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10

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The ZX Spectrum on Your PC"well-written and superbly presented" -Micro MartDownloaded over 2,000 times and featured onthe Retro Gamer cover disk, this guide toSpectrum emulation on the PC is the perfectintroduction for ex-Spectrum users returning totheir first ever computer. Written by ZXF editorColin Woodcock, The ZX Spectrum on YourPC teaches you how to use modern PCemulators to play all those old favourites, aswell as some of the more advanced featureson offer too. You've read the electronicversion, now enjoy the luxury of a profession-ally printed paperback!78 page paperback $11.99 (about £6.60)

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Currency confusion? $1 = £0.55/€0.80 approx (exchange rates can vary) so $5 = £2.75/€4.00 approx, $10 = £5.50/€8.00 approx and so on.Please note: ZXF merchandise is provided by www.cafepress.com, an American company, and items sent outside of the US will incur an inter-national shipping fee of $7.00 (approx £3.85/€5.60) for one item, with additional items charged at $4.00 (approx £2.20/€3.20) per item thereafter.

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SPRING/SUMMER 2005 Issue 10

ContentsTwelve pages of Spectrum news. p8

If you enjoy ZXF and you want it to continue then consider yourselfduty bound to let me know this (mail@cwoodcock.co.uk or by thefeedback form). All other feedback will be gratefully received too.ZXF has a voluntary purchase scheme. If you have downloadedand enjoyed an issue of ZXF, and if you are able to afford to, pleaseconsider paying £1 for your issue via the Paypal button on at the ZXFwebsite ('magazine' page).Editor: C Woodcock (mail@cwoodcock.co.uk)Website: www.cwoodcock.co.uk/zxfContributors this issue: Matthew Westcott, Matthew Wilson, SimonGoodwin, James Zeun, Douglas Harter, John King, Simon Ullyatt,Colin Piggot and Thomas Eberle. A big thankyou also to all letterwriters and news contributors.ZXF magazine is copyright © C Woodcock 2005All contributors retain their own copyrights.

Your views and opinions. p20

Higgledy Piggledy and more. p30

Douglas Harter explains WinPAW. p38

Unlocking the Sinclair code p42Soundtracker tutorial part two. p46Spectrum emulation on the GP32 p50A brief history of ZXF p52

A simple, yet effective modification idea for a +2B p40

Pointy sticks at the ready... p35

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GAME?Rare doesn't even begin to describe this title... if in fact it exists. The coding system

used by Sinclair suggests that it does, but other Sinclair silver inlay re-releases of theUltimate titles - although hardly common - do crop up on ebay from time to time.Not so Tranz Am. The image above is a mock-up; if you have seen the real thing

then ZXF would love to hear from you. www.cwoodcock.co.uk/zxfRead more on page 42

�

So WoS Times, for example, could be hosted via acouple of pages on WoS, where there could alsobe a form for uploading articles or news items. Itcould be discussed in its own forums at WoSForums - perhaps one forum for public discussionand a private forum for the 'DevelopmentCommittee' to talk in. People could volunteer todo a year's editing in the forums and when it'stime to select one this could be done through avote if there's more than one candidate. And soon. The specific rules would be up to thecommittee to decide.Alternatively, CSS Today (or whatever you want tocall it) could follow the CGC model more closely,being hosted each year from a different web siteset up by the current editor. Discussion would, ofcourse, be done using CSS. Personally I prefer theWoS model, since then the editor wouldn't haveto spend time making a website as well asmaking a magazine. But I'm aware that this ismaking an assumption of WoS in terms of itsdesire to host something like this - which may notbe a valid one at all.Making the magazine more of a distributedproject would also help correct some of the short-fallings of ZXF - most notably the lack of coveragefor emulators on other platforms (Amiga, RISCOS,Linux, etc) and the very poor coverage of thedemo scene. Being jointly 'owned' in this waymight also encourage more people to writethings for it.I think it's an idea worth discussing at least and I'llbe starting up a thread on WoS for this once thisissue's been out a day or so. My hope is thattiming it this way will channel your great sadnessat the passing of ZXF into enthusiasm for a betterreplacement ;)ZXF has been a great project to work on and I'veenjoyed every aspect of it immensley. To all mycontributers over the years I am extremelygrateful and I cannot thank you - the reader -enough for sticking with this little 'zine andspreading the word afar.

Until next time.

Colin Woodcockmail@cwoodcock.co.uk

As most of you are already aware this is to be thelast issue of ZXF for the time being. I've known fora while that it would be - there's just too much forme to do at the moment - and I wanted to goout with a great issue that left you wanting more.Well here it is: the biggest issue yet - 56 pages -with some of the best content so far.It feels good to be ending on issue 10, prettymuch bang on three years after the projectstarted. It is my intention to return to it at somepoint in the future; I'm quite deliberately stoppingnow before it gets dull or annoying (I've had agreat time putting this issue together) so that thedesire will still be there once the time is. But Idon't know when that will be.So how successfull has ZXF been? Well issue nineattracted well over a thousand downloads - andthat's only counting the 'whole issue' downloads(ie, it doesn't include the part A/part B downloadsavailable for making the printed version). It'sreceived attention in Micro Mart, Retro Gamerand Games TM. It's been included on RetroGamer's cover CD, incidentally, alongside myspin-off book, The ZX Spectrum on Your PC (whichitself has been downloaded from WoS a stagger-ing 2,500 times). Undoubtably the thing thatmakes me most proud is the number of countriesin which ZXF is being read - well over 20 at the lastcount.Enough of the trumpet blowing; I have a seriousproposal to make. One of the functions I havealways worked hardest on with ZXF is its role as anews digest of events in the scene. There areother places you can get all this information from,but not as much in one place; I always hoped themagazine would be useful to any historians of thefuture wanting to document the aftermath of theSpectrum's heyday and its continuing life in 21stCentury. If ZXF has been successfull in this rolethen a gap now exists and I think this is anopportunity for someone to grasp.But rather than just another magazine edited byanother person in the community, what I thinkwould be really great would be a publicationaffiliated with either WoS or with CSS that isoverseen by a group of people and specificallyedited by a different person each year. I'm kindof thinking the Crap Games Competitonapproach here, which has been extremelysuccessfull in sustaining this contest - now into itstenth year.

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TZXF IS HERE>Cassette version of ZXF up for downloadIt's a project I personally was seriously begining to doubt I'd everget even close to completing. But TZXF, the cassette version ofZXF Magazine, is now a joint UK-Romanian venture and, thanks tothe help of Cristian Grecu - who got in touch with ZXF just afterissue nine had gone out - the first two issues are now ready to pulloff the Internet and load into a real Spectrum.The cassette versions are for a 48K Spectrum and feature thenews section of each issue along with the editorial and gamereviews. Each issue is a BASIC program with a small machinecode routine giving 42 column text (Sinclair's own Print Utilities, infact). Cristi typed up each magazine on his HC-2000 (a Roma-nian Spectrum clone) and I edited his output using a combinationof BASin for making alterations to the program and Spectaculatorto check it all looked ok. Loading screens were put togetherusing ZX-Paintbrush, BMP2SCR and YASPIC. Just to round thingsof, copious use was also made of Taper.An international effort, then, in many ways. Which has made theproject very satisfying. After all his hard work, ZXF wanted to learna little more about Cristi and so I asked him a few questions:ZXF: Tell us a bit about yourself.CG: Let's have a look at the "ZX certified" people: 8% of thempassed the exam. These are the masters of the ZX Spectrum. Butlet's think a little at the others 92%. Average users, most are stillusing the ZX Spectrum, others have a small website about it, all ofthem used and were impressed by this wonderful machine. Well,I'm just like them; just a guy who felt in love with the ZX Spectrum;a guy who prefers staying in front of a blinking cursor, working ona program that will never be used by anyone, rather than goingto the disco or to a soccer game.ZXF: How did you first come into contact with the Spectrum? Wasit a UK model or a Romanian clone? CG: I first met the ZX Spectrum in 1994: I was five years old, andthe Spectrum era has just faded. My father gave me a HC-85(Romanian clone of the 48), and taught me how to load games.Later, I learned BASIC, assembler and various utilities. Last year,an old dream was accomplished when I bought a HC-2000(clone of the 48, with internal FDD unit), that I’m still using today.ZXF: Do you mostly use real hardware or do you prefer emulators?CG: Even the best emulator can’t be compared with a Spectrumthat works perfectly, on a color TV. I have never written aprogram on an emulator.ZXF: When did you first learn about ZXF? What caused you towant to get involved with the TZXF project?December 2004, Christmas Eve. Out of ideas, I was navigating onthe World of Spectrum website when I saw a link to the ZXFwebsite. Following the link, I found a very interesting magazine forboth advanced and beginner users, presenting the developmentof the ZX Spectrum in the 21st century. I found the TZXF projectan opportunity to help someone, especially because I cancontribute a little to the development of the ZX Spectrum.

ZXF10: 8

Fans of the late Douglas Adams'classic Hitchiker's Guide to theGalaxy books will no doubt beaware that the text adventure ofthe same name is a rather specialpiece of work because it waswritten by Douglas himself. Writtenin 1984 using the Infocom system,the game didn't make it to theSpectrum until the +3 came along.2005 is a bit of a milestone year forHitchikers fans because the filmversion - a project in the pipeline forso many years - is finally due outthis spring (and will probably beplaying by the time you read this).Initial reviews at this stage look verydisapointing, unfortunately.But it's not all bad news: at thesame time that the film opens, BBCRadio 4 will be airing the fourth andfinal radio series following lastautumn's much-anticipated 'TertiaryPhase' third series which re-unitedmany of the cast of the originalseries (first aired 1978 - 1980). At

the time of The Tertiary Phase'srecording the BBC decided tocelebrate by re-making the originaltext adventure - then 20 years old -for its online audience. The actualtext remained the same, of course,but a new interface and graphicswere added.Drafted in to update the game wereRod Lord creator of the Guide'swonderful graphics in the 1980s TVversion of the story and Sean Solléfrom Douglas' own company TheDigital Village. The game has beenan immense success for the Radio 4website and was honoured in Marchwith an Interactive BAFTA award.Now the game has been developedeven further; following BBC Online'srequest for visitors to design newgraphics for locations and objectswithout pictures, the artwork of NolanWorthington and Andrew Wyld havebeen added in to create two neweditions. Proof if proof were neededthen that great games don't die.

The brand new, BAFTAwinning BBC remake of theclassic DNA text adventure,alongside the Spectrum +3version.

BAFTA AWARD TO TEXT ADVENTURE>BBC remake of HHGTTG game celebrated at www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/game.shtml

ZXF10: 9

MEDIAMEDIAMEDIAMEDIA

CHIPTUNES GALORE>Online radio examinationSincere respect is due to CSS andWoS Forums regular Sharopolis foran absolutely cracking radiodocumentary on ZX Spectrummusic presented on Flat four(www.mcld.co.uk/flatfour) duringthe first couple of weeks of April.Produced with his mate Dan,Sharoplis presents the programme,taking the listener on a journeythat starts with some modern AYtracks and an interview with AYRiders artist Matthew Westcott(aka Gasman); from there we aretreated to a rare interview withthe legendary Tim Follin, creatorof so many classic ZX tunes in theeighties and one of Matthew's

OCEAN VIDEO>Dedicated video pagetheoceanexperience.co.uk is anew website and discussionforum started up earlier in theyear by ex-Ocean employeeMark R Jones and aims tocollect together all sorts ofartefacts regarding theexperience of working atOcean in the 80s and 90s. Oneof the most interesting pages ishis video collection page; aswell as the fantastic Commer-cial Breaks documentary (seelast issue) there's a 72 second'Chegwin Checks It Out'feature where broadcastinglegend Mr Keith Chegwin visitsthe Ocean coding parlour toask all the questions on the lipsof 80s Britain. Even moreinteresting (as if anythingcould top that) is thebehind-the-scenes homemovie of Cheggars andhis film crew setting thewhole thing up; beamazed as youwitness such tradesecrets as smilingand nodding at thecamera to lookinterested...

www.

caps

ule.or

g .uk

ZXF10: 10

personal inspirations. And then we meet The ZXSpectrum Orchestra, described bythe artists involved as "basically anorchestra of Spectrums." Thisfascinating segment introduces usto Mike Johnston and Brian Duffytwo members of the group whoare now co-ordinating wholegroups of the machines musicallyin front of live audiences - aprocess described as being akinto "having a gang of naughtyschoolchildren on the stage" (aquite wonderful comparison, Ithink, given the schoolboyheritage of the Speccy).Aparently the project all startedwhen Brian bought a Spectrummanual out of curiosity at a carboot sale and read about the'BEEP' command - and wonderedif it was possible to create musicwith it... The live setup involvesattempting to 'conuct' differentSpectrums - each with a differentfunction. One is a dedicatedCurrah MicroSpeech unit, forexample; another runs the WhamDrum Machine. I can't evenbegin to imagine how hard thatmust be. There's lots to be read about TheZX Spectrum Orchestra,incidentaly, over atwww.redkeyreddoor.com,including an interview with thegroup and reviews of their live gigin January by both Gasmanhimself and band member MikeJohnston (check outwww.redkeyreddoor.com/index.php?p=48 for an overview of allarticles and links). Their officialhome on the net is to be found atwww.warmcircuit.com/webn/artist.php?artist_id=2, where youcan learn about their upcomingcommercial releases, including aCD EP which apparently hasalready sold out. Finally, thegroup have produced a musicvideo called Look and Listen(programmed by Mike Johnston)which can be downloaded fromwww.7inch.org.uk/About_7inch/Film_of_the_month.aspx AY Riders itain't, but with the right company

and lager it should give rise tosome interesting conversations!On the subject of the AY Riders,the AY chiptune champions haverecently released a new CD athttp://8bitpeoples.com whichcan be yours for the tiny price of$7 US (you can also listen to thetracks online, as well as down-loading the cover art). ZXSpectrum is Alive is the follow-upto their third album 8 Bits Is Enuffand features tracks by Yerzmyey,X-Agon, Factor6, and Gasman. Gasman, of course, is currently aZXF guest columnist; you cancheck out the final part of hisSoundtracker tutorial in this veryissue, where the final touches arebeing put on his rendition of theDoctor Who theme. And so themusic continues. As Sharopolisconcludes so eloquently in hisradio programme, "23 years onenthusiasts are still keeping theSpectrum beeping." Long may itbe so.

ZXF10: 11

NEW COOKIE>Remake of early Ultimate classicYou know Cookie. Of course youdo. Help Charlie Chef make hiscake by deflecting the ingredientsfrom the pantry into the mixingbowl and at the same time, ofcourse (I mean, it's not like youever get to do only one thing at atime in a Spectrum game -especially those knocked out byUltimate - where would be thechallenge in that?) avoid anynasties that might escape from thepantry or dustbins that will makeyour job harder. Fans of Cookiewill no doubt be delighted to learnthat they can now re-live thesecake-making frolics in glorioustechnicolour thanks to Space-TimeProductions Ltd, who reside in thatcorner of the web to found atwww.spacetimegames.co.uk. Theremake - for that is what it is - is acollaboration between coderSteve Watson and graphics personOddBob. And it runs on Windows.Yes.

NEW LABELS>Download for 3 inch disksA simple, yet elegant idea fromswordheart. Well where does onego to get 3 inch disk labels fromthese days? Not to Dixons, that'sfor certain. Not even to the guyon the market who does bulk-buyDVDs, replacement ink cartridgesand an interesting line in noveltycrystal. No. These convenientdownloadable pages, however,are designed to be printed offonto A4 sticky labels and cut out.Simple. Now A4 sticky labels the

guy on the market does do...

SMITH ANALYSIS>Willy creator to be immortalisedEmulator author Adrian Robsonhas contacted ZXF about a newproject he is working on:"I’m writing a book aboutMatthew Smith, Manic Miner, JetSet Willy etc. This will be an A5book that people can buy andsome of the money will go tocharity. The book will coverSmith’s early years, Manic Miner,Jet Set Willy, All other versions ofManic Miner & Jet Set Willy,Screen shots etc, chart listings,hacking, what the future holds forMiner Willy and a bunch of otherstuff. I’m about half way throughat the minute and I’m verypleased with what I have so far. Iwant this to be the definitive bookabout Matthew Smith and MinerWilly, and I’m hoping that peoplewho already know a bit about itall will find something interesting inthere to read."

SE NEWS>Andrew Owen updateAndrew Owen has also been intouch with ZXF to update us onthe progress being made on histwo projects, SE Basic and the ZXSpectrum SE. Regarding theformer, the official website atwww.worldofspectrum.org/sinclairbasic/ has been updated withnew links and the latest version ofhis extended version of SinclairBASIC (0.94B, released 16/12/04).Andrew has also added informa-tion on the differences betweenprevious releases on the manualspage. He now has all the code tofinish this project, but it's currentlyon hold again while he works onsomething else.Regarding the ZX Spectrum SE,Andrew's hardware enhancementof the original ZX Spectrumproduced in collaboration withYarek Adamski, Andrew has

recently introduced ZXCFtechnology into this device,resulting in the ZX Spectrum SE/CF.ZXCF is the amazing CompactFlash interface by Sami Vehmaafor any Spectrum, giving itpotentially enormous high-speedstorage potential without theneed for any hard disks and alltheir associated clutter. If youwant to see what a ZXSE/CFwould look like, it is alreadyavailable in emulation using FUSE:just select the Spectrum SE modelfrom the emulation list, activatethe ZXCF interface and you havea working ZX Spectrum SE/CFenvironment.Recently the ZXSE website athttp://zxse.raww.net/ has alsobeen updated, including updatedlinks and a new ZX Spectrum SEand Timex 2068 software archive.99% of the Timex software in thearchive will run on the ZXSpectrum SE using the Timex 2068emulator. The archive alsoincludes emulators which will runon the ZX Spectrum SE for theZX80, the ZX81, the Timex 2068(with help from Paul Farrow andAlvin Albrecht) and Shadow of theUnicorn SE. Shadow of theUnicorn, if you didn't knowalready, was a 64K Spectrumgame by Mikro-Gen that requireda peripheral device to beplugged into your Spectrum whichreplaced its 16K ROM with 16K'sworth of game to supplement theremaining 48K that you thenloaded in from tape. All verycomplicated and the SOTU SEemulator cuts out a lot of themucking about.Development of software for theZX Spectrum SE is on hold for thetime being, however futurereleases promised include a ZXSpectrum emulator (16K/48K) anda debugged version of 128 Basic(hopefully with an extra 16K in theRAM disk). When he gets timeAndrew will also be releasing EliteDX, featuring minor graphicenhancements based on the NESversion (Ian Bell's favourite 8-bitversion, so I'm told).

