Re: Power supply circuit diagram
Thank you for very interesting description. According to my findings the 12V line looks like this: 18v |>|\/\/\/\/\12v D3 R1:33R | | | -¬ === /\ D4:12v zener C4:1000uF | -- | | 0v I put my photos here: http://www.keprt.cz/sam/psu.php __ Od: "nev young" Komu: Datum: 15.01.2012 13:52 Předmět: Re: Power supply circuit diagram On 15/01/12 10:52, Aley Keprt wrote: Colin, thank you very much!!! Also I always wondered why there is a zener diode (I never saw this kind of computer power supply) instead of IO 7812. It's a cheap and nasty way of getting 12v. And technically, why there is that R1 resistor? Is its purpose to limit maximum current on 12V line (i.e. something like a cheap reversible fuse)? The voltage coming of the transformer is nominally somewhere like 18v. To get it down to 12v all the current is put through the 33ohm resistor which has the 12 zener tied between the other side and ground. The 12v supply (drawn from memory) is: (excuse the poor ascii graphics.) 18v--\/\/\/\/\--12v-- | 33ohm | | ¬ === /\ 12v zener | 4700uF -- | | -0v-- So under no load there is a drop of 6V across the 33ohm resistor which gives a current of 0.18A which is just over 1W to be dissipated as heat. This also means the zener has to lose over 2W of heat as well. As the load from sam increases, by running two disk drives for example, more of the current goes through sam and takes the load off the zener but the resistor still has to burn off the excess voltage. The problem with this type of regulation is the resistor has to have a small enough resistance to let enough current through under max load conditions and heavy enough to dissipate the heat. If you're not using all of the 0.18A available, e.g. you only have one floppy drive, then you can increase the 33ohm resistor which will still drop the excess volts but draw a smaller current, and so be cooler. These days, of course, a 7812 would more than likely be cheaper than a big resistor :-) Nev
Re: Power supply circuit diagram
Colin, thank you very much!!! Btw. I never realized these PSU's are dated 1984. A piece of history. :-) Also I always wondered why there is a zener diode (I never saw this kind of computer power supply) instead of IO 7812. And technically, why there is that R1 resistor? Is its purpose to limit maximum current on 12V line (i.e. something like a cheap reversible fuse)? Aley __ Od: "Colin Piggot" Komu: Datum: 15.01.2012 10:52 Předmět: Re: Power supply circuit diagram Aley wrote: You can clearly see that D4 is missing (right-bottom), and there is a very large old zener diode put there instead. It is Tesla 6NZ70 - 12V 1.5W Zener diode which proudes a LOT of heat. (If I count correctly, a 2.5W diode should be used instead.) That's not the standard part... never seen that old type of Zener diode used in the SAM power supply - perhaps that PSU has been repaired by someone else in the past? But yes, D4 is the Zener diode - the 1N5349B I suggested is a 5W diode which I use as a replacement. I am also suspicious about R1 (large grey resistor right beside D4) which is a bit mechanically damaged (clearly visible on the second photo), I would recommend replacing R1 - 33ohm if I remember correctly. I use a 10W part for this - as I've repaired quite a few power supplies where the normal wirewound resistor has charred the PSU and melted the inside of the power supply case when the 12V line fails. and also C4 (one of the large capacitors) which seems to me a bit bloated. With these power supplies being made around 1984 (going by date codes I've seen on the transformers inside them) replacing the electrolytic capacitors is a very good idea. 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/
Re: Power supply circuit diagram
I made a few photos of my PSU: http://www.keprt.cz/sampsu1.jpg http://www.keprt.cz/sampsu2.jpg You can clearly see that D4 is missing (right-bottom), and there is a very large old zener diode put there instead. It is Tesla 6NZ70 - 12V 1.5W Zener diode which proudes a LOT of heat. (If I count correctly, a 2.5W diode should be used instead.) I am also suspicious about R1 (large grey resistor right beside D4) which is a bit mechanically damaged (clearly visible on the second photo), and also C4 (one of the large capacitors) which seems to me a bit bloated. So do you recommend me to put there 1N5349 instead of that old big boy? (Local retail shop here offers me 1N5349, not 1N5349B, but I think it is the same and maybe it actually is the "B" version.) I don't use my Sam often, I just nostalgically