Top 10k strings from Alchemist News - Issue 27 (1998)(Alchemist Research).tzx in <root> / bin / z80 / software / Sinclair Spectrum Collection TOSEC.exe / Sinclair ZX Spectrum - Magazines / Sinclair ZX Spectrum - Magazines - [TZX] (TOSEC-v2007-01-01) /
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1 You willbe able to switch between playing JSW andJSW2 as it is really easy for me to flagthe rooms for different versions.
1 Theonly hassle I have now is to re-do mystructures to incoperate the new data andto add the extra graphics. I will try andget some screens up by the end of theweekend. End of diary. And you can see the end result with thisissue!
1 The difference between a popdown and anactivity is similar to that betweenlanguage roms and service calls on theBBC. An activity is the equivalent to alanguage it takes control of the machineand can go into suspension whilst apopdown is a utility which is performedbut cannot be suspended. You are notlimited to one suspended activity perapplication so you could have, forexample, several suspended Pipedreamdocuments. The amount of free memory isthe only restriction on the number ofactivities that can be in suspension. Of course with all these things insuspension you need to be confident thatthe machine is stable. Pressing the resetbutton (the equivalent of the BBC's"Break") kills all suspended activitiesand alarms. Resetting does not deletefiles but nevertheless you are likely tolose some work. In a month of
1 Thats about it fortoday. I will be hitting #sinclair on IRCtonight to see whats going on. Friday wasa bad turnout and my connection was reallyslow. Hopefully tonight will be better. Sunday 28 September 1997 Wrote a small routine to grab the mapblocks from the JSW snap. Not that manyblocks really. I shall draw these alongwith the sprites and hopefully they willbe done for next weekend. Although I am anartist, this is the bit I don't like. Iwant to be getting on with the coding. Idraw all week so it's nice to get a breakfrom pixeling. Saturday 4 October 1997
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1 Of course, in reality, you will have do make other sedoric disks or else you will soon fill this one up. We will look at this aspect later. Whatever you do - do not try the init command whilst here, or else you will re-format your master - I know, as i ve done it! Whilst on the disk you can play krillys ,and dump the state of that game - samerules that applied in the cassetteoperating system. You restart it from theoric directory. Unfortunately there-started game doesn t allow control overthe vessel. 6) Reading an Oric Disk If, like me, you want to transfer youroric 3.5" disk software to the pc, thenread on. Out your Oric disk in the a drive, and atthe C: prompt
1 Memory used: Amount of memory needed forrunning picture, i.e. total length +buffer length. SAVE PICTURE FOR ROUTINE Saves picture data only, without routine -only one routine is required for showingall pictures in memory. (For furtherinfo., see Routine and Pictures section.) CATALOGUE Lists disk files. For tape, displaysheader information without loading anyfiles. 4. EDITOR First, the desired picture must beselected. All functions can be accessed bya single keypress ('hot keys' system) orthrough the pull-down menu. (The hot keysare not available in the Help Menuitself.)
1 It is private format connector wiring 38pins. They are devoted for memoryaddressing. Each slot is able to address1024K. The slot 3 present a Vpp (12V)line, useful for Eprom programming.Pseudo-static RAM, static RAM, EPROM andFlash EPROM can be used. Slot RAM/ROM RAM/ROM Eprom pins Slot 1 Slot 2 Slot 3 Signals Signals Signals 1 A16 A16 A16 2 A15 A15 A15 3 A12 A12 A12 4 A7 A7 A7 5 A6 A6 A6 6 A5 A5 A5 7 A4 A4 A4 8 A3 A3 A3 9 A2 A2 A2 10 A1 A1 A1 11 A0 A0 A0 12 D0
1 If we compile and run this programme, theSpectrum returns "19.129101" which isabsolutely correct, as we can confirm withour trusty pocket calculator. That's jollygreat, isn't it? An implementation ofPythagoras' theorem in machine code, usingonly a handful of bytes. With this little routine, it is easy toexplain how the calculator actually makesuse of the stack. If you are used to Basicand to commands like "PRINT SQR x", youare perhaps puzzled because the calculatorinstructions have no parameters. As amatter of fact they don't need any,because the instructions relate perdefinitionem always to the uppermost or tothe two uppermost elements on the stack,or they add an element without regardingthe stacked values. That means, if youhave the value 5 on the stack and orderthe calculator to duplicate (DEFB 49),then the two uppermost stack elements willafterwards be 5, 5. If then theinstruction to