ZXF10: 12

CSSCGC TURNS TEN>Tenth anniversary of Cassette 50 tributeHow's this for a truely staggering fact: for ten yearsnow we've been hammering away at the rubberkeyboards to produce the worst games conceivable,all out of love and recognition for the world's worstever computer games compilation, the CascadeCassette 50. How many of us would have thoughtback then, as we cursed the seductive allure of thefree digital watch and sobbed over our £9.95 foreverlost to the clutches of Mr Cascade, that one day wewould come to look upon that little blue and yellowbox with something limping its way towards affection?The 2005 comp.sys.sinclair Crap Games Competitioncompetition, then, is being hosted by CSS regulardekay and already the entries are arriving. Top ofthe list is last year's winner Paul Equinnox Collins withhis new version of Space Invaders, 'Invade-o-Tronsfrom Planet Q'. Paul claims on the opening screenthat he sincerely believes Invade-o-Trons "to be theworst Space Invaders game ever written"; ZXF canreport this perception to be a highly accurate one.

In a break with well-established tradition thecompetition this year has got its act together beforethe summer solstice and actually aims to completethe submission process by the end of the year, so ifyou'd like to make a submission to the competitionyou have until December 31st to put your entrytogether. Entries can be made as .z80, .sna, .tapand .tzx files for Spectrum games, .p files for ZX81games, and .o files for ZX80 games. Hopefully this year's competiton will see a return tousing judges after recent attempts to introducedemocracy to the judging process resulted in suchscandals as awarding first place to actually goodgames masquerading as bad ones (2003) andawarding first place to the first game on the dropdown list by just clicking on the 'vote' button (2004).There are rumours that Matthew Lewis, one of theoriginal Cassette 50 authors, is up for doing duty asa celebrity judge. A good punishment, if overdue...www.lofi-gaming.org.uk/speccy/cgc2005/

CRASH TALK>Dominic Handy interviewedMatthew Wilson, maintainer ofCRASH - The Online Edition(http://crashonline.org.uk) hasmanaged to pin down ex-editorDominic Handy for an interview. Handy, who edited CRASH fromissue 55 to issue 62, reveals somefascinating insider information inthe interview, including how - inthe days before editorship - hewas employed for reviews hedidn't write and how his face wasused for a reviewer who didn'texist! Perhaps the most scandal-ous revelation is confirmation thatthe never released Rainbow Artsgame The Great Giana Sisters onlygot its CRASH SMASH because itwas featured on the cover of issue55. According to Handy, RainbowArts owners US Gold were sodesperate for a hit they managedto persuade him to get CRASHresident artist Oliver Frey to designa cover based around the gamebefore a review copy made itsway to Ludlow. When they finally

did get a copy the game wasrubbish, but "we didn't have muchchoice than give it a CRASHSmash as we'd put it on thecover." Tch. Eh?You can read more at http://crashonline.org.uk/99/handy.htm

ZX CLUB>Gaming like it used to beIf there's a problem with themodern Spectrum scene, it's thatthere is too much choice when itcomes to playing games. Withthousands of titles to choose fromat WoS, few of them ever getplayed at anything like the depththat they used to when your nexteight bit purchase was at least afew paper rounds away.Such is the rationale behind the ZXClub, a club set up to encourageplayers to spend a little timegetting to know a game.Operating from a small site athttp://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/zxclub the clubmembers also use WoS Forums as

their primary medium fordiscussion: a new game is choseneach week by the members anddiscussed as play progresses.It's a neat idea and the clubappears a well-organised affair.Games played so far includeBooty, Uridium and Rogue Trooper.Visit the site for more details.

PGD IS GO!>Cronosoft designer releasedReviewed last issue, Cronosoft'sPlatform Games Designer byJonathan Cauldwell took a whileto make it to the virtual shopfrontat www.cronosoft.co.uk, but in thelast couple of weeks (at the timeof writing) it finally made it thereand judging by the initial responseit seems to have gone down astorm. Deservedly so. The fullpackage includes both the LinearDesigner and the ExplorerDesigner as well as a samplegame and costs £4.99 for a DVD-cased cassette or £3.49 for anemulator file. Get coding.

ZXF10: 13

IN DENIAL>Permission mattersWith the rise in popularity in retrogaming it was perhaps inevitablethat a few copyright holderswould examine their ownershipsafresh to see if there was any newcash to be made in their handling.And so, over the past few months,distribution permission has againbecome a topic for hot debate,sparked by the very firm denial ofdistribution permission by PaulMcKenna (no, not the hypnotist) ofThor and Odin titles atwww.worldofspectrum.org. Thisparticular piece of action was metby outrage by most WoS regulars -not so much by the decision itselfas by the manner in which it wascommunicated ("It appears thatyou have on your site variousgames that are MY copyright andownership. I intend to takeproceeding against you and yourcompany!"). Although MrMcKenna did become a greatdeal more polite in subsequentemails (a testament, no doubt, toWoS maintainer Martijn van derHeide's superb diplomacy skills),the community were unpreparedto forgive him for assuming theworst of us and blundering in withsuch threatening language. A key issue highlighted by MrMcKenna's emails and the debatethey gave rise to was that ofcopyright belonging to thecompanies employing softwarewriters in cases such as this, not tothe software writers themselves. Itappears that Steve Wetherill, aformer employee of Mr McKennaand - by Mr McKenna's ownadmisson - star programmer ofmany of the titles concerned hadindicated that he was happy forhis titles to be distributed fromWoS; Mr McKenna was very quickto point out that this permissionwas not Mr Wetherill's to give.Since the McKenna denial therehave been further distributiondevelopments, perhaps the mostprolific revolving around an emailallegedly sent by software house

Activision to retro gaming sitewww.gamestage.net asking themto remove Activision and ElectricDreams games from this site. In along and rather confusing threadat WoS Forums, the owner ofGamestage asserted that he hadreceived this email but that itscontents were confidential. WoSat the time had received no suchrequest from Activision, which wasrather confusing since WoS has afirst page Google ranking for both"Sinclair Spectrum" and "ZXSpectrum," whereas Gamestage'sranking on these search terms isnowhere near this high - ifActivision were looking for websitesto contact regarding the distribu-tion of Spec-trum games, how didthey come across Gamestagebefore WoS? In the end (from what I can makeout - the thread was a record 16pages long last time I looked)Gamestage chose to share theActivision email address it had withMartijn, who then contacted thecompany only to be told that - yes- these titles were denied. It has tobe said they did put this rathermore politely than Paul McKenna.Game Gamestage? Hmmm... Thisincident in particular has high-lighted for many the different waysin which copyright issues aretreated between WoS and otheremulation sites such asGamestage. Martijn's copyrightspage on WoS(www.worldofspectrum.org/permits)gives a very clear summary of hisviews regarding copyright and hedisplays all emails he has receivedregarding permission, listedaccording to both software housesand individual programmers (that'sa lot of emails). Gamestage doesalso claim to be actively pursuingdistribution permission by writing tosoftware companies; in contrast toWoS, Gamestage doesn't show anyactual evidence of this, other thanlisting the companies they claim tohave received permission from, butthe key difference is deeper thanthis. The gist of Martijn's stance isthat the copyright owner's decision

is unquestionably final; Game-stage, however - although theyacknowledge this right - expressdistain at denials receivednonetheless ("We really hopethat someday all enterprises willunderstand our point of viewand let us distribute theirproducts with no 'buts'"). Theexpectation is sort of thatcompanies should permitdistributon.The difference in approach isperhaps best illustrated throughthe two websites' recentresponses to yet anotherdevelopment in distribution issues- the emergence of a brandnew retro software label calledRetro-Soft and their arrangementwith the Shaw Brothers regardingtheir back catalogue of games.The deal means that ShawBrothers titles will be removedfrom free distribution, and this ishow WoS covered the news:

We have another confirmationthat retro gaming is stillgrowing fast: The brand newretro software label Retro-Softsigned an exclusive deal withShaw Brothers, to bring variousof their games back tocommercial status. Apart fromselling the original Spectrumversions, Retro-Soft announcesto remake those games formobile phones.Although of course thesegames were removed fromthe archive, it looks like theSpectrum's future is as bright asever (especially considering itwas picked before othersystems)!

Gamestage, on the other hand,reported the event in muchmore negative terms (and alsoconfused 'Retro-Soft' with 'Retro-Trader'):

More sad news! This yearseems to be getting worse forSpectrum fans andGamestage! Retro-tradercompany has signed anexclusive license contract withThe Shaw Brothers, which

ZXF10: 14

means that several games (somefrom Atlantis Software) wereremoved from our website.Retro-trader(http://www.retrotrader.com/)also assures that more games willbecome denied, so let's waitand see what they are up to!

In the midst of all this there is atleast one good example of howwe in the community mightimagine old software might be putto use - the publishers of FightingFantasy books (such as Warlock ofFiretop Mountain) - recently re-published and to be supple-mented by new titles (boy doesthat take me back) - have actuallysuggsted on their website(fightingfantasygamebooks.com)that readers download Spectrumversions of Warlock of FiretopMountain and Forest of Doom toplay for free. The positivity towardsthe Fighting Fantasy books comingout of the thread on WoS wherethis was discussed is a markedcontrast to the negativity towardsPaul McKenna following hisintervention and underlines thepoint made by several posters inthe latter thread that Mr McKennahas done himself no favours bytaking the approach that he has.After all, his aim with the games inquestion is to develop versions formobile phones. Perhaps he thinksthe Spectrum community can'tpossibly have an influence on thewider audience he is hoping existsfor this product, but this is not thesort of risk that astute businesspeople tend to take. Retro Gamerlast year positively bent overbackwards to try to keep thevarious retro gaming communitieshappy, seeing this population asone of their core audiences. If MrMcKenna is unaware of the size ofthis community then he clearly hasnot researched a market he ishoping to enter.At the same time it's up to us tokeep our tone moderate andfriendly, and to recognise - as inthe Retro-Soft example - thatsometimes the good of theSpectrum outweighs the removal

of less than 0.1% of the currentarchive. In our dealings with thesoftware houses today which ownthe intellectual copyright to thetitles we would like to be able todistribute it's up to us also toremember that the people wecommunicate with potentiallyhave little or no knowledge of theSpectrum, of Spectrum games orof the modern Spectrum scene; atthe same time they're probablytrying to juggle 101 other jobsthey're supposed to be deliveringon and granting 'dsitributionpermission' (whatever that means -they're probably unclear on thatwithout legal advice) for a bunchof old games is probably nowherenear the top of their to-do listunless they're in serious work-avoidance mode. And if they'rein any doubt as to the legal issuesinvolved - which most of themprobably will be - it will no doubtseem a much more attractiveoption to err on the side ofcaution and say 'no' than say 'yes'and later find out that they're introuble with the boss for doing this.If anything, it's amazing that somany companies have granteddistribution permission given this;the lesson for us all - especially forGamestage - is that this is likely tohave been a success broughtabout by diplomacy more thananything else. Empathy is key. Ifwe can successfully communicatethat we understand the situationour contact is in - as opposed tojust trying to convince them to dowhat we want them to - then theodds will be the best that theycan be in our favour.

+D MOVE>Small updateRudy Biesma has contacted ZXF tolet us know that his Disciple and+D disassemblies have beenmoved to a new website.The new address is:www.biehold.nl/rudy

SWEDISH TREASURE>Missing ROM discoveredSelf-confessed Commodoreaficionado Niklas Ramsberg hasstumbled across a very rareSpectrum at his local fleamarket -a Swedish version of the rubberkeyed model by BeckmanInnovation. The hardware is nodifferent from an English Speccy,but its 16K ROM has for some timebeen listed as Missing In Action.You can try out new ROMs inmany modern emulators. In SPIN,for example, you can select aspecific ROM from the Hardwaretab on the Options box. Drop theROM file into SPIN's folder andselect it from SPIN for either the48K or the 48K+. The ROM gives a rather colourfulreset and boots with a differentcopyright message than thestandard 48K Spectrum. All errormessages are in Swedish and theextra characters are available inextended mode with shift and S,D, F, G, Y and U.

Unsurprisingly, ROM fan GeoffWearmouth was quick to leapupon the new file and pick itapart for secrets. It appears thatthe ROM is actually a little moreclever than just a translation oferror messages: many of theoriginal 16K ROM's bugs (highlight-ed by Dr Ian Logan in Understand-ing your Spectrum) have beenfixed in this file. So far Geoff hasworked this out by running routinesdesigned to force the errors thatwould normally be found; nowhe's going to work out how theydid it.

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OCEAN HAUL>Microdrive data recoveredCovered elsewhere in this issue'snews section is the opening oftheoceanexperience.co.uk - anew website and discussion forumstarted up earlier in the year by ex-Ocean employee Mark R Jonesdedicated to documenting theexperience of working for Oceanas an employee in the 80s. Arather significant find in Februarywas the discovery of a load of oldmicrodrive cartridges which Markhad used to develop variousgraphics in his time at Ocean.Announcing the find on his websitein February, it was at first a bit of ahead scratcher as to how thedata from these cartridges was tobe salvaged. But once Spectrumpreservation expert Andy Barkergot involved it wasn't long beforethose carts were well and truelymined for their data. In additionto early versions of now well-knownloading screens such as Wizballand Arkanoid II, the cartridgesalso contained previously un-seengraphics for an unreleased versionof Total Recal as well as Athenamock ups that were never usedand some graphics for an Ice-Hockey game that was neverreleased. A major find, then. Youcan explore all the pictures at:ftp://ftp.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-extras/MarkRJones/During the discussions that tookplace over at WoS regarding theproject a rather nifty little routinedevised by Geoff Wearmouth fortransferring real microdrivecartridges to their virtual .MDRequivalents was brought to light bySpectaculator author JonathanNeedle. The trick requiresSpectaculator emulating Interface1 hardware, of course, and onboth this and your Spectrum (withIF 1) the 1984 introductioncartridge with the *MOVE programon it. This is what you do:1) Connect your Speccy's MICsocket to your PC's line-in socket.2) Boot the Introduction cartridge

on your real speccy and load*MOVE 3) Boot the Introduction cartridge.mdr file on Spectaculator andload *MOVE + turn on "Load fromAudio Source" 4) In Spectaculator, do a File>Newand create a blank cart (.mdr file)5) On your real Speccy set *MOVEto backup a cart to tape6) On Spectaculator, set *MOVEto restore a cart (and thus to the.mdr file) from tape. Start it going7) On the real speccy, put thecart to backup into a microdriveand start *MOVE backing up totape What happens it that the realSpeccy backs up the cart andsaves it to tape. However, Spectaculator is on theother end of the audio cable with*MOVE running in restore mode soit just writes the data to the .mdrfile. Magic!Right: Evolution of a loading screen- from early ideas to finished work.

PLUS 3 PRINTERFACE>Perfect printing for your +3From WoS forums comes a nice lit-tle DIY project. guesser writes:The +3 has a centronics compat-able printer port, which is connec-ted using a standard FDD edgeconnector. A peice of ribbon cable about 5"long is crimped into the connec-tor, and then the other end isopened out to 34 seperate wires. The +3 manual shows the number-ing of the port, and these have toeventually match the same numb-ers on the centronics type plug atthe end of the normal cable.Just open up the printer cable,and write down which wire is No.1

,2, etc. (on mine it went red, oran-ge, yellow, etc) on the centronicsconnector, and which pin it corre-sponds to on the D-type. Then solder the ribbon cable in thesame order to the female D-type. NOTE 1: some of the cables go tothe same pins, solder all these pinstogether in a row, and then just tagthe ribbon into the lump of solder. NOTE 2: the ribbon cable is num-bered in alternate rows for discdrives, for this cable the ribon goesin the order; 1, 19, 2, 20, 3, 21, 4, 22, etc (18 and36 are non existent).NOTE 3: if your centronics cablehas a wire going to 36, IGNORE it.

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ZXF10: 17

.NET ZX>New Spectrum emulator in works.NET is how Microsoft see the futureof programs on the PC. Etc. It's afree upgrade to Windows XP thatcan be had from microsoft.com.And Adrian Robson is writing anew Spectrum emulator in it.Currently a Spectrum EmulatorWithout a Name, Adrian wants hisemulator to be orientated moretowards the casual Speccy game-player than the hard-core emulatorjunkie; with this in mind he's puttinga lot of thought into makingsupport material such as instructionsand inlay art accessible.In its current state the emulatoroffers no support for tape files; itdoesn't emulate the Spectrum'sborder and it only covers the basic48K and 128K models. A way togo, then, but a promising start.

Spectrum Emulator Without a Name recognises snapshots and displaysscreen$ and basic info in the panel to the right of file names. Clickingon 'instructions' brings up inlay text in a seperate window; unfortunatelySEWN doesn't recognise WoS text instructions, these have to be re-formatted in RTF before being saved into the instructions folder. If you'dlike to help Adrian out (he's very keen for others to get involved) youcan email him at captain_grey@hotmail.com

NEW MODULES>ZX-Previewand ZX-Blockeditor Last issue we brought you news ofthe first of Claus Jahn's ZX Modules,ZX-Paintbrush and ZX-Explorer.Collectively the modules areintended as a replacement forClaus' previous project, ZX RainbowSecond Edition and the next twohave now been released.ZX-Blockeditor displays a breakdownof the contents of a TZX or TAP fileand allows you to move these aboutto your heart's desire. It's a nice littletool which I tried to use in thecreation of TZXF, but I kept gettingloading errors from the resulting tapefiles created and ended up goingback to good old Taper.ZX-Preview works either on its own orwith ZX-Blockeditor and displaysscreen$ data and other goodiesfrom your selected Spectrum file.The next module underdevelopment is the rather nicelooking ZX-Editor. You can check upon its progress, as well as grabbingthe above at: http://home.arcor.de/clausjahn/spectrum/

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Winning bid: £3,600Number of bids: 29Ended: 06-Mar-05

This, apparently, is what 50,000 unsold retrotitles looks like, covering the formatsSinclair, Commodore, Amstrad and more.Starting at 99p this auction soared up toover three and a half grand in nine days.Pressumably the buyer will break the lotdown and start selling off the titlesindividually; the question is will he make aprofit? By our calculations he's paid 7.2pper title so far, so things look hopeful.More details in Retro Gamer 15.

eyeon

50,000 + Wholesale Brand New, Retro Software Titles

Michael Jackson Moonwalker 1989 Spectrum computer game

Starting bid: £15Number of bids: 1Ended: 16-Jan-05

Two months and much press coverageafter an ambitious seller first listed this"INCREDIBLY rare Michael Jacksoncomputer game for the SinclairSpectrum" s/he finally got rid of it. Notat the £199 starting price of the firstattempt (see last issue), not at the £140starting price of the second attempt,not even at the £99 starting price of thethird attempt. Nope. In the end it wentfor £15 to an 'anonymous' buyer. Right.