keep it. So I don't want a whole new PSU. Best regards, Aley __ Od: "Colin Piggot" Komu: Datum: 14.01.2012 19:15 Předmět: Re: Power supply circuit diagram Aley Keprt wrote: So I just need to know what was the original piece in the PSU and I am going to replace it back. For the 12V Zener Diode - I use 1N5349B when repairing old supplies. I would also recommend replacing the wirewound resistor by it with a higher wattage part - often see them burnt out when the 12V line fails. I still have a few of these parts if needed. Thomas Harte wrote: You should sell those; some of us are pathologically incapable of soldering but would love a quiet power supply. I can supply switch mode power supplies with a little adapter cable to plug into the SAM if needed. I also add a big capacitor to the 5v line in my adapter cable as there can be a bit of noise on the output from the switch mode power supplies. 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/
Power supply circuit diagram
Hi guys, does anybody have the original Sam Coupe power supply unit circuit diagram? My power supply was damaged years ago and somebody repaired it by replacing something inside with an old big zener diode. I just remember that 12V line was dead and that diode is just a random one which we were able to get. Then in 90's it was not easy to buy good new diodes here, but it is easy to buy anything on internet now. So I just need to know what was the original piece in the PSU and I am going to replace it back. Thanks in advance. Aley Keprt
Re: Sam scart to PC Monitor converter
In my opinion, today a PC display is just a cheap crippled TV set. If you go and buy a proper fully featured LCD/LED TV set, you can get not only better picture, but also a standard scart input on it. And you won't need to stick with third party HDMI converters etc. Best regards, Aley __ Od: "Stephen Longhurst" Komu: sam-users Datum: 13.07.2011 21:10 Předmět: Sam scart to PC Monitor converter Hi all, Has anyone successfully used a scart converter box to display a Sam on a PC monitor? I've got a Kaanan HDMI upscaler (http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00423K7R2/) and it doesn't sync to the Sams RGB output properly. I get a picture that stays for a second or two, then flicks off, then comes on again, etc. I was hoping to be able to display my Sam on my PC monitor which has VGA, DisplayPort, DVI and HDMI. I do have a proper Sam compatible scart cable. Cheers, Steve -- Stephen Longhurst steve at longsteve.com
Please somebody clean Sam web ring
Please can somebody clean Sam web ring of retro trader website? I can see they added themselves to our web ring, but - they didn't aded required navigation bar to previous and next sites in the ring - they don't have anything to do here (my opinion) Best regards, Aley
Re: Which assembler?
I've got very good experience with TASM on PC. I use version 3.0.1 and combine it with emulator to run the programs on "Sam". ;-) /--- Aley - Original Message - From: Steve Parry-Thomas To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Sent: Wednesday, July 04, 2007 7:44 PM Subject: RE: Which assembler? I tend to use TASM 3.2 ,[ for PC ] there are better ones out there as every one will now recommend the one they like and Edwin's Comet for Sam. TASM can be found here: - http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/250/25051.html Steve(spt) -- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Calvin Allett Sent: 04 July 2007 18:05 To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Which assembler? What Assembler would anybody reccomend me having a go with, i.e. preferably the most easy to use :) Feature`s don`t neccesarily top my needs, as I won`t be doing any games in MC, just wanting to learn the language, and be able to try a few small routines. -- Yahoo! Answers - Get better answers from someone who knows. Try it now.
Re: A feature I'd like in SimCoupé
I am pretty sure that if those 114 bytes persist in the real hardware, it surely can do as well in the emulator. Aley - Original Message - From: "Chris Pile" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Sunday, December 03, 2006 1:13 PM Subject: A feature I'd like in SimCoupé Persistent Dallas module data. :-)) Would it be possible to save the Dallas module contents on SimCoupé's exit? Obviously the 14 bytes of clock/status registers would be re-built on the next load, but I feel the 114 bytes of user RAM should persist across SimCoupé sessions. As per the real hardware. Just a thought - and something I'd like!! ;-) Chris.