1 COPYRIGHTED - NOT PUBLIC DOMAIN!
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1 1998 A.Davis & Alch. Research
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1 ). Dry it beforereassembling. Do it carefully especiallyon the cursor, tab, diamond, square, enterand shift keys. 2.5 - The LCD connector The LCD is connected by a special ribbonwith 14 links on SK5. There are differetversions of the LCD but the best (and themore common) is the last which have thebest contrast. It is an OPTREX DMF690N. Itis driven by self circuitry : OneSED1610F, the master, and eight SED1600Ffor each line. Actually, we just have the timings for thehardware access. TIMEX was themanufacturer but it has left itsdeveloppement a long time ago. I'm
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1 The ROM Calculator ------------------ By Nele Abels-Ludwig Try to imagine the following: you haveinvested many nights of hard labour intoyour brand-new, ultra-fast, machine-codedeconomic simulation "Sim Company 2000" andnow you would like to add some statisticalfeatures. But...ooh, ehrm, how do you dotrigonometrical functions again? Oh my...where are my logarithmic tables? Or youwould like to draw perspective graphics inmachine code. Hmmm... you need tocalculate some square roots for that,don't you? But how do you do this withoutthe help of a pocket calculator or Basic?? You see, it might even happen to a machinecode programmer that he or she needs to docalculations with real numbers, i.e.numbers with digits behind the decimalpoint. But alas, normally theZ80-processor
1 INDEX (1) AN27.0 : This file. AN27.1 : NEWS. Possibly the largest newsAN27.2 : section in AlchNews history! AN27.3 : FLASH EPROM. A new, instant, 1Mb storage device for your Z88. AN27.4 : DIARY OF A GAME. How Andy Noble designed and programmed Jet Set Willy PC. AN27.5 : COLORDRAW REVIEW. Makes Art Studio look like a UDG editor! AN27.6 : THE 3RD NSS SHOW. Reviewed by The Editor. AN27.7 : ROMCOMBINER REVIEW. A most useful Z88 utility which allows you to copy and create your own ROMs.
1 MAY 1998
1 What if you got tomorrows Roys Rantings, today?, yeah I know, but what if?, what if you could see tomorrows dribble today?, what would you do? Well it's been a long journey, almost as long as Star Trek Voyagers!, but I have ineffect reviewed most, of the speccy emulators available on the PC today. Bar the updates, and one last emulator review (below), I figure the emulator review series has come to it's final end, natrally if any new emulators become available (Speccy +3 perhaps?) I will review them, but to round up my series (christ, and my column material as well, what on earth i'm I going to fill this column up with now? - I know, combine harvester reviews! - oh I've got a brand new combine harvester...), I have produced a lit
1 The Haunting music which accompanied the scenes/episodes following Scullys sister's death are here, and the memorable episode (after Scullys abduction) where Mulder meets some real life vampires, just serves to remind us how good the 2nd/early 3rd season episodeswere. My own favorite tunes are here, the music from 'Soft Light', about the scientist Chester Ray Banton, who's shadow has the ability to kill people, and from the episode 'Grotesque' where Mulder is assigned to track down a serial killer , who is obsessed by Gargoyles, by his former supervisor at the Behaviorial Sciences Unit. Add to this The X Files theme (the extended one released as a single), and the 'Flexifinger' re-mix (which you may remember, featured as the tune for the X Files theme
1 TRADING POST Victoria Road SHIFNAL TF11 8AF (Spctrum +2a / +3 hardware and spares UK supplier of SINTECH games) ZENOBI SOFTWARE 26 Spotland Tops Cutgate ROCHDALE OL12 7NX (Leading adventure software house) ZX FILES Paul White 30 The Rowans WETHERBY LS22 5EB (The best Spectrum magazine around!) Z88 Emulator Jeroen Van Den Bilt Keteldiepstraa
1 RAKEWELLS NEW FLASH EPROM FOR THE Z88 BY MICHAEL HARROP Rakewell has just launched a new self erasing 1M flash EPROM. The flash EPROM can be formatted from inside the Z88 so you can now throw away that bulky Eprom eraser!!. Around 2 weeks ago i sent for this new flash EPROM as i thought it may let me free up some of that 128k memory (still waiting for Andy to give me his 512k:-). Two days later a small envelope dropped through my letter box, inside was the new EPROM and a small instruction leaflet. Now when you first plug in the EPROM you are told to back up the programs on the cartridge these files consist of 1 text file, 1 cli file and a basic program file has this is the program you have to use for all the EPROM commands??.