SPECTRUM 48K MANIC MINER CHEAT unlimited lives

Buy It Now: 99pEnded: 30-Apr-05

That's right folks: 99p will buy you onewhole infinite lives poke, rushed to youby express email delivery from thisphilanthropist ebayer. Yes really. Justsearch ebay on 8186755709 to see.Thanks to Steven Holland for the link.

ZXF10: 19

What areareareare you going on about?�

BFEEDBACK FOR ISSUE 9Comments left at the ZXF website.

TEN [rating] is not enough! Keepit up. Thank you very much andenjoy Christmas! [CzechRepublic]

Thanks for this incrediblemagazine!! [Spain]

This is the first issue I've read and ilove it - great work! [Australia]

Thanks for a this great bigmagazine, It is full of interestingstuff to read [South Africa]

Great work. As a teenager, Ididn't pay as much attention toso many topics that you arecovering, especially hardwareissues. You're giving us a great re-cap on what's been going on inour non-Spectrum years.[Amman, Jordan]

Another great issue of ZXF with farmore pages than ever before.Keep it up that way! [Slovenia]

Keep up the good work!Congratulations! [Rio de Janeiro]

Boy! am I glad I kept my oldSpectrums! Great, great, greatmag! [Flanders, Belgium]

ZXF is useful and superb. The onlything I would like to see is abigger font. Thanks. Keep doingthe good job! [Argentina]

Thank you for this magazine![Belarus]

Send your letters, viewpoints, mini articles, etc to zxf@cwoodcock.co.uk, with 'wibble' in the subject line.

LETTERS TO ZXF

Thanks for the playtzx referenceand credit in ZXF09 (a wonderfulread again - well done), I justwanted to point out that youmissed the credit for Tomaz Kac,who wrote the original version ofplaytzx for DOS back in 1997, andthe vast bulk of code is still his. Itwould be great if you couldmention it in the next issue.Thanks again,FredCongratulations with new issue ofZXF! Great layout and greatamount of useful information asalways.By the way, I used your magazineas referrence to collect informa-tion about new hardware such asZXCF, zxUSB and so. The amount ofinformation I found was much thanenough to write an article, it willbe published in one of russianSpectrum magazines soon. Thank you once again for yourexcellent work.Kendo Anoubis Greetings for your latest ZX-F issue.It's quite a lot to read and watchwhat's happening on Spectrumscene. Hopefully, I have alreadylaunched a new PDF-zine called'ZX Spectrum Files', in Spanishlanguage as I'm from this quitesunny place (well, not always).Well I want to try to do more orless the same here, for those whospeak Cervantes accent (this isDon Quixote's year). The site fromwhich you can download ZXSFissues, for free, is:www.microhobby.com/zxsf/pagina_1.htmUse better Internet Explorer orNetscape navigator, as it's still introuble with Mozilla. Nevertheless,a new update is up to come

nearly, fixing this problem.Keep on going as remarkable asusual with your zine. Simply thebest in its genre.Kind regards,Ignacio Prini GarciaI'm writing this letter to say bigTHANK YOU for another brilliantissue of ZXF. I like ZXF very muchbecause Speccy was my firstcomputer (today I don't own "thereal thing", I only emulate it). ZXF isalso first "Sinclair only" magazinethat is available without problemsfor me. I live in Poland, Spectrumswere very popular in my country.There were many Polish computermags but they weremultiplatform(Atari/Amstrad/Commodore/Spectrum). Titles likeCrash, Sinclair User and YourSinclair weren't available in Polandso I couldn't just buy ZX mag everymonth :( (You were lucky there inEngland :)I have one complain about ZXF09 -where is article about year 1986?Will the saga be continued?And the last thing - emulators. Aswe all know the PCs are the mostpopular computers and there aremany Spectrum emulators for PC.But there are other computers tooand emulators for them. So,maybe an article about Spectrumemulators for Amiga?GreetingsPiotr Szymanski aka PopoCopRegarding Retrospective, MatthewHarrodine has not been in touchwith ZXF since issue 8 and is notreturning emails. Also his websiteappears to be permanently down.It's a source of considerableconcern for me and if anyone isable to put me in touch withMatthew or is able to let me knowhow he is I would appreciate thatgreatly.

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Hi Colin,It's Simon N Goodwin, ex Crash, SU,both YSes etc.I've got around to downloadingand reading issues 8 and 9 of ZXFand enjoyed reading them. I wasflattered to find myself in thewordsquare and have found 30words, though I'm not sure if theywere all intended - e.g. perhaps ZXwas present by chance. AlsoGraeme Kidd's name seems tohave been truncated(d :-).This mail is a collection ofcomments, which I hope you willtake in the context that I'm veryglad ZXF exists, and remember alot about the Sinclair heyday andtherefore am likely to be critical aswell as informative and (I hope,still) interesting.As regards the note about Fuse0.7.0 on page 20 of ZXF8, I'mpuzzled when you say that 'I don'thave a system capable of runningit' because clearly you havegeneric X86 hardware andeverything you need to run FUSE isfreely downloadable in the form ofnumerous Linux and BSDdistributions. The greatestweakness of ZXF is its ignorance ofnon-Windows systems (other thanSpectrums, of course) so Ivolunteer to set up a Linux systemon any machine or removabledrive you have spare, if you wish,by arrangement, to put this right,and put some ZX emulators on itfor good measure.My reviews of ZX emulators forLinux Format magazine are at:http://simon.mooli.org.uk/LXF/Spectra/Spectra.htmlI might update them but it's notyet a high priority. Back then Fusewas at version 0.3 and an also-ran- I suspect the Windows versionyou tried was of that vintage. There are reviews of many AmigaZX emulators here:

http://simon.mooli.org.uk/AF/7.htmlAgain there's been significantprogress since (most notably theport of X128, and ASP andCBSpeccy, both on Aminet) and Imay update the pages to notethis, but haven't scheduled time todo that yet. I did write a bit aboutthose in other magazine articlesafter the AF series finished.I've written quite a few reviews ofZX emulators for Qdos too, mostrecently in the final issue of YourSinclair (the final news-standedition, I should say). You mighthave spotted me a few times inRetro Gamer; I gave a long talkabout Sinclair spinoffs (ZX and QLclones), most of which Tarquin Millsnow has on DVD, at ORSAM 2004. Your readers might like to knowthat I've put all the articles andmany of the graphics from theSam Supplement disc-zine online:http://simon.mooli.org.uk/snarf/SUPPLEMENT/All the reviews, program notes,editorials, letters and lists of the fileson the 60 disks (freely download-able as +D/Disciple style 800K diskimages elsewhere) have beenconverted to HTML from theoriginal SAMScratch format, alongwith scores of SCREEN$ files now inPNG format linked to the HTML. Theconversion was done in SinclairSuperBASIC running on UQLX (aUnix Qdos emulator) as that madeit trivially easy to open the diskimages and read the directoriesand documents therein andconvert the contents to hyper-linked HTML). This was done withpermission of Dave Tonks,Supplement editor, and a CD withall the contents plus disk images,emulators and tools for varioussystems is available from me.Sam Supplement was a thrivinguser-group of active SAM BASICprogrammers and the disks providea vast resource of sample code

and tips for anyone who has aSAM or one of the SAM emula-torsand is keen to continue homecomputing in this exceptionallyproductive 'Super-Sinclair'environment.A retro remake of my DkTronics hitGold Mine is now underway,based on the later SAM versionbut with options to revert to the16K (DkTronics) or 48K (SUcovertape) version, and optionallynew 16 or 24 bit graphics andsound. I'll let you know whenthere's something to show of this -I'm helping an enthusiast convertthe SAM version to VB at themoment.Incidentally the 30M of 'stock' atSinclair was not properly explainedin the ZXF8 history of 1985. It hassince become known (I first heardit after the Amstrad takeover, froman ex-Sinclair employee) that mostof that 30M figure was derivedfrom accounting for all theuntested product returns (almostall of them 48K Spectrums, often infull working order sent back bycatalogue firms who asked noquestions) which Sinclair hadwarehoused pending a retestingprocess that wasn't even started tillafter Sinclair sold out - at their fullprice, delivered from Timex, of £30each. The 25% return rate that ledto Clive's spat with Chris Curry, onproduction of approaching fourmillion machines, accounts foralmost all the 'stock'. There weresome QLs and 128s in that pile, butonly a few thousand of each. Mostof the rest were returned byconsumers who couldn't cope withcassette loading. Quite a fewwere returned after the 12 monthwarranty expired. Sinclair's policywas to send out a fresh one fromcurrent production withoutquestion when a machine wassent back by a customer, and pileup the putative duds till it wasworthwhile sifting through them to

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find faults and reassemblecomplete sets - in practice, onlyafter Sinclair sold out and firms likePST bought up the 'stock' fromAmstrad.This explains why so many 'new'Spectrums released to retail camein reverse serial number order - lastin, first out. ;-) The collapse ofdistributors Prism was the fatalblow to Sinclair as it releasedSpectrum systems to retail atbelow Sinclair's cost price. Eventhough production was soonhalted there was no point in 'fixing'the 'stock' till the gut of machinesSinclair had supplied for distributioncleared, and Sinclair never reallygot over that.Your article about Spectrum discsystems was interesting though notparticularly informative; it's a pityyou did not mention the SixwordSwift Disk system which was thenicest ZX disc expansion, in variousways, I used in my time as CrashTechnical editor. I attach the textof my review, which you'rewelcome to edit and re-use if yousee fit. I've got the hardware in myshed and could dig it out for aphoto if you wanted and did notwant or could not find the Crashreview pics. It didn't work last time Itried it, but I'm not sure what partwas playing up. I'd be interestedto hear from others who own one.This article has been read from theVideo Genie disk on which I wrote

it with a Sinclair SuperBASICprogram (Multidos_bas, in theQuanta library) - I still use the QL toread such disks as 'modern'controllers can't read the FM(single density) format used by theoriginal TRS-80 and Genie WD-1771disk controller - and transferred toa 3.5" 1.44Mb Qdos floppy to becopied to the hard drive of theAmiga 4000 on which I'm writingthis note. Amigas can read Qdos180-1.44Mb, all Disciple, Plus D,Opus Discovery and +3 floppies asif they were native AmigaOS - orMSDOS - format, with free handlersfrom Aminet - so they pop up onthe desktop as icons, and can beloaded from like any native disk(preserving ZX file attributes likestart line and filetype) by anyapplication as soon as they're in amechanically-suitable drive on anyAmiga with the relevant (small,free) filesystem handler installed.XFS handles the most formats withone file, but there are dedicatedMGT and QL handlers freelyavailable on Aminet as well. Thesework with 'Catweasel' Zorro andPCI retro floppy controllers as wellas Commodore's standard 'Paula'one.Incidentally, I fear your 'prediction'of people being able to read MGTand Opus discs with a USB floppydrive in your look forward to 2014may be stymied by the sameignorance that leads people tobelieve that Windows is the only

OS ever used by anyone whomatters. My understanding is that -for firmware reasons, embeddedthe other side of the USB - thesedrives are not capable of readingthe 256 byte sectors standard onOpus discs and many earliermicros, and can only read diskswith the physical layout of MSDOS -9 or 18 sectors per track, of 512bytes each. This is OK for Qdos, STand later MacOS disks, but couldbe confounded by the use of atenth sector on MGT format disks,also an option on Atari, Linux etcetc - and used by Microsoft forsome distribution sets.Once again thanks for ZXF, I lookforward to the next whenever youfeel like doing it, and hope I canhelp you fill it with interesting stuff.Cheers,Simon N GoodwinMany thanks for this extremelyinformative letter Simon - and Itake pleasure in reprinting yourarticle on the following pages. Regarding Linux - well, yes, ZXF isdefinately the poorer for theabsence of any information onLinux emulators. The specificreasons for not having this on mysystem so far are to do with usingNTFS as my filing system. A fewpoeple - Simon included - havegiven me a few new ideas topursue on this, however, so by thenext ZXF things might be different...

NEW TO THE SPECTRUM SCENE?The essential sites you need to visit.

www.worldofspectrum.orgThe cornerstone of the community: emulation, discussion, downloads and online gaming.www.spectaculator.com; www.ramsoft.bbk.org; www.worldofspectrum.org/emulators.htmlYou'll be needing an emulator to play those games on...www.the-tipshop.co.ukMore tips, hints and pokes for those games than you can shake a pointy stick at.www.ysrnry.co.uk; www.crashonline.org.uk; www.sincuser.f9.co.ukThe online editions of all your favourite Spectrum magazines: YS, CRASH & Sinclair User.http://raww.org/Spectrum news from around the world. Constantly updated!www.sinclairfaq.comAll your further Spectrum questions answered.

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The Swift Disk system wasdeveloped last year [1986] for alarge company which

eventually lost interest in theSpectrum. The inventors - a groupof 'big computer' designers -decided to press on, and sell thesystem themselves. This is its firstever review.The Swift Disk began as an easy-to-use combination of a standard diskinterface and a 'press-button'copier like a MULTIFACE. Since thenit has grown in power, but theoriginal core remains.The interface is a black box withconnectors for a Kempston joystick,serial printer and up to fourstandard disk drives. You use yourSpectrum or 128 as normal, withthe interface connected.The fun starts when you press thebutton on the back. Whateverprogram you were running issuspended and the disk system

says hello. You can then use any ofthe SWIFT DOS commands. Forinstance: SAVE 0;FRED 7will save the entire contents ofmemory on disk zero, under thename FRED. Unlike a Multiface file,the data is not compressed, butyou can still get 13 48K images, orfour 128K ones, on a single disk.The '7' is the screen border colourto be set when the program is re-loaded. If you type an 'S' after thefile name, only the screen is saved.128 users can choose between itstwo possible screens. You can savethe contents of any memory areasimilarly.LOAD fetches programs, screens orcode from disk. QUIT lets you re-start the loaded program, with itsdisplay intact. '*' resets thecomputer. ERASE deletes disk files,unless you have used KEEP toprotect them against accidental

erasure.You only need to type the firstcharacter of a DOS command. Ifyou miss out parameters - e.g. youjust type 'L' - the system will ask youquestions to obtain any otherinformation it needs.ALTER lets you edit programmemory. Thus you can use all thePOKEs published in CRASH PlayingTips, without resorting to loadingtricks or a MULTIFACE.FORMAT makes a new disk readyfor use. It takes about two minutesto set up a 640K disk. When youformat a disk you must specify themaximum number of files it canhold; the default is 32; largernumbers slow things down andgobble up some file-space.CATALOGUE comes in twovariations: the BRIEF form tells youthe name of each disk file, thedate it was created, the size in 256character 'sectors', and the file

In response to last issue's article on storage solutions (originally printed inMicro-Mart), Simon Goodwin has not only sent us his original article forCRASH issue 44 (September 1987) describing the Swift Disk system, he'salso provided us with some new pictures of his own kit to look at.

The Swift disc interface used the same plastic moulding as Interface 1, and it can even be plugged in andused at the same time as Sinclair's microdrives, network and serial port.But Swift puts the Shugart-format floppy drive connector in the space Sinclair reserved for the net ports, adds aKempston-compatible autofire joystick port where Interface 1 had the serial port, and moves its own serialconnector to the space Sinclair used for microdrive connections, on a similar obscure IDC connector. The vitalsnapshot 'magic button' was added at the rear end, by the through-port.

ZXF10: 23

type. The FULL listing also tells youthe code address, start or recordsize of each file.MOVE and BACKUP transfer files, orentire disk contents includingempty spaces, between disks. Thisis a slow process, involving muchdisk-swapping, if you've only gotone drive: data is copied in 4Kchunks to avoid disturbing thecomputer's main memory. It's oftenquicker to copy files by loadingand saving them individually.

DISK BASICVersion one was ace forgamesters, but of limited use toprogrammers and 'serious' users.Version 2 added commandsavalable from BASIC, as well asthe DOS commands called up bythe magic button.The disk BASIC syntax is rathererratically recorded in both themanuals I received, but it's easyenough to work out with a littleexperimentation. Most diskcommands are distinguished by aper cent sign before the disk orchannel number. This is simplerthan the microdrive's ' *"m";1;" 'though OPEN and CLOSE look oddwith extra per cent and hash signsafter the 'automatic' hash thatcomes with the keyword.You can LOAD, SAVE and MERGEprograms, screens, code andarrays, just as with cassette butmuch faster. LOAD reads about 7Kevery second. If you LOAD amemory file created by SWIFT DOS

it runs automatically.Unlike Amstrad's Plus Three, theSwift Disk can OPEN files. You canuse up to four files on one disk atany time; these can be normal textfiles, processed with PRINT, INPUTand INKEY$, or random-access fileswith fixed length records, passedback and forth with IN and OUTkeywords. The BASIC interpretercan only process files at about 0.5Kper second.A file can be opened at the startor the end, but you can't 'rewind'or move about in a text file, andthere's no way to discard datafrom the end without creating anew file. The %EOF function letsyou detect the end of a file, butyou can't trap other errors without

a toolkit.You may run into problems if youCLEAR low addresses when usingSwift BASIC. There's no check onthe amount of free memory whenyou type in a program line, so youmay get 'stuck' editing a line if thesystem can't find enough room toconvert it into tokens.Swift include a FORMAT commandfor their printer port, which lets youLPRINT and LLIST at any speed toany width of serial printer.

MICRODRIVE EMULATIONProgrammers and serious users willbe especially impressed by themicrodrive emulator - a new

SWIFT DOS COMMANDSALTER <address> <value> Apply POKEs (as for Multiface)BACKUP <drive> <drive> Copies all files between 2 disksCATALOGUE <drive> /B/F List disk file detailsDATE <Day> <Month> <Year> Sets the default dateERASE <name> Erases a file from the diskFORMAT <name> <files> Formats disk for <files> filesKEEP <filename> Protects a file from ERASELOAD <filename> /Addr/S Loads a memory image fileMOVE <name> <name> Copies a disk fileSAVE <name> /S/CODE/DATA Save image, screen or data fileUNKEEP <name> Removes 'KEEP' protection* Resets the computerQUIT Returns from DOS to main program

All commands can be abreviated to their first letter.<name> = (optional drive No.;) 1-10 character filename.