Re: Latest Quazar News (April 2006)
If this came 15 years ago, it would be excellent. Now, it's void. :-( And, Escape... game is really bad on Sam - it's slow, has so many bugs, and the controls are stupid. I liked ZXS128 version of that game, not this one. /--- Aley - Original Message - From: "Colin Piggot" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Tuesday, April 25, 2006 11:09 AM Subject: Latest Quazar News (April 2006) Mayhem Accelerator -- As the Mayhem Accelerator is now approaching production, with launch hopefully within the next couple of months, I've captured some videos of it in action and uploaded them onto the website. Videos are of: Lemmings (at 10MHz) Manic Miner (at 20MHz) Stratosphere (at 20MHz) Escape From .. Robot Monsters (at 20MHz) Total Eclipse (at 20MHz, spectrum emulated) Rover demo (at 20MHz) You can find them, and a bit more info, as the first news item at www.samcoupe.com Any feedback is appreciated. (Videos are 4-6MB in size, 25 frames / sec, divx compressed) Sam Revival - Thanks for all the feedback you've sent directly on the latest issue of Sam Revival (issue 14), it seems the colour pages have gone down well, and work is now well underway on issue 15 which is due out in late May. If you've not tried Sam Revival yet, why not give it a try? £3.99 for the latest issue with UK postage, or £4.79 with EU postage. More details and ordering information is up on the website. Retro Fusion - A new 'retro' magazine has now hit the shops. Issue one of 'Retro Fusion' can be found at GameStation stores in the UK (with online ordering at www.retrofusion.co.uk). Covering retro computers, consoles and nostalgia, you'll also find in this first issue a 4 page Sam Coupe article which i've written - covering the history of the Sam as well as the history of Quazar and what i've been doing for the Sam for the last eleven years. All the best, Colin = Quazar : Hardware, Software, Spares and Repairs for the Sam Coupe April 1995-2006 - Celebrating 11 Years of developing for the Sam Coupe Website: http://www.samcoupe.com/
Re: Kaleidoscope
This is really interesting, as I ever wondered what exactly is it. (Whatever is it, they never tell you what really is it when they try to sell...) Thank you for this nice description. /--- Aley in your last email you said the Kaleidoscope was a bodge - is this coz there was no software for it? Does the Kaleidoscope realy give the Sam 32,768 true colours? I'm interested in what it is and what it does - (you never seem to hear anything about it...) It was a complete bodge. What the kaleidoscope did was pull down the RGB video signals generated by the Sam as normal (by darkening the output by varying amounts of red, green, blue - set with an OUT command to the kaleidoscope port) so it technically produced 256 tinted shades of the original colours - in total 32768 shades, but could they be used in a proper fashion - nope! So whatever value of shading the kaleidoscope was set to would affect all the colours on screen. There was no real way to use it all, could you have individually shaded pixels - nope again! At most, you could write code to tint horizontal groups of 16 pixels at a time... but for all 192 scanlines you would be using all the CPU time and even effectively tinting 16 pixel blocks that wouldn't really let you achieve any decent graphical effects, plus 62% of all the CPU time is being used. In all, a waste of time, it couldnt be utilised in any useable way at all, therefore no software attempted to used it. Colin = Quazar : Hardware, Software, Spares and Repairs for the Sam Coupe April 1995-2005 - Celebrating 10 Years of developing for the Sam Coupe Website: http://www.samcoupe.com/
Mouse emulation problems [Fw: SAM COUPE]