1 Z88 ROMCOMBINER By Garry Lancaster Reviewd by The Editor The Z88 is a very powerful machine, evenwhen unexpanded. But, there will come atime when you need more. Perhaps a monitoror disassembler, or maybe a utility tolink the laptop to a PC. You can getsoftware for this, but it's much better tohave the application in a ROM cartridge. There are many such ROM cartridges outthere, which just slot into the Z88. But,they can be expensive and if you have morethan one cartridge, and only one freeslot, you will have to mess aroundswapping cartridges. If you have a spare128k or 256k EPROM, wouldn't it be greatto have all your favourite applications onjust one cartridge? Then ROMCOMBINER isjust what you need! ROMCOMBINER is one of the best Z88programs I hav
1 The Z88 FOREVER Applications ROM If you've read the review for ROMCOMBINER,the author, Garry Lancaster, has createdan applications ROM featuring tenexcellent utilities. Alchemist Researchcan supply the ROM either as two 16k imagefiles, a 32k ".EPR" image for the Z88emulator, or can program the ROM for you,providing you send us a blank 32k EPROM.See the ROMCOMBINER review for furtherdetails. The Z88 FOREVER ROM contains the followingapplications: UNZIP: A compressed file manager. If youown a PC then you will be familiar withZIP files. UNZIP is a comprehensivemanager to handle these files. You canobtain a copy of the ZIP software from theZ88 User Group Library, or from AlchemistResearch. UNZI
1 Back In Time with Arnold Yates. This month I would like to go into alittle detail concerning two seprate itemsof Spectrum hardware,such as the mouse.This is a small creature with four legsand a tail and is kept as a pet, sorry notthat mouse! The mouse that I owned was made by DatelElectronics and at the time cost `50.00.It came complete with the mouse,interface, mouse mat, and Advanced ArtStudio program. It boasted to be the bestall round graphics package available. The mouse can be used on the Spectrum 48k,48+, 128k, 128+2, in 48k mode. It can alsobe used on the +2a, or +2b in 48 mode. To use this item the interface must bepluged into the Spectrum expansion port.If, however, you have a disc drive thismust be remove
1 Z882TAS A Lead And A Listing By Michael Harrop A couple of months ago I was sorting outsome of my Spectrum software and cameacross a file I had forgotten about. Thefile Z882TAS! is a program for convertingZ88 Pipedream text files to SpectrumTasword files.. Oh I thought now thiscould be handy so I turn on the Spectrumand loaded the file from the micro drive. Now this is where I found the firstproblem I needed a lead to transfer thePipedream file to the Spectrum! so I gaveBill Richardson (of Richardson & Co) aring. Do you sell Z88 to Spectrum leads Iasked!! NO was his reply they never madeone for the Spectrum! but has it happensBill had got a letter from a guy that veryday saying tha
1 THE Z88 HARDWARE DESCRIPTION Thierry Peycru The Z88 is organized around fourintegrated circuits: a Z80 CMOS, themicroprocessor, a specialized gate-arraycalled 'Blink', the ROM chip and apseudo-static RAM chip. There are8connectors on the motherboard: theexpansion connector, the serial port, 2for keyboard connections, one for the LCDand 3 for the slot connectors. We willdescribe here the pinout, theirapplication and their modifications ifpossible. These informations are issued from the'Z88 Service Manual' with personalcomments, a section is added for FlashEprom description and usage. 1 - Integr
1 CONNECTING A PC KEYBOARD Hello all, In a previous article, I described the XTkeyboard protocol, designed & tested aserial to parallel interface(attached) andoutlined a crosspoint circuit design. Inthis installment we'll have a look atacomplete XT to ZX keyboard interface.This circuit is a simple open loop design:there is no flow control to prevent fasttypists from overflowing the XT keyboardinterface with a resulting loss ofcharacters. This is no problem for me butin a (near) future article I will add amod to provide the required (clockline)handshaking, as well as IO addressdecoding / bus buffering for an externallyconnected version and a listing of theEPROM code. The schematic
1 The COBOL Programmer By Don Dyer Jack was once a COBOL programmer in thelate 1990's who (after years of beingtaken for granted and treated as atechnological dinosaur by all the UNIXprogrammers and Client/Server programmersand website developers, etc.) was finallygetting some respect. You see, he'd becomea private consultant specialising in Year2000 conversions. He was workingshort-term assignments for prestigecompanies, travelling all over the worldon different assignments. He was working70 and 80 and even 90 hour weeks, but itwas worth it. However, several years of this relentless,mind-numbing work had taken its toll onJack. He had problems sleeping and beganhaving anxiety dreams about the Year 2000.It had reached