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feature of version 3. This lets yourun commercial microdriveprograms on disk without changes.You don't need Interface 1 or 'real'microdrives, although an Interface1 manual is useful if you want todevelop new microdrive programs- Swift don't document the Sinclairdrive commands.The microdrive emulator is easy touse. It takes about four seconds toload a file called EMUL, whichstores a close imitation of Sinclair'smicrodrive system in the diskinterface RAM. Swift DOS and SwiftBASIC are disabled and replacedwith microdrive commands just likethose provided by Interface 1.The main difference - besides amassive increase in reliability - is

that FORMAT grabs an area of diskspace and uses it to imitate amicrodrive, rather than set up areal cartridge. The disk areaappears as one 128K file from SwiftDOS, but when the emulator isloaded CAT shows you up to 50files 'inside' that area. Four 'pseudo-cartridges' fit on one disk, and youcan use them all at once if youlike.The competing Disciple disk systemmakes a brave attempt atmicrodrive emulation, by recognis-ing microdrive BASIC syntax andthe 'hook codes' - microdrivesystem calls provided by Sinclair.Unfortunately 'real' machine-codeprograms like Tasword 3 tend toleap directly into interface routines.Only the Swift Disk can cope with

this, by mimicking the Interface 1code right up to the point atwhich data is about to be read orwritten.I tried out a pre-release version ofEMUL with all the microdriveprograms I could muster, and itworked remarkably well. I had notrouble creating disk versions ofthe programs by loading theemulator and following themicrodrive transfer instructions.All the programs loaded andsaved disk data files withouttrouble. Besides Tasword I triedCheetah's Sound Sampler,Powerprint 2, Beta BASIC, HisoftPascal 1.6M, Oasis's Laser Genius,MIRA Pascal (a new compiler,reviewed next month),Discovery/Gremlin's CodeMachine 3.1 and its parent,Pictureque's EDITAS 2.1. CAToptions, multi-file assembly andother tricky operations workedfine.The only things that went wrongwere file ERASE operations fromTasword and the Sound Sampler.Both programs ignored thecommand. Swift say they've sincemoved a misplaced instruction inthe emulator, and ERASE nowworks even if the microdrive ROMis called directly.The microdrive emulator is apowerful incentive to buy a Swiftdisk, if you already use microdrivesoftware - or would like to butcan't stand the cartridges.At the moment EMUL runs atabout the same speed as a real

SWIFT BASIC COMMANDSCAT %( stream,)drive (;B/F)CLOSE % streamERASE %drive;"filename"FORMAT %drive;"diskname" (,maxfilecount)FORMAT % stream;"T"/"B",baudrate,linelengthIN % stream,variable,recordnumINKEY$ streamINPUT stream;<variables>LOAD %drive;"filename" (,LINE/DATA/CODE/SCREEN$)MERGE %drive;"filename"OPEN % stream;drive;"filename","R"/"W"/"A", "T"/"R",lenOUT % stream,variable,recordnumPRINT stream;<values>SAVE %(drive;)"filename" (,LINE/DATA/CODE/SCREEN$)

Items in brackets are optional. "/" separates alternatives.

ZXF10: 25

microdrive, although CAT andERASE are noticeably faster. Swiftare still fine-tuning their code, andhope to double the speed ofmany file operations by'interleaving' data inside thepseudo-cartridge.

HARDWAREThe Swift Disk interface uses thesame black plastic box as Sinclair'sInterface 1, with the words 'Sinclair'and 'ZX Interface 1' filed off andcovered with plastic stickers. Theinterface fits the original SinclairSpectrum models well, but it's avery tight fit on the Amstrad PlusTwo.A Kempston joystick socket skulksat the back of the box, where theInterface 1 serial plug used to fit.Some of the original holes in thecase have been cut out to makeroom for different connectors. Thedisk drive socket sticks out whereInterface 1's network sockets usedto live.The disk connector is the same asis used by the BBC Micro and QL,among other machines, so there'sno shortage of alternative drives.You can plug in up to four'modern' 3.5 inch or 5.25 inchdrives; the software automaticallyadjusts to different drive formats.Some old drives can't switch tracksfast enough - Swift only allowdrives six thousandths of a secondto step from one track to the next.The Disciple interface copes withslower drives, but you must load a'configuration' file whenever youstart to use it. The Disciple alsolimits you to two drives.Alongside the Swift disk connectoris an edge connector for otherSpectrum peripherals. You canplug in anything that does not usea 'magic button' to interrupt thecomputer. Swift hope to removeeven this restriction.After all this standardisation theprinter port almost comes as arelief to Spectrum fans, used to theway Sinclair defied convention.The port uses the ultimate obscuresocket - a modified Microdriveedge-connector!

Sixword didn't send an adapter(#14.95), despite requests, so Ican't say how well it works. Theysay it's much like the port on theInterface 1 - in other words, O.K.for driving an RS-232 printer, but abitch for anything else. ZX andAlphacom printers still work.You can plug a genuine SinclairInterface 1 into the back of theSwift unit, and run microdrives anddisks at the same time. You can'tuse real microdrives while you'reusing the microdrive emulator, forobvious reasons, but Swift supply aprogram to move the contents ofa tape into a 'psuedo-microdrive'automatically.

TECHTALKThe SWIFT contains 8K RAM and16K ROM. The ROM is split into 4Ksections, with space for up to 32K.The entire system, including thedisk and printer ports, is invisiblyhidden under the Spectrum's 16KROM unless the DOS is in use. Thismakes it hard for protectedsoftware to detect and disable theinterface; I have yet to find aprogram that won't SAVE to diskproperly.The circuit-board is crammed intothe Interface 1 box with no roomto spare. It is well-engineered butcrying out for some more space.Swift intend to use their own boxeventually, saving space andmoney by re-designing the logiccircuit to use custom PLA chips.

COMPETITIONThe Swift disk is very competitivelypriced, mainly because it is onlyavailable direct from themanufacturers. The interface costs£75 on its own, or £149 with aseparate 640K 3.5 inch drive andpower-supply. That's a bargainprice for the drive - you'd be hardput to find a similar unit anywherefor under £100.The Swift unit competes with theDisciple interface, which FrancoFrey reviewed here in March. TheDisciple costs £90 without a drive.Both load at similar speeds, but the

Swift SAVE is about twice as fast asDisciple's.The Disciple has the edge in termsof hardware - it packs 780K, ratherthan 640K onto a disk, althoughsome of that space is needed forits configuration file. It has Sinclairstandard joystick and networkports, and a flexible driver forparallel printers. The Swift is easierto use, and significantly morecompatible with existing programs.Amstrad evidently think aSpectrum with a disk drive is worth£250, or at least £200 - ourpredicted price for the Plus Threethis Christmas. If you've alreadygot a Spectrum, and want disks,an add-on interface is cheaperand - at least for the time being -more flexible than Amstrad's PlusThree.The Plus Three has less than a thirdof the speed and capacity of theSwift or Disciple. The Amstrad won'twork with microdrive software, andlacks BASIC file-handlingcommands. Most damning of all,there's no easy way to transferprotected game tapes onto PlusThree disks. Spectrum-specificsoftware may be published in thatformat, but I'd be amazed to see'hit' programs released on threeinch disk alone, with no tapeversion for other users.The Plus Three benefits from serialand parallel output ports, andcomes all in one box. In theory it iscompatible with the old CP/Mbusiness operating system, but 80-column display hardware will beneeded before most programs willwork. Frankly, I don't thinkSpectrum users need or wantCP/M.

VERDICTThe Swift disk is well-engineeredand competitively priced. It's fast,friendly and uniquely compatiblewith existing Spectrum software.The question is, can Spectrumusers afford a £150 upgrade? It'sworth it, but only if the restrictionsof cassette are hampering youruse of the computer. You DO getvalue for money - a disk drivetotally transforms your system.

ZXF10: 26

New:PC-PSU with supply for 2 Floppies and MB02 36,00 €MB02-Printerlead 13,00 €Proface AT Extern (Interface for connecting PC-Keyboards to Spectrum) 69,00 € KSProface AT Intern (internal interface) 62,00 € KSMelodik AY-Soundbox (unboxed) 24,00 € KS+2 Cassette recorder 36,00 €Floppy Disc drive (1,86 with MB02, 720k with Opus, 780k with +D) Please specify 24,00 €PSU for +2A/B and +3 or PSUl for +2 (also 48k and 128k) Please specify 29,00 €FDD lead for 2 drives 4,00 €Multiface 128 (works also on 48k Spectrums 26,00 €Dust Cover 48k+/128k 8,00 €Plus 3 Tapelead 9,90 €Normal Tapelead 3,00 €Spectrum +2 Lightpen 36,00 €Spectrum +3 Lightpen 27,00 €Phaser Gun with Software (Tape or +3) 19,00 €SCART-Monitor cable (choose for 128k/+2 or +2A/+3) 25,00 €VGA-BOX (connect Spectrum 128/+2 to VGA monitor) 49,00 €VGA-BOX Multi purpose (Connect any PC monitor to Spectrum 128/+2) 79,00 €+3 drive belt 2,00 €Silver paper for ZX Printer 5,00 €Keyboard membrane 48k 11,00 €Keyboard membrane Spectrum +/128k, new quality, not aging 21,00 €Spectrum keyword stickers 8,00 €Used:Sinclair ZX Spectrum 128k, complete with all cables 129,00 €Sinclair ZX Spectrum +2, complete with all cables 79,00 €Sinclair ZX Spectrum +2A, complete with all cables 69,00 €Sinclair ZX Spectrum +3, built in 3'' drive, complete with all cables 99,00 €Sinclair Spectrum 48k (Gummy), complete with all cables 64,00 €Sinclair Spectrum 48k +, complete with all cables 64,00 €+3 Drive (tested) 29,00 €Interface I 69,00 €Microdrive 25,00 €Wafadrive 39,00 €Opus Discovery Diskinterface with 1 x 720k Drive 119,00 €Joystick interface 1-Port 3,00 € 2-Port 11,00 €Joystick (many different) 2,50 €Sinclair SJS-Joystick (+2/+3) 6,00 €Consumables:Microdrive Cartridges (ex-software) 3,50 €Wafadrive Cartridges 16K= 7,00 €, 32K= 7,50 €

Also we have a lot of Software offers and books. Please contact us and we will send you our pricelist.Products marked KS are sold in the name of Kompakt Servis. We organise the business.Prices excluding postage. Delivery as long as stock lasts.

Orders to: SINTECH, Gastäckerstr. 23, 70794 Filderstadt, GermanyTel./Fax: 0049 711 775033 email: sintech@online.de http://www.sintech-shop.de

PRICE LIST (prices checked April 2005)

ZXF10: 27

SPECTRUM +3 SOFTWARE ANDSPARES

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.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 onlysupplied. 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 KING26, GUYSFIELD DRIVE, SOUTH HORNCHURCH, RAINHAM, ESSEX.

RMI3 7AJTEL: 01708 630477 john@pcwking.freeserve.co.uk

www.pcwking.freeserve.co.uk

ZXF10: 28

USE YOUR VOTE WISELY ON 5 MAY

�Vote Spectrum

Dear Valued Constituent,

You might find it surprising that a 1980s home computer is standing for

election as a member of parliment in your area. After all, computers

have tried and failed for many years to pass tests of 'human intelligence'.

But what exactly does that phrase mean?

Apparently it's supposed to have something to do with the way in which

decisions and policies are made. 'Intelligent' decisions are:

• based on evidence• made for the benefit of all ('all' meaning all, not 'us' or 'me')

As opposed to:• based on how we think reality should be, dammit• based on how we're feeling at the time (generally bored, irritated,

angry or scared shitless)

The mistake that voters are making, year after year, is to assume that

polititians are capable of human intelligence. In fact, most politians

would not even pass the Turing test. Computers, however, are just as

capable of bad decision making as polititians are - and they don't have

salaries and expense accounts. In the case of the ZX Spectrum you don't

even need an IT support department.

On 5 May, make sure your vote counts and elect the candidate whose

mistakes will at least produce a recognisable error message. Using

the award winning 'Member of Parliment' software by Sinclair

your Spectrum will make decisions on your behalf based on:

• FOR ... NEXT looping• available memory• the activities of the kettle/vacuum cleaner next door

Additional software modules will include Daley Thompson's

Olympic Bid, MacMan's Magic Treasurer, Cookie (Jamie Oliver

37p budget re-release) and the ever popular Horace and the

Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Say farewell to dashed hopes and make colour clash a feature

of Daily Mail editorials. Vote Spectrum on 05/05/05.

P.S. Please don't vote Commodore. That would be just silly.

HIGGLEDY PIGGLEDYAuthor: Jonathan Cauldwell; published by Cronosoft Price: £2.99 Reviewer: Colin Woodcock/James ZeunWebsite: www.cronosoft.co.uk

Another year; another Cronosoftrelease; another game byJonathan Cauldwell. The first thatthe denziens of WoS Forums knewof this upcoming release wasCronosoft's Simon Ullyatt asking forentries in an inlay designingcompetition. A very strangethread followed, but Simon got hisentries nonetheless and the coverfor Higgledy Piggledy is one of thebest Cronosoft inlays so far.The game? It's to do withInterplanetary Pig Farmer EadwigAddlethorpe. Of course it is.Eadwig's pigs - through some sortof odd evolutionary quirk - can fly;this, of course, is not normalporcine behaviour and frankly itmakes things rather awkward forEadwig when it comes to round-ing them up for slaughter. He'sinstalled a number of teleporters -like you do - in order to sendthem off to the pig processingplant, but can he direct thosepigs successflly into the telepor-ter? He can not. And that, ofcourse, is where you come in.If it was down to me a rifle and apointer dog would do the trickquite nicely; instead we are givena fiendishly addictive puzzlegame where you both movearound the playing area andattempt to influence the directionof the pigs by picking up andmoving blocks one at a time. Thepigs, you see, move along instraight lines until they hit a block,at which point they take a right-angled turn. It's a bit like acombination of Lemmings andthat game where you control thelight with the mirrors. But morefrustrating. Oh yes - and better.In my opinion Jonathan Cauldwellhas already made a permanentname for himself in Spectrumsoftware, simply due to the fact

that it's the twenty-first century andhe's the only guy around bangingout Spectrum games at thefrequency and high quality that heis. All of his games to date havebeen highly competant, attractiveand fun-to-play pieces of work but,with the possible exception of FunPark, I can't say in all honesty thatanything he's done so far standsout as a Specrum classic in its ownright. But Higgledy Piggledy does.There are a number of simple, butvery effective ways in which heachieves this - we're not talkingmulticolour effects or bordergraphics here, just striking visualsand simple gameplay. The back-grounds against which Eadwig andpigs move in particular are cleverly

managed patchworks which looklike they shouldn't be possible on aSpectrum. Of course you quicklyrealise that the effect has more todo with good colour placementthan it does any tomfoolery withthe TV beam, but by then theillusion has done its work and whatyou're left with is a 'look' that willnow always be associated with thisspecific game. Higgledy Piggledyhas that ultra-special quality: itdoesn't look like something you'veseen before. Add in a wacky seriesof title screen animations (pigsflying; sausages sizzling: you knowthe sort of thing) and you havesomething completely unique. I'veapplauded Jonathan's workbefore, but this gets an ovation.

ZXF10: 30

JAMES ZEUNHiggledy Piggledy is achallanging game andcertainly worth getting. WhenI first began playing, I was alittle confused as to how Idirected my pigs to theteleporter. It seemed at thetime to be an impossible task,yet I still managed to do it. Iwas disappointed with thelack of music on the titlescreen - a game like thisdeserves a theme tune. In-game sound effects arepretty basic, even for theSpectrum. However these areonly minor things, and whencompared to the gamespolished design can bedismissed. I personally hopethis isn’t the last we see ofEadwig Addlethorpe. Thereare certainly many directionsthe creator could take thischaracter, without restricting itto this one game design. LikeDizzy, I believe Eadwig couldbe the Spectrum's leadingcharacter for 2005. Which Idon’t believe would be a badthing. It’s overdue thatSpectrum users had acomputer icon to be proudof. Dizzy did this well for sometime, but with no new officialDizzy games being releasedfor the Spectrum. I believeEadwig could do a good jobin fulfilling this role.

Author: Santiago Romero Published by Compiler Software Price: FreeReviewer: C Woodcock Website: ww.speccy.org/compiler/index_en.php

ZX COLUMNSZX Columns is actually one ofthree new games available fordownload from the CompilerSoftware website. And they're allfree. There's Another Brick On TheWall 2, a remake by Miguel A.García Prada of the gamepresented to 2004 BASIC Contestat Bytemaniacos (winner of itscategory) - a sideways variant onArkanoid/Batty, etc, andreasonably fun, but very BASIC inits look and feel (presumably it'sbeen compiled). And there's ZXPoker by Santiago Romero whichpretty much does exactly whatyou might imagine it does,although I don't know how to playpoker so we'll just have to trust it(we'll have to arrange for Sir Cliveto give it a go).But ZX Columns is my favourite ofthe bunch by far, also pro-grammed by Santiago Romeroand with graphics by Davit Masía.It's basically aTetris/ConnectFour hybrid wherethe aim is to lineup colouredgems thatdescend invertical columnsof three. Youcan rotate thecolours beforeyou drop thecolumns, butonly whenthree gems ofthe samecolour arelined up(eitherhorizontally,vertically ordiagonally)will theydisappear.Apparently

this was a classic for the SEGAMaster System that's since beenremade for a number of morerecent platforms. And now its theSpectrum's turn.I must admit I enjoyed ZX Columnsquite a lot more than I expectedto; I was horrified to discover justhow much time had elapsedplaying it on only my first go [whichmeans it's probably too easy - Ed].It's a straightforward game but it'salso a very addictive one.

