Comments on: Sinclair Spectrum+ Tape emulation: Métal Hurlant

By: Defixiones

Defixiones — Thu, 02 Mar 2023 19:31:03 +0000

US Gold was just the name of a label, they actually developed their own games, often Japanese arcade conversions. I don’t believe Activision or EA ever developed Spectrum games.
Plenty of Spectrum developers went on to sell games internationally though; Rare, Rockstar, Psygnosis, Argonaut, Codemasters, etc.

By: blw

blw — Mon, 06 Jun 2022 17:46:25 +0000

In reply to neozeed.

Well, not much of it was done by me at all, all these repositories I listed above are other developers, lol!

But I perhaps am the person who experimented with these emulation & vintage Xerox technologies the most… At least, nowadays.

If you need any assistance while trying to run it, though, let me know!

By: neozeed

neozeed — Mon, 06 Jun 2022 10:48:49 +0000

In reply to blw. wow that looks like a massive undertaking I assume, by you? To bring not only a dead platform back, but all that exciting networking too!

By: blw

blw — Tue, 31 May 2022 20:48:48 +0000

Hello!
Very unrelated to the Spectrum, but I have an idea for a “virtually fun” activity you can do for free:

Emulating Xerox D-Machines and a real XNS network!

Resources you’ll be needing:
https://github.com/livingcomputermuseum/Darkstar (if you want to run a Xerox Star, the emulator in releases isn’t the most recent one with support for Dodo XNS emulation so you’ll probably need to recompile from Git, I made it work with VS 2022, WiX Toolkit, .NET Targeting Pack 4.5 (not sure upgrading works) and the required libraries on NuGet)
https://github.com/devhawala/dwarf (if you want to run a Xerox 6085 and/or Xerox GlobalView for Windows)
https://github.com/devhawala/dodo (if you want to run Xerox Network Services (network printing, mail, filing and departmental management in 1981!))
https://bitsavers.org/bits/Xerox (all kinds of Xerox software, 8010 folder is a Xerox Star, 6085 is a Xerox Daybreak, XSoft is for GVWIN)
https://bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox (tons of Xerox documentation)

Make sure to read the documentation included in Darkstar, Dodo and Dwarf’s GitHub READMEs. If you want some detailed discussions, check out the Issues tab for these emulators. Good luck!

By: neozeed

neozeed — Fri, 27 May 2022 10:44:42 +0000

In reply to Tux2000. I've been looking too, and it seems the vDrive still needs the "Interface 1" which of course adds the drive interface, along with a RS232 port, and a ZX network port, much like the QL network port. It seems only Sinclair could botch a medium so badly that interchange of data between the ZX and the QL never would work. In this day and age it seems the DivIDE/DivMMC are the only way to go, but at £99 or so, it seems like a really poor choice when compared to the sizif 512 which is about £110, and includes the ability to run all the system types, goes into turbo mode, and has a real z80/YM chip... I'll probably end up going sizif.

By: Tux2000

Tux2000 — Fri, 27 May 2022 10:16:47 +0000

In the 1980s, I very quickly added an Interface 1 and a Microdrive to my Spectrum+, mostly getting rid of the slow casssette interface and its annoyingly sensitive volume adjustment. Loading a program in only one or two attempts was clearly progress. The autorun function (just hitting R and Enter after reset to load a program named “run” from the first Microdrive) was really cool, and so I had a menu on most tape cartridges.

Recently, I found the vDrive ZX (https://vdrivezx.com/vdrivezx/) that can replace the inner workings of a microdrive with a SD Card interface and emulate up to eight microdrives. I don’t have any experience with it, since I no longer own a Spectrum.

By: neozeed

neozeed — Thu, 26 May 2022 15:09:39 +0000

In reply to Lee.

My dad was a massive fan of that game. He couldn’t type or work out the controls so instead I had to “drive” and he would bark out commands.

Games would last for hours only ending in running out of torpedos and shells, and the occasional defeat. Every time I play I’m destroyed so quickly.

It’s a shame that I never recorded them, I’m sure it’s have been interesting to someone

By: neozeed

neozeed — Thu, 26 May 2022 14:26:18 +0000

In reply to JQW. I have only tried to digitise one game so far and the wav doesn’t load under emulation or in iron.. I suspect it’s the mono stereo thing again. They do seem somewhat picky about stuff, although this tape deck I have is 2/2 of tapes loading. I’ll have to try more to find out.

By: Lee

Lee — Thu, 26 May 2022 13:53:25 +0000

I spent as little time as possible loading tapes into my Commodore 64 before getting a 1541 disk drive. Then the drive broke, and I was too broke to fix it. I’d become addicted to MicroProse’s Silent Service submarine simulator. Of course it wasn’t available on cassette anymore in the U.S., but I found a British dealer who was willing to ship overseas. Even with the shipment time, I still had a few months of loading that game from tape before I could get the disk drive fixed or replaced. I was fortunate that I hadn’t gotten rid of my Commodore Datasette, much easier to load from than a standard cassette player.

By: JQW

JQW — Thu, 26 May 2022 13:40:21 +0000

I owned a Spectrum back in the day and had some terrible issues getting tapes to load with my first tape deck. Replacing it with another unit seemed to work fine in the majority of cases, but even then there was one particular game which wouldn’t load at all, no matter what volume or tone settings I used. I had to make a tape-to-tape copy, which worked fine.