1 NEW EPROM PROGRAMMERS Once a tool for hobbyists with littlesupport, EPROM programming could be theSpectrum medium of 1998 - all thanks toKevin Gurd. He's finally finished hisEPROM programmer and is now progressinginto making custom 48k ROM chips. Not onlythis, but he's also made a board so thatthe chips can be plugged directly into anInterface 2 or Ram Turbo ROM socket so youdon't have to open your machine and canswap ROMs quickly and easily. Kevin willshortly be progressing to writing gamesand utilities onto these EPROMS. Contacthim at: 21 Ladycross Road Langdown Hythe SOUTHAMTON SO45 3JR STOP PRESS: In early April, Kevincontacted us t
1 Euphoric for dummies By Dave Dick (Editor of ORIC USER MONTHLY magazine) 1) Introduction A lot of space has been given over thelast year to the onward development ofEuphoric - the Oric Emulator for the PC.As reported earlier, I have recentlypurchased one of those all singing, alldancing multimedia PC systems. Of course,I wanted to try the latest version of theemulator. In fact I want it to do a lotfor me - i want to transfer all my Oricsoftware to the PC hard drive. I want tosend out 3.5" disc software copied fromthe pc. I am not knocking the readme thatcomes with Euphoric - I wouldn t knockanyone like Fabrice whose sheer genius hastransformed the Oric scene. It is justthat I and many others find thedocumentation not too user friendly . Theproblems are m
1 Introducing the Z88 Retro Review by The Micro User, 1988 Despite using a Z80 processor instead ofthe BBC micro's 6502 Sir Clive Sinclair'snew lap-held computer, the CambridgeComputers Z88, is surprisingly compatiblewith the BBC machines. The programminglanguage is Z80 BBC Basic and theword-processor cum spreadsheet, Pipedream,was written by Mark Colton, the author ofView, and is almost identical toAcornsoft's View Professional. Other "applications" and "popdowns"supplied on the Z88's rom are a VT52Terminal, Diary, Calculator, Calendar,Real Time Clock, Alarm and FileImport-Export Software.
1 The 4th NSS SHOW Review by The Editor The weather was bleak. Heavy snowfalls,rain, bitter wind, aircraft blown off therunway, rooves blown from schools etc. Wasthis God smiting George for changing thedate? No matter, despite the inch offrozen snow on my car, the skies were blueand off ventured Mick Harrop (Alchemisttape and +3 services) and I to the NSSshow. We arrived about 9am, just after PaulWhite (ZX Files) and began to set up ourtwo stalls - our regular Alchemist'talking-shop', with Mick's +3, myexternal drive and monitor. We also had a hardware stall which we wererunning on Bill Richardson's (EEC) behalf- selling Z88 accessories, interface 1's,microdrives, cartridges and QL board.
1 Diary of a Game: Jet Set Willy PC. By Andy Noble Saturday 27 September 1997 Uploaded the final release of Manic Minerto my web page. I am now free to startJSW. I re-snapped my original JSW with allthe bug fix pokes in. A good idea to startwith no bugs I think. I have ripped theguardian sprites from the speccysnap.(plug) I used my SPECRIP programme tofind the sprites and save them out. Theyall fit onto one Dpaint screen so thatmakes me happy :) The sprites should takeabout a week to colour in. I am going touse the system I had in MM where theystart off at one colour and the programmecan then change them to another colourreally easly. This saves on memory and thespeed hit is very small. The only thingyou have to do
1 128K OR NOT 128K? THE SPECTRUM IN LIMBO... By Miles Kinloch Some people may know the technique forprinting UDGs 'T' and 'U' in 128 mode, byPOKEing 23611,205. These characters willthen be displayed as graphics when theprogram is run, although they still appearas SPECTRUM and PLAY in the listing. The POKE, however, has less familiarside-effects that it's as well to be awareof, the first being that it causes anerror (Nonsense in BASIC) when a Ramdiskcommand is encountered in an auto-runningprogram. Fortunately, the error onlyoccurs if the POKE is already in placebefore loading the program; it doesn'tcause problems if done afterwards fromwithin it. In practice, this means it willonly have implications when one programloads another
1 TRADING POST ************** Please enclose a SAE with your enquiry toall services. If purchasing from a privateindividual, make confirmation the articleis still for sale and try not to send cashunless a premium delivery service is used. SERVICES REMOVED: IMPACT SOFTWARE: Closed down. EMILY SOFTWARE : No longer manufacturing. SOFTSELL / SSH : Closed down. If your group isn't listed, please get intouch and we'll add your details. * * * * * ADVENTURE WORKSHOP 36 Grasmere Ro
1 CRACK CITY With The Ed. With a farewell to Desmond, who hasrecently emigrated, I've stepped in towrite about some interesting tours, shouldyou be in Nottingham or Lincoln. For both these towns offer 'ghost walks' -a guided tour of some of the eerier partsof the old areas of town, with fascinatingstories as to how these areas becamehaunted. I'll begin with the Nottingham Ghost Walk,which runs every Saturday (except inDecember) at 7pm at The Old Salutation Innon Maid Marion Way, Nottingham. The walk visits three interestingbuildings in the town; the old Brothel, where a myseterious sadness filled a room,causing despair in it's occupants.