ZXF10: 31

DOCTUMAuthor: Carlos Gandarillas, Antonio Ballesteros Price: Free Reviewer: James ZeunDownload: www.worldofspectrum.org

When I was first offered to reviewthis game, I was slightly suspicious.Not because it was an adventuregame, which requires skill.Something I lack when it comes tothese games. But because it wasall in Spanish. Erm, I don’t speakspeak Spanish ‘EDFrom the first look of the menu, Iwas intrigued. I half expected thisgame to be about barbarians orat least something along the linesof Golden Axe. What with the

sword and Axe incorporated intothe title. It’s also worth mentioningthat the menu screen is accompa-nied by a pretty catchy tune.Which I’m sure, I recognise as asong by Wham.You start in a room that wouldn’tlook out of place in a Dizzy game,with a strange little rat runningaround on the level below you.Now at first I didn’t know exactlywhat was going on, so I died onseveral occasions. This was before

realising I could not only kickthings, but if I pressed down Icould press the action key andfire my gun. (Poor Dizzy, he couldhave use one of these??)So from the onset it looks likeDoctum is an adventure game,similar to say “Tomb Raider”. Yourun around collecting Blue gemsand if you’re in a serious pickleyou can also find the odd heartto give you another life. While Iwasn’t able to get very far, due

to my lacking in the adventureskill dept. I still found Doctum tobe very enjoyable, if not a littlefrustrating. I’d say 60% ofwhat’s on the screen is there tokill you in some hideous orotherwise gruesome way.Spikes, dogs, rats and flyingarrows are amongst the arsanalof obstructions you willencounter when trying to getyour grubby hands on thoseprecious blue gems. So what about the bad bits?Well when calculating a jump,it became a tad annoyingwhen an invisible ceiling wouldsuddenly stop me from clearinga spike in the floor. Sometimeswhen you are standingbeneath a lantern and youthink you have cleared it justenough to jump, in actual fact

you haven’t. Which if like me youdiscover after reaching threescreens past the beginning. It canre-kindle primordial rages not seensince the days of the cave manand pointy sticks. If you put the object detection toone side, I think Doctum is a prettygood game. I think it stands upwell against other published works.I’d certainly like to see it put on totape. It would complimentanyone’s game collection.

Map:www.iespana.es/carlogical

ZXF10: 32

VEGA SOLARISAuthor: Fernando Saenz Perez, Carlos Garcia Cordero Price: Free Reviewer: Colin Woodcock Website: www.speccy.org/trastero/2005/070305/070305.htm

Benefit of the doubt time here.Apparently Vega Solaris is apreviously unreleased Spanish titlefrom Dinamic which was sched-uled for release originally in 1989. Itonce was lost but now it's found.Although in fact there's been aVega Solaris up on WoS for sometime now, one which looks almostidentical to this new find but whichwas released in 1987. Admitedlythe WoS version is just a snapshotfile and the new 'find' is a properTZX, complete with a rather snazzy

loading screen that featuresnothing less than a minatureSpace Invaders game you canplay whilst the game's loading(although I can't for the life of mework out how to fire). The WoS titlequite clearly states in the mainmenu that its release date is 1987;the new version quite clearly states1989. So it's a little bit of a mystery,and the blurb on the page fromwhich you can download thegame (see above) doesn't reallygive all that much information

about the game (particularly onceit's been run through the Googletranslator) other than thatsomeone is jolly chuffed withthemselves that they've found it.It's undisputable, however, that thisis graphically a very nice game tolook at (do I sense a hint of SabreWulf in some screens?). It's worthchecking out for this alone. Theplot's still a bit of mystery atpresent, but I'm sure this too willcome to be found eventually.

ZXF10: 33

This is loooong overdue, I'm sure you'll agree. What with all these new Spectrumgames being released over the last few years our pointy sticks have been justcrying out for a new bunch of hints, tips and pokes to be shaken at. So get...erm... shaking...

Flash BeerHere's some Tipshop pokesfor the Boulderdash cloneby Weird Science Software.Provided by Martin Ball

Part 1Infinite Lives: 32860,0 Immunity: 35201,201

Part 2Infinite Lives: 32860,0 Immunity: 35310,201

Part 3No of Lives: 49591,x Immunity: 35516,201

TV-GAME

Blown away by TV-GAME's amazing border graphics? Hidden awayin the game is code that pushes the barriers back even further: pressSYMB SHIFT + CAPS SHIFT + V at the main menu and you too can getamazing extra multi-colour bats just like those shown above.

WILLY POKINGFinding Dr Andrew Broad's MinerWilly games just a tad on thedifficult side? No? You sir are nothuman. Luckily for us Dr Broaddoes at least appear to be inposession of some humanity, forhe's included an infinite lives pokefor his games.Manic Miner: Neighbours and MaJollie both use POKE 35136,0; PartyWilly, on the other hand, usesPOKE 35899,0

CAULDWELL CAULDWELL CAULDWELL CAULDWELL CORNERCORNERCORNERCORNERJonathan Cauldwell himselfhas sent us in the following:Rough JusticeTo skip a difficult screen pausethe game, then hold downthe SYMBOL SHIFT key andpress 5.Egghead 3To teleport around theunderground complex holddown SYMBOL SHIFT and pressX. Where you end up dep-ends which room you telepor-ted from, but most of the timeyou will be taken straight tothe room containing Egg-head's Spectrum games.Collect the disc, then pressSYMB SHIFT and X again, andyou will be teleported back tothe start. This makes thegame far easier to complete.Higgledy PiggledyFor invulnerability enter "OINK"as your name for the highscore table. (Actually,entering "ZXF" has the sameeffect!) There's also a hiddengame but I'm saying no more!

ZXF10: 34

Walkthrough Walkthrough Walkthrough Walkthrough - --- by by byby Wibble Wibble Wibble Wibble and and and and Blim Blim Blim Blim for for for for CASACASACASACASANote that this is a brief solution to this very well-written game. There aremany objects which can be examined and some of the descriptions are areal joy.Inventory, x epipen, x doll, x bull, x post office, get post office, look,leave (you're asked to find the post office).North, enter car park, x daughter, x wife, x car, leave, north, entertelephone box ("the door won't open" - though, if you wait around,someone will appear and actually enter it - you cannot for the moment),enter field, leave.South x 3, enter cafe, x menu ("unhealthy"), leave, south, enter arcade(Robby hands you the bull and disappears), x bull ("China. Made inChina."), leave.South x 2, southwest x 2, x wasp, touch wasp, use epipen, west x 2, xruins, east, down x 2, x couple, climb over railing, west x 2, south, entercarriage, x rag, east, east ("A man blocks the corridor."), enter cabin(you can't), blink (the scenery changes), west, leave carriage.

You meet Bart again (note the reference to manual 214 and theprocedure described on page 392), x token, eat token, x token, climbfence, north x 4, x girl (hmm, something very strange is happening), givedoll to girl (and receive the bag in return), x bag, get post office out ofbag.Leave (the girl now follows you), north, blink at girl, sit down, blink (youreappear, alongside the little girl, in the village cafe), stand up, leave,north x 3, enter telephone box, leave (and you find yourself in thecontrol room).X man, get manual 214, read page 392 (note the reference to buttons 2and 98), say to girl "press button", point at button 98, press button 2.All becomes clear and you are given another task. Enter lift, leave, enterfield, smash bull with post office (and reach the lengthy ending screens).

Displayed on the Classic Adventures SolutionArchive: http://solutionarchive.com/

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X ME (personal details of your character -note occupation), I (an ID card, a slip ofnotepaper, a car key), READ NOTEPAPER (alist of questions to ask the hotel guests andstaff), NE (reception), RING BELL (to attractionreceptionist's attention), SHOW ID CARD (nowhave large brass key to room 12), U (firstfloor landing), SW (need brass key). Now inyour hotel room, no luggage but see a letter.TAKE LETTER, READ LETTER, DROP ALL, TAKEBRASS KEY, N, SAY PORTER "WHERELUGGAGE", D (hallway), NE, RING BELL, SAYRECEPTIONIST "WHERE LUGGAGE", RING BELL,SAY RECEPTIONIST "WHEN DINNER" (told eighto'clock), S, X CLOCK.N, E, N (lounge), TURN ON TV (news reportabout sightings of UFOs in the area), S, W,OPEN DOORS, N, N, E (shed), TAKE ROPE.When the gardener appears X GARDENER(note what he is carrying). He wanders aroundthree locations, here, by the gate, and thepatio. When he drops the calculator and smallkey, pick them up. Return to the hallway. U, N(into room 14 - see a lady), SAY LADY "I AMA JOURNALIST", SAY LADY "DID UFOS LAND",SAY LADY "HOW MANY WERE THERE", SAYLADY "WHAT DID THEY LOOK LIKE", S. When the business man appears GIVECALCULATOR TO BUSINESS MAN (he gives youa tenner). When the middle-aged man appearsSAY MAN "DID UFOS LAND" (he gives you atorn map), SAY MAN "HOW MANY WERETHERE", SAY MAN "WHAT DID THEY LOOKLIKE". Return to the hallway, X CLOCK (shouldbe just after eight o'clock and everyone shouldbe at dinner).N (dining room), SIT DOWN, if necesasaryWAIT (until waiter appears and starts babblingabout UFOs), HIT WAITER (he calms down andgives you a crucifix to give to thebarmaid/bargirl), WAIT (until he brings yoursoup), EAT SOUP, GET U, E, N (lounge -

THE FOREST STOPThe The The The Forest Forest Forest Forest Stop Stop Stop Stop is is isis a aaa 128K128K128K128K adventure adventure adventure adventure game game game game I III wrote wrote wrote wrote in in inin the the the the late late late late 80s 80s 80s 80s using using using using PAW. PAW. PAW. PAW. Which Which Which Which never never never never got got got got published. published. published. published. When When When When I III set set set set up up upup my my mymy firstfirstfirstfirstSpeccySpeccySpeccySpeccy website website website website (see (see (see (see p54p54p54p54) ))) aaaa page page page page of of ofof it it itit was was was was dedicated dedicated dedicated dedicated to to toto TFSTFSTFSTFS and and and and a aaa snapshot snapshot snapshot snapshot available available available available to to toto download. download. download. download. One One One One problem problem problem problem I III had, had, had, had, however,however,however,however,was was was was that that that that I III couldn't couldn't couldn't couldn't recall recall recall recall its its its its solution. solution. solution. solution. I III asked asked asked asked visitors visitors visitors visitors to to toto have have have have a aaa go go gogo at at atat finding finding finding finding out, out, out, out, but but but but no no nono submissions submissions submissions submissions came...came...came...came...More More More More recently recently recently recently Douglas Douglas Douglas Douglas HarterHarterHarterHarter (see (see (see (see p38p38p38p38) ))) set set set set up up upup a aaa new new new new contest contest contest contest for for for for me me meme in in inin monthly monthly monthly monthly IF IF IFIF magazine magazine magazine magazine Adventure Adventure Adventure Adventure Probe Probe Probe Probe and and and and the the the the solution solution solution solution hashashashasbeen been been been worked worked worked worked on on onon by by byby noneothernoneothernoneothernoneother than than than than the the the the editor editor editor editor of of ofof this this this this publication, publication, publication, publication, BarbaraBarbaraBarbaraBarbara Gibbs.Gibbs.Gibbs.Gibbs. BarbaraBarbaraBarbaraBarbara has has has has produced produced produced produced a aaa stunning stunning stunning stunning piece piece piece piece of of ofof work,work,work,work,which which which which stirred stirred stirred stirred memories memories memories memories aplenty aplenty aplenty aplenty as as asas I III followed followed followed followed it. it. it. it. Unfortunately Unfortunately Unfortunately Unfortunately she she she she also also also also seems seems seems seems to to toto have have have have uncovered uncovered uncovered uncovered a aaa bug bug bug bug which which which which messes messes messes messes about about about about withwithwithwiththe the the the ending, ending, ending, ending, so so soso I've I've I've I've got got got got a aaa little little little little compensatory compensatory compensatory compensatory coding coding coding coding to to toto do do dodo this this this this summer summer summer summer before before before before I III put put put put the the the the game game game game back back back back on on onon my my mymy website. website. website. website. Oh Oh OhOh well...well...well...well...In In InIn the the the the meantime meantime meantime meantime a aaa big big big big thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou to to toto BarbaraBarbaraBarbaraBarbara - --- her her her her almost-complete almost-complete almost-complete almost-complete solution solution solution solution is is isis below below below below - --- who'll who'll who'll who'll be be bebe recievingrecievingrecievingrecieving a aaa signed signed signed signed copy copy copy copy of of ofof BLINK BLINK BLINK BLINK forforforforher her her her troubles.troubles.troubles.troubles.

bargirl usually here), GIVE CRUCIFIX TOBARGIRL (she takes you to the beer room, butyou are discovered by the barman), KISSBARGIRL (barman is satisfied and leaves, thebargirl gives you her diary of events andsuggests you look for the teleport, maybe Jimthe gardener can help). Now back in bar.LOOK (until barman appears), BUY BEER.N (lounge), TURN TV OFF, READ DIARY (notedetails), S, W, S, U, N (room 14), SEARCHROOM (find an album of photographs), XPHOTOS, S, D, N, N, N, E (garden shed).When the gardener appears GIVE TENNER TOGARDENER, SAY GARDENER "WHERE ISTELEPORT" (he says it is in the attic), GIVEPHOTOS TO GARDENER, TAKE UNLIT TORCHFROM GARDENER, TAKE ROPE. Go to patio if not already there. X WALL(covered in ivy), U, U, W (outside room 23),SMASH WINDOW (now in room 23 - see arubber-suited body), X BODY, SEARCH BODY(now have a slip of paper and a laserweapon), READ SLIP PAPER (ticked staff arethe ones taken over by the aliens), X LASER,Should now hear footsteps. HIDE UNDER BED,WAIT, WAIT (porter goes into the bathroom), S(to exit the room), X CEILING (see atrapdoor), OPEN TRAPDOOR (too high).

D, SW, DROP DIARY, GO TO BED, I (shouldhave brass key, rope, unlit torch, laserweapon, small key, torn map), N, D, (hallway),X CLOCK (just after 10 o'clock), N, UNLOCKDOORS, OPEN DOORS, N, CLOSE DOORS, N(by gate), OPEN GATE, N (road), READ TORNMAP, DROP TORN MAP, N (forest), N, N, N, N,N, N, N, N, N, N, N, E, E, E, E, E, E (clearing- see house to the north), N, N (by door),OPEN DOOR, N (challenged by another rubber-suited figure), FIRE LASER (that's got rid ofit).N, U, DROP ALL, TAKE ROPE, TIE ROPE TODOOR, TAKE TORCH, U (fall through hole instairs), TURN TORCH ON, TAKE CAN OFPARAFFIN, CLIMB ROPE, DROP ROPE, TURNTORCH OFF, TAKE SMALL KEY, TAKE LASER,TAKE BRASS KEY, N, E (small living room),TAKE BLACK BOX, X BLACK BOX, W, S, S(clearing), S, S, S, W, W, W, W, W, W, S, S, S,S, S, S, S, S, S, S, S (back at road), S, S, S(back on patio), UNLOCK DOORS (if necessary,need small key), OPEN DOORS, S, CLOSEDOORS, S, X CLOCK (should be around 11.30when the night porter arrives).WAIT (until night porter arrives at 11.30), XNIGHT PORTER (note he is carrying a thermosflask), N, E, CLIMB OVER BAR, S (beer room),

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TAKE WINE, SAY BARGIRL "TELEPORT INATTIC", N, CLIMB OVER BAR, W, S, NE, N, N(reception office - see the thermos flask here),POUR WINE INTO FLASK, S, S, U, SW, DROP ALL, TAKE BRASS KEY, WAIT (about 5 to10 turns), N, D (night porter will probablycatch you but that awful day porter shouldhave gone), SW, GO TO BED ???N, DROP BRASS KEY, D, X CLOCK (should bejust after 1 o'clock - night porter is asleep),N, E, CLIMB OVER BAR, S (bargirl should behere) SAY BARGIRL "???" N (bargirl follows you???), CLIMB OVER BAR, W, W, W, N, W (intomanager's office), TURN COMPUTER ON(manager slumps in his chair), SEARCHMANAGER (find a badge), WEAR BADGE. Donot turn off the computer. E, S, E, D(basement), TAKE CRATE, U, E, S, U, U, DROPCRATE, D, D, N, W, W, S, W (staff bedroom),TAKE GRENADE, E, N, E, E, S, U, TAKE BRASSKEY, SW, X DRESSING TABLE, TAKE CHAIR, N,U, PUT CHAIR ON CRATE, D, SW, TAKE LASER,TAKE BOX, TAKE PARAFFIN, TAKE TORCH, N,DROP BRASS KEY.U, CLIMB ON CHAIR, OPEN TRAPDOOR, U(dark), TURN TORCH ON, X CONSOLE, PUTBLACK BOX INTO HOLE, STAND ON PLATFORM(teleported to alien ship), FIRE LASER, W, N, N(must be wearing badge), DIVE, FIRE LASER,THROW GRENADE, THROW PARAFFIN (youcrawl south), need Bargirl present to save you ???

ADVENTURE PROBE is a paper-based fanzine forplayers of text adventures. Probe, as it is affectionately known, is a monthly A5magazine with 48 to 60 pages per issue. There aresections for letters, reviews, articles, advertisements,newsdesk, plus reference pages containing solutions,objects and their uses, getting you started, redherrings, bugs and amusing responses, hints and tips,and more. Contributions are sent in by the small butvery loyal readership. It was founded in June 1986 by Sandra Sharkey andPat Winstanley. After a few years Mandy Rodriguesbecame editor, and in June 1992 I took over as itsthird editor. There is a magazine for EVERY month todate.There have been many changes in the computerworld during the last twenty years. Most adventurersstarted on a C64, Spectrum or Amstrad, and maybeupgraded to an Atari or Amiga. (As a matter ofinterest I started on a BBC B.) As it become impossibleto get these computers repaired, it was a naturalprogression to play text adventures on a PC undervarious emulations, as well as the PC-specificadventures. As the number of subscribers is falling, eventually thetime will come when Probe will no longer be printed.However, one thing won’t change, and that is ourlove of text adventures.

