[Sam-users] Floppy drive belt
Dear Sam Coupé friends, my Sam floppy drive does not work and I thought it was not possible to repair it. I have also a few PC floppy drives, but I don't have the adapter board, so I would like to repair the original Citizen drive. I received information that it is actually quite easy to repair, because it should be possible to buy a new drive belt. And it is the same as in ZX Spectrum +3 drive, so there are several sources where it can be bought. (Even Farnell has it. :-)) It seemed good before I realized all eshops where I found it are in the UK = outside of the European Union. So my question is simple: Is there anybody who can send it to me from the European Union or who can send it from UK as a private person, not UK eshop, so I don't need to pay those high customs fees (which are mandatory after brexit and make the final price of these cheap items like 4-times higher)? And one more question: Please let me know if you also did this repair. Just to verify that it really works. (I think it could work - the drive seems alive and pretty fine, except the rubber belt.) Cheers, Aleš Keprt ___ sam-users mailing list sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no http://nvg.ntnu.no/mailman/listinfo/sam-users
Re: Prototype of case for planed new computer SAM COUPE 2
I think the NTSC-PAL signal compatibility differs manufacturer to manufacturer. But I wonder why do you use a NTSC display. You live outside of Europe? Or you mean NTSC like a standard 60 Hz computer monitor? From: Thomas Harte Sent: Thursday, April 30, 2015 10:18 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Prototype of case for planed new computer SAM COUPE 2 With further consideration I'd suggest that the hypothetical hardware LDIR-alike be optionally able to logically invert its output addresses. With suitable adjustments to the inputs, that gives you counting down as well as counting up. So you can also scroll left-to-right! That stuff all aside, does anybody know anything about the compatibility of PAL machines with modern NTSC flat screens? The one I have otherwise does an excellent job with a composite input, including the off-spec non-interlaced stuff that '80s computers put out, but I've not tried it with a 50Hz or PAL signal. Do manufacturers still bother to differentiate or have economies of scale reduced everything down to a single chip regardless? It also has component inputs but I've nothing that outputs component video and wouldn't be surprised if it's implemented in such a way as to accept only HDTV signals. Which is a roundabout way of wondering whether I'd ever be able to use a Sam 2 on this side of the Atlantic. Anyone care to speculate? I guess one of those composite/s-video/RGB to HDMI converters might be a smart investment anyway as they're probably only going to get more obscure. On 29 April 2015 at 08:09, wrote: Case looks very good. Discussion is pretty interesting. On 29.04.2015 09:34, the wub wrote: What a great project, your Sam Coupe 2 looks really amazing. I particularly like the spherical feet! And the Lynx did have at least one good game: Super Skweek! :) ----- Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian University College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz
Re: Prototype of case for planed new computer SAM COUPE 2
Technically you are correct, but I think you cannot compare the professional product of top class technology company like Atari with amateur home made product like this Sam Coupe 2. I think even the original Sam Coupe was rather a home made product than a professional computer hardware on the technology level possible in the 1980's. -Původní zpráva- From: Thomas Harte Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2015 1:55 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Prototype of case for planed new computer SAM COUPE 2 True, but both the Lynx and the Sam came out in the same year and the Sam was the more expensive of the two. The Lynx gets away with it, I think, because it's pushing only an 8kb frame buffer — 160x102 in 4bpp. So divide all your mental calculations by three. ... though, of course, I wouldn't advocate it if fun games are your real objective. The Lynx's design is what Needle and Mical did after the Amiga and before the 3DO so it's from that lineage of design. The graphics hardware is like an Amiga plus in many ways, though a 6502 was all they could fit into the mobile transistor budget. On 28 Apr 2015, at 07:22, Aleš Keprt wrote: AKAIK the hardware sprites are much simpler to implement. I don't know Lynx, but the blitter like you described needs uncomparably faster hardware than a set of hardware sprites. A. -Původní zpráva- From: Thomas Harte Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2015 1:12 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Prototype of case for planed new computer SAM COUPE 2 I'm inclined to think the Atari Lynx is the pinnacle of '80s graphics chipsets: just a frame buffer and a scaling blitter. No need for all the special-case sprites/backgrounds nonsense. On 28 Apr 2015, at 06:32, Leslie Anderson wrote: In an ideal world you could have : 32/8 full colour hardware sprites ...16x16 or 8x8 ? with sprite collision detection ? Hardware scroll vertical/horizontal Increase in Colour palette Hardware line interrupts (programmable) to switch palette at a fixed number of scan lines ? No need for CPU intervention. Even a second Video processor to give superposition, Superimposed video. This could be something like a V9938/V9958. though this obviously would mean quite a bit of extra circuitry, but the resulting graphics would be superb, probably surpassing a Commodore AMIGA. Though this all boils down to someone with the time, brains and means to make it happen ! On 28 April 2015 at 09:28, Andrew Park wrote: I think hardware sprites would be great, increase in colour palette would be beneficial as long as more colours on screen at once was introduced but given the size of the screen as standard is 24k more colours on screen would mean more memory unless line interrupts were used then this would have speed issues on the cpu, so how could this be used? From: owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no [mailto:owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no] On Behalf Of Leszek Chmielewski Sent: 27 April 2015 22:27 To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Prototype of case for planed new computer SAM COUPE 2 I agree. The original (crowdfunding) plans for the "new" Golden ASIC's involved hardware sprites and palette expansion to 4096, which is enough for most needs, and this as upgrade for the original SAM 1. LCD On Mon, Apr 27, 2015 at 11:20 PM, Aleš Keprt wrote: I think hardware sprites would be more beneficial than so many colors. If I look to old game cabinets from 80’s, many of them have got excellent games with simple slow CPU’s... but always with hardware sprites= ----- Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian University College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz ----- Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian University College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz
Re: Prototype of case for planed new computer SAM COUPE 2
AKAIK the hardware sprites are much simpler to implement. I don't know Lynx, but the blitter like you described needs uncomparably faster hardware than a set of hardware sprites. A. -Původní zpráva- From: Thomas Harte Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2015 1:12 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Prototype of case for planed new computer SAM COUPE 2 I'm inclined to think the Atari Lynx is the pinnacle of '80s graphics chipsets: just a frame buffer and a scaling blitter. No need for all the special-case sprites/backgrounds nonsense. On 28 Apr 2015, at 06:32, Leslie Anderson wrote: In an ideal world you could have : 32/8 full colour hardware sprites ...16x16 or 8x8 ? with sprite collision detection ? Hardware scroll vertical/horizontal Increase in Colour palette Hardware line interrupts (programmable) to switch palette at a fixed number of scan lines ? No need for CPU intervention. Even a second Video processor to give superposition, Superimposed video. This could be something like a V9938/V9958. though this obviously would mean quite a bit of extra circuitry, but the resulting graphics would be superb, probably surpassing a Commodore AMIGA. Though this all boils down to someone with the time, brains and means to make it happen ! On 28 April 2015 at 09:28, Andrew Park wrote: I think hardware sprites would be great, increase in colour palette would be beneficial as long as more colours on screen at once was introduced but given the size of the screen as standard is 24k more colours on screen would mean more memory unless line interrupts were used then this would have speed issues on the cpu, so how could this be used? From: owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no [mailto:owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no] On Behalf Of Leszek Chmielewski Sent: 27 April 2015 22:27 To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Prototype of case for planed new computer SAM COUPE 2 I agree. The original (crowdfunding) plans for the "new" Golden ASIC's involved hardware sprites and palette expansion to 4096, which is enough for most needs, and this as upgrade for the original SAM 1. LCD On Mon, Apr 27, 2015 at 11:20 PM, Aleš Keprt wrote: I think hardware sprites would be more beneficial than so many colors. If I look to old game cabinets from 80’s, many of them have got excellent games with simple slow CPU’s... but always with hardware sprites= ----- Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian University College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz
Re: Prototype of case for planed new computer SAM COUPE 2
I think hardware sprites would be more beneficial than so many colors. If I look to old game cabinets from 80’s, many of them have got excellent games with simple slow CPU’s... but always with hardware sprites. A. From: VELESOFT Sent: Saturday, April 25, 2015 8:34 AM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Prototype of case for planed new computer SAM COUPE 2 No hardware scroll, no sprites. But text mode with transparent color(s). Theoretically may palete contain up to 65536 colors. VELESOFT - Original Message - From: retr...@gmail.com To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Sent: Saturday, April 25, 2015 2:46 AM Subject: Re: Prototype of case for planed new computer SAM COUPE 2 Velesoft, you say, the SAM2 will have 256 colours at once. Does this mean, the colour palette is enhanced to 512 or even 4096 colours? Will it have hardware scrolling or hardware sprites too? Greetings LCD Originalmitteilung Von:VELESOFT Gesendet:Fri, 24 Apr 2015 18:09:58 +0200 An:sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Betreff:Re: Prototype of case for planed new computer SAM COUPE 2 - Original Message - From: "Chmielewski" To: Sent: Friday, April 24, 2015 12:01 AM Subject: Re: Prototype of case for planed new computer SAM COUPE 2 >> Case on my picture is only one of more possible versions. I plan also >> other cases. Main board will small (mini itx format) and will support >> different additional boards with connectors. See here: >> http://velesoft.speccy.cz/other/SAMCLONE_PANEL2.JPG > Thats really cool. Does this mean, it will be possible to use ZX > Spectrum interfaces directly? Yes. You can connect SAM COUPE interfaces and ZX interfaces. >> Will possible use also similar board for install to original SAM COUPE >> case, different version to MINI ITX case and different to my cases. >> SAM 2 is not only clone. Enable good compatibility with ZX128 and >> faster graphic operations, rom reflashing, rom emulation... This >> project is primarily maked for me and my friends, but will possible >> make more pieces. > I'm your friend, please! I want one or two of these. > You said, it will have Text mode. Can the Text characters be redefined? > Which other graphics modes are planed? Text modes will usable in color modes 16c/pixel and in hi-res mode(also color pixels). Yes, font will in ram. New graphic mode will 256x192/256 colors each pixel and may be also 512x192/256c. >> Big part of USB/PS2 keyboards have ghosting effect and not support >> some keys combinations in ZX games. For example problems with SINCLAIR >> joysticks, QWERT, CURSORS+0, QAOP+SPACE, etc... Laptop keyboard >> contain only membrane, but is possible with software filter eliminate >> ghosting effect. And TOSHIBA SATELLITE laptop keyboards support most >> popular keys combinations in ZX games. Info about PC keyboard ghosting >> test: >> http://speccy.pl/forum/index.php/topic,1221.msg14678.html#msg14678 >> >> High priority is for me keyboard with usable keys combinations in >> games. Laptop keyboard is small, cheap and is possible buy each type >> more years after release. SAM 2 use universal adapter for connect any >> laptop keyboard and will use define keys after first connect new >> keyboard (any membrane). Each user can define own keys layout. >> > Excellent, but I hope, you can use also original SAM membranes in a SAM > case. Yes. All membranes will usable. ZX membrane, +2A/+3 membrane, laptom keyboards, sam coupe membrane, membrane from any PS/2 or USB keyboards... Keyboard module use software autodetection on all pins of connected membrane. If you connect any new membrane, must be call software test which test membrane state during pressing key by key. After detect all states save new configuration for your keyboard. Membrane is under software controll thanks to second CPU Z80. All software for second CPU will be in assembler Z80 and rewritable direct from computer :-) >> > LCD >> - Original Message - From: "Aleš Keprt" >> To: >> Sent: Thursday, April 23, 2015 8:18 PM >> Subject: Re: Prototype of case for planed new computer SAM COUPE 2 >> >> >>> Sorry, I am pessimistic here. I don't like this design. I don't like >>> the look of the original Sam Coupe either, why the hell would anybody >>> want to clone it? In my opinion it's weird, it's a waste of effort >>> and skills. And why 3.5" floppy diskettes? Another weird thing here. >>> It's 2014, not 1984! I would definitely prefer a standard PC keyboard >>> and a computer in a separate box, with
Re: Prototype of case for planed new computer SAM COUPE 2
Sorry, I am pessimistic here. I don't like this design. I don't like the look of the original Sam Coupe either, why the hell would anybody want to clone it? In my opinion it's weird, it's a waste of effort and skills. And why 3.5" floppy diskettes? Another weird thing here. It's 2014, not 1984! I would definitely prefer a standard PC keyboard and a computer in a separate box, with flash memory cards (of any easily implementable type) instead of the current design. Best regards, Aley -Původní zpráva- From: VELESOFT Sent: Wednesday, April 22, 2015 11:10 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Prototype of case for planed new computer SAM COUPE 2 New computer compatible with sam coupe and ZX128. Contain real CPU Zilog Z80, and CPLD chip instead old ASIC. Real SAA1099 and AY chip,... Don't contain any modern PIC,ARM. Price is unknown, all is in development. VELESOFT - Original Message - From: "Thomas Harte" To: Sent: Wednesday, April 22, 2015 11:01 PM Subject: Re: Prototype of case for planed new computer SAM COUPE 2 It reflects poorly on me but Spanish isn't one of my languages. What sort of machine is it? A genuine hardware compatible or just a Pi-or-whatever in a suitable case? How much? When? In what form? Very exciting. On 22 Apr 2015, at 14:59, Andrew Park wrote: Interested to see some more information on this, will it be a DIY sam or produced? Andy From: owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no [mailto:owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no] On Behalf Of Kurt K Sent: 22 April 2015 17:34 To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Prototype of case for planed new computer SAM COUPE 2 Where do we find more information? I'd love to get one. I'll have to look closer on Velesoft's website. On Apr 22, 2015, at 10:50 AM, Leszek Chmielewski wrote: How much will it cost? On Wed, Apr 22, 2015 at 5:29 PM, VELESOFT wrote: It's first version of case for planed new computer SAM COUPE 2: http://velesoft.speccy.cz/other/SAMCASE_6E.JPG http://velesoft.speccy.cz/other/SAMCASE_6A.JPG http://velesoft.speccy.cz/other/SAMCASE_6D.JPG http://velesoft.speccy.cz/other/SAMCASE_6B.JPG http://velesoft.speccy.cz/other/SAMCASE_6C.JPG http://velesoft.speccy.cz/other/SAMCASE_6G.JPG http://velesoft.speccy.cz/other/SAMCASE_6H.JPG VELESOFT --- Tato zpráva byla zkontrolována na viry programem Avast Antiviru --- Tato zpráva byla zkontrolována na viry programem Avast Antivirus. http://www.avast.com - Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian University College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz
Re: Nyan Cat
I didn't finish it last winter. Actually, I finished the Nyancat itself, I also finished the compression system (I use all RAM for frame buffers, but keep it in one small 32 KB file on disk) but I wanted to add some text scroller. I'm afraid I am not going to have more time to work on it until next winter. Aley -Původní zpráva- From: Simon Owen Sent: Friday, November 09, 2012 7:53 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Nyan Cat On 12/05/2012 22:34, Aleš Keprt wrote: We have the program done, including graphics and music. I also added a tiny text scroller and now I need to write some text to put there. :-) Did you ever finish this? It'd be great to see how it compares to the Speccy version. Si
Re: Nyan Cat
We don't need to talk endlessly about it, do we? We have the program done, including graphics and music. I also added a tiny text scroller and now I need to write some text to put there. :-) The size of whole program is approx. 50 KB (unpacked), including the AY8910 emulator for music. A. -Původní zpráva- From: Balor Price Sent: Saturday, May 12, 2012 8:27 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Nyan Cat Ha! Not too many takers all at once eh? I'm thinking about it... If it was an online demo party I'm not sure we could all get the time together, but I'm willing to try. Howard On 12/05/2012 01:39, Adrian Brown wrote: Ok, so who is looking at Nyan cat, I reckon if I wasn't clever and said it was 512kb only it would take about 2 hours, to be clever on a 256kb sam it would take about 3-4. ;) ----- Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz
Re: XOR now completed!