I forward you a translation of message from "velesoft" (original message is written in Czech, se below): - I checked out your Sam Coupe emulator. I tested mouse emulation and I obtained these results: All versions of the emulator(s) too early reset mouse. I borrowed the original mouse interface from Kapsa club. For example, the game Legend of Eshan, which relies on the longer delay before mouse reset, doesn't work. In this game, when it is reading the last byte of X coordinate, the emulator is actually returning the state of the keyboard, because the mouse was reset too early. When using the original Sam mouse interface, this game works correctly. The time of mouse port activity must be longer at least twice (in the emulator). Since I don't understand the mouse at all, I replied this: - Please send me that game, and I will give it to somebody who can try to fix the emulation. I personally think that the problem might be in the Sam mouse interface from Kapsa, which is probably not identical to the original interface. But it must be checked out... And that person sent me that game, and replied: - The program is correct, it only has a longer delay in mouse port reading routines and before it reads all the numbers, the emulator is returning the keyboard status again. In this game you need to hold shift key down in order to let the mouse work [in Sim Coupe - all versions]. The mouse interface is original from Samco/Samtek. You can find the schema on my www pages, it's 100% identical to the original one. (On the other hand, the schema listed in Sam tech.manual is wrong - the pin out is incorrect and C1 is missing in there.) There is no other mouse interface for Sam, just the original one. Mr. Richard Haramule tried to make a simplier solution, but he didn't finished it successfully. My new "sam mouse turbo" has 100% identical timing to the original interface. I wrote a test program in assembler and it showed that emulator resets the mouse ports too early. The mentioned www page is: www.velesoft.wz.cz I just wonder why this person calles all his work "turbo something" - it sounds to me like something really stupid, like "magnificent abc..." LOL So, hardware gurus we are awaiting your comments... :-) /--- Aley - Mgr.(MSc.) Aleš Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, Palacký University, Olomouc, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.inf.upol.cz - - Original Message - From: "VELESOFT" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Aleš Keprt" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, December 30, 2005 10:55 AM Subject: Re: SAM COUPE Dobry den. Nedavno jsem zkousel Vas emulator SAM COUPE. Zabyval jsem se testovanim SAM MOUSE a dosel k temto vysledkum. Prakticky vsechny dosavadni verze emulatoru SAMa prilis brzy resetuji mys. Original interface jsem si zapujcil z klubu KAPSA. Zlobi napriklad hra Legend Of Eshan, ktera spoleha na vetsi odstup resetu mysi. Takze pri hre, kdyz rutina cte uz posledni byte souradnice X, emulator uz vraci stav klavesnice protoze pred- casne resetoval. Zatimco na original interface vse funguje perfektne. Chce to alespon 2x prodlouzit cas, po ktery jsou porty mysi aktivni. Osobně tipuju, že chyba je v tom programu. Je ten interface z Kapsy opravdu "originální"? Protože já mám za to, že emulátor je velmi přesný a chyba je v tom interfacu z Kapsy, který funguje asi jinak, než originální interface Sam Mouse, který je právě emulován v SimCoupe a ASCD. Chyba v programu neni. Ten pracuje korektne, jen ma delsi casovej delay mezi vycitanim portu mysi a nez se nactou posledni hodnoty, vraci emulator opet stav klavesnice + od zacatku znovu souradnice. U teto hry budete muset pridrzet v SIM COUPE(vsechny verze) klavesu SHIFT, aby vubec mys reagovala. Interface je original od SAMCO/SAMtek. Na moji strance najdete i korektni schema, ktere 100% souhlasi s original zapojenim. (schema mysi v tech.manualu k sam coupe vubac nesouhlasi pinoutem a chybi tam hodnoty C1). Zadny jiny mysi interface pro SAMa dosud neexistoval, jen original. Sice byly pokusy o nove jednodussi reseni, ktere navrhnul pan Richard Haramule, ale z toho seslo. Muj novy SAM MOUSE TURBO interface ma 100% shodne casovani a chovani s originálem. V assembleru jsem si napsal tester casovani mysi a opravdu se v emulatoru prilis brzy mys resetuje. Mimochodem jsem si pred par lety postavil ATOM HDD interface a rozchodil HDD+CD. Nebavilo me furt pretahovat image disket z PC na disketu a na SAMovi z diskety zas na HDD, tak jsem napsal konvertor, kterej rozdeli DSK image na dva linearni soubory o delce 400kB. Sam vse umisti do slozky kam ulozi i TXT soubor nazvy zkonvertovanych images. Hotovou slozku staci nakopirovat na CD a konvertor na SAMovi
Re: Sophistry