Barbara GibbAdventure Probe52 Burford RoadLiverpool L16 6AQU.K.gibb2@blueyonder.co.uk

AboutAdventure Probe

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PAW obviously made an impressionon you when it came out. Wereyou a Spectrum user at the time? Ifso, were you previously a Quilldevotee?Actually I was a Timex/Sinclair user.I was getting a couple UK maga-zines and saw an ad for the Quill,so I got that first. Then when thePAW came out I ordered it also. Before starting work on WinPAW,had you written any PAW or Quillgames yourself?I have one game which I havebeen working on for years, buthave never completed it. When did you come up with theidea for WinPAW; what inspired it?Febbruary 2001. It was inspired by aprogram out at the time calledWinQuill, a Windows version of Quill.WinQuill stopped being supportedabout a year after I started workingon WinPAW. He even lost thesource.Was the ability to import aSpectrum snapshot (of aPAWed/Quilled game) always aplanned feature or has the mainfunction of WinPAW always been toencourage the development ofnew Interactive Fiction?The main function was to encour-age the development of newInteractive Fiction. However, Iadded imports early in thedevelopment because I neededworking games to test the program.WinPAW communicates withunPaws and UnQuill to achieve the

import facility; did you have towork with any of the authorsresponsible for these tools in orderto manage this?Yes, I worked with both John Elliott(UnQuill) and Alexander Katz(UnPaws) when testing. I foundseveral bugs in both programswhich they corrected for me. Bothhave been very helpful.Have you ever met or communi-cated with either of the originalPAW authors (Tim Gilbert andGraeme Yeandle) during thedevelopment of WinPAW?Never talked to Tim. I couldn't finda way to get in touch with him. Ihave talked to Graeme severaltimes. He has helped we withseveral code sections. I live in theUSA and have never gone to theUK, so never met any of my UKusers or contacts.What has the response to WinPAWbeen? Is it being used within the IFcommunity? I really have no idea. I only knowthat I have 70 registered Users. Ihave never heard of WinPAWgames. None of my users hasindicated that they have writtenany. I do have one user who wasworking on one, but he now hasgotten away from text adventuring.He did a good bit of testing for meon WinPaw.The current version of WinPAWbeing worked on is verson 6; howhas the program evolved over sixversions?Version 1 was the PAW up thru

Version A16. Version 2 added some exports inUnPaws and PC Paw formats. Version 3 added a couple newActions and HTML-like tags. Version 4 added PAW Characterset and graphics. I have to giveAlexander Katz credit for helpingme with this change. He providedme with a lot of info on how themachine code in PAW handledthem.Version 5 added being able toplay Quill games. Also added wasbeing able to use character setand graphics or not.The main feature in Version 6 isbeing able to use duplicate words(use water as both a verb andnoun). This was a feature of anon-spectrum version of PAW andwas requested by a user. Thisrequired support for the AdventureCreation Environment (ACE),another version of PAW which wasbased upon that non-spectrumversion.Within the modern IF community,which are the main 'rivals' toWinPAW for developing InteractiveFiction and how do they differ fromWinPAW?Well, ACE will be a rival to PAW assoon as it is released, which shouldbe shortly. I uses strictly text input,similar to PC Paw, another rival.There are several other major IFdevelopment packages. They areall text based (text is entered usingan editor, the package compiles itusing the compiler and it is then

My own main contribution to ZX Spectrum software is a couple of text adventure gameswritten using Gilsoft's wonderful Professional Adventure Writer (PAW). As demonstrated by

the enduring popularity of Douglas Adams' Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy (see new), a well-written text adventure can stand the test of time as a work of contempory art, if you will, all byitself. It doesn't need to concern itself with all the bells and whistles we seem so obsessed withthese days if the writing is good enough.There are lots of IF (Interactive Fiction) authoring systems out there, but for those of us who knowand love the PAW way of doing things, a Windows program that adopted this approach wouldhave to be a gift from above, right? The good news is that not only does just such a programexist, but its already been through several revisions and can import Spectrum PAW (or QUILL)adventures. It's called WinPAW. ZXF has been asking its creator, Douglas Harter some questions.

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run using the engine). The majorones are TADS, Hugo, Inform, andAGT. There are quite a few more,some still active, but most notupdated in years on theftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/programming/ directory.What are your future plans forWinPAW and how do you seethese fitting in with the directionsIF is taking as a genre?Currently the next version will addExport capabilities in ACE formatand being able to importdatabase changes from a textfile. Sometimes when you have amultitude of changes it is easier totype them into a text file than togo through all the screens inWindows. I really don't know how these fit inwith the directions IF is taking as agenre. My main idea is to makeWinPaw as easy to use andversatile as possible.One aside, this is not the first time Iwrote a version of PAW. Backwhen PAW & Quill were originallyout, I wrote a version, strictly tosee if I could do it, which actuallylooked like PAW & Quill in ALGOL,the main programming languageon the Burroughs mainframe(Burroughs is now Univac).Actually, I have never been toogood a solver of text adventures. Ihave actually completed 4, onethe original Colossal Caveadventure by plodding thru it formonths and months. The others Ihad to get some hints from theinternet. I did write a TADS versionof the Very Big Cave Adventureonce. And, as alreadymentioned, I have been workingfor years on an adventure basedupon Philip Jose Farmer's 'World ofthe Tiers' series. I have now startedit in AGT, TADS, & WinPaw. Mymain thrust after I am done with6.0 is completing the WinPawversion of the 350 point ColossalCave Adventure. It is maybe 25%completed, but I know I can dothe stuff to complete it.www.winpaw.com

WinPAW lists BLINK's messages.

Very useful: the incorporation of flag metadata saves all that trying towork out which flag controls whether the ogre has eaten a mint or not.

Simple editing. And you can keep the Spectrum font too.

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INSPIRED BY RUBBER KEYSThis +2B valiantly gave up a couple of its original keys for a +3 I stumbled across at a car boot sale twoyears ago. A perfectly good computer, I was reluctant to just leave it like that, particularly when I had amucky old +2 under the bed with some sort of cassette mechanism problems. This is the solution I came upwith. At first I plugged in all the grey keys of the +2, but that just didn't look right. Swapping back in all thelarge black keys seems to do the trick.

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THE ULTIMATE SINCLAIR DESKTOP?The Stonechip Echo Amplifier is an extremelyrare find these days. It's special because itwas one of the very few third party peripheralsto adopt casing that mirrored Sinclair's ownshape and style. It sits perfectly next to arubber keyed 48K.The model shown is on loan to ZXF and wascleaned up using wipes and an electrictoothbrush. It came without a power supply orinstructions, but a standard 48K PSU works fine.

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There's just something about theSinclair brand. I love it. Thevivid, often action-packed

inlay designs have something of aBoys' Own quality about them andcould hardly contrast more withthe stark, basic, often BASICcontents held by the C15 within;yet I never feel betrayed bySinclair Research packaging. It'salmost as though the assumption isimplicit that the onus is on me -the player - to turn chunky,spartan graphics or a veryminimalist description of a desertisland/alien planet into somethingmuch more exciting. Systemrequirements: imagination.Perhaps it's just me, but it feels likethere's something very British aboutall that.Before the Spectrum came alongthe Sinclair Research softwarebrand was already wellestablished, of course, with plentyof titles for the ZX81 (requiringpressumably even moreimagination). The codes used onthe spines of cassette inlayscomprised a single letter todenote the genre of the software -G for games, E for education, L forlanguages and B for business -followed by a number. G1 wasSuper Programs 1, E1 was EnglishLiterature 1 and so on. ForSpectrum software the samecoding system was used initially,the addition of an S (for Spectrum)suffixed to distinguish these fromZX81 titles. So G1/S was Games 1and E1/S was History 1. TheSpectrum titles weren't completeydistinct from those in the ZX81range, however; quite a few titlesappeared in both ranges (Chess,Backgammon, Space Raiders, etc)and in some cases it was clear

very little had been done to thecode in its conversion to takeadvantage of the Spectrum'sadditional capabilities (perhapsmost apparent for Adventures A toD, which I'm willing to wagerwould look identical running on aZX81 and Spectrum side by side).Many of the ZX81 inlay designswere also re-used in the early daysof the Spectrum range.Of course the purpose of theSinclair Research range was toprovide a wide selection ofgames and utilities to entice thepotential Spectrum buyer in thedays before a mass market existedfor Sir Clive's little machine. As weknow now, it didn't take too longfor that market to becomeestablished, but it's a fair bet thatat the time the certainty of thisoutcome was an unknownvariable and Sinclair didn't wantwould-be Spectrum owners turningaway due to a lack of softwareavailable for the machine. As themarket got on its feet Sinclaircontinued to support its machinethough new releases, but therange was eventually brought toan end late 1984/early 1985;possibly the financial difficultiesSinclair was in by this stage playeda role in this or perhaps it was justfelt that the range no longerserved a purpose. The Softwareand Peripherals Catalogueshipped with every Spectrum+ 128in 1986 did not contain a singlepiece of software from the SinclairResearch range.In 1984 Sinclair made a change toits brand design, introducing thesilver label inlay style nowachieving a fame of sorts throughthe trading of these titles on ebay.

From the serious collector's point ofview these are amongst the morehard-to-find titles within the rangeand they rarely sell for less than afiver. The first of the games rangeto carry this design was BubbleBuster (G32/S) if we go by chrono-logical release, although if wewere to go by spine code alone itwould appear to be Jet Pac.Jet Pac, Pssst, Tranz Am andCookie were, of course, the fourgames by Ultimate to be releasedunder the Sinclair label as ROMcartridges for the ill-fated SinclairInterface 2, alongside Psion titlesSpace Raiders, Chess, Planetoids,Hungry Horace, Backgammon andHorace & the Spiders. Each oneof these ten titles had beenreleased previously in cassetteversion (perhaps the fatal flaw inSinclair's marketing of this device),but the four Ultimate titles hadnever been released as Sinclaircassettes. To distinguish the Psioncartridge titles from their existing(identical) cassette versions the R(for ROM) suffix was adopted inspine codes, making the Chesscartridge, for example, G10/R asopposed to G10/S. But for theUltimate titles there were noexisting numbers to add an R to sothey were just given the next fournumbers available in the Spectrumsequence at that time - G27 toG30. For a while, therefore, thegames sequence went from G26/S(Flippit) to G27/R (Jet Pac) throughto G30/R (Cookie) and then toG31/S (Chequered Flag) - ie, fromcassette to ROM cartridge andback to cassette again. But then,some time later, the four Ultimatetitles were also added in -retrospectively - to the cassetterange as G27/S to G30/S (although

UNLOCKING THE SINCLAIR CODEWhilst I take a break from editing ZXF one of my new projects will be researching theSinclair brand range of software for the Spectrum. The first piece of work undertakenhas been examining the code system used by Sinclair to identify individual titles.

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in fact the Sinclair cassette versionof Jet Pac was incorrectly codedG27/R). By this time the silver labeldesign had been introduced andso this was the style used for thesetitles too.So Jet Pac, Psst, Tranz Am andCookie ended up being releasedon cassette by Ultimate, on ROMcartridge by Sinclair in the 'old'Sinclair design, and then by Sinclairon cassette again - this time in thesilver label design. Extremelyconfusing. And it gets worse.We're not actually sure that all fourtitles were released as silver labels.Jet Pac, Pssst and Cookie are allknown to exist for certain as silverlabels - these titles are in factconsidered to be the gems of theSinclair range on ebay, fetchingmuch higher prices than othersilver label Sinclair software -fetching much higher prices thanpretty much any other Spectrumsoftware. But what about TranzAm? We can infer its silver labelexistence from the silver labelexistence of the other threeUltimate-formerly-ROM-cartridgetitles and their cassette spinecodes, but no-one appears tohave ever actually seen thisproduct. Does it even exist? If itdoes and a copy ever managesto find its way onto ebay it's beenspeculated it could well fetchthree figures. If it doesn't exist...why doesn't it exist?!But we're not done yet with thesilver label mysteries - an evenbigger one lurks just around thecorner. At some point during 1984Sinclair decided to change thespine code format; all of asudden, four digit codes - eachstarting with a 4 - appeared in the

place of the old codes. G36/Swas the last game to use the oldcode system (Zipper Flipper);instead of G37/S the next gameto be released (Match Point)came with the code 4036. For theeducational programs E24/S(Alphabet Games) was the lasttitle to use the old code system;instead of E25/S the next programcame with the code 4324. Theonly other range affected was theBusiness range: 4607 was thenumber for Tasword Two wherethe expected code would havebeen B8/S. Why the change of codes andwhy, specifically, were theseparticular numbers used withwhich to introduce it? It turns out,in fact, that these codes wereactually being used at least ayear earlier, alongside the oldcoding system. The series of'Sinclair Special' four pageadvertising supplements, tuckedinto a monthly magazine (I can'tseem to work out which magazine- possibly Sinclair User) reveal thison their order forms, whereproducts are listed using both setsof codes; Chess Tutor 1, forexample, is listed with the codeE9/S to the left of the title and4308 to the right. Further anlysis of these order forms(WoS currently hosts SinclairSpecials numbers 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6)reveals that these order codeswere in fact used for all Sinclairproducts - not just Spectrumsoftware. Spectrum hardwareitems were given codes startingwith 3000, ZX81 hardware itemswere given codes starting with1000 (including the ZX Printer) andZX81 software got codes starting

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ROSETTA STONEIt was the order forms on a handful of Sinclair's "Sinclair Special" leaflets (found on WoS) which finallyexplained the alternate spine coding system introduced towards the end of the Sinclair branded range. Itturns out that the codes had been used for some time already as order codes before they were introducedto inlay spines.

with 2000. Even postage andpacking costs got their own codesunder this system (0028 for ordersunder £90 and 0029 for ordersover £90). Returning to Spectrumsoftware in particular, Games hadthe range 4000 to 4200, Educationhad the range 4300 to 4399,Languages had the range 4400 to4499, Personal had the range 4500to 4599 (although only one titlewas ever produced in this range)

and Business had the range 4600upwards. ROM cartridges werecoded 5300 to 5309.And the 'even bigger mystery'?Study the complete list on theopposite page and you'll discovera gap between 4036 (MatchPoint) and 4038 (Panama Joe).No known title is known to existwith the code 4037. This could bejust an error of the same type that

saw the Silver label Jetpacincorrectly coded G27/R. Orperhaps a release was scheduledfor this number but got delayed orpulled out for some reason. Butmaybe - just maybe - there's amystery title out there that wedon't yet know about. It's only alittle mystery, but it's a mysterynonetheless and I'm delighted byit. After all, what is a communitywithout its little mysteries?

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GAMES GAMES GAMES GAMES

G1/S G1/S G1/S G1/S 4000 4000 4000 4000 Games Games Games Games 1 111G2/S G2/S G2/S G2/S 4001 4001 4001 4001 Games Games Games Games 2 222G3/S G3/S G3/S G3/S 4002 4002 4002 4002 Games Games Games Games 3 333G4/S G4/S G4/S G4/S 4003 4003 4003 4003 Games Games Games Games 4 444G5/S G5/S G5/S G5/S 4004 4004 4004 4004 Games Games Games Games 5 555G6/S G6/S G6/S G6/S 4005 4005 4005 4005 Pastimes Pastimes Pastimes Pastimes 1 111G7/S G7/S G7/S G7/S 4006 4006 4006 4006 Pastimes Pastimes Pastimes Pastimes 2 222G8/S G8/S G8/S G8/S 4007 4007 4007 4007 Biorhythms Biorhythms Biorhythms Biorhythms G9/S G9/S G9/S G9/S 4008 4008 4008 4008 Space Space Space Space Raiders Raiders Raiders Raiders G10/S G10/S G10/S G10/S 4009 4009 4009 4009 Chess Chess Chess Chess G11/S G11/S G11/S G11/S 4010 4010 4010 4010 Flight Flight Flight Flight Simulation Simulation Simulation Simulation G12/S G12/S G12/S G12/S 4011 4011 4011 4011 Planetoids Planetoids Planetoids Planetoids G13/S G13/S G13/S G13/S 4012 4012 4012 4012 Hungry Hungry Hungry Hungry Horace Horace Horace Horace G14/S G14/S G14/S G14/S 4013 4013 4013 4013 Adventure Adventure Adventure Adventure A: A: A:A: Planet Planet Planet Planet of of ofof Death Death Death Death G15/S G15/S G15/S G15/S 4014 4014 4014 4014 Adventure Adventure Adventure Adventure B: B: B:B: Inca Inca Inca Inca Curse Curse Curse Curse G16/S G16/S G16/S G16/S 4015 4015 4015 4015 Adventure Adventure Adventure Adventure C: C: C:C: The The The The Ship Ship Ship Ship of of ofof Doom Doom Doom Doom G17/S G17/S G17/S G17/S 4016 4016 4016 4016 Adventure Adventure Adventure Adventure D: D: D:D: Espionage Espionage Espionage Espionage Island Island Island Island G18/S G18/S G18/S G18/S 4017 4017 4017 4017 Reversi Reversi Reversi Reversi G19/S G19/S G19/S G19/S 4018 4018 4018 4018 The The The The Hobbit Hobbit Hobbit Hobbit G20/S G20/S G20/S G20/S 4019 4019 4019 4019 Embassy Embassy Embassy Embassy Assault Assault Assault Assault G21/S G21/S G21/S G21/S 4020 4020 4020 4020 Horace Horace Horace Horace goes goes goes goes Skiing Skiing Skiing Skiing G22/S G22/S G22/S G22/S 4021402140214021 Backgammon Backgammon Backgammon Backgammon G23/S G23/S G23/S G23/S 4023 4023 4023 4023 Cyrus-IS-Chess Cyrus-IS-Chess Cyrus-IS-Chess Cyrus-IS-Chess G24/S G24/S G24/S G24/S 4022402240224022 Horace Horace Horace Horace & &&& the the the the Spiders Spiders Spiders Spiders G25/S G25/S G25/S G25/S 4024402440244024 Scrabble Scrabble Scrabble Scrabble G26/S G26/S G26/S G26/S 4025 4025 4025 4025 Flippit Flippit Flippit Flippit G27/R G27/R G27/R G27/R 4026 4026 4026 4026 Jetpac Jetpac Jetpac Jetpac G28/S G28/S G28/S G28/S 4027 4027 4027 4027 Pssst Pssst Pssst Pssst G29/S G29/S G29/S G29/S 4028 4028 4028 4028 Tranz Tranz Tranz Tranz Am Am AmAm ???? ???? ???? ???? in in inin theory theory theory theory - --- never never never never seenseenseenseenG30/S G30/S G30/S G30/S 4029 4029 4029 4029 Cookie Cookie Cookie Cookie G31/S G31/S G31/S G31/S 4030 4030 4030 4030 Chequered Chequered Chequered Chequered Flag Flag Flag Flag G32/S G32/S G32/S G32/S 4031 4031 4031 4031 Bubble Bubble Bubble Bubble Buster Buster Buster Buster G33/S G33/S G33/S G33/S 4032 4032 4032 4032 Driller Driller Driller Driller Tanks Tanks Tanks Tanks G34/S G34/S G34/S G34/S 4033 4033 4033 4033 Eric Eric Eric Eric and and and and the the the the Floaters Floaters Floaters Floaters G35/S G35/S G35/S G35/S 4034 4034 4034 4034 Stop Stop Stop Stop the the the the Express Express Express Express G36/S G36/S G36/S G36/S 4035 4035 4035 4035 Zipper Zipper Zipper Zipper Flipper Flipper Flipper Flipper 4036 4036 4036 4036 4036 4036 4036 4036 Match Match Match Match Point Point Point Point 4037 4037 4037 4037 4037 4037 4037 4037 ?????? ?????? ?????? ?????? no no nono known known known known title title title title - --- aaaa mistake?mistake?mistake?mistake?4038 4038 4038 4038 4038 4038 4038 4038 Panama Panama Panama Panama Joe Joe Joe Joe 4039 4039 4039 4039 4039 4039 4039 4039 Return Return Return Return of of ofof the the the the Jedi: Jedi: Jedi: Jedi: Death Death Death Death Star Star Star Star Battle Battle Battle Battle

EDUCATIONAL EDUCATIONAL EDUCATIONAL EDUCATIONAL

E1/S E1/S E1/S E1/S 4300 4300 4300 4300 History History History History 1 111E2/S E2/S E2/S E2/S 4301 4301 4301 4301 Geography Geography Geography Geography 1 111E3/S E3/S E3/S E3/S 4302 4302 4302 4302 Inventions Inventions Inventions Inventions 1 111E4/S E4/S E4/S E4/S 4303 4303 4303 4303 Music Music Music Music 1 111E5/S E5/S E5/S E5/S 4304 4304 4304 4304 English English English English Literature Literature Literature Literature 1 111E6/S E6/S E6/S E6/S 4305 4305 4305 4305 Make Make Make Make a aaa Chip Chip Chip Chip E7/S E7/S E7/S E7/S 4306430643064306 Music Music Music Music Master Master Master Master E8/S E8/S E8/S E8/S 4307 4307 4307 4307 Beyond Beyond Beyond Beyond BASIC BASIC BASIC BASIC E9/S E9/S E9/S E9/S 4308430843084308 Chess Chess Chess Chess Tutor Tutor Tutor Tutor 1 111E10/S E10/S E10/S E10/S 4309 4309 4309 4309 Learn Learn Learn Learn to to toto Read Read Read Read 1 111E11/S E11/S E11/S E11/S 4310431043104310 Learn Learn Learn Learn to to toto Read Read Read Read 2 222E12/S E12/S E12/S E12/S 4311 4311 4311 4311 Learn Learn Learn Learn to to toto Read Read Read Read 3 333E13/S E13/S E13/S E13/S 4312 4312 4312 4312 Learn Learn Learn Learn to to toto Read Read Read Read 4 444E14/S E14/S E14/S E14/S 4313431343134313 Learn Learn Learn Learn to to toto Read Read Read Read 5 555E15/S E15/S E15/S E15/S 4314431443144314 Cargo Cargo Cargo Cargo E16/S E16/S E16/S E16/S 4315 4315 4315 4315 Glider Glider Glider Glider E17/S E17/S E17/S E17/S 4316 4316 4316 4316 Survival Survival Survival Survival

E18/S E18/S E18/S E18/S 4317431743174317 Magnets Magnets Magnets Magnets E19/S E19/S E19/S E19/S 4318431843184318 Early Early Early Early Punctuation Punctuation Punctuation Punctuation E20/S E20/S E20/S E20/S 4319431943194319 Speech Speech Speech Speech Marks Marks Marks Marks E21/S E21/S E21/S E21/S 4320 4320 4320 4320 The The The The Apostrophe Apostrophe Apostrophe Apostrophe E22/S E22/S E22/S E22/S 4321432143214321 Capital Capital Capital Capital Letters Letters Letters Letters E23/S E23/S E23/S E23/S 4322 4322 4322 4322 Castle Castle Castle Castle Spellerous Spellerous Spellerous Spellerous E24/S E24/S E24/S E24/S 4323 4323 4323 4323 Alphabet Alphabet Alphabet Alphabet Games Games Games Games 4324 4324 4324 4324 4324 4324 4324 4324 Oil Oil Oil Oil Strike Strike Strike Strike 4325 4325 4325 4325 4325 4325 4325 4325 Weathermaster Weathermaster Weathermaster Weathermaster 4326 4326 4326 4326 4326 4326 4326 4326 Planet Planet Planet Planet PatrolPatrolPatrolPatrol4327 4327 4327 4327 4327 4327 4327 4327 Disease Disease Disease Disease DodgersDodgersDodgersDodgers4328 4328 4328 4328 4328 4328 4328 4328 Alphabetter Alphabetter Alphabetter Alphabetter 4329 4329 4329 4329 4329 4329 4329 4329 Wordsetter Wordsetter Wordsetter Wordsetter 4330 4330 4330 4330 4330 4330 4330 4330 Spellbox Spellbox Spellbox Spellbox 4331 4331 4331 4331 4331 4331 4331 4331 Soundabout Soundabout Soundabout Soundabout ?? ?? ???? these these these these two two two two could could could could bebebebe4332 4332 4332 4332 4332 4332 4332 4332 Bodyswap Bodyswap Bodyswap Bodyswap ?? ?? ???? the the the the other other other other waywaywayway roundroundroundround4333 4333 4333 4333 4333 4333 4333 4333 MacMan MacMan MacMan MacMan and and and and the the the the Caber Caber Caber Caber Eater Eater Eater Eater 4334 4334 4334 4334 4334 4334 4334 4334 MacMan MacMan MacMan MacMan in in inin the the the the Treasure Treasure Treasure Treasure Caves Caves Caves Caves 4335 4335 4335 4335 4335 4335 4335 4335 MacMan's MacMan's MacMan's MacMan's Magic Magic Magic Magic MirrorMirrorMirrorMirror4336 4336 4336 4336 4336 4336 4336 4336 MacMan MacMan MacMan MacMan and and and and the the the the Great Great Great Great Escape Escape Escape Escape 4337 4337 4337 4337 4337 4337 4337 4337 Number Number Number Number Painter Painter Painter Painter 4338 4338 4338 4338 4338 4338 4338 4338 Estimator Estimator Estimator Estimator Racer Racer Racer Racer

LANGUAGES LANGUAGES LANGUAGES LANGUAGES

L1/S L1/S L1/S L1/S 4400440044004400 FORTH FORTH FORTH FORTH L2/S L2/S L2/S L2/S 4401 4401 4401 4401 Micro Micro Micro Micro Prolog Prolog Prolog Prolog L3/S L3/S L3/S L3/S 4402440244024402 Zeus Zeus Zeus Zeus Assembler Assembler Assembler Assembler L4/S L4/S L4/S L4/S 4403 4403 4403 4403 Monitor Monitor Monitor Monitor and and and and Disassembler Disassembler Disassembler Disassembler L5/S L5/S L5/S L5/S 4404 4404 4404 4404 Print Print Print Print Utilities Utilities Utilities Utilities L6/S L6/S L6/S L6/S 4405 4405 4405 4405 Sinclair Sinclair Sinclair Sinclair Logo Logo Logo Logo

PERSONAL PERSONAL PERSONAL PERSONAL

P1/S P1/S P1/S P1/S 4500450045004500 Cattell Cattell Cattell Cattell IQ IQ IQIQ Test Test Test Test

BUSINESS BUSINESS BUSINESS BUSINESS

B1/S B1/S B1/S B1/S 4600 4600 4600 4600 VU-CALC VU-CALC VU-CALC VU-CALC B2/S B2/S B2/S B2/S 4601 4601 4601 4601 VU-FILE VU-FILE VU-FILE VU-FILE B3/S B3/S B3/S B3/S 4602 4602 4602 4602 VU-3D VU-3D VU-3D VU-3D B4/S B4/S B4/S B4/S 4603 4603 4603 4603 Collector's Collector's Collector's Collector's Pack Pack Pack Pack B5/S B5/S B5/S B5/S 4604 4604 4604 4604 Club Club Club Club Record Record Record Record Controller Controller Controller Controller B6/S B6/S B6/S B6/S 4605460546054605 Small Small Small Small Business Business Business Business Accounts Accounts Accounts Accounts B7/S B7/S B7/S B7/S 4606 4606 4606 4606 Which? Which? Which? Which? Tax Tax Tax Tax Calculator Calculator Calculator Calculator 1983-84 1983-84 1983-84 1983-84 4607 4607 4607 4607 4607 4607 4607 4607 Tasword Tasword Tasword Tasword Two Two Two Two 4608 4608 4608 4608 4608 4608 4608 4608 Tiny Tiny Tiny Tiny Touch Touch Touch Touch 'n' 'n' 'n' 'n' Go Go GoGo

ROM ROM ROM ROM CARTRIDGES CARTRIDGES CARTRIDGES CARTRIDGES

G9/R G9/R G9/R G9/R 5300 5300 5300 5300 Space Space Space Space Raiders Raiders Raiders Raiders G10/R G10/R G10/R G10/R 5301 5301 5301 5301 Chess Chess Chess Chess G12/R G12/R G12/R G12/R 5302 5302 5302 5302 Planetoids Planetoids Planetoids Planetoids G13/R G13/R G13/R G13/R 5303 5303 5303 5303 Hungry Hungry Hungry Hungry Horace Horace Horace Horace G22/R G22/R G22/R G22/R 5304530453045304 Backgammon Backgammon Backgammon Backgammon G24/R G24/R G24/R G24/R 5305530553055305 Horace Horace Horace Horace and and and and the the the the Spiders Spiders Spiders Spiders G27/R G27/R G27/R G27/R 5306 5306 5306 5306 Jet Jet Jet Jet Pac Pac Pac Pac G28/R G28/R G28/R G28/R 5307 5307 5307 5307 PSSST PSSST PSSST PSSST G29/R G29/R G29/R G29/R 5308530853085308 Tranz Tranz Tranz Tranz Am Am AmAm G30/R G30/R G30/R G30/R 5309 5309 5309 5309 CookieCookieCookieCookie

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SOUNDTRACKERMatthew Westcott contemplates himself for the role as the tenth Doctor whilst hecompletes the third and final installment of his Soundtracker tutorial.

notes and twiddly bits into your music - these arethings which are referred to as 'ornaments' intraditional music, after all - but the most popularuse of them is to generate fake chords that rapidlycycle between notes so that they blend togther(hopefully) and simulate more voices than thethree channels you're limited to. Figure 3.1illustrates the concept - we alternate between +00(the base note), +07 (an interval of a fifth abovethe base note), and +12 (an octave above). Asusual, press 0 to listen to the result - a nice fatpower chord.Notice that we hold each note for two framesbefore moving on to the next - this happens tosound better than simply alternating between +00,+07, +12. If you do that, the notes are played soquickly that they lose their musical quality, andcome out as a rather unpleasant 'warble'. Try it outif you don't believe me. Actually, try it out even ifyou do believe me.In most of my compositions I find that the quota of15 ornaments gets used up very quickly, withmajor and minor chords turned around everywhich way, but as it happens we can get by withjust the one in this case. We need a sample to

overlay our ornament onto, so edit samplenumber 5 to look like figure 3.2 - leave all the pitchvalues at +0000. Nothing new here - just a purenote that's a bit quieter than sample 1, so that we

Well, what do you know? One minute we'rebeavering away on a Spectrum rendition of theDoctor Who theme, and before you know it theBeeb are rewarding us with a brand new series.Time for us return the favour by dressing up oursoundtrack with special effects that would do theBBC Radiophonic Workshop proud. Load up thetrack at the point we left off last time, and we'llget cracking.

OrnamentsHead for the 'Orn.Edit' button, and chooseornament number 1. You're presented with aninterface that looks rather like the second page ofthe sample editor, and there's a good reason forthat - it does pretty much the same thing, varyingpitch over the duration of a note. There are twodifferences: firstly, with ornaments you have morecontrol over the musical scale because you'readjusting the note up and down by completesemitones, rather than those hazy indefinablewave periods (although this does mean that youcan't use them for pitch shifts and whatnot,because they rely on adjustments finer than acomplete semitone). Secondly, they're separatefrom samples and therefore one ornament canbe applied to any sample you like, even onethat's already got some pitch shifting built in.Ornaments are just the ticket for inserting grace

Figure 3.2

Figure 3.1

ZXF10: 46

row zero and leaving the rest at 0000 - but don'tdo that, because we're about to add some morenotes there in a minute. If you want to go back toplaying plain vanilla samples with no ornaments,put F00 as the last three digits (effectively selectingornament number 0, a special 'do nothing'ornament).

EnvelopesThe boffins who designed the AY chip didn't knowanything about trackers. They assumed thatpeople would tend to pick a volume level for theirnotes and stick to it. In an effort to liven things upa bit, they introduced the concept of envelopes -these allow you to vary the volume levelcontinuously over time, so you can have a notethat starts at full volume and fades to nothing, orone that swells from nothing to full volume, or onethat repeatedly fades in and then out... The full set

of permutations is shown in figure 3.3.Of course, with Soundtracker samples we can doall that and a lot more besides, so you mightwonder why we bother with envelopes at all. Well,they have one important trick up their proverbialsleeve - you can take any of the repeatingenvelopes (8, A, C and E) and speed them up toinsane degrees, much faster than the 50Hz limitthat comes as standard with Soundtracker. Whenyou do that, it stops being a way of adjusting thevolume of the waveform, and starts being awaveform all of its own. A nice juicy triangular orsawtooth wave to be specific - one that'sparticularly good for bass lines, although onspecial occasions AY musicians will be particularlydaring and use it as the lead instrument.Because they're controlled in hardware on the AY

don't drown out the melody.Going back to the main tracker screen, we canenter our chords into channel C of our pattern. Thefollowing notes will give us a simple but effectiverhythm:

00 F-4 5F0101 --- 000002 F-4 5F0103 --- 000004 --- 000005 F-4 5F0106 F-4 5F0107 --- 000008 F-4 5F0109 --- 000010 --- 000011 F-4 5F0112 G#4 5F0113 --- 000014 G#4 5F0115 --- 000016 --- 000017 G#4 5F0118 C-4 5F0119 --- 000020 C-4 5F0121 --- 000022 --- 000023 C-4 5F01

The right hand column is where the ornamentscome in to play: the 5 refers to sample 5 as usual,the F is a special instruction to tell the tracker touse an ornament, and the 1 tells it to selectornament number 1. (The zero is... well, just a zero.)Copy rows 00-23 to rows 24-47, using the 'MoveText' facility we covered last time, so that we havethe chords covering the whole pattern.I should point out that if you have a zero in the 'F'column, it will continue to use the last ornamentplayed, so in that respect it behaves a lot like azero in the 'sample number' column, and in factwe could get by with just entering the 5F01 into

Figure 3.3

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can tweak the final sound - using F-1 instead of F-2will give a deeper note, and putting 3C as theenvelope speed (a number half way between thetwo 'sensible' values we identified) will producesome gritty harmonics. Here we'll build our bass riffby alternating between envelopes C and A - thelatter is a bit mellower due to the smootherwaveform. Cramming our remaining notes into thegaps in channel C, this is how it works out:

01 F-2 5C5903 F-2 5A5904 F-2 5C5907 F-2 5C5909 F-2 5A5910 F-2 5C59

Now, after that string of Fs, we get a bit in G sharpfollowed by a bit in C. As a quick test, see if youcan figure out some sensible envelope values touse in those keys. While you're doing that, allowme to go off on a brief diversion.One thing I haven't covered up to now is thetransposition capabilities of Soundtracker. Thiscomes in two forms: firstly, there's the 'Transposition'option lurking under 'other', which presents youwith a cheap-and-cheerful interface for shifting asection of a pattern up or down a prescribednumber of semitones, looking rather like the 'MoveText' feature. Secondly, when you're working withpositions, and placing a pattern at a certainposition in the song, you can fiddle with the'height' slider to get the entire pattern shifted up ordown, and instantly create your own Eurovision-style cheesy key changes.Unfortunately, these features aren't what they'vecracked up to be, due to what we've just learnedabout envelopes. Soundtracker can transpose theactual notes, but there's no way to automaticallyadjust the envelope speeds to match new notes.Consequently, the 'height' slider is almost no use atall (except for those rare occasions when youchoose not to use envelopes anywhere), and the'Transposition' button will only help if you'reprepared to go through the transposed dataafterwards, fixing up any envelope-based notesthat have been trashed in the process.Enough of that though - back to our bassline.

itself, the Speccy can still continue talking to theAY chip at the normal 50Hz rate, so this trickdoesn't suck up any more of the Spectrum'sprocessing time than a normal wave would. Youcan only have one envelope running at any time,but you can have as many of the channels as youlike following that envelope for their waveform.To start playing around with envelopes, we needan ordinary sample with pure tone, no pitchbending or anything fancy like that. The shape orvolume of the sample doesn't matter, becausethe envelope is going to override that. Our newly-created sample 5 will fit the bill. In our vacant slotin row 01 of channel C, enter this:

F-2 5C23

A bit jarring, no? What's going on here is actuallyquite involved, so let's take it slowly: On the onehand, you're playing an ordinary note at pitch F-2- a square wave note, to be precise. On the otherhand, you have the instruction 'C' on the rightwhich tells it to ignore the shape of the sampleand instead use the sawtooth pattern asindicated on our graph. The volume is rising andfalling every 23 squillionths of a second (the exactdefinition of a squillionth is unimportant to us) - thiseffectively slices up the note into very short pulses.I just plucked the number 23 out of the air, soinevitably the points at which the note is sliced upwill fail to match up with the highs and lows of thesquare wave, and as a result we get a horriblefarty noise. Got that? Good. Hopefully you won'tbe put off when I tell you that the number 23 isactually in hex.Since we are, after all, exploiting an unintendedquirk of the AY chip, we don't have the luxury ofworking with musical note names here, or evenany guarantee that we can perfectly match upthe envelope speed with our desired note. It allhas to be done through trial and error. So, takethat number 23 and gradually increment itthrough 24, 25... 29, 2A, 2B... you'll find that thetone goes down until you reach 2D, where itsettles in tune with the F-2 note. It's not very bass-like though - it could do with being an octavelower, and to do that we need to double thenumber. I'm not very good at mental arithmetic inhexadecimal, so I'll just say that it's fifty-somethingand fiddle around with different values until wearrive at 59. There's an endless variety of ways you

ZXF10: 48

Epilogue: The Soundtracker compilerEven though it's a completely different subject, itwould be awfully impolite of me not to tell youhow to use your music outside of the tracker. Whatyou need to do is save your track fromSoundtracker, and then fire up the Soundtrackercompiler (available from World Of Spectrum,unsurpr is ingly enough). Load the savedSoundtracker data, then hit 'Compile Song' andwait for it to do its stuff. Then go to 'Merge PlayRoutine' and choose where the music is going toreside in memory - 49152 is the usual address to gofor if you don't have any better ideas. You're thenready to save the compiled data file, and as youdo so, you'll be told a bunch of importantaddresses. The first one is for the initialise routine,which will reside at the address you chose - youneed to call it before playing the track, and againwhen you want the AY chip to shut up. The playerroutine proper starts 6 bytes further on, and youneed to call this every 50th of a second while thesong is playing. In Basic, it looks like this:

10 CLEAR 4915120 LOAD "my_track"CODE30 RANDOMIZE USR 49152: REM initialise40 PAUSE 150 RANDOMIZE USR 49158: REM play60 IF INKEY$<>" " THEN GO TO 4070 RANDOMIZE USR 49152: REM silence

If you want to have more than one tune kickingaround, then save the subsequent ones out fromthe compiler without going through the 'MergePlay Routine' step. Before calling the initialiseroutine, poke (initialise address + 1) and (initialiseaddress + 2) with the start address of the track youwant to play. Machine code programmers will findample opportunity for hacking the player to suittheir own evil plans.And, if I'm not mistaken, that just about wraps upour tour of Soundtracker's capabilities. From hereon, all that remains is to take this knowledge andapply it towards your own creative ways. Goodluck and happy composing!

(c) 2005 Matthew Westcott

Hopefully you'll have arrived at something notdissimilar to the following:

13 G#2 5C4B15 G#2 5A4B16 G#2 5C4B19 C-2 5C3C21 C-2 5A3C22 C-2 5C3C

Copy this to the second half of the pattern again(rows 24 onward), and we're pretty close to ourfinal version. There's one last mystery to explain,though, and it's back in the sample editor. Editsample number 6, and use the M key to set bothrows of 0s into 1s. You know all about the bottomrow - a digit 1 in that line masks out the whitenoise - but we now turn our attention to the rowabove. This masks out the volume setting,effectively silencing the sample. But why on earthwould you want to do that? Surely if you wanteda silent sample for whatever reason, you'd just setthe volume level right down to the bottom?The answer is that it turns off the square wave,while still allowing envelopes to do their stuff. (Forthe more audio-minded among you, it fixes thesignal in the full-amplitude 'on' state, so there's nowave produced, and consequently no sound,unless you move the signal up and down bychanging the volume.) In other words, this givesyou a pure triangular or sawtooth wave, which issmoother and quieter than the triangular andsquare wave mish-mash that we were workingwith just now. The fact that it's quieter isparticularly fortunate, because there's no way ofplaying envelope-based notes at (say) halfvolume.Return to the pattern editor, and from row 24onward, change all the notes that use envelopesA or C to use sample 6, with envelope A. Hear thedifference? There are two things to bear in mindwhen working with 'muted' samples - firstly,changing the note from F-2 to anything else hasno effect whatsoever, and secondly, becauseyou're not mixing waves there's no audible 'cue' toknow when you've hit the right pitch - you have toplay it by ear. In our case we've already got ourvalues worked out, though, so no worries there.

ZXF10: 49

SPECTRUM EMULATION ON THE GP32Matthew Wilson takes us on a tour of handheld fun, ZX Spectrum style; courtesy ofthe GP32

Awhile ago I picked up aGP32 – a relatively little-known hand-held console

from Korea. There are develop-ment kits available for the GP32, itis capable of playing ports ofgames such as DOOM, and evenrecently had a release of MAME(until the author was forced to re-move it temporarily for licensingreasons). There are also a numberof emulators available for it. Thisarticle looks, for obvious reasons, atthe current selection of Spectrumemulators.For my testing, I chose a few famil-iar games (Manic Miner,Starquake) plus, on the advice of afew World Of Spectrum forumregulars, some additional programsto push the emulators hard:• Aquaplane has an effect where

the sea should extend into theborder

• Cobra tests the emulation of thefloating bus

• Overscan for multi-colour andborder effects

• Fairlight, for 48K multi-channelbeeper effects

GPSpeccy 0.06

GPSpeccy 0.06 seems to supportSNA files only. Unfortunately it tookme a while to notice this, althoughI suppose there was a clue in thedirectory from which it loads snap-shots – GPMM\SNA. (It attempts,and fails, to load TAP files).The keyboard selector (brought upwith the left shoulder button) is anattractive photostyle view of the48K keyboard complete withkeywords, but i tdoes take up thewhole screen. Ifound the smallerviews of ZXGP32and fZX32 moreconvenient. Ther ight shoulderbutton cyclesthrough theavailable controlopt ions: Cursor,K e m p s t o n ,Q/A/O/P/M, andZ/X/N/M/Space. Ifound Kempstonsupport to beslightly unreliable – itdoesn't seem towork in Aquaplane, forexample.The graphics in Cobra are flickerythroughout, but the game still playsessentially correctly. There is no

border effect onAquaplane.

ZXGP32 Beta 3This boots by default intothe familiar 128K menu.Left shoulder button bringsup a pop-up keyboard,pushed down into thebottom-right corner of thescreen (most ly in theborder).Start brings up the main

menu, allowing you to choose theSpectrum model (128 or 48K),Render Mode (FAST vs ULA).Select brings up the file selector(capable of loading games fromany directory). There is no .ZIP sup-port or auto-loading of tape files,so you'll have to use the keyboardto enter LOAD “” (in 48K mode) orthe main menu (in 128K mode) toload your .TAP files once selected.

Joystick support is for Kempstononly.Cobra is more flickery than normalbut still plays a good game.The border effect in Aquaplane isrendered perfectly when theRender mode is ULA. When theRender mode is FAST, there is noborder effect. Changing therender mode did not make an ob-vious difference to the speed atwhich games actually played.After this achievement, I loadedNMI3 with some hope, but sadlypart 6 (“Splitty Overscan”) displays“Unknown opcode – ED 65”. Therelease notes do acknowledgethat not al l opcodes areimplemented yet.

Below: Overscan demo

Above: GPSpeccy keyboard selector

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The music on Fairlight is tolerablebut not perfect. “Overscan” pro-duces a reasonable effect in theborder, but it's not in synch with theeffect on the main part of thescreen.

SpeccyAl K 0.7Curiously, SpeccyAl K loads withborder emulation switched off. Thistends to leave artefacts from thestartup or Options screen remain-ing in the border area, so I suggestswitching it back on straightaway(use both shoulder buttons toreach the Options screen). Therewasn't any obvious impact onperformance.The file selector (right shoulderbutton) allows directory browsing,which is a definite plus point. Thereis autoloading of TAP files, plus SNAsupport, and, supposedly, Z80support, although my 128K snap-shot of Fairlight 2 didn't seem toload. Also, attempting to load a fileseems occasionally to cause theGP32 to reboot.The keyboard popup is another full-screen image. Note though that,unlike elsewhere in this emulator, it'sthe B key to select a key.Joyst ick selection is betweenCursor, Sinclair 1 or 2, and user de-fined keys – there is no Kempston

support.There was no border effect inAquaplane, whether or not the“Fast rendering” option was on. TheOverscan demo doesn't look toohot either.The sound on Fairlight is pretty un-pleasant to the ear.SpeccyAl K plays a mean game ofCobra, however, with non-flicker-ing sprites, provided that “Fast ren-dering” is off (the default mode).

fZX32 (Xmas edition)This is probably the sleekest andmost capable emulator currentlyavailable on the GP32. It starts upwith a splash screen (based on aHead Over Heels room with a vari-ety of game characters in it). Itthen impresses further by attempt-ing to automatically identify thegames you have saved onto thecard (in \GPMM\ZX). For example,Manic Miner displays as “ManicMiner (1983) (Bug-Byte Software)”.Although this approach can clearlyonly work for games known by theemulator, it is a nice touch. (Notehowever that if you add anygames to this directory, you willhave to rescan it.)fZX32 seems to be the most capa-ble of the emulators here for load-ing different formats. It loads frominside ZIP files, it loads Z80 and SNAfiles (it is the only emulator herewhich I could get to load as 128KFairlight 2 snapshot), it has TAP andpartial TZX support, and fast-load-ing and auto-loading of tape files.SELECT brings up the usual pop-upkeyboard. This version is quite us-able and can also be movedaround the screen.There seem to be some timingproblems on fZX32. In Manic Miner

for example, Willy crosses thescreen almost twice as quickly ashe does in Spectactulator, al-though the 'Debug' option shows aspeed of around 103%. fZX32 also plays Cobra withoutflickering sprites. It also managers anear-perfect rendering of the Over-scan demo. Its rendition of the Fair-light music is hideous – but infairness, the release notes do saythat the beeper will be improved inthe next release.

ConclusionAlthough the current generation ofGP32 Speccy emulators can't com-pete with what's available onWindows, and they might not all beable to cope with the special ef-fects in demos, they will generallygive you a decent play of yourfavourite Speccy games. It would be nice if emulator authorscould either agree on a directoryin which to look for snapshot andtape files, or if they could all pro-vide a multi-directory browser.At the moment, fZX32 seems tohave the best general usability,with perhaps some problems get-ting the timing right. SpeccyAl K isprobably the next most capable interms of its functionality.

(c) 2005 Matthew Wilson

Above: ZXGP32 Options menu

ZXF10: 51

A BRIEF HISTORY OF ZXFA brief look back over ten issues of ZXF. Hope you enjoyed them!

ABOVE: The first English languageversion of SUC-SESSION wassomething of an inspiration. Oncedownloaded you could print it outlike a booklet. To say that thisbrought about some seriousnostalgia is something of anunderstatement...

And so it's time for the blinds to bedrawn in the ZXF office for the lasttime in a while. Everything'sturned off and unplugged, thebins are empty, the mugs arewashed and a note's been leftout for the milkman.Enough time for a quickretrospective? Oh go on then.There's still a few minutes' leccy inthe meter, after all.Where did it all begin? Well thatwas with 'ZX Format,' a little website I knocked together out of anidea that it would be really coolto make a website almost entirelyout of Spectrum graphics. Yeahwell... things have got to startsomewhere. The tag line for thesite was "Remembering the ZXSpectrum." These were the daysbefore I'd discoveredcomp.sys.sinclair, you understand.Oh I'd read about it - I knew it wasout there somewhere, but I hadn'tgot my head around newsgroupsback then and so I'd decided ithad to be some sort of web sitesomewhere which everyonethought was really great, but no-one was prepared to actually linkto it for fear of reprisal. Kind of afreemasonry sort of thing. Kind of...Of course once I finally workedthe newsgroup thing out andfound myself a darkened cornerwithin CSS from which to lurk Isoon realised there was noshortage of people alreadyremembering the Spectrum.My next idea was to build aSpectrum in a PC case after I sawsomething along these lines onLCD's site. Except that mymachine, I decided, would behooked up to microdrives, a 3inch disk drive and a Plus D 3.5inch drive. Oh yes. And thisultimate Spectrum would be

called a ZX-Box, which was ofcourse an utterly hilarious play onthe phrase X-Box.Luckily for me I've never hadmuch trouble accepting thenotion that what I understand tobe true about something mightactually bear about as muchressemblence to the truth as a 45minute WMD claim, so recognisingthat I would have to do somepretty damn hefty research wasall part of the project. The way Ipersonally learn things best of all isto write about them - puttinginformation down on paper forcesme to look at the connectionsbetween facts and ideas, and theoverall patterns apparent. Sowhen I next encountered the firstEnglish language version of theGerman Speccy mag Suc-Sessiona few lights started to come on.Retiring to bed that night with myfreshly printed copy I was struckby just how good it was to havesomething physical to read aboutthe Speccy again. The time bet-ween that moment and the firstissue of ZXF was just a few weeks...Since then ZXF has grown from 28to 56 pages and the DTP file sizefor each issue has risen from underten to over a hundred and fiftymegabytes. The first issue wasreally quite a simple affair, a fivepage BASIC listing and a twopage short story of mineoccupying a large chunk of themagazine; images were small andboxy and the font was kept toArial and Times New Romanthroughout. The PDF conversionprogram I used then - PDF 995 -wasn't all that happy withembedded fonts at the time(although newer versions appearto handle this fine) andapostrophes, for some obscure

reason, appeared to cause itparticular difficulty (mind you, whyshould a computer program beimmune to the apostrophe abusesweeping across the Englishwriting world). This all changedwith issue 4, when both DTP andPDF programs were updated anda whole load of new possibilitieswere opened up. To be honest,issue four could have been a lotbetter in its layout than it was - bitsof it worked and bits of it didn't -but it was very much anexperimental issue in that respect.Cover design had beendecidedly iffy up until issue 5, atwhich point I started putting a bitmore time into their design. Issue5's cover was of course a pictureof the BT tower (and it would have

ZXF10: 52

ABOVE: The first issue of ZXF was produced using Pressworks 2 andconverted to PDF format using the freeware program PDF 995.Graphically fairly unambitious, the DTP file for the issue weighed in ata slice under 9MB. Also, PDF 995 had a few difficulties with fonts inthose days, so the typface was kept at Arial throughout to avoidcomplications - even so there were a few difficulties (withapostrophes) ocassionaly. JAWS PDF, however, experienced no suchproblems, and at the same time that this was introduced (issue 4) theDTP software was also upgraded to Greenstreet Publisher 3. The waywas clear for some much more complex and creative work! The DTPfile for this issue, for example, weighs in at over 150MB. In ten issuesalso the pagecount has gone up from 28 to 56 pages.

worked a lot better had it beenfull cover) - a homage of sorts tothe artwork of John Harris (whodesigned the cover to the originalSpectrum manual, introductionbooklet and Interface 1 & Micro-drive manual). Issue 6's covertook me ages and was inspired byOliver Frey's CRASH issue 36 cover.Issue 7's cover was a detail from aphoto of my own Spectrum soft-ware collection (passed through awhole cocktail of PSP fiters). Issue8 - a popular cover, apparently -is testament to what you can dowith a digital camera and a sandpit on a bright Sunday morning(sorry to those of you who imagin-ed me digging away on a beachsomewhere, but the ZXF expenseaccount wouldn't stump up thebus fare). Issue nine was straight-forward - a Christmassy 3D stero-gram featuring Horace (I'd alwaysthought that Spectrum spritesmight lend themselves particularlywell to stereograms and wantedto experiment). This issue's cover isa play on the phrase 'The ZXSpectrum on your PC' andinvolved a PC keyboard blue-tacked to the wall of the ZXFoffice and an LCD projector.'The ZX Spectrum on your PC,' ofcourse, is another project to havecome out of ZXF. As is ZXIF, theinteractive fiction software label(which will see more releases infuture, I promise). And the ZXFwebsite. And a number of articlesfor Micro Mart magazine. And asizeable contribution to last year'sYour Sinclair revival issue.Gratifying things, for sure,although the most gratifying thingof all, by a very considerablemargin, is the sheer number ofcountries in which ZXF is read andenjoyed.Well, that's it for now. Just one lastcheck to make sure the fridgedoor's open. And I'm out of here.Out of the door... down thestreet... feeling the sunshine...smelling the air... Did I shut all thewindows? Oh crap...

ZXF10: 53

Before ZXF: ZX Format was my website for "Remembering the ZXSpectrum." It became clear very quickly that no-one actuallyneeded any help remembering. The logo was a play on the popularPC magazines of the time, in particular PC Advisor and PC Format.

2002 - 2005Issues 1 to 10

After Ceaucescu's death in 1990 over 120,000 children were discoveredliving in grim institutions. In the county of Jud Bihor in Western Romania,children who had been assessed as 'mentally retarded' at the age of threewere sent to an institution in the country village of Cadea. They were housedin old buildings that had broken windows and no heating or plumbing. It wasdark and dirty and for the majority of the time the children were confined totheir cots. Most of them were tied to the bars by strips of cloth tied tightlyaround their wrists and ankles. The children were always dirty, hungry and cold - sixty to seventy died everywinter. Their original 'retardation' was the result of early illnesses such aspneumonia and bronchitis, and years of confinement at Cadea onlycompounded the problem. When they were finally released in January 1991,many could neither walk nor speak. All of the children rocked backwardsand forwards in their distress; their eyes were glazed and unseeing. Onrelease, many of the children were sent to hospital buildings in the mountainvillages of Remeti and Bratca. It is here that the White Cross startedassisting the local Romanian staff in their care.Since the White Cross has been working with the children, over 600 peoplehave travelled with the Mission to Romania. Some have only been able togive a few days of concentrated work, most average two months and onestayed for four years! Some work with the children, others repair thebuildings and yet others deliver goods. Every volunteer is special. Theyraise their own money for air and train fares, insurance, food and electricityand more than half of them do it all over again and go out for a second oreven third time. Old or young, with or without qualifications, the combinedwork and presence of these many different people has had an amazingimpact on the children.Children with blank, unseeing eyes, rocking in a world of their own are nowhealthy, laughing and boisterous. The accumulative effect of the WhiteCross volunteers with their mixture of naivety and experience, their energy,their perseverance, their hopes, their dreams and their many different waysof showing love has created a rainbow effect of bouncy, confident andindividual children. Fundatia Crucea Alba has helped White Cross Mission with the legalities ofpurchasing small farms, employing assistants and moving children from themental institutions in order to live a normal family village life. We intend thatthese farms will be the children's homes for as long as they need. All theirlives if necessary.Buying the farms is only the beginning of a lifetime commitment to thosechildren we take out of State care. Without a regular financial safety net wewould be irresponsible if we established too many homes. We do, however,believe that this is the only way forward and are desperate for substantialfunding.

The White Cross Mission is a Charitable Trust Registered in England No 102117652, Gwel-an-nans, Probus, Cornwall, TR2 4ND, United KingdomTel (+44) (0)1726 884344 Fax (+44) (0)1726 884345 Mob (+44) (0)7775700893Email wcm@whitecross.org.ukwww.the-white-cross.ndirect.co.uk