pouët.net

I have one on my room, but I have no power supply and I can't find one powerful enough.

MSX is pretty close to an expanded Speccy and for Atsaas we used about 50% C and 50% asm. SDCC isn't probably the best Z80 compiler out there but it was sufficient and has inline asm available. Definitely easier and less error-prone to try out stuff instead of writing full asm directly. Of course the sound system and any realtime gfx are asm but for all sorts of precalcs, setups and scripting C is fast enough.

Z80 coding <3 Is there even alternative? ;) With modern cross-assemblers (like Pasmo) and emulators (like ZXSP), assembly coding on these small platforms is actually enjoyable. The assemble-test-debug cycle is such short and painless. For testing on a real hardware DiVIDE+CF is just pure gold.

Vortex tracker got already mentioned several times. It is a good piece of free software. I just wish it would also work on other platforms than Windows.

The only tool set area that imho need a real boost is the graphics drawing programs. There are few good free programs available that have decent amount of effort behind them (like ZX-PaintBrush & ZXGfx) but could definitely be improved.. or then I am just spoiled by DPaint2 ;) Also, as a non-Windows user I cannot really use any of those..

doesnt vortex tracker run with wine? i havent tested, but i dont see any reason why it wouldnt.

I use Vortex Tracker on a Mac under Crossover (not for the actual composing though - just fixing up bits and pieces that you can't do in Soundtracker), so that's probably a yes.

Evilpaul:
>if you want to make demos then you'll probably want a 128 rather
>than a 48. the 128 gives you double buffering and a sound chip.. as
>well as obviously more memory ;)
-------------
Shit, Paul, You're EVIL indeed.


Deveah:
Do NOT listen to him. He's lying. And obviously he's evil.
If You wanna do hard coding, then 48K is the only machine.

DEATH FOR 128K!
http://zxspectrum48.i-demo.pl/ay48k_demos.html

Hi there!

I thought of not opening another thread, since there is this one.
I just returned from vintage computer festival in bletchley park and bought two spectrum (48k and +3) and divide. I might get a tv monitor to do something with them but I would like to start experiment in emuls and crossdev tools at the moment.

1) Which speccy emuls have an integrated assembler? (I know one which is Spin but there must be some more. Spin displays some weird windows error messages sometimes and there is no direct assemble/run button that works, you have to go through menus :P)

2) Are there some tutorials for the most basic stuff for someone who wants to start coding on speccy? (where the vram/attribute ram is, how to vsync, which ram is occupied, basic coding tricks you should know, sound playing, key handling maybe and more I forget) I can't find some good docs. How about a forum with people talking about coding or answering your questions?

1) Spin is pretty much unstable here and it's assembler also has some serious issues (eg. with conditional assembly, some particular opcodes still get compiled when they should not...). Some text editor with Pasmo or Sjasm+ is all you need to write&compile your program on PC.

2) The FAQ at WoS explains the basics, for anything else you can try the forum (you can also try to lurk there too).

this seems like a nice non-verbose speccy reference. Atleast the GBA/NDS docs from the same guy were always very useful to me. :)

Coding in assembler is a lot easier than coding in C when it comes to 8-bit platforms, as you really need the precise control it gives you. C could be a nice choice for native tool coding if you know what you're doing though, but that's only if you already know the ins and outs of the target system.

The Spectrum scene is active enough. Make an Oric demo ;-)

More speccy questions:

Ok,. now I have bought a small TV and tried my two spectrums.

First of all, is there a specific TV specification I should have worried about? I get an image but I don't like the quality, but that could be normal for speccy and TV. A lot of flickering, snow, but sometimes little details have wrong colours, for example blurry details between white and black or other colours, blurs that are of different colours. Sometimes it looks so bad that I am not sure if it's normal, sometimes it's not bad.

I got fucked up with the sound of the +3 too.
They told me some models might have bad sound and I have to replace something inside the speecy (some capacitor, some electronic). What exactly? Where can I find information? (Sorry, I googled, couldn't find)

About the video, I think I have improved it a bit by some settings on the tv (disabled scaling, reduced colour saturation). It's quite better now but I still get little artifacts. For example, in pure black/white screen with lot's of dithering, you can see faint blue and yellow stuff between the white and black gaps. Maybe it's normal?

The sound is still shit in +3. I hope it's easilly fixed

How about using RGB? I made myself an rb cable for the commodore monitor. There was just a small resister to bridge in the +2A.... i think in the +3 its the same. But beware, the +3 has some bug that other 128's dont have. Also, the timing on every machine is different. There are a few "groups" within original machines, where they can be divided in....ask others for details...

xernobyl - if your soldering is passable, build a ZX PSU

Use 5x 7809 in parallel in place of the 7812 as shown (and ground the adjust (middle) pin to all)

Optimus Knight - the signal coming out of a ZX is pretty poor to begin with,
try making a better lead (with satellite TV coax) instead of the crappy one that comes with the machine.

Putting 78xx stabilizers in parallel is a bad idea. They're not matched and the current will not distribute evenly resulting in possible thermal problems and/or fireworks. Use a current bypass transistor, like this: [/url]http://www.eleccircuit.com/boosting-regulator-current-for-ic-78xx-by-mj2955/[/url]. It is also cheaper :)