Don't cry, I don't understand the game at all. ;-) Aley -Původní zpráva- From: Thomas Harte Sent: Sunday, April 29, 2012 12:39 AM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: XOR now completed! I'm not sure I understand the game correctly. • either the replay function doesn't work correctly, or it doesn't do what I think it's meant to. Having just failed miserably to complete the first level I let it give me a replay but if you believe that then I never switched shield, spent a lot of time just pressing 'up' and 'down' and apparently figured out the key to view the map. Which, try as I might, I can't. Once it was showing me the map there then appeared to be no way out short of resetting the machine. • completing the first level appears just to take me back to the title screen, at which point pressing space takes me back to the first level. I'm forced to conclude that I'm being a dunce somehow. Any tips? On 26 April 2012 03:14, Simon Owen wrote: On 25 Apr 2012, at 21:29, Aleš Keprt wrote: It says: Domain http://cookingcircle.co.uk/ not found. It was working yesterday morning but it's now broken for me too. I wonder whether it's was caught up in the UK2.net issues from yesterday, due to the DDOS. This should work in the meantime: http://cookingcircle.tumblr.com/ Si - Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz
Re: XOR now completed!
It says: Domain http://cookingcircle.co.uk/ not found. Aley -Původní zpráva- From: Balor Price Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2012 3:00 AM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: XOR now completed! Hello everybody I'm proud to present my conversion of the 1987 Spectrum game XOR. I finally kept my promise to my teenage self to finish a SAM game! You can download it for free from the revived http://cookingcircle.co.uk I hope you enjoy it (and yell in frustration). It's 25 years old and still as rock-hard as I remember. Any feedback/initial bugs found would be greatly appreciated. :D Cheers Howard - Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz
Re: Nyan Cat
Oh, you are right. I forgot this. Bright and Flash. The only thing I regularly used mode 2 for were text scrollers, because it is very easy to make a slow 1 pixel per frame scroller in mode 2, and it is a bit more harder in mode 4 because it's slow. (I switched to mode 2 only part of the screen to show to text and then switched back to mode 4.) Aley -Původní zpráva- From: James R Curry Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2012 12:33 AM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Nyan Cat The strangest decision regarding Mode 2 is keeping the BRIGHT and FLASH attributes. Without those, the Ink and Paper colours could each be any of the sixteen colours. As it is, the select colours have to both be in the range 0-7 or 8-15, not one in each range. Incidentally, has anyone thought about clever use of Mode 2 and attributes to create a game that runs at a super low resolution, like 64 x 96 (using 4x2 pixel blocks)? It could run at a high frame rate... it might be an interesting experiment= - Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz
Re: Nyan Cat
Oh yes, I repainted it a bit to let it fit to Sam's screen and still look 99% like original. Or as much as possible. I would rather stop this discussion until it is published. Aley -Původní zpráva- From: Thomas Harte Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2012 8:56 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Nyan Cat I had a brief look at it; given that the originals are 400x400 (and, as you noted, not actually simply an upscaling of a smaller size, despite consciously adopting that look), I assume you repainted by hand? On 24 April 2012 11:13, Aleš Keprt wrote: My conversion of original graphics is already finished, so I look forward to your music. :-) I wanted to ask for help the people who did music for some other 8bit conversion(s). Aley From: David Sanders Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2012 10:59 AM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Nyan Cat On 23 April 2012 21:34, Thomas Harte wrote: If it's for some sort of quick attempt at multipart megademo (albeit with all the parts being extremely similar), would it be safe to assume that someone [else] is working on the music? I'd love to be able to contribute but music is completely beyond me. I'm loathe to put myself forward for this, but what the hell. I'll convert the music :-) ----- Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz ----- Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz
Re: Nyan Cat
My conversion of original graphics is already finished, so I look forward to your music. :-) I wanted to ask for help the people who did music for some other 8bit conversion(s). Aley From: David Sanders Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2012 10:59 AM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Nyan Cat On 23 April 2012 21:34, Thomas Harte wrote: If it's for some sort of quick attempt at multipart megademo (albeit with all the parts being extremely similar), would it be safe to assume that someone [else] is working on the music? I'd love to be able to contribute but music is completely beyond me. I'm loathe to put myself forward for this, but what the hell. I'll convert the music :-) ----- Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz
Re: Nyan Cat
Yes there is a vocal. The problem is that 4x4 is too low resolution to reproduce the original animation with all detail. You actually need 2x2 to reproduce the whole original or 3x3 if you can live with parts being cut on top and bottom. btw. Why MGT designed mode 2 this way instead of low-res 2x2 pixel mode (i.e. 128x96) with 4 bits per each 2x2 block? That would look more similar to C64 and Amstrad CPC, and it would allow us to have a nice and fast action games. Now we have 2 bytes per 8 pixels in mode 2, but only with two colours. I'd prefer to have these 2 bytes for 4 larger pixels so that each pixel could have any one of 16 colours in palette. Aley -Původní zpráva- From: Tommo H Sent: Monday, April 23, 2012 5:16 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Nyan Cat The graphics are no problem whatsoever but the sound would be completely beyond me. Listening to the original (non-8 bit) version shows the song to have a vocal so if that weren't the case I'd probably do the graphics in 4x4 blocks in Mode 2 and get that whole footprint down to 10kb or so, then spend everything else on music. Even then I assume someone would need to come up with a MOD-style version of the track... Vaguely related: does anyone know where I can get hold of Sam dos as a binary blob, outside of a disk image, for the purposes of being able to assemble things conveniently? I can find disk image file extraction tools for Windows only, making them quite useless. On 23 Apr 2012, at 08:07, Andrew Park wrote: I wonder if this will spawn several renditions of a sam version i'm going to give it a go too :-) Andy -Original Message- From: owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no [mailto:owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no] On Behalf Of Aleš Keprt Sent: 23 April 2012 02:06 To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Nyan Cat I analyzed the original video - the whole animation consists of 12 frames only. So this part is easy. :-) Aley -Původní zpráva----- From: Aleš Keprt Sent: Monday, April 23, 2012 2:42 AM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Nyan Cat I think normal mode 4 + normal music would be OK. I would rather see it finished in basic variant then to read 100 mails on theory what can be done. ;-) I believe mode 4 is achievable. It is small, it is repeated and it seems to me that all states of the cat can fit into a few screen pages so we would draw just stars. Plus standard music, samples aren't needed for this. So who is going to do it? :-))) A. -Původní zpráva- From: Andrew Collier Sent: Sunday, April 22, 2012 10:57 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Nyan Cat Yeah, 4-pixel squares in mode 2 would be easy enough. An authentic facsimile in Mode 1 would be tricky as there are squares with more than 2 colours in. Achievable with rainbow processing, but that seems a bit of a faff... Andrew On 22 Apr 2012, at 21:34, Tommo H wrote: Based on the Spectrum version, you could probably do it in Mode 1 or 2, just using the attributes? On 22 Apr 2012, at 13:32, Andrew Collier wrote: so this is what people do on the internet these days, is it? Actually it does remind me a bit of the kind of stuff that ended up on early issues of Fred... You'd need to draw the stars manually, but that should be achievable. Andrew On 22 Apr 2012, at 19:45, James R Curry wrote: There are few enough frames that it could easily be done with screen swapping with a sampled version of the music playing. -- James R Curry On Apr 22, 2012, at 1:39 PM, "Aleš Keprt" wrote: Do we have Nyan Cat on Sam Coupe? Somebody should make a conversion. original version, Atari 800, ZX Spectrum, Commodore C16, Atari 2600: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQ5v9Qo6XzA Amstrad CPC version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfD3WxgaiXo BBC Micro version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBVQdx3dJ1c If you don't have time to watch it all, here is a "short" 100h summary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA5DsLzSVrk Sam Coupe version: ??? ----- Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz ----- Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz ----- Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz ----- Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz
Re: Nyan Cat
This is a great idea. I am going to make it. I mean one part of it. Aley From: James R Curry Sent: Monday, April 23, 2012 5:14 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Nyan Cat I'm looking forward to the Nyan Cat Megademo. 5 interpretations of Nyan Cat in one demo by five same coders! On Mon, Apr 23, 2012 at 9:04 AM, Andrew Park wrote: I wonder if this will spawn several renditions of a sam version i'm going to give it a go too :-) Andy -Original Message- From: owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no [mailto:owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no] On Behalf Of Aleš Keprt Sent: 23 April 2012 02:06 To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Nyan Cat I analyzed the original video - the whole animation consists of 12 frames only. So this part is easy. :-) Aley -Původní zpráva- From: Aleš Keprt Sent: Monday, April 23, 2012 2:42 AM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Nyan Cat I think normal mode 4 + normal music would be OK. I would rather see it finished in basic variant then to read 100 mails on theory what can be done. ;-) I believe mode 4 is achievable. It is small, it is repeated and it seems to me that all states of the cat can fit into a few screen pages so we would draw just stars. Plus standard music, samples aren't needed for this. So who is going to do it? :-))) A. -Původní zpráva- From: Andrew Collier Sent: Sunday, April 22, 2012 10:57 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Nyan Cat Yeah, 4-pixel squares in mode 2 would be easy enough. An authentic facsimile in Mode 1 would be tricky as there are squares with more than 2 colours in. Achievable with rainbow processing, but that seems a bit of a faff... Andrew On 22 Apr 2012, at 21:34, Tommo H wrote: > Based on the Spectrum version, you could probably do it in Mode 1 or > 2, just using the attributes? > > On 22 Apr 2012, at 13:32, Andrew Collier wrote: > >> so this is what people do on the internet these days, is it? >> Actually it does remind me a bit of the kind of stuff that ended up >> on early issues of Fred... >> >> You'd need to draw the stars manually, but that should be achievable. >> >> Andrew >> >> >> On 22 Apr 2012, at 19:45, James R Curry wrote: >> >>> There are few enough frames that it could easily be done with screen >>> swapping with a sampled version of the music playing. >>> >>> -- >>> James R Curry >>> >>> >>> On Apr 22, 2012, at 1:39 PM, "Aleš Keprt" wrote: >>> >>>> Do we have Nyan Cat on Sam Coupe? Somebody should make a conversion. >>>> >>>> >>>> original version, Atari 800, ZX Spectrum, Commodore C16, Atari 2600: >>>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQ5v9Qo6XzA >>>> Amstrad CPC version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfD3WxgaiXo >>>> BBC Micro version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBVQdx3dJ1c >>>> >>>> If you don't have time to watch it all, here is a "short" 100h summary: >>>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA5DsLzSVrk >>>> >>>> Sam Coupe version: ??? >>>> >>>> - >>>> Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. >>>> private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz >>>> office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, >>>> ales.ke...@mvso.cz >> ----- Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz - Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz -- James R Curry 8...@itdoesntsuck.com - Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz <>
Re: Nyan Cat
I analyzed the original video - the whole animation consists of 12 frames only. So this part is easy. :-) Aley -Původní zpráva- From: Aleš Keprt Sent: Monday, April 23, 2012 2:42 AM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Nyan Cat I think normal mode 4 + normal music would be OK. I would rather see it finished in basic variant then to read 100 mails on theory what can be done. ;-) I believe mode 4 is achievable. It is small, it is repeated and it seems to me that all states of the cat can fit into a few screen pages so we would draw just stars. Plus standard music, samples aren't needed for this. So who is going to do it? :-))) A. -Původní zpráva- From: Andrew Collier Sent: Sunday, April 22, 2012 10:57 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Nyan Cat Yeah, 4-pixel squares in mode 2 would be easy enough. An authentic facsimile in Mode 1 would be tricky as there are squares with more than 2 colours in. Achievable with rainbow processing, but that seems a bit of a faff... Andrew On 22 Apr 2012, at 21:34, Tommo H wrote: Based on the Spectrum version, you could probably do it in Mode 1 or 2, just using the attributes? On 22 Apr 2012, at 13:32, Andrew Collier wrote: so this is what people do on the internet these days, is it? Actually it does remind me a bit of the kind of stuff that ended up on early issues of Fred... You'd need to draw the stars manually, but that should be achievable. Andrew On 22 Apr 2012, at 19:45, James R Curry wrote: There are few enough frames that it could easily be done with screen swapping with a sampled version of the music playing. -- James R Curry On Apr 22, 2012, at 1:39 PM, "Aleš Keprt" wrote: Do we have Nyan Cat on Sam Coupe? Somebody should make a conversion. original version, Atari 800, ZX Spectrum, Commodore C16, Atari 2600: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQ5v9Qo6XzA Amstrad CPC version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfD3WxgaiXo BBC Micro version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBVQdx3dJ1c If you don't have time to watch it all, here is a "short" 100h summary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA5DsLzSVrk Sam Coupe version: ??? ----- Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz ----- Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz ----- Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz
Re: Nyan Cat
I think normal mode 4 + normal music would be OK. I would rather see it finished in basic variant then to read 100 mails on theory what can be done. ;-) I believe mode 4 is achievable. It is small, it is repeated and it seems to me that all states of the cat can fit into a few screen pages so we would draw just stars. Plus standard music, samples aren't needed for this. So who is going to do it? :-))) A. -Původní zpráva- From: Andrew Collier Sent: Sunday, April 22, 2012 10:57 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Nyan Cat Yeah, 4-pixel squares in mode 2 would be easy enough. An authentic facsimile in Mode 1 would be tricky as there are squares with more than 2 colours in. Achievable with rainbow processing, but that seems a bit of a faff... Andrew On 22 Apr 2012, at 21:34, Tommo H wrote: Based on the Spectrum version, you could probably do it in Mode 1 or 2, just using the attributes? On 22 Apr 2012, at 13:32, Andrew Collier wrote: so this is what people do on the internet these days, is it? Actually it does remind me a bit of the kind of stuff that ended up on early issues of Fred... You'd need to draw the stars manually, but that should be achievable. Andrew On 22 Apr 2012, at 19:45, James R Curry wrote: There are few enough frames that it could easily be done with screen swapping with a sampled version of the music playing. -- James R Curry On Apr 22, 2012, at 1:39 PM, "Aleš Keprt" wrote: Do we have Nyan Cat on Sam Coupe? Somebody should make a conversion. original version, Atari 800, ZX Spectrum, Commodore C16, Atari 2600: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQ5v9Qo6XzA Amstrad CPC version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfD3WxgaiXo BBC Micro version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBVQdx3dJ1c If you don't have time to watch it all, here is a "short" 100h summary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA5DsLzSVrk Sam Coupe version: ??? ----- Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz ----- Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz
Nyan Cat
Do we have Nyan Cat on Sam Coupe? Somebody should make a conversion. original version, Atari 800, ZX Spectrum, Commodore C16, Atari 2600: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQ5v9Qo6XzA Amstrad CPC version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfD3WxgaiXo BBC Micro version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBVQdx3dJ1c If you don’t have time to watch it all, here is a “short” 100h summary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA5DsLzSVrk Sam Coupe version: ??? - Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz <>
Re: Musics
Oh, attachments are blocked? Thank you for pointing it out. I sent you the player for that tune yesterday, and exactly as you said: It was blocked. And without notice. So who wants to play that tune in Windows: https://rapidshare.com/files/1558291338/sanxion.zip Run the attached .bat file to start it. I am just unsure if the sound is 100% correct because the tune uses a lot the envelopes. Maybe the author can check it. :-) Best regards, Aley -Původní zpráva- From: Balor Price Sent: Saturday, April 21, 2012 10:24 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Musics On 21/04/2012 21:14, war...@wdlee.co.uk wrote: David, looking forward to checking out your music, once I remember how to play it! ;-) Sorry - tried sending an attachment to the list yesterday but they're blocked. Here's a version of the disk with the music compiled on it, just load up the basic program... :) http://scenedamage.com/cookingcircle/sanxion.dsk - Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz
Re: Musics
I think this is right on ZX Spectrum. I don’t know much about C64, but it has some graphics accelerator at least for sprites, which in turn let us use simpler and faster algorithms for background scrolling, doesn’t it? Also, I found this in related videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdzfOXkZrY0&feature=related Isn’t it the music from Sam Tetris? David Gommeren or who is the autor of Sam remake? This SID has so different sound than our simple triangular waves on SAA1099. But I always liked Frantisek Fuka’s remakes of SID music even without these SID-like sound effects. Frantisek added more channels to play more notes at once instead of just copying the original tune. Aley From: Balor Price Sent: Saturday, April 21, 2012 8:20 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Musics I'm currently using the delta-update (only printing the changes) in XOR to get 192*192 pixel scrolling. It doesn't go at 50 frames per second, but looking at the C64 version of Sanxion, that's obviously not running at 50fps either: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDg1GX37bkU&feature=related For example, at about 1m35 the bonus level bullets are obviously skipping out lots of frames to get a good speed. The mountain level before that, looks like the scrolls are going 16 pixels per update, which looks like 25fps at most. But I think most people forget that full screen scrolling never went at 50fps on 8 bit machines. Even the ST struggled, and the Amiga only managed it because it had the blitter. If you want to convert it, just go with whatever you can get away with! Howard On 21/04/2012 18:59, Adrian Brown wrote: Yer, with limited tiles its not soo bad. The current thing im working on uses a change check for updates but that’s not for scrolling. Im just not sure any method would work for a mode 4 screen, its just too much data. Adrian From: owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no [mailto:owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no] On Behalf Of Thomas Harte Sent: 21 April 2012 18:31 To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Musics The best idea I've come up with is to use a very limited number of tiles and scroll like one of those infinite ball demos. So, you have 8x8 tiles and 8 screen buffers. You scroll only either 1 or zero pixels at a time, only ever in one direction. Assuming it's a right to left scroll, for each movement you switch from one buffer to the next. Then run through each on-screen tile and paint only if that tile is not the same as the tile one position to its left. With a small number of possible tiles and a normal sort of platform game layout (ie, lots of horizontal platforms) you shouldn't have to draw all that much. Level two of Super Mario Brothers would probably be an ideal usage case. I guess that the next thing would be to store your tile map as the computed list of tile changes to draw per tile column, and to consider whether compiling your tiles so that you map from the combination of old tile and new to the code and draw only the changes gives a meaningful boost for the memory cost. I'm not sure whether anybody else has done this sort of thing, but I really mean to give it a go sometime soon. On Saturday, 21 April 2012, Adrian Brown wrote: That’s top, im a child of the electronic sound – don’t think my wife is too impressed with it blasting out of the office though ;) Im working on some other sam bits at the moment (when time allows) For programmery people, scrolling on sam is what let it down imho. Thinking of something like sanxion, who has some ideas on how to move that much data. Im guessing it would have to be mode 2 to really be able to get a decent speed scroller. Ive tried various things for a decent speed scroll mode 4, but it just doesn’t seem possible if you want a lot of graphics on screen, even with compiled block data. Adrian From: javascript:_e(%7b%7d,%20'cvml',%20'owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no'); [mailto:javascript:_e(%7b%7d,%20'cvml',%20'owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no');] On Behalf Of David Sanders Sent: 20 April 2012 11:16 To: javascript:_e(%7b%7d,%20'cvml',%20'sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no'); Subject: Musics Hello List, If anyone fancies a listen to the most fiendishly complicated piece of Sam music I've written, here it is: http://dsanders.co.uk/sanxion.dsk It's kind of a conversion of Rub Hubbard's Sanxion loader, but done from memory so probably quite different. I believe the effect at around 2:00 has never been done before on the Coupé! A first time for everything even on the Sam eh? So, why did I spend my morning writing this? Your guess is as good as mine, but I reckon someone now ought to make the effort to convert the actual game. Ahem. Cheers David
Re: Musics
Really? I didn't know it. Believe me, I don't lie, I never saw any EDSK or at least I don't remember any. I don't know much about World of Sam. It is something like NVG FTP archive? Aley -Původní zpráva- From: Andrew Collier Sent: Saturday, April 21, 2012 2:59 AM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Musics On 20 Apr 2012, at 20:07, Aleš Keprt wrote: I haven’t seen any protected EDSK files anywhere, Almost all the previously-commercial software on worldofsam.org, for a start. Andrew ----- Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz
Re: Musics
Yes, but these compromises are needed for 1 disk of 100, while 99 of 100 do work with DSK. So if somebody sends us his new ETracker tune in EDSK format I ask myself: “Is this really what we needed?” Btw. I haven’t seen SAMdisk utility before. It looks nice. I slept many years or something. Please can you tell me the format of TRD (Beta128 TRDOS images)? Is it the same as DSK? Or is it like SAD without header? I read the documentation you link from your website, so I know the internal data format, but I can’t see the actual TRD file format described there. Thanks in advance. Aley From: Simon Owen Sent: Friday, April 20, 2012 10:40 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Musics Aley, I'd started to type a longer reply to this, but I just can't be bothered anymore. It's clear we have very different approaches to pretty much everything. I'm just not willing to make the same compromises as you when it comes to preserving media. If it doesn't work without modifying it, you need a better quality copy. Si On 20 Apr 2012, at 20:07, Aleš Keprt wrote: You know my disk extractor and other utilitie are dated 199x. And I don’t like this. I think 95% or even more of disks overall don’t need any special disk formats, and there are many software utilities which support simple DSK/MGT/SAD because those programs are much older than 2005. It isn’t a clever idea to design a whole new file format 15 years after Sam Coupe was born and use it for all disks even when it is not needed for most of them. Also those two SDF files can be downloaded from some websites, but I haven’t seen any protected EDSK files anywhere, so I would prefer sticking with the same formats. “Don’t change what works.” Also this is the first time I have seen EDSK file on my own eyes, and I wonder why it has DSK extension when it is not a real old good DSK file. I looked at the file in heax view and I can see Amstrad CPC header in it. Note that I created my SAD format only because it was years before DSK format was known to me, and also I have several 840KB disks which are a bit problematic in DSK especially in some software which automatically expect 800KB DSK only. But otherwise DSK is enough for most of disks. I think it would be OK if we had this file format around 1995 when there was a real big need to backup our disks, but not in 2005 when 99% of disks are converted and possibly cracked to be converted without any special file formats. Aley From: Simon Owen Sent: Friday, April 20, 2012 7:36 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Musics On 20 Apr 2012, at 17:25, Aleš Keprt wrote: I’d like to know why do you use Amstrad CPC file format, instead of a standard Sam Coupe one (DSK/MGT or SAD). EDSK has been an adopted format in the SAM scene at least as far back as 2005. It's the only way to preserve some disks in their original format, allowing for unformatted tracks, disk errors and other custom-formatting tricks. EDSK seemed like a reasonable solution at the time, without inventing yet another disk image file format. Before that was finalised I did still create SDF as a temporary solution. Only two public disk images ever existed (Lemmings and Prince of Persia), and I don't think the creation tool was every released. All support for SDF was dropped from SimCoupe a few months back, so it's effectively dead. I think we should stick to standard file formats whenever possible to let all those old file utilities work. For legacy use you could convert to MGT: SAMdisk sanxion.dsk sanxion.mgt Si ----- Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz ----- Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz <>
Re: Musics
You know my disk extractor and other utilitie are dated 199x. And I don’t like this. I think 95% or even more of disks overall don’t need any special disk formats, and there are many software utilities which support simple DSK/MGT/SAD because those programs are much older than 2005. It isn’t a clever idea to design a whole new file format 15 years after Sam Coupe was born and use it for all disks even when it is not needed for most of them. Also those two SDF files can be downloaded from some websites, but I haven’t seen any protected EDSK files anywhere, so I would prefer sticking with the same formats. “Don’t change what works.” Also this is the first time I have seen EDSK file on my own eyes, and I wonder why it has DSK extension when it is not a real old good DSK file. I looked at the file in heax view and I can see Amstrad CPC header in it. Note that I created my SAD format only because it was years before DSK format was known to me, and also I have several 840KB disks which are a bit problematic in DSK especially in some software which automatically expect 800KB DSK only. But otherwise DSK is enough for most of disks. I think it would be OK if we had this file format around 1995 when there was a real big need to backup our disks, but not in 2005 when 99% of disks are converted and possibly cracked to be converted without any special file formats. Aley From: Simon Owen Sent: Friday, April 20, 2012 7:36 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Musics On 20 Apr 2012, at 17:25, Aleš Keprt wrote: I’d like to know why do you use Amstrad CPC file format, instead of a standard Sam Coupe one (DSK/MGT or SAD). EDSK has been an adopted format in the SAM scene at least as far back as 2005. It's the only way to preserve some disks in their original format, allowing for unformatted tracks, disk errors and other custom-formatting tricks. EDSK seemed like a reasonable solution at the time, without inventing yet another disk image file format. Before that was finalised I did still create SDF as a temporary solution. Only two public disk images ever existed (Lemmings and Prince of Persia), and I don't think the creation tool was every released. All support for SDF was dropped from SimCoupe a few months back, so it's effectively dead. I think we should stick to standard file formats whenever possible to let all those old file utilities work. For legacy use you could convert to MGT: SAMdisk sanxion.dsk sanxion.mgt Si - Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz
Re: Musics
I can send you my player for Windows if that helps. Or you can download SamPlay from my website. It has built-in ETracker player. Aley From: James R Curry Sent: Friday, April 20, 2012 6:24 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Musics Looking at your other thread, I'm guessing this lacks player code? I don't have a copy of E-Tracker lying about. Can someone give me quick instructions on listening to this in Simcoupe? On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 5:07 AM, David Sanders wrote: Hello List, If anyone fancies a listen to the most fiendishly complicated piece of Sam music I've written, here it is: http://dsanders.co.uk/sanxion.dsk It's kind of a conversion of Rub Hubbard's Sanxion loader, but done from memory so probably quite different. I believe the effect at around 2:00 has never been done before on the Coupé! A first time for everything even on the Sam eh? So, why did I spend my morning writing this? Your guess is as good as mine, but I reckon someone now ought to make the effort to convert the actual game. Ahem. Cheers David -- James R Curry 8...@itdoesntsuck.com ----- Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz
Re: Musics
Hi! Nice effort. I am going to release a new version of my SAA player for PC, and I am definitely add this tune to the collection, if that’s OK. I’d like to know why do you use Amstrad CPC file format, instead of a standard Sam Coupe one (DSK/MGT or SAD). I tried to extract your music file to let me play it in SAA player on PC, but the file extractor obviously cannot read this kind of disk image. I think we should stick to standard file formats whenever possible to let all those old file utilities work. Also, does anybody have source code of ETracker player? The debugger shows warnings that the code repeatedly reads from address 0x0400, this applies to this particular tune and also many other I tried. Maybe it uses Sam-ROM just to get some “random” values, but I’d like to look at the source code. I know the source code was somewhere published, but I can’t remember where it was. Also, is ETracker the only commonly used music editor for Sam Coupe? I know also Pro Tracker, and some people said that it is probably better than ETracked, but I don’t know of any music written in it – it seems to me that all the people use just ETracker. Best regards, Aley From: David Sanders Sent: Friday, April 20, 2012 12:07 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Musics Hello List, If anyone fancies a listen to the most fiendishly complicated piece of Sam music I've written, here it is: http://dsanders.co.uk/sanxion.dsk It's kind of a conversion of Rub Hubbard's Sanxion loader, but done from memory so probably quite different. I believe the effect at around 2:00 has never been done before on the Coupé! A first time for everything even on the Sam eh? So, why did I spend my morning writing this? Your guess is as good as mine, but I reckon someone now ought to make the effort to convert the actual game. Ahem. Cheers David - Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz
New upload to NVG FTP archive
Hi Frode, I uploaded new stuff to NVG FTP archive. It's ASCD versions 0.98 and 1.00 - both are new versions of the emulator. btw. Do people use that NVG FTP archive? Or am I the last one who uses it? I can see no activity in there. Also I can still see my former uploads (thos files marked "conversion Axoft 1993) in that directory. Do you have any problems with sortign them out? They are desktop publishing systems conversions from ZX Spectrum. Best regards, Aley Keprt - Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz
ASCD 1.00 released
Hi Sam users! I released ASCD 1.00. I hope I fixed all known bugs and implemented all features people wanted. Or I will do more in next version. I have problems with my web provider, so I uploaded the file to reapidshare.com, please download here: https://rapidshare.com/files/3734044978/ascd100.zip (no registration needed) I will also upload to WOS (World of Spectrum). Or World of Sam? Actually, I don’t know what is World of Sam and how it does work, so I am going to upload to WOrld of Spectrum. And also to our old and lovely NVG FTP archive. What’s new in this release: In short: ZIP, TZX, joystick autofire, AY8910 for Sam, SAA1099 for ZXS, known bugs have been fixed * New! Added the support of TZX tape files. Only standard data blocks via ROM hooks are supported atm. * ZIP-compressed snaps/tapes/disks can now be directly loaded into ASCD * Added the Recent Files list displaying 10 most recent snap/tape/disk files open * FDI: Added correct emulation of Missing disk status * FDI: Added correct emulation of Write protected disk status * Added autofire option for joystick (0autofire switch) * Open Tape/Snap menu option incorrectly offered only snapshot files in the filter list * D3D: OSD (on-screen-display) has now black color when border color is 6 or 7 (yellow or white) * Caps lock "fix" didn't work on many computers, so there is another fix in this version * Added low pass filter to ZX Beeper audio -> better music quality in some games * An OSD message is shown whenever DAC on IC 8255 is activated * SAA1099 soundchip is now available in ZX Spectrum 48/128 mode too * AY8910 soundchip is now available in Sam Coupé mode too * AY8910 soundchip is responding on its ports even if audio emulation is off * More precise attribute port 255 emulation * Fixed AY8910 port decoding (thanks to Velesoft) * Quickboot option is now configurable in config file and menu (it was always on) * Fixed a bug in SCS loader which caused it to report a file error when a datablock is longer than expected * Fixed problem with Sam Coupe Tab key behaviour after Alt+Tab ----- Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz <>
Re: ZX Spectrum 'relaunch'
hat related for most of us) I came across this the other day: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/video-games/8304237/ZX-Spectr um-relaunch-gaming-goes-back-to-the-future.html Lots of you have probably already heard this, but I don't remember it being mentioned, so thought I would! ;-) Supposedly a company were going to relaunch the zx spectrum this year (by the looks of it, as a 48k speccy keyboard that links up to an iPhone or similar to run an emulator), to coincide with the 30th anniversary, but it doesn't look like it's going to materialise any time soon. I know something similar is/was being planned for the C64? However, it got me thinking... Obviously in this day and age, many of use want to enjoy the retro gaming experience, but we haven't exactly got the space to keep things set up. I intend to have my SAM set up permanently at some point, but I very much doubt I'd ever get the space to dedicate to other systems, so clearly something that pleasantly replicates the original experience quickly and easily with modern advantages would be a pleasing alternative. So I figured, what would make an easy to use 'spectrum' emulator for playing all the old games? You'd want HDMI output for ease with modern televisions, SD card storage, and have it all fit into one of our old rubber keyed friends. How do you do this on a budget at that size? The first thing that popped into my head, is the Raspberry Pi (if it ever gets to selling!!). Small enough to probably fit in a speccy case, with HDMI out and card reader. Surely this could make for a fairly cheap and effective 48k Spectrum emulation experience? I think the Speccy is particularly suited, because let's face it, for most of us it was about the games more than anything. I don't think anything similar would work for the SAM, because what makes that such a unique experience (for me, anyway) is the original and additional hardware in addition to the software. But for a speccy I could see it being great fun, to play the games with ease on a keyboard that replicates the old experience but with updated advantages. (I think a SAM equivalent would have to be more along the lines of Colin's 'SAM-in-a-can' projects, but rather than old SAM parts, something that accurately replicates the original hardware with modern additions) Not being much of a tech person I'm not sure about the feasibility, but it seems like a wasted opportunity in todays market where retro-gaming has had somewhat of a resurgence? Warren - Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz
Re: ZX Spectrum 'relaunch'
Also, you can find a lot of videos of ZX-related stuff people already created in the past on Youtube. A. -Původní zpráva- From: war...@wdlee.co.uk Sent: Friday, April 13, 2012 12:18 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: ZX Spectrum 'relaunch' Off on a bit of a non-SAM tangent (but probably somewhat related for most of us) I came across this the other day: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/video-games/8304237/ZX-Spectrum-relaunch-gaming-goes-back-to-the-future.html Lots of you have probably already heard this, but I don't remember it being mentioned, so thought I would! ;-) Supposedly a company were going to relaunch the zx spectrum this year (by the looks of it, as a 48k speccy keyboard that links up to an iPhone or similar to run an emulator), to coincide with the 30th anniversary, but it doesn't look like it's going to materialise any time soon. I know something similar is/was being planned for the C64? However, it got me thinking... Obviously in this day and age, many of use want to enjoy the retro gaming experience, but we haven't exactly got the space to keep things set up. I intend to have my SAM set up permanently at some point, but I very much doubt I'd ever get the space to dedicate to other systems, so clearly something that pleasantly replicates the original experience quickly and easily with modern advantages would be a pleasing alternative. So I figured, what would make an easy to use 'spectrum' emulator for playing all the old games? You'd want HDMI output for ease with modern televisions, SD card storage, and have it all fit into one of our old rubber keyed friends. How do you do this on a budget at that size? The first thing that popped into my head, is the Raspberry Pi (if it ever gets to selling!!). Small enough to probably fit in a speccy case, with HDMI out and card reader. Surely this could make for a fairly cheap and effective 48k Spectrum emulation experience? I think the Speccy is particularly suited, because let's face it, for most of us it was about the games more than anything. I don't think anything similar would work for the SAM, because what makes that such a unique experience (for me, anyway) is the original and additional hardware in addition to the software. But for a speccy I could see it being great fun, to play the games with ease on a keyboard that replicates the old experience but with updated advantages. (I think a SAM equivalent would have to be more along the lines of Colin's 'SAM-in-a-can' projects, but rather than old SAM parts, something that accurately replicates the original hardware with modern additions) Not being much of a tech person I'm not sure about the feasibility, but it seems like a wasted opportunity in todays market where retro-gaming has had somewhat of a resurgence? Warren - Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz
Re: ZX Spectrum 'relaunch'
I don't share your thoughts. There already exist a lot of Spectrum clones based on real ULAs and real Z80 and imo these are much better alternatives than what you described. You can already buy anything you can imagine. So many alternatives already exist and were created by huge fan base in the past, that I can hardly imagine that somebody can really come today driven by just marketing or business visions and create something significantly better or more compatible or more useful. For example: I personally prefer functionality, not the look of that crappy original keyboard. So I would prefer a PC keyboard, CF memory card instead of tapes or disks, and real ULA (i.e. 100% accurate ULA clone), standard 128 KB RAM, and real Z80 CPU. For other people who prefer or require the original ZX Spectrum case, they can buy a new "internals" - this was already possible to buy 10 or more years ago. (I personally has a working original ZX Spectrum+ and working original Sam Coupe. :-)) I think you are too focused on emulators - why would anybody put a today's computer with an emulator inside an old ZXS box? It's just funny, not worthy. I prefer either emulator on a proper PC computer, or original 8bit Zilog Z80 in an original box. :-)) Aley -Původní zpráva- From: war...@wdlee.co.uk Sent: Friday, April 13, 2012 12:18 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: ZX Spectrum 'relaunch' Off on a bit of a non-SAM tangent (but probably somewhat related for most of us) I came across this the other day: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/video-games/8304237/ZX-Spectrum-relaunch-gaming-goes-back-to-the-future.html Lots of you have probably already heard this, but I don't remember it being mentioned, so thought I would! ;-) Supposedly a company were going to relaunch the zx spectrum this year (by the looks of it, as a 48k speccy keyboard that links up to an iPhone or similar to run an emulator), to coincide with the 30th anniversary, but it doesn't look like it's going to materialise any time soon. I know something similar is/was being planned for the C64? However, it got me thinking... Obviously in this day and age, many of use want to enjoy the retro gaming experience, but we haven't exactly got the space to keep things set up. I intend to have my SAM set up permanently at some point, but I very much doubt I'd ever get the space to dedicate to other systems, so clearly something that pleasantly replicates the original experience quickly and easily with modern advantages would be a pleasing alternative. So I figured, what would make an easy to use 'spectrum' emulator for playing all the old games? You'd want HDMI output for ease with modern televisions, SD card storage, and have it all fit into one of our old rubber keyed friends. How do you do this on a budget at that size? The first thing that popped into my head, is the Raspberry Pi (if it ever gets to selling!!). Small enough to probably fit in a speccy case, with HDMI out and card reader. Surely this could make for a fairly cheap and effective 48k Spectrum emulation experience? I think the Speccy is particularly suited, because let's face it, for most of us it was about the games more than anything. I don't think anything similar would work for the SAM, because what makes that such a unique experience (for me, anyway) is the original and additional hardware in addition to the software. But for a speccy I could see it being great fun, to play the games with ease on a keyboard that replicates the old experience but with updated advantages. (I think a SAM equivalent would have to be more along the lines of Colin's 'SAM-in-a-can' projects, but rather than old SAM parts, something that accurately replicates the original hardware with modern additions) Not being much of a tech person I'm not sure about the feasibility, but it seems like a wasted opportunity in todays market where retro-gaming has had somewhat of a resurgence? Warren - Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz
Re: Essential Sam Goodies
acker, E-tracker, SAMpaint, GI-mon, Comet, Pyz80, some kind of SAMdac or EDDAc, SAM mouse, and every diskzine you can get your hands on! There's just LOADS of great stuff available. What did I miss? Howard (aka Balor Price, Tobermory Womble or whatever else) --Original Message-- From: Graeme Gregory Sender: owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no ReplyTo: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Essential Sam Goodies Sent: 12 Apr 2012 11:19 Ok, to change the topic from current discussion lately ;-) I am a newbie to the Sam world, I bought a machine on ebay as a whim and to reach one of my childhood dreams of owning one. As a kid I could not afford one and by the time I had $$$ Sam had dissapeared and it was time for Uni. So I now have this lovely Sam Coupe with 1.5 working drives and 512K of memory. What games/demos/widgets should I be getting for it. Would be good to give this machine as much love as my collection of spectrums and zx81 get! Graeme Sent from my BlackBerry(r) smartphone on O2 - Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz
Re: Essential Sam Goodies
Defender, Momentum, Lemmings, Protracker, E-tracker, SAMpaint, GI-mon, Comet, Pyz80, some kind of SAMdac or EDDAc, SAM mouse, and every diskzine you can get your hands on! There's just LOADS of great stuff available. What did I miss? Howard (aka Balor Price, Tobermory Womble or whatever else) --Original Message-- From: Graeme Gregory Sender: owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no ReplyTo: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Essential Sam Goodies Sent: 12 Apr 2012 11:19 Ok, to change the topic from current discussion lately ;-) I am a newbie to the Sam world, I bought a machine on ebay as a whim and to reach one of my childhood dreams of owning one. As a kid I could not afford one and by the time I had $$$ Sam had dissapeared and it was time for Uni. So I now have this lovely Sam Coupe with 1.5 working drives and 512K of memory. What games/demos/widgets should I be getting for it. Would be good to give this machine as much love as my collection of spectrums and zx81 get! Graeme Sent from my BlackBerry(r) smartphone on O2 - Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz
Re: SAM HAM viewer
I expect approximately +25% speed gain in uncontended memory. And Simon Owen wrote that he changes palette only “between” lines. Aley From: Stefan Drissen Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2012 11:42 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: SAM HAM viewer Jumping in a bit late here, but the results are absolutely stunning! I had an attempt at reading the source on github, but my Z80 has gone a bit rusty. :-) Is the palette being adjusted multiple times while the line is being drawn (similar to the rainbow processor effects on the Spectrum) or is the palette being adjusted in the time between two lines? Please forgive me for talking potential nonsense - I have completely lost any notion of how many t-states are available between line end and next line start but the expensiveness of outs does ring a bell somewhere. On another note (to hijack the thread), RJ does have some interesting ideas between all his communication issues and his one meg 128k emulator 'pestering' got me thinking - if this is uncontended RAM - how much could I win in the SAM MOD player if I moved code and data to make use of the one meg. Obviously larger mods would be interesting, but I'm more interested in would I be able to increase the sample rate from 10.4 KHz to 15.6 KHz? Or is the gain from uncontended vs contended RAM much too small? Regards, Stefan On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 3:10 AM, Simon Owen wrote: Hi all, I've been experimenting with HAM-style tricks on SAM, to try to improve the quality of converted images. I've aimed to modify as many colours as possible between lines, rather than using the traditional compromise static palette. Are there any viewers using that technique already? I've written a Python script to convert regular images to a new .sham format, and a SAM viewer program to display them. Demo: http://simonowen.com/sam/shamview/shamview.dsk Source code: https://github.com/simonowen/shamview You might recognise some of them as SAM or image processing favourites! It still needs work on the dynamic palette selection, which just uses the most-frequent colours, rather than doing proper quantisation. I left the crayons image as an example of this breaking down. Si ----- Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz
Re: Weird caps lock behaviour
No, it is not caused by third party libraries, because it behaves the same way in all emulators I tested. It means that the root of this evil must be inside keyboard hardware or keyboard driver or any other driver in my Windows, because Windows drivers can generally corrupt other drivers in Windows. (This is well known fact - I remember unbelievable situations when driver of a totally unrelated hardware caused changes in behaviour of other unrelated devices in Windows.) Normally in DirectInput the keys send a single KEYDOWN event, then they send nothing as you hold the key down, and then they send a single KEYUP event. I wrote this differntly in my previous email, but this is the right description. Unfortunately, my capslock behaves like your Apple caps lock, and in addition it keeps sanding weird sequence of UP-DOWN-UP-DOWN... events when I hold it for a while. Also, I tested it in VMware on the very same computer and it behaves normally, i.e. the same way as other keys. So I think the hardware isn't root of this evil, it must be some driver in my Windows. Unfortunatelly, no other people tested it yet, so I am a bit alone in it a.t.m. /--- Aley -Původní zpráva- From: Thomas Harte Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2012 12:08 AM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Weird caps lock behaviour I'm not a Windows user so am unable directly to comment, but is SDL or some other cross-platform library possibly contributing to the confusion? Here in Mac world the caps lock key is a special case. It sends a key down when caps lock is engaged and a key up when caps lock is disengaged. That was originally because original Mac keyboards had a caps lock key with a little latch, like a pen with a button, so that you pressed it once and it stayed down, you pressed it again and it popped back up, and I guess it continues because Apple don't consider it sufficiently worrisome to be worth the mild breakage. Slightly boring history lesson of a minority platform aside, when last I checked SDL handled this problem by emulating Mac behaviour on all platforms. It looks like in ye olde ASCD you used Allegro. I doubt those guys had any particular strategy for handling this, and even if they did they probably got it wrong, then squabbled over maintaining DOS support ten years after the fact. So, anyway: is there any possibility that either you and other authors are seeing differing results because some are using cross-platform libraries that attempt to reconcile Mac and PC behaviour? On 8 April 2012 12:43, Aleš Keprt wrote: Hi Sam users! I encountered a weird caps lock behaviour, and I'd like you to test it too and let me know whether you encounter the same problems or not. On my computer all emulators I tested have got problem with caps lock - it simply doesn't work as expected. So I made changes to keyboard handling routine in ASCD 0.98 to let it work. And now this new version is the only emulator where caps lock works correctly on my computer, but Simon Owen wrote me that on his computer it is different and ASCD 0.98 doesn't work correctly like other emulators. Please can you test it? If you compare ASCD 0.98 with SimCoupe, you should clearly see difference in caps lock behaviour in Sam Basic. You can also test older ASCD 0.98 WIP which uses the old (i.e. standard) caps lock routine and will probably be similar to SimCoupe. Download here: http://www.keprt.cz/progs/ascd/ascd098.zip http://www.keprt.cz/progs/ascd/ascd098wip3.zip --- Technical information follows: Normally each key sends KEYDOWN when you press it, then it waits 250 ms (this can be set in Windows) and then sends another KEYDOWN's as long as you hold down the key. The speed of autorepeat can be set in Windows as well, normally it sends 30 KEYDOWN's per second on my computer (which is the highest speed possible on a standard PC keyboard). Finally it always sends a single KEYUP when you release the key. Caps lock sends initial KEYDOWN normally, then waits 250 ms (i.e. still everything normal), but when you hold down the key longer, it starts to send weirdly KEYUP - KEYDOWN - KEYUP - KEYDOWN... etc. at 30 events per second (i.e. 15x KEYUP and 15x KEYDOWN). When you release the key, the final event sent is based on the state of the green caps lock led on the keyboard. So you can never know if the final event will be KEYDOWN or KEYUP. I use Windows 7 with plain standard PS2 keyboard driver, at least I think. I will definitely go and test it on other computers (I have a few old ones at home). ----- Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz ----- Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz
Weird caps lock behaviour
Hi Sam users! I encountered a weird caps lock behaviour, and I’d like you to test it too and let me know whether you encounter the same problems or not. On my computer all emulators I tested have got problem with caps lock – it simply doesn’t work as expected. So I made changes to keyboard handling routine in ASCD 0.98 to let it work. And now this new version is the only emulator where caps lock works correctly on my computer, but Simon Owen wrote me that on his computer it is different and ASCD 0.98 doesn’t work correctly like other emulators. Please can you test it? If you compare ASCD 0.98 with SimCoupe, you should clearly see difference in caps lock behaviour in Sam Basic. You can also test older ASCD 0.98 WIP which uses the old (i.e. standard) caps lock routine and will probably be similar to SimCoupe. Download here: http://www.keprt.cz/progs/ascd/ascd098.zip http://www.keprt.cz/progs/ascd/ascd098wip3.zip --- Technical information follows: Normally each key sends KEYDOWN when you press it, then it waits 250 ms (this can be set in Windows) and then sends another KEYDOWN's as long as you hold down the key. The speed of autorepeat can be set in Windows as well, normally it sends 30 KEYDOWN's per second on my computer (which is the highest speed possible on a standard PC keyboard). Finally it always sends a single KEYUP when you release the key. Caps lock sends initial KEYDOWN normally, then waits 250 ms (i.e. still everything normal), but when you hold down the key longer, it starts to send weirdly KEYUP - KEYDOWN - KEYUP - KEYDOWN... etc. at 30 events per second (i.e. 15x KEYUP and 15x KEYDOWN). When you release the key, the final event sent is based on the state of the green caps lock led on the keyboard. So you can never know if the final event will be KEYDOWN or KEYUP. I use Windows 7 with plain standard PS2 keyboard driver, at least I think. I will definitely go and test it on other computers (I have a few old ones at home). - Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz
Re: ASCD 0.98 (final) released
kempston: I do it the best possible way, i.e. I decode only A5-A7 and always reset D5-D7 to 0. palette: How can I (or you) know what is the correct "real" palette? What is that correct palette, where can I find documentation? Isn't it just dependent on the brightness and contrast settings of a TV? This applies both to Sam Coupe and ZX Spectrum palette - I haven't found any colour information on WoS or other websites, so I did it simply mathematically - I construct the RGB colour from the bits in the Sam/ZXS colour number. Visually, I can't see any difference from other emulators on my crappy Samsung LCD display, but I'd like to fix it if it's objectively wrong. Best regards, Aley -Původní zpráva- From: VELESOFT Sent: Sunday, April 08, 2012 2:07 AM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: ASCD 0.98 (final) released ----- Original Message - From: "Aleš Keprt" To: Sent: Sunday, April 08, 2012 12:53 AM Subject: ASCD 0.98 (final) released * Fixed minor incompatibility in kempston joystick emulation (top 3 bits were set instead of reset) This is problem: - Part of ZX Spectrum games work only with original kempston joystick readable also on port #DF (joystick port adressation is only A5=0 and all other adress lines are ignored = joy port BIN xx0x ). - exist more versions of kempston joystick interface and often is used models with port adressation: BIN 000x or new interfaces use full adressation BIN 0001. - old joystick interfaces send joystick value only to data lines D0-D4. Bits D5-D7 are not set or reset, but contain part of floating data bus (transparent ula port #FF = videoram data). This three bith are readable always in log.1 only if ula not read videoram data (in border area/after interrupt). - modern joystick interfaces and some ZX emulators return always D7-D5 in log.0. Some ZX games also work only if D7-D5 is 0. Also all games/software writed in ZX basic need it. Not exist any universal joystick standard, but often is used adressation: BIN 000x and joystick return always D7-D5 in log.0 and D4-D0=joy state. D5 can be used for joystick fire 2 and D6 for joystick fire 3. This is best. Old problematic ZX games exist also in fixed version for use with any joystick interface. (see W.O.S.) My idea: can you add joystick autofire emulation ? :-D VELESOFT ----- Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz
ASCD 0.98 (final) released
Hi folks, I just released ASCD 0.98 (final). I am sure there are some hidden unknown bugs still present (because bugs are always present) but I fixed all known issues and reserve higher versions numbers for more work. :-) http://www.keprt.cz/progs/ascd/ What's new in this release (news and changes since 0.98 WIP 3): * Sam: MODE 3 had switched palette entries 1 and 2 * Sam: MODEs 3 and 4 ignore VMPR bit 0 (this was missing) * Sam: Better port access timings * Fixed AY8910 deadlock bug (was caused by audio thread race condition) * Added key shortcuts for floppy drives (F1, Shift+F1, F2, Shift+F2) * Added variable emulation speed and shortcuts to control it (F3, F4) * Added pause emulation option (available in menu and Ctrl+F3) * Moved QuickSave shortcut from key F4 to F5 * Keyboard: Fixed caps lock problem * Keyboard: Better mapping of symbols on PC keyboard to ZX Spectrum keyboard * Video: Fixed palette problems in fullscreen mode when using DirectX 6 driver on Windows Vista and later * Video: Fixed windows size after return from fullscreen to windowed mode when using DirectX 6 driver * Video: User can now switch bilinear filtering (available in menu and Ctrl+F5) * Audio: Many fixes in audio emulation and Win32 sound update routines * Audio: Simplified DirectSound driver (because the support for old VXD drivers isn't needed anymore) * Fixed ZX Printer's output, which was shifted one pixel * Fixed minor incompatibility in kempston joystick emulation (top 3 bits were set instead of reset) * Fiexd minor bug in ZXS48k quickboot (RAMTOP was set 1 byte less the correct value) * Sam Coupé and ZXS 128k quickboots are now even faster * Saving of SCS snapshots is now allowed in ZX SPectrum 48/128 modes as well * Tape: Added VERIFY emulation to both ZXS and Sam modes * Tape: Message "Press any key and start tape" is now skipped * Tape: SAVE is faster on ZXS, because it doesn't wait 1 second after header anymore * Tape: When a LOAD/VERIFY command is issued and no tape is inserted, user is asked to insert one I also added the ZX80/ZX81 emulation, but it isn't included in this release because I am still unsure if it belongs to the same emulator as Sam Coupe, or should rather be published on its own. ----- Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz
Re: Junk mail
Who is the sender? Is it Roger Jowett? I don't know any other person sending tens of emails per hour. Aley -Původní zpráva- From: Andrew Gillen Sent: Thursday, April 05, 2012 12:43 AM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Junk mail No, second time I've been mail bombed by him in as many weeks. The first was a mail of 21MB, then tonight 40 odd individual mails plus one of 8MB. Every single one forwarded to ab...@gmail.com. I know they'll do nothing, but we can dream, right? -- From: Sent: Wednesday, April 04, 2012 11:39 PM To: Subject: Junk mail Was it just me who was sent a huge number of un-requested files? I've added the sender to my email blacklist. ----- Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz
Re: SAM HAM viewer
Actually there is a commented source code on Simon's web. The viewer is quite straighforward, all the colour magic lies in the converter. ;-) I am now planning to create a zx81 emulator, and that computer is quite interesting in that it doesn't push all registers to stack on interrupt. It means that some registers can't be generally used when interrupt is enabled, but the benefit is that the interrupt handelr routine is faster to start. This zx81-way it would probably be possible to change more colours per scanline. That brings me to the question if there exist 64bit TASM compiler. I always used TASM with Z80 mactors to compile my programs, but now I can't run TASM because my version is apparently a 16bit exe from MS-DOS. I would probably need to find at least some 32bit edition, if that's possible. (I don't have any experience with Python and I am not generally happy to install Python in order to run Z80 crossassembler once in a while.) A. -Původní zpráva- From: Thomas Harte Sent: Tuesday, April 03, 2012 12:58 AM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: SAM HAM viewer I've seen something similar on the Atari Lynx, which also has a 4 bit frame buffer, the only difference being that I think that used a tight loop of something like (i) load next palette index, next colour and next delay length; (ii) push colour to palette index; (iii) perform a busy loop of the desired length; (iv) repeat. The loop was synchronised once with vertical retrace and timings were such that a degenerate case was to change the entire palette once after every scan line but you could instead, say, change a single palette index several times over the course of a single scan line, or anything in between. A better adaption for the Sam might be to allow palette and mode changes, and for simplicity to add a delay length that just means to wait until the next vertical retrace? If you have portions of the image with only four colours (especially once the colour aliasing forced by the 128-colour palette is accounted for) then switching to mode 3 for a portion of a line could be the smarter thing to do, and would presumably cost basically nothing to implement? In terms of image conversion, I guess a heuristic would be the thing. It feels like, even at Sam size, an exhaustive search could take forever. Of course, I didn't disassemble Simon's fantastic work so it's possible he's way ahead of me on this one. On 1 April 2012 18:05, Aleš Keprt wrote: Oh yes, this is nice. I saw similar things in the past, AFAIR this was published on some disk magazine back in 90's. But it will be hard to find it now. So how many colours are possible per line in this format? Or what is possible in this picture format? Also, I think that the converter could possibly de-noise the picture before or after the conversion. Or something like that. Because there are too many dots visible in places where there should be no dots. This is good in high resolution graphics like when printing on printer in 600 DPI, but doesn't look too well on Sam. Especially in emulator with crisp LCD display. ;-) I think the whole de-noising process is extremely important when converting to low resolution and low bitdepth. And each single picture needs a different values for the algorithm, so maybe there should be some kind of WYSIWYG editor or something where users could change some settings and see the result immediately in order to find the best settings for each file. ;-) Maybe a genetic algorithm could help to find at least some local optimum. /--- Aley -Původní zpráva- From: Simon Owen Sent: Saturday, March 24, 2012 3:10 AM To: sam-users Subject: SAM HAM viewer Hi all, I've been experimenting with HAM-style tricks on SAM, to try to improve the quality of converted images. I've aimed to modify as many colours as possible between lines, rather than using the traditional compromise static palette. Are there any viewers using that technique already? I've written a Python script to convert regular images to a new .sham format, and a SAM viewer program to display them. Demo: http://simonowen.com/sam/shamview/shamview.dsk Source code: https://github.com/simonowen/shamview You might recognise some of them as SAM or image processing favourites! It still needs work on the dynamic palette selection, which just uses the most-frequent colours, rather than doing proper quantisation. I left the crayons image as an example of this breaking down. Si - Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz - Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz
Re: SAM HAM viewer
Oh yes, this is nice. I saw similar things in the past, AFAIR this was published on some disk magazine back in 90's. But it will be hard to find it now. So how many colours are possible per line in this format? Or what is possible in this picture format? Also, I think that the converter could possibly de-noise the picture before or after the conversion. Or something like that. Because there are too many dots visible in places where there should be no dots. This is good in high resolution graphics like when printing on printer in 600 DPI, but doesn't look too well on Sam. Especially in emulator with crisp LCD display. ;-) I think the whole de-noising process is extremely important when converting to low resolution and low bitdepth. And each single picture needs a different values for the algorithm, so maybe there should be some kind of WYSIWYG editor or something where users could change some settings and see the result immediately in order to find the best settings for each file. ;-) Maybe a genetic algorithm could help to find at least some local optimum. /--- Aley -Původní zpráva- From: Simon Owen Sent: Saturday, March 24, 2012 3:10 AM To: sam-users Subject: SAM HAM viewer Hi all, I've been experimenting with HAM-style tricks on SAM, to try to improve the quality of converted images. I've aimed to modify as many colours as possible between lines, rather than using the traditional compromise static palette. Are there any viewers using that technique already? I've written a Python script to convert regular images to a new .sham format, and a SAM viewer program to display them. Demo: http://simonowen.com/sam/shamview/shamview.dsk Source code: https://github.com/simonowen/shamview You might recognise some of them as SAM or image processing favourites! It still needs work on the dynamic palette selection, which just uses the most-frequent colours, rather than doing proper quantisation. I left the crayons image as an example of this breaking down. Si ----- Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz
Re: ASCD 0.98 WIP 2 released
So you use your own MRLE encoder instead of Microsoft's codec? How does it work? I use only codecs installed in Windows. Including the AVI file container - I use AVI support in Windows. AFAIK lossless audio codecs aren't technically possible in ACM. It means FLAC isn't an option for me, because I need ACM codec, and ACM requires the constant bitrate. (ACM is part of Windows API for audio compression.) IMO the best option for audio would be to save the SAA register values. I mean the best i.e. the smallest file size. That would make very short files, but nobody would replay those files outside our custom player. A. -Původní zpráva- From: Simon Owen Sent: Friday, March 30, 2012 10:52 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: ASCD 0.98 WIP 2 released On 30/03/2012 21:15, Aleš Keprt wrote: I think the audio track needs to be compressed to MP3 in an external program. MP3 would have been good, though I don't know if finding a legal free codec for the encoding might be a problem? The demo AVI I posted a few years ago was run through VirtualDub to convert the audio to MP3, so it was a reasonable size for my website. My original plan was to record to a lossless file, and let the user transcode to their preferred video+audio format. In practice, I can't imagine many people will bother with that, so cutting the original video size is better. Finding the right balance between size and quality is the tricky part. Another issue I had was sticking to simple formats for speed, and so I could implement them directly in SimCoupe, to reduce dependencies on different platforms. Decent audio encoders certainly weren't trivial! MRLE is an big unknown to me. Unfortunately VirtualDub cannot write MRLE files so I did't do any tests with it. I think Microsoft dropped the MRLE encoder in newer versions of Windows, maybe after XP. I think VirtualDub is completely dependent on local codecs for output too. You could probably use ffmpeg to output MRLE under Windows, if you wanted to compare. A friend sent me his test video in MRLE he recorded in another ZXS emulator and it is quite small, but it is really new thing for me. I remembered finding that RealSpectrum videos were small, and I found it was using MRLE for lossless video. I researched that and found it was surprisingly simple. When we compared MRLE to SCLS, the MRLE file was 6x bigger. I hadn't heard of SCLS before, but it does sound like it works better than MRLE. Perhaps some of the size difference is that I force keyframes every second, to improve seeking resolution? Audio still takes up the bulk of the video size, so there's probably more to be gained on that side. FLAC would have been nice :) Si ----- Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz
Re: ASCD 0.98 WIP 2 released
OK, I can let the user choose audio codec. I think the audio track needs to be compressed to MP3 in an external program. I didn't want to spend a lot of time with my avi writer and I don't have any experience with writing mp3, so I used ADPCM. So the question is if ADPCM converted to MP3 has more noise than PCM converted to MP3. Or AAC. MRLE is an big unknown to me. Unfortunately VirtualDub cannot write MRLE files so I did't do any tests with it. (At least my VDub - it can read MRLE, but cannot write it.) A friend sent me his test video in MRLE he recorded in another ZXS emulator and it is quite small, but it is really new thing for me. I never tested MRLE. When we compared MRLE to SCLS, the MRLE file was 6x bigger. But that is just a single test, so it's not representative. Since MRLE codec is present in each Windows (and MPlayer supports it as well) I think you your approach is good. Aley -Původní zpráva- From: Simon Owen Sent: Friday, March 30, 2012 9:44 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: ASCD 0.98 WIP 2 released On 28/03/2012 19:27, Aleš Keprt wrote: My final choice is Microsoft ADPCM, its bitrate is 384 kbps (for 48kHz stereo), i.e. 172 MB per hour, and I think the audio quality is good. I tried ADPCM for SimCoupe but wasn't very happy with it. MS-ADPCM was brighter than IMA-ADPCM, but still seemed to have too much extra noise and swooshiness (for want of a better word!). It will depend on what you're recording too. Spot effect and pure notes are probably fine, but it struggled with rapid note changes in some music. My early recordings were of Manic Miner, and it was the in-game music that put me off. Here are some samples, including PCM and ADPCM variations: http://simonowen.com/misc/sndcompare.zip (661K) The ADPCM versions seem quite inconsistent, as the quantisation size vary between blocks. I actually prefer the constant quality of the 22kHz 8-bit PCM instead. Again, it depends what you plan to do with the recordings. Chances are they're just uploaded to YouTube, where they video will usually suffer more than the audio (~128kbps AAC) in transcoding. I'm sticking with PCM for now, with an option to vary the quality. MS-RLE has served me well on the video side, and is widely supported. Si ----- Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz
ASCD 0.98 WIP 3 - release candidate