1 COLOUR DRAW New instructions by Miles Kinloch COLOUR DRAW is a multi-colour graphicseditor to create pictures with 15 colourcombinations per attribute cell, each newattribute having an 8 x 1 pixel format. The picture dimensions are: Width: 128 pixels. Height: Min. 8, max. 192 pixels, adjustable in 8-pixel steps. Three multi-colured pictures can be editedtogether, and parts may be copied or movedbetween each. 1. CONTROLS Cursor movement is controlled with keysQ,A,O,P,M/Space, or with the KempstonJoystick. No k
1 COLOUR DRAW Reviewed by Miles Kinloch As fresh ideas in Spectrum programming aresomething of a rarity these days, myinitial reaction on seeing the title was,"ah, another drawing utility". As itturned out, however, I was in for asurprise... Colour Draw in fact introduces arevolutionary new dimension to Spectrumscreen design. By clever use ofinterlacing techniques, it allows allfifteen colours to be present in eachattribute cell - every Spectrum artist'sdream. Flicker is kept to a minimum bycareful attention to the timing, and theresults are truly impressive. If only thishad been around in the Spectrum's heyday! Being menu dri
1 Why CP/M? By Dave Baldwin The advantage of CP/M machines is that ONEperson, not a team hiding under the stormclouds of the northwest, can actually dosomething with the machine and even modifythe OS to suit themselves. There arepeople in this newsgroup who have totallycustomized CP/M to their liking, made itrun on a network of machines (of their owndesign), and others who understand themachines well enough to write emulatorsoftware that runs on PC's, Amiga's, Unixmachines, and god knows what else.Emulators that are complete enough toprocess all the 'undocumented' Z80instructions and / or the Z180instructions. Other people just like having a machinesimple enough to tinker with. Some startedwith their Kaypro, Big Board, Compupro,Imsai, Ithaca
1 CREDITS Greatful appreciation must go out to allwho helped in the production of this finepublication. Notable thanks must go to: Editor: Andy Davis Bsc Sub-Editor: Michael Harrop Assistant: Sian Hartley Original Programming: Dominic Morris Later Programming: Andy Davis United Minds Paul Howard Miles Kinloch 128K Music: Agent-X Chris Taylor United Minds Dave Fountain Technium 220
1 ZFU By Michael Harrop Now if you are like me and only have 128K of ram in your Z88 you soon find that you are running out of space on your ram card so I thought to my self it would good to have a program that would compress your text and program files that you don't need t use there and then but need them ready to hand. I know Rakewell Limited sell a file compression program similar to the PC winzip progra but this cost `46. so I had a look in the Z88 library and came across aprogram called ZFU. Now not only does this program compress your files to a small size it also has a neat backup facility this will back up all your fi
1 ORFEUS Reviewed by Miles Kinloch Orfeus is a 48K two-voice musicdevelopment program in a similar vein toWham! Music Box. Indeed, being based on acompatible format, it even allows Wham!files to be loaded into it. Orfeus,however, has the distinct edge, as itsports more features and goes a long waytowards addressing its predecessor'sdeficiencies. To the delight of any musician, theprogram uses real music notation, completewith key and time signatures, and even akey transposition facility. In addition tothe two melody voices, a third voice isset aside for drums and percussionaccompaniment. The menu-dri
1 NEWS ALCHEMIST PD IS BACK! Who would have guessed? After years ofslaving away at tape decks and diskdrives, the editor swore that he'd neverbe involved with PD again! When we handedover our library to Fountain andAlchemist, we thought that would be theend of our opertaing a library. How wrongwe were! After a few months on the internet, mainlyin the Sinclair areas, the only programsbeing peddled around were emulators andsnapshots of games. Most of the 'net userswere not even aware of some of the gemsout there. So, with the aid of Mick Harropand his web space, we decided to re-startthe library - allowing 'netters todownload entire disks full of PD software. The site is: