but rather ironically often more powerful than the original Spectrum particularly in terms of memory and storage features One such feature was the BETA Disk Interface developed by Technology Research Ltd An English company based in Middlesex Technology Research released the interface over here for a pricey 109 in 1985 this was just for the interface disk drives you had to buy seperately It was not a great success over here but in Russia the interface or rather pressume a clone of the interface
40. me must fall on the software Companies and there were far worse culprits than Codemasters and bedroom programmers themselves the Oliver twins that squeezed out innovation by releasing nothing but the sparklingly predictable streams of good bad games There s no need to malign poor Dizzy After all he s a shell of his former self 2003 Paul E Collins R S L C NIA OJT Sr a 13 Codemasters games WIP IXIEIY ERoMK hidden here can you IQ U ZIRIG H J S K Z find them Canyuh ZXFO6 13 be downloaded from http retrospec sgn net users tom cat Z802TZXv10 zip An Amiga port is also available converted by xeron at www pgordon clara net z802tzx lha BRAINWAVE TALKING gt New scene zine The demo group Brainwave are planning to bring out their own scene magazine They describe it thus There will be new zx spectrum magazine big magazine purplepond pp include many information about world speccy scene like south africa brasil poland england chezh russia and many other it means interviews info about speccy group new software PP include many parts if include 1 antique about ascii scene on speccy 2 crack zone about speccy crack profession 3 views vip info and interviews about group 4 music scene about ay music 5 party zone more info about many speccy phestivales 6 warez
41. monitor output bigger and louder soeaker extra video modes maximum was black amp white 512 192 pixels The compatibility with Spectrum is very high think that over 90 of ZX software works loaded over 500 games and only few didn t work Timexes were VERY popular in Poland they were available in shops brand new at a price about 10 higher than second hand Spectrums TC2048 wasn t the only Timex machine sold in Poland There was also FDD3000 a 3 inch disk drive using a TOS Timex Operating System with it s own Z80 CPU and 64kB of RAM FDD could be connected to Spectrum or TC2048 and it allowed to run CP M software FDD3000 was so popular that it became a standard in my country If anybody wants to buy a Timex 2048 or FDD3000 advice to search in Poland think that hundreds of those machines survived Greetings Piotr Szymanski aka PopoCop Glooooop from Johnathon Cauldwell was slapped a little and left forlorne by your remarks would to rise in defence of its qualities as believe its belated release markes the continuing of something interesting o After playing the game for more than a few screens and a couple of times you find that the ZXF06 28 branded product Retail Growth Sinclair was beginning to hit the big league with many of the UK s biggest retailers signing up to sell Spectrum hardware in their stores Today we would think nothing of going into a shop t
42. n Dizzy after him And yes he does currently live near Bristoll As for the dog the dog at Codemasters was named Zak but he was actually named after Wizard Zak in the game rather than the other way round We got that name from the author of the Z80 Programming Guide we used to learn coding Rodney Zaks Although the last Dizzy title was released in 1993 did you have future adventures planned for egg shaped chum and if so how far into production did these get Towards the end of our time at Codemasters there were a couple of Dizzy outings that we d worked on that didn t end up being released but we moved on to pastures new and had a load of great new characters to work on instead Do you think a new Dizzy game would be well received if released on any of the current consoles Could the colourful but 2D graphics remain or would our ZXF06 19 In reply to David Harrison s letter ZXF5 on the production of a new Spectrum I d like to offer a few thoughts from someone who s been there and tried David says his goal is a new Spectrum capable of running old software but extensible flexible and powerful a low cost easy to use and easy to program computer It s a great idea but the truth is hardly anyone wants one The majority of the Spectrum scene is made up of retro gamers and they are perfectly happy to play their old favourites on an emulator There just aren t enough of the rest of us to make it
43. n addition to the main clone hardware however Spectaculator author Jonathan Needle has also added in support for a couple of Russian peripherals the most impressive being the General Sound system an add on giving 4 ZXF06 32 company that have denied distribution rights to all of their titles meaning that although these are listed in the archive there are no download links What are your views on this Do you think Codemasters are being over protective on a collection of what is very old software for a machine hasn t been in production for almost 15 years Surely the Codies aren t considering bringing tiles such as Super Robin Hood and Advanced Pinball Simulator out for the PS2 Gamecube etc and as such need to protect these valuable properties Codemasters have every legal right to stop people duplicating and distributing games that they own Even though they obviously won t make any money from any of them any more we would guess that it s more of a legal principle about pirating games that they re enforcing Piracy is currently a huge problem in the industry and Codemasters are quite active in trying to prevent it so it would be hypocritical of them to complain about piracy on the one hand and then allow it on the other Many would agree that emulation of vintage computer platforms is a wonderful way of keeping the spirit of a now defunct machine alive However there s nothing quite like loading up
44. o buy a computer but in 1983 at least in the UK it was a novel and new idea for shoppers Computing was still shrouded in mystery and many were still used to the idea of computers being the sole reserve of electronics hobbyists and technical people in large corporations A computer you could buy from a department store What was all of that about It gets better for Clive The retail sector played a crucial part in making 1983 an incredibly good year for Clive and Sinclair Research In March s Sinclair User it was announced that Clive was now a multi millionaire due to the excellent financial performance of his business Just two months later in May he was awarded the accolade of Guardian Young Businessman of the Year But even that was eclipsed just three months later when he was knighted in the Queen s birthday honours list Arise Sir Clive Sinclair s impetus edges competitors By now Sinclair and the Spectrum were on ad roll The product had impetus through it s highly visible public profile reliability and third party support It was arguably the UK s most popular computer Competitors tried to copy Sinclair s formula but it wasn t exactly working out for them Oric had seemed to be the biggest threat pitching the Oric directly at Sinclair s customers and offering it for less money although a bugs in the ROM scandal ended up playing into Sinclair s hands This affected compatibility between Oric m
45. pling your Spectrum tape into a seperate sound editor and then running the audio file that it produces through the MakeTZX decoder Instead it recommends you sample and decode all at once in MakeTZx s DirectMode f a conversion in DirectMode has failed then it would have failed even if you had recorded the samples into a VOC with your favourite sampler Besides consider that a digitally filtered VOC Is not always better than a normal one because the digital filter itself may introduce nasty errors But tried anyway using Soundprobe 2 pressumably pretty much any sampling program will do the job And sure enough it didn t work tried sampling in mono And sure enough it didn t work tried increasing the sample rate And sure enough it didn t work As a last ditch attempt tried sampling in 8 bit mono as opposed to 16 bit And guess what It worked It worked perfectly That was all that was needed in ZXFO6 7 opportunity asked for the dirt he give me the real fifth He admitted to sleeping in the same house as Bruce Gordon of Miles Gordon Technologies in Swansea a man with a leaky shower If there was an award for quote of the show it would have to go to Nev for the came here today because live around the corner Simon Goodwin Simon Goodwin of various Sinclair Magazines fame and the talk completely missed was displaying a debowled Sam Coupe that looked worked over out of
46. rity of the product before you buy Join those who have bought and played whether you have emulation and or a Spectrum Personally if you sold your Spectrum or never had one then consider buying one This is part of a development that looks to prise some of the oldie coders and new talents alike from their lives in an expression of art and the enduring nature of the Soectrum for diverse gaming realisations Not convinced old monies who think anything more than a year old looks and is old technology should play on an emulator The game looks and plays like a Windows runtime This though doesn t deliver the true detail and performance of actual hardware An irony could be the IBM PC compatible that smothered many formats could help give rise to their continuing effort once again believe that Cronosoft believe it as they have more games from Mr Cauldwell and other programer from the Spectrum history Follow a link to the Cronosoft web site for other titles and future releases Cronosoft is becoming a truly interesting collaboration of artists programer and musicians alike For me it is my pleasure to make a contribution for a continuing pleasure to Spectrum and 8 bit gaming Perhaps some things never go away just rest a while Dizzy X Joumey to Russia Author Sergey Gorshkov Translation by Dmytro Gryshchenko Price Free Reviewer Colin Woodcock Websites www34 brinkster com zxtop and _ hitp tcg speccy c
47. roactive htm Only problem is that bandwidth for the site has been exceeded so it s been and gone but will be returning See how lucky we are to have WOS Only a few days left to go until the deadline for entries for the 2003 comp sys sinclair Crap Games Competition This year s host shady Dave the Lurker will be refusing any entries submitted after midnight on December 31st A voting page will be appearing somewhen in January and you ll then have 28 days to register your vote ZXF06 34 England or Scotland The computer controlled teams within the game would have to manage their teams just as the human controlled ones All the football players within the teams would have a number of characteristics There are 512 players in the game s database At the end of each week all the managers manage their teams and all the players have their characteristics updated depending on how they played during that week This takes a little time for the Soectrum to work out but it also removes the random element of results that happened in a lot of earlier football management games Is there a life span to the players in terms of increasing abilities with experience and training Does this flexible element have a game end in terms of outcome The players have characteristics These include Actual Skill Game Skill Types Match Bookings Disciplinary Points Fitness Injury Age and Goals Scored Players can receive coaching wante
48. rt to medium paragraphs at most would do Still this is only what feel is a good suggestion but if you feel you have a bit more fo say to them then by all means go ahead You should be very polite and make sure you understand that the teaser doesn t mean a new game but you are thankful they let them do it You may email them through here custservice codemasters com They will know you have all written Don t worry Also since it will go through Customer Service in the Subject Line you may want to put something like ATIN Richard and David Darling Thank you for the Dizzy Teaser This is what did and know my email got through Customer Service was also told to tell me thank you very much for your kind email so apparently they are getting through to the Darlings Philip Oliver said to me after asked about writing the Darlings By all means write to the Darlings but don t let anyone make out that it s anymore than it is On the website it s clear it s just a graphics test etc So you see he also believes it s a good idea It couldn t be a bad idea to say thanks to Codemasters hope you alll will write and thanks very much for your time Sentinel ZXFO6 26 SPECTRUM 3 SOFTWARE AND SPARES HARDWARE 3 inch 180K disc drive for 3 Reconditioned with 3 months warranty 10 each These drives can be supplied with cream coloured facias in place of the black facias if wanted just ask
49. rticular file for loading is then a simple matter of LOAD filename exactly as though you are dealing with a tape compare this with Sinclair s own microdrive syntax LOAD m 1 filename This is pretty much how it goes for all the other commands you are used to for dealing with tape SAVE MERGE and VERIFY all work in the usual way a main addition is the RUN command which you can use with a filename to LOAD and then RUN that program all in one Many thanks to Matthew Westcott for his help with this article TR DOS Quick Reference COMMAND W KM q W xine C 40 80 CAT CAT CLOSE COPY COPY s COPY b ERASE LIST LIST LOAD INPUT MERGE MOVE NEW OPEN PEEK POKE PRINT RETURN RUN SAVE VERIFY RANDOMIZE USR 15616 RANDOMIZE USR 15619 FUNCTION set default to drive A set default to drive B set default to drive C set default to drive D inform TRDOS that default drive is 40 track inform TRDOS that default drive is 80 track display the disk directory print the disk directory closing a serial random access file copying files from one drive to another copying files in a single drive system backup disk in a single drive system delete a file from the disk display details of disk contents print details of disk contents load a program from the disk read from serial random access file combine BASIC program from disk with one in RAM reorganise and pack together the files on a disk