I think my work on ASCD 0.98 is complete. I put 0.98 WIP 3 version to my web site. This is planned to be the complete 0.98 version, I just want to have some time for debugging. I added also documentaion.html file with all “what’s” and “how’s”. You can try new AVI recording with –writeavi command line switch. The russian SCLS lossless video codec can be found here: http://compression.ru/video/ls-codec/screen_capture_codec_en.html#Download ASCD is here: http://www.keprt.cz/progs/ascd/ - Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz
Re: ASCD 0.98 WIP 2 released
Tommo, I’m afraid I don’t understand what are you talking about in your second paragraph. AD Codecs: I tried a few codecs from Windows, MJPEG which I used in the past, and then I searched for some lossless codecs. The best one is SCLS, the second best is MSUD – they are both from Moscow State University (MSU). You can download them for free from their website. SCLS is superior in all aspects – it is very fast, it has best compression ratio (by far), it doesn’t need any configuration settings. Microsoft video 1 (a standard very old codec which is present in all Windows) is also able to compress losslessly the ZX Spectrum video, but its compression ratio is much worse compared to MSU codecs. Radius Cinepak (another standard old codec from Windows) has very bad picture quality and is slow. I also tried MJPEG codecs, but the results weren’t good – it is necessary to use the highest mjpeg quality settings, files are quite large and the compression process is slow. I didn’t try XVID or other MPEG4 codecs because I am sure it would be bad as well. The SCLS codec is fast and produces the smallest files, so it is the #1 choice. Yesterday I recorded 12 minutes of North Star gameplay. SCLS video is 3.75 MB, MSUD is 36.9 MB, while other codecs produce much larger files. So it is approximately 19 MB per hour, that’s amazing. :-) These values are for full resolution with border and 50 frames per second! It is much worse with audio. In the fact there is no single good codec available. I read article on Wikipedia on this topic – unfortunately ACM (audio compression manager in Windows) has troubles with variable bitrate (it doesn’t support it at all to be more precise). MP3 is pain, OGG is yet bigger pain, similarly AC3 or AAC are pain as well. In addition all these codecs are quite unsuitable for computer music. My final choice is Microsoft ADPCM, its bitrate is 384 kbps (for 48kHz stereo), i.e. 172 MB per hour, and I think the audio quality is good. And it is installed in each Windows and also supported by MPlayer on all other platforms. It would be better to create a new custom audio codec, but I rather let the files to be big than to use nonstandard codec for audio. Standard AVI files have got file size limit at 2.0 GB. Normally I can record only 5.5 minutes of uncompressed RGB video to those 2 GB at 25 frames per second. When I use SCLS, I can go up to 50 frames per second, and still I am limited only by the size of audio track. More than 10 hours of uninterrupted recording will fit into 2 GB. :-) Best regards, Aley Keprt From: Tommo H Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2012 7:21 AM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: ASCD 0.98 WIP 2 released Which codec is that, if I may ask? Something much more fun than dealing with complicated interfaces in a platform-neutral manner that I recently experimented with was a GPU-driven pipeline for PAL simulation. If I recall, you did a lot of work on SAA emulation back in the day, which must give rise to some broadly similar DSP sort of topics so have you any plans there? On 26 Mar 2012, at 10:41, "Aleš Keprt" wrote: I think what you suggest is possible, I had these thoughts too. But currently I am quite happy with simple quicksave feature, and there is also history of quicksaves stored on disk, so you can eventually revert to any of older saves. What you suggest would move the emulator even further to something like a movie cutting studio. ;-) But it would also bring more complicated menu/GUI to control these features. I personally prefer the quick one, just because it's really "quick". Currently I have implemented AVI recording. Interestingly, I found a nice lossless video codec which can record several minutes of video into just 1.0 MB AVI file. :-) Audio track is then much larger than video track, which is quite unusual. ;-) Aley From: Tommo H Sent: Friday, March 23, 2012 1:31 AM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: ASCD 0.98 WIP 2 released If I dare make a suggestion; what might be nice now that memory is so large would be to ditch fast loads and saves (or at least significantly demote them) in favour of a simple jog dial. So I'd be able to rewind with, say, frame accuracy for the last five minutes, second accuracy for the five minutes before that, etc. Obviously you'd want to approach the problem similarly to compressed video, with key frames and the subsequent few stored as delta differences. If you just densely stored the entire state, and pretending it were just the RAM for ease of calculation, 50fps for five minutes is 15,000 frames, for a footprint of 15,000 times 512kb or about 7.3 gigabytes. A key frame each second for five minutes is already only 150mb and the delta changes would likely be light. If you reduced it to just storing input as deltas (whether things the machine inherently reads or things the emulator supplies like disk changes) then
Re: ASCD 0.98 WIP 2 released
I think what you suggest is possible, I had these thoughts too. But currently I am quite happy with simple quicksave feature, and there is also history of quicksaves stored on disk, so you can eventually revert to any of older saves. What you suggest would move the emulator even further to something like a movie cutting studio. ;-) But it would also bring more complicated menu/GUI to control these features. I personally prefer the quick one, just because it's really "quick". Currently I have implemented AVI recording. Interestingly, I found a nice lossless video codec which can record several minutes of video into just 1.0 MB AVI file. :-) Audio track is then much larger than video track, which is quite unusual. ;-) Aley From: Tommo H Sent: Friday, March 23, 2012 1:31 AM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: ASCD 0.98 WIP 2 released If I dare make a suggestion; what might be nice now that memory is so large would be to ditch fast loads and saves (or at least significantly demote them) in favour of a simple jog dial. So I'd be able to rewind with, say, frame accuracy for the last five minutes, second accuracy for the five minutes before that, etc. Obviously you'd want to approach the problem similarly to compressed video, with key frames and the subsequent few stored as delta differences. If you just densely stored the entire state, and pretending it were just the RAM for ease of calculation, 50fps for five minutes is 15,000 frames, for a footprint of 15,000 times 512kb or about 7.3 gigabytes. A key frame each second for five minutes is already only 150mb and the delta changes would likely be light. If you reduced it to just storing input as deltas (whether things the machine inherently reads or things the emulator supplies like disk changes) then they'd cost almost nothing at all either to compute or to store. Good idea? Bad idea? On 22 Mar 2012, at 16:12, "Aleš Keprt" wrote: Thank you very much. It is a bug in emulator – apparently the end of file mark is not saved correctly. (One zero byte is missing at the end of the file.) And yes, now we are able to finish some games quite easily, for example I finished Exolon yesterday. Best regards, Aley Keprt From: Andrew Gillen Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2012 11:29 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: ASCD 0.98 WIP 2 released Hi Aleš Great work on this emulator. I tried it this evening and it plays a mean game of Dave Invaders and even the demo of Dave Infuriators Quick load and save seems to work great but with one small bug (that I'm sure you know about already but I thought I'd mention anyway) when I Quickload from the Emulation menu it says it fails to load, but actually loads fine. The F9 key doesn't offer up the same error. Anyway, I might actually be able to complete my own game now without resorting to a cheat mode Looking forward to further development. All the best Andrew From: Aleš Keprt Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2012 2:26 AM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: ASCD 0.98 WIP 2 released Hi Sam Users! I just released the new version of my emulator ASCD 0.98 WIP 2. It’s still “work-in-progress”, but many planned things are already implemented. You can download it from my web site www.keprt.cz – click Download, then see at the bottom of that page. Snapshots are now enabled for use, they are saved to the new file format with extension SCS (aka. Sam Coupe Snapshot). The file format is self-described in the source code (see file SamSnap.cpp). The new fileformat covers also ZX Spectrum 48/128 snapshots, as it is the fileformat used for internal Quicksave/Quickload feature. You can also simultaneously write action replay recording file and use quicksave/quickload. My plan is to add AVI video recording to let people record “walkthrough” videos in games. Until this is implemented, ASCD 0.98 won’t reach final state. What’s new: - 0.98 WIP 2 - march 2012 == * Sam Coupé Snapshots are now public; next goal is to implement AVI video file writer * The snapshot code is still in development, now supported also for ZX Spectrum modes * QuickSave/QuickLoad feature now uses new snapshot format in all modes, including air recording * New file format for OpenAir recordings - files are now a lot smaller * Sam: Added printer support (wasn't implemented in Windows version yet) - saves to printout.txt * Sam: Improved floppy disk drive emulation, SAMDICE doesn't crash anymore, although it still doesn't work * Sam: Improved mouse emulation code * ZXS: Added support for 3x8bit DAC audio based on IC 8255 (ports 31,63,95,127 - MQM5 works :-)) * ZXS: Added support for Fullerbox AY audio (it's always turned on in ZXS 48/128k mode) * ZXS: Added ZX Printer support - it saves the prints to zxprint.bmp file * Z80: Fixed ADC HL,rr
Re: ASCD 0.98 WIP 2 released
Thank you very much. It is a bug in emulator – apparently the end of file mark is not saved correctly. (One zero byte is missing at the end of the file.) And yes, now we are able to finish some games quite easily, for example I finished Exolon yesterday. Best regards, Aley Keprt From: Andrew Gillen Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2012 11:29 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: ASCD 0.98 WIP 2 released Hi Aleš Great work on this emulator. I tried it this evening and it plays a mean game of Dave Invaders and even the demo of Dave Infuriators Quick load and save seems to work great but with one small bug (that I'm sure you know about already but I thought I'd mention anyway) when I Quickload from the Emulation menu it says it fails to load, but actually loads fine. The F9 key doesn't offer up the same error. Anyway, I might actually be able to complete my own game now without resorting to a cheat mode Looking forward to further development. All the best Andrew From: Aleš Keprt Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2012 2:26 AM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: ASCD 0.98 WIP 2 released Hi Sam Users! I just released the new version of my emulator ASCD 0.98 WIP 2. It’s still “work-in-progress”, but many planned things are already implemented. You can download it from my web site www.keprt.cz – click Download, then see at the bottom of that page. Snapshots are now enabled for use, they are saved to the new file format with extension SCS (aka. Sam Coupe Snapshot). The file format is self-described in the source code (see file SamSnap.cpp). The new fileformat covers also ZX Spectrum 48/128 snapshots, as it is the fileformat used for internal Quicksave/Quickload feature. You can also simultaneously write action replay recording file and use quicksave/quickload. My plan is to add AVI video recording to let people record “walkthrough” videos in games. Until this is implemented, ASCD 0.98 won’t reach final state. What’s new: - 0.98 WIP 2 - march 2012 == * Sam Coupé Snapshots are now public; next goal is to implement AVI video file writer * The snapshot code is still in development, now supported also for ZX Spectrum modes * QuickSave/QuickLoad feature now uses new snapshot format in all modes, including air recording * New file format for OpenAir recordings - files are now a lot smaller * Sam: Added printer support (wasn't implemented in Windows version yet) - saves to printout.txt * Sam: Improved floppy disk drive emulation, SAMDICE doesn't crash anymore, although it still doesn't work * Sam: Improved mouse emulation code * ZXS: Added support for 3x8bit DAC audio based on IC 8255 (ports 31,63,95,127 - MQM5 works :-)) * ZXS: Added support for Fullerbox AY audio (it's always turned on in ZXS 48/128k mode) * ZXS: Added ZX Printer support - it saves the prints to zxprint.bmp file * Z80: Fixed ADC HL,rr incorrectly setting N flag * Z80: Added support for saving .z80 snapshot files (uncompressed 48KB only) * Mouse was too fast, so it is set 2 times slower than before * Changed contents of a disk images are now saved with a temp filename and then renamed back only if no error occurs 0.98 WIP 1 - march 2012 == * First public Win32 version - supports Windows 2000 and later, DirectX 6 (2D) and Direct3D 9 (3D) * MS-DOS version is now officially dropped * Updated to Visual C++ 2008 and Zlib 1.2.6 * Fixed many bugs in the emulation core * Fixed Windows related bugs (especially in GUI) * Added support for saving .sna snaps (both 48k and 128k) * Added many items to Windows menu, but this is still quite incomplete * Fixed wrong flash speed (it flashed every 25 frames, now it flashes every 16 frames) Best regards, Aley Keprt ----- Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz - ----- Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz <><>
SCS snapshot file format documentation
If anyone of you interested in new file format, please visit this page: http://www.keprt.cz/sam/scs.php (I also found a bug in emulator when documenting the file format. A minor bug, I will fix it in next version.) - Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz
Skull video tape
Hi Sam Users! You probably know Roger Jowett’s “skull” video from youtube. Now you can play that video directly in virtual Sam Coupe. I created a player in Sam Basic (thanks a lot to Andrew Collier!). The trick is that ASCD has tape emulation in Sam Coupe mode and it loads the tape in almost zero-time, so it can be used to play videos. ;-) It would be possible on a real Sam if we managed to load files in extreme high speed. ;-) The mode 4 video player is here: http://www.keprt.cz/progs/ascd/videotape.tap The skull video is here: http://www.keprt.cz/progs/ascd/skull.tap The tape video file is only 3 MB (it’s .GZ compressed, and you can directly load it to ASCD in this compressed form). (File format is a regular TAP, as used in ZX Spectrum emulators. :-)) - Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz
ASCD 0.98 WIP 2 released
Hi Sam Users! I just released the new version of my emulator ASCD 0.98 WIP 2. It’s still “work-in-progress”, but many planned things are already implemented. You can download it from my web site www.keprt.cz – click Download, then see at the bottom of that page. Snapshots are now enabled for use, they are saved to the new file format with extension SCS (aka. Sam Coupe Snapshot). The file format is self-described in the source code (see file SamSnap.cpp). The new fileformat covers also ZX Spectrum 48/128 snapshots, as it is the fileformat used for internal Quicksave/Quickload feature. You can also simultaneously write action replay recording file and use quicksave/quickload. My plan is to add AVI video recording to let people record “walkthrough” videos in games. Until this is implemented, ASCD 0.98 won’t reach final state. What’s new: - 0.98 WIP 2 - march 2012 == * Sam Coupé Snapshots are now public; next goal is to implement AVI video file writer * The snapshot code is still in development, now supported also for ZX Spectrum modes * QuickSave/QuickLoad feature now uses new snapshot format in all modes, including air recording * New file format for OpenAir recordings - files are now a lot smaller * Sam: Added printer support (wasn't implemented in Windows version yet) - saves to printout.txt * Sam: Improved floppy disk drive emulation, SAMDICE doesn't crash anymore, although it still doesn't work * Sam: Improved mouse emulation code * ZXS: Added support for 3x8bit DAC audio based on IC 8255 (ports 31,63,95,127 - MQM5 works :-)) * ZXS: Added support for Fullerbox AY audio (it's always turned on in ZXS 48/128k mode) * ZXS: Added ZX Printer support - it saves the prints to zxprint.bmp file * Z80: Fixed ADC HL,rr incorrectly setting N flag * Z80: Added support for saving .z80 snapshot files (uncompressed 48KB only) * Mouse was too fast, so it is set 2 times slower than before * Changed contents of a disk images are now saved with a temp filename and then renamed back only if no error occurs 0.98 WIP 1 - march 2012 == * First public Win32 version - supports Windows 2000 and later, DirectX 6 (2D) and Direct3D 9 (3D) * MS-DOS version is now officially dropped * Updated to Visual C++ 2008 and Zlib 1.2.6 * Fixed many bugs in the emulation core * Fixed Windows related bugs (especially in GUI) * Added support for saving .sna snaps (both 48k and 128k) * Added many items to Windows menu, but this is still quite incomplete * Fixed wrong flash speed (it flashed every 25 frames, now it flashes every 16 frames) Best regards, Aley Keprt ----- Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz -
2sad 1.01 source code released
Hi Sam users, I just released the original source code of 2sad 1.01. You can download it from my web site www.keprt.cz (click Download and go to the bottom of that page). I also just uploaded it to ftp.nvg.ntnu.no archive. I released this source code now as a help in documenting the file formats used in emulators. 2sad is converter to and from DSK(MGT), SAD version 1 and SAD version 2 disk image files. Best regards, Aley - Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz
Please help with screen$ loader
I received a bunch of screen$ files in a tape file. I want to read and show then at 25 fps. This is possible in emulator, because it loads files immediately. I have got this code: 10 poke svar &33,1 20 load “”screen$ 30 pause 2 30 goto 20 The problem is that screen$ files have got color palette at the back so the new image is first loaded and shown with old palette and then the new palette is set. Please somebody help me fix this annoyance. I need to keep the current image with its palette visible until the new image is read from tape, and then show the new image with its palette immediately. Can this be done in Sam Basic? Or can somebody help me to make the correct assembler code to do it? I know exactly how it should be done, but I haven’t programmed in Z80 asm for 15 years. I would use two screen buffers in separate pages, and a short asm code would switch VMPR to the new page and set the new palette at once. Something like this: 10 poke svar &33,1 20 load “”code 131072 30 call 131072 + &7000 40 load “”code 81920 30 call 81920+&7000 30 goto 20 Z80 ASM PROGRAMMER WANTED! :-) I need those few instructions to be placed at offset &7000/&f000. Thanks in advance. Aley ----- Mgr. Aleš Keprt, Ph.D. private: a...@keprt.cz, www.keprt.cz office: Moravian College / Moravská vysoká škola Olomouc, ales.ke...@mvso.cz
ASCD 0.98 WIP 1 - new version of the emulator available
Hi Sam Coupe fans, I just uploaded the new version of my Sam Coupe emulator ASCD to my website. It’s 10 years since last public release. :-D It is “work in progress” release. It emulates ZX Spectrum 48, 128, and Sam Coupé. There are two or three reasons why I resurrected this old project: 1. It was originally meant to be “Aley’s SimCoupe for DOS” aka ASCD. But MS-DOS is dead, so I converted whole project to Windows. I did this Windows port back in 2003 and we used it as a ZXS emulator in game tournaments. But there were strange bugs in Sam emulation I wasn’t able to find, so I never released that version 0.97 to public. Now I finally found that strange main 9 old bug. :-) 2. I plan to add support for Sam Coupe snapshots, QuickSave/QuickLoad together with action replay recording. The today’s version already contains support for QuickLoad/QuickSave, so you can play the games more easily. ;-) But all saved ”quick” snapshots are discarded when you restart the emulator. I need first to discuss the snapshot file format with Simon Owen to make it usable in SimCoupe too, then I will publish the final version. 3. Finally, I want to add support for video recording with QuickSave/QuickLoad. I hope some game players will record game progress of some games to a video file. Of course it is a bit unfair to use QuickSave/QuickLoad when making video recording, but it can help us to compose a really “best” plays. I look forward to it. :-) If you are interested, download the emulator from my Downloads page: http://www.keprt.cz/progs/ Please let me know whether it works correctly on your computer or not. Required configuration is simple: Windows 2000 or later, DirectX 6 or Direct3D 9 --- I also recommend you to try this: http://www.keprt.cz/zx_girlsaloud_something_kinda_ooh.tap.gz It is a video file in TAP (ZX Spectrum tape file) made by Roger Jowett. Warning: It is 33 MB long, 11 MB compressed. You can load it in ZX Spectrum mode (use menu to insert the tape, then switch to ZXS 128 and press Enter). I wonder how many real tape casettes would it take to save those 33 MB of data. :-D ASCD emulator supports TAP tapes in Sam Coupe mode too. Maybe somebody will create similar crazy videos for Sam Coupe. The size of tapes is virtually unlimited, so it is possible to create almost anything when you use infinite-load speed of the emulator. Best regards, Aley Keprt
Re: Drive/SCART fault?
I renewed my PSU last week. Look here: http://www.keprt.cz/sam/psu.php Although I think 12 Volt line is not used for actual scart output, bad el.capacitors can of course cause almost any kind of evil in electronic devices. Aley From: Leszek Chmielewski Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2012 7:23 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Drive/SCART fault? Okay, thats strange. I Overreaded the good RF signals... Video signal for RF is made from RGB signals by MC 1377P chip, but Scart has some additional signals and supplies ölike +12V for switching to RGB. Maybe the +12V are too weak. Please check the voltage of +12Volt. Check also the condensators in PSU and SAM. LCD Am 24.01.2012 19:13, schrieb Aleš Keprt: If you use the original floppy drive and have got power problems, you can simply call an electrician to repair your original power supply. You don’t need to replace it. Every normally skilled repair man will repair it. I just wonder how it is possible to see problems on scart caused by power supply problems, and have RF image good at the same time. From: Andrew Gillen Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2012 6:44 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Drive/SCART fault? Hi LCD Thanks, that's good to know it is just a PSU fault. The drive is the original drive that shipped with the SAM back in '91. Is this something I should approach Quazar with, or is it something that can be resolved easily by someone as inept as me with electronics? I'd like to keep the original SAM supply really for aesthetic value. Cheers Andrew From: Leszek Chmielewski Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2012 12:21 AM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Drive/SCART fault? Am 24.01.2012 01:01, schrieb Andrew Gillen: Anyone experienced any issues whereby accessing the floppy drive causes the display to corrupt? It starts off with the left hand side phasing off in jagged lines, then eventually the entire screen goes blank. When the drive has been shut off the display returns. This only effects the video signal from the scart socket - RF works absolutely fine. Cheers Andrew Sure, the PSU supples not enough ampere or the drive (replaced?) consumes too much. I had similar issue with replacement drive, and after building new PSU all works fine. Cheers LCD
Re: Drive/SCART fault?
If you use the original floppy drive and have got power problems, you can simply call an electrician to repair your original power supply. You don’t need to replace it. Every normally skilled repair man will repair it. I just wonder how it is possible to see problems on scart caused by power supply problems, and have RF image good at the same time. From: Andrew Gillen Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2012 6:44 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Drive/SCART fault? Hi LCD Thanks, that's good to know it is just a PSU fault. The drive is the original drive that shipped with the SAM back in '91. Is this something I should approach Quazar with, or is it something that can be resolved easily by someone as inept as me with electronics? I'd like to keep the original SAM supply really for aesthetic value. Cheers Andrew From: Leszek Chmielewski Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2012 12:21 AM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Drive/SCART fault? Am 24.01.2012 01:01, schrieb Andrew Gillen: Anyone experienced any issues whereby accessing the floppy drive causes the display to corrupt? It starts off with the left hand side phasing off in jagged lines, then eventually the entire screen goes blank. When the drive has been shut off the display returns. This only effects the video signal from the scart socket - RF works absolutely fine. Cheers Andrew Sure, the PSU supples not enough ampere or the drive (replaced?) consumes too much. I had similar issue with replacement drive, and after building new PSU all works fine. Cheers LCD
Re: Floppy drive problem
I would rather sell the whole computer than to invest more money to it. Anyone interested? (For collectors: I still have also the original cartoon/polystyrene box. :-)) I do have a plenty of working PC floppy drives at home, but I think it would be more wise to move to the compact flash instead of putting more money to new floppy controllers. /--- Aley -Původní zpráva- From: Colin Piggot Sent: Thursday, January 19, 2012 10:12 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Floppy drive problem Thomas wrote: the original MGT SAM Coupe diskdrives are from Citizen, they are indeed a bit different than PC drives. One possible way is to get a replacement drivebelt, or buy a replacement diskdrive, both can be ordered from Quazar: http://www.samcoupe.com/ I don't have any original Citizen drives left, and no drive belts at the moment. I can provide a new disk drive system based around a modern PC disk drive and an interface board (which I can supply on it's own without a disk drive if you already have a spare PC drive to hand) Colin = Quazar : Hardware, Software, Spares and Repairs for the SAM Coupé 1995-2012 - Celebrating 18 Years of developing for the SAM Coupé Website: http://www.samcoupe.com/
Floppy drive problem
So after a renewed the power supply, I found a problem with floppy drive. There is a rubber which connects the engine to the centre of the disk to let it spin. Simply said: The rubber is aged, it needs to be either replaced, or the whole drive needs to be replaced. But as I can see the connector of the floppy drive is not the same as the connector on the PC drive. I understand that Sam Coupe’s drive has its own controller, but even the rest isn’t the same. I wonder where had MGT got the original Citizen drives from? They definitely aren’t PC drives. Any suggestions? (Please don’t tell me about compact flash now. ;-)) /--- Aley
Re: Attempts at 3d on the Sam?
Guys, please be realistic. 3D on Sam sucks. /--- Aley -- - Original Message - From: "Thomas Harte" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Tuesday, April 08, 2008 3:35 PM Subject: Attempts at 3d on the Sam? Hi, I've just discovered pyz80 and am having a fresh bash at some Sam projects. As I'm simultaneously working on a Freescape interpreter for the PC, my thoughts have inevitably turned to 3d on the Sam, even if it means a Freescape-style non-realtime display. I'm therefore curious about lots of things, and have a multitude of questions: — besides Stratosphere, the F16 demo and that brief gameover bit in Dyzonium, are there any other playable segments of games that demonstrate 3d graphics? I know there are some demos with bits of 3d graphics, but I figure that spending 256 kb on getting the fastest possible rotating cube isn't a helpful guide. — has it been established whether the animated gifs of Chrome featured on http://www.samcoupe.com/preview.htm represents the speed at which the game would play on a real, unexpanded Sam? — is there any speed advantage to using the ROM routines such as JDRAW, JPUT and/or JBLITZ? I appreciate that they are more general case than routines that it makes sense to write for a game, but as I understand it the ROM is uncontended? To be honest, I can imagine that something like Chrome could be done with a live update since most of the display doesn't change between most frames (it's just a bunch of vertical strips of colour that quite often change height and occasionally change colour), and the algorithms that are commonly used to calculate scenes such as that in Chrome make it really cheap to calculate out a minimal list of the required changes.