50. season the promotion and relegations are calculated and Manager Of The Year Player Of The Year Top Scorers Table awards presented During which you will be able to select more options including Ground Development and taking your team to the Specialist Physio Excellent extra game characteris tics to add that real world to the game do you get to demote to mowing the grass Maybe should have added that option Or included a Lawn mower Simulator Maybe that could be part of the new arcade action game 2003 Kevin Bennet Graham Shaw Football Glory is now available from www cronosoft co uk priced 2 99 Dizzy wasn t born an egg It may be that he was simply a face on legs the easiest character to draw It may be that the oval shape was simple to animate leading to the trademark Dizzy somersault At any rate his Yolkfolk pals were only mentioned in the second game Treasure Island Dizzy and didn t actually appear on screen until the game after that Dizzy the eponymous original was released in 1988 and billed as the ultimate cartoon adventure and it was The game boasted a varied landscape and plenty of object based puzzles to solve There were crystal mountains underground mines and a haunted graveyard all peppered with obscure hint scrolls to set the player thinking The sequel Treasure Island Dizzy improved the formula This time Dizzy could carry several objects at once There were hidd
51. siasts If somebody wants to resurrect Dizzy commercially however there are legal obstacles The Oliver twins are now in charge of their own games company Blitz Interactive and have given a few interviews to Dizzy fan sites Codemasters owns the Dizzy character however and has no immediate plans to do anything with it They re still churning out car simulators mind So what s wrong with Dizzy There was nothing terribly bad about the games They were cute colourful and user friendly with varied locations and tunes you could hum Why then does Dizzy inspire such revulsion on comp sys sinclair the newsgroup dealing with the very home computer on which he shone For Soectrum users particularly the older ones Dizzy represents homogeneity Games in the early eighties were offen home grown in teenagers bedrooms By 2000 they were being designed and shrink wrapped by corporations Somewhere in the middle came Dizzy and with his string of similar hits he can easily be regarded as a figurehead for the standardisa tion of modern games We hate Dizzy for the same reason we hate Big Brother both are Ubiquitous and repetitive The problem is not the original concept but the lack of development So like Britney Spears being trashed for her latest bubblegum album the celebrity egg is held accountable for the greed and cynicism of the industry The product is a scapegoat for the producer The bla
52. te published in YS in 1992 AP is Adam Peters of Amstrad Action JP Kids like Dizzy games cos they re fluffy and innocuous like some pop songs The fact that they re best sellers doesn t mean they re any good at all AP But people aren t going to buy games which they think are crap You might think they re crap but the people who are buying them obviously don t You re just taking the high intellectual ground Dizzy games are among the best games coming out at the minute And they make money We are living in a material world JP But when the Codies put some thought into things they can come up with something like Steg Dizzy Is just an easy way out Steg was a curious strategic puzzle game which had you blowing bubbles in an attempt to guide baby slugs to safety While not mind blowingly original it was almost certainly inspired by Lemmings released the previous year Steg was certainly a new direction for Codemasters Favourable reviews of Steg demonstrated that games that were different could succeed With the recent appeal of retro gaming and the comeback of characters like Sabreman and Donkey Kong could Dizzy have a future It s hard to say There s a small but persistent fan base on the Web with sites offering Dizzy downloads fonts and even a petition to bring the egg back There are fan made games hacked versions of genuine Dizzy games and new PC adventures cobbled together by younger enthu
53. ture issues of ZXF even if it s just to write a letter please do contact me again by the email address above Editor Colin Woodcock mail cwoodcock co uk Website www zxf cjb net Contributors this issue Kevin Bennet Matthew Harrodine Paul E Collins Tarquin Mills Robert Hazelby The Oliver Twins Graham Shaw John King and Thomas Eberle A big thankyou also to all letter writers All written material unless otherwise stated and excepting letters is Copyright Colin Woodcock 2003 ZXFO06 44 TR DOS Whilst it s not made much of an impact in western lands TR DOS is about as closely associated with Russian Spectrum clones as tapes are here with the original machine Time to have a look then TR DOS is one of those pieces of Spectrum esoterica I ve always promised myself I ll get around to learning about one day A bit like going on a diet or learning assembly language however days like this do not occur frequently But so great has become my embarrassment at the blind eye feel I ve turned towards this immensley important disk system within five issue s worth of pages have at last gathered up my courage and ventured out onto the net to learn And guess what it s really not all that hard at all If you re not aware of what TR DOS is you might wonder why it s worth the bother Even the most well known disk formats the 3 format the Plus D format the ZX Microdrive at a push were never anyt
54. ways screaming because there were shortages left right and centre so stuff got used just simply to fill orders sometimes that everyone knew shouldn t be used but let s deal with the problem when it comes back The problem was he added that Sinclair was so enthusiastic about these new products that he would talk to the press about them long before they were actually ready for launch And the result was that the final stages of design development and production engineering were always done in a panic Sinclair C6 anyone FURTHER PRESERVATION gt Type Ins project starts at WOS It s full steam ahead at www worldofspectrum org for yet another new project an archive of all the magazine and book type in listings ever published This ambitious project typical of the sort of scope that WoS has envisioned from the start is to be overseen by WoS Forums regular Arjun Nair and already there are a good number of titles in place Available from a new subsection of the Archive page the type ins are listed in the usual WoS format including online play through Java emulator ZZ Spectrum So work off that turkey dinner and get typing ZXF06 42 Day of the Match then and Ball by Ball were both releases from a company called Video Software Limited And started thinking Could these be MIA tapes Well I ve been in that soot many a time before Oh yes At the car boot sale though not this year like said
55. year the question was was there going to be a next year at this rate We still had no speakers and asking Colin MacDonald to do the SAM talk lead to a thread started by him on the SAM mailing asking people whether they were coming lead to people saying they could not come Fortunately things had already start to improve NTK wanted to come and sell t shirts and promised to give us a lot more coverage As my best friend said it s in traders interest to promote the show In a tough moment decided to send an email to the mailing list pointing out that they had promised to come A local councillor Steve Land of the Green party a rarity in this country who knew through my political career agreed to open the show Finally the day of show came getting up a 7 30am to put up the sign as Friday night was Halloween That and fireworks nights stopped us getting any coverage in the local media The main sign was not vandalised during the day but the paper one in Grove Road was It seems a family saw the Computer Showso entered they must have found something of interest as they stayed several hours as did most people We entered the hall in which we had laid the tables out the day before and we got the kitchen ready Bang on Yam a taxi drew up with Colin Piggot in it and an off road vehicle carrying Cronosoft Hardly had they started setting up when the first visitors arrived including one from Germany a full hour before t
56. z index php pg games en It s nearly ten years since Speed Code knocked out this successor to the Dizzy series Graphically indistinguishable from the originals if that s what you can call them Dizzy X saw our egg shaped hero concerning himself with an invasion of soace invaders And Russia The problem was you had to speak Russian to understand it Not any more thanks to Dmytro Gryshchenko who has taken the Russian original and translated it into English and how fitting that he should do so in time for our Oliver Twins themed issue Dmytro s release avaiable from www34 brinkster com zxtop stripped the original down to a pure 48K title in no time at all however a 128 version was also released by Wixet of TCG http tcg speccy cz essentially Dmytro s work with the 128 features of the Russian original added back in If you re a fan of the Dizzy adventures and haven t yet discovered this little treat then this will be a pleasant surprise indeed If like me Dizzy was never something you got into during the golden years and you re wondering what all the fuss was about naturally since Codemas ters have denied the free distribution of their titles you re unable to find out then this is definately worth at least a look And as a game in its own right the beautiful graphics are added to rather nicely by the in game AY music which by the way seems to dislike Soectaculator Nice one
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