Why don't you go and get the unprotected versions of those games? It's not ideal from Simon's point of view as he is desperate to emulate everything, but it's quite practical. ;-) /--- Aley - Original Message - From: "Carol" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Sunday, December 11, 2005 7:21 PM Subject: Re: Sophistry > Is there a way to create SimCoupe-compatible images of > protected disks yet? If you'd asked this next week it would have been a whole lot easier to answer! I've been trying to get a few things tidied up before Christmas, so some of it is a bit up in the air. I've got a test version of SamDisk that will image (almost) any SAM title under W2K/XP. It's missing some features from SamDisk 2.0, so it's not quite ready to replace the existing version yet. I'd be happy to send you a copy to try, if you're just looking to image some disks. One problem is that it creates images in EDSK format, which the current SimCoupe releases can't read. I've added support for it, but I'm in the middle of hacking the FDC emulation so I can't check my changes back in yet. It's likely to be a couple of days before I've put all the pieces back together though. Si Hi, I've been reading the list for a year or two now - never replied before *grin* - I'm one of those silent lurkers mentioned a few months back. Does this mean I might finally be able to load in Astroball, Manic Miner and Sam Strikes out? I managed to load in some of my own old disks, but (maybe not suprisingly) none of my protected ones. Gave up fairly quickly & they're all hiding in the attic again now, along with poor abandoned Sam himself. I think I got Splat working though. Infuriating music to say the least. Carol -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.371 / Virus Database: 267.13.13/197 - Release Date: 09/12/05
Re: Biggest Risk to SAM?
Sam is dead. So what survival are you talking about? /--- Aley - Original Message - From: "Calvin Allett" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Wednesday, August 03, 2005 2:49 AM Subject: Biggest Risk to SAM? Sorry for the blatent rip off of a thread I seen on WoS but what do you guys reckon` is the biggest risk for SAMs longterm survival/rememberance? To me it`s userbase... There`s possibly a smaller user base than any machine, yet actual more web presence than some of the older VERY early 80`s computers, there`s mebeez (and probably) more people with those machines that remember and might come into the `scene`, even as casual users for those but with us there is such a small community that despite all exciting stuff I feel worried sometimes :) I know you guys do your things still with the machine, give it the time it deserves and hardware wise and some of the software in past 3 years has been immense but is there anybody even here who isn`t a developer? It makes me sad but I simply can`t believe that a machine with all the character and appeal of the SAM is essentially `ignored` by soo soo many Spectrum owners that I know would be excited/amazed (especially the Basic Programmers of them *_+ ) by it... Have a linux nut friend who`s totally C64/Risc/PC oriented and yet loves the machine and thinks of it as (his words) - a kinda alterbntive/flavoured PC, he thinks the Spectrum is lame, being a C64 nut but for him having been `forced` to view SAM stuff by me he gives it respect, and even Personal Computer World called it once the 8-bit Archimedes, even if we all begrudge the fact that we undrstand the speed/ahem/issues with SAM (Mayehem accelorator, woohoo , :)) I remember in the early dying days of Amiga Format 94-96 , or rather perhaps Amiga Computing there were some quite intensive 6-8 page conference like `meetings` between those in the magazine writer stable and the `names` of the coding scene about the future and direction of the Amiga, I keep thinking that the Spectrum scene needs something like this and yet we all know the Spectrum will be around in fourty-fifty years, can the same be said of the SAM? Sorry for ramble :( Just interested in what everybody perceives to be SAM / `our` fate regarding the SAM Coupe :) Cal *_+ ___ Yahoo! Messenger - NEW crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com
Re: SAM Coupe Keyboard Relay for Linux
OMG, why would anyone like to use it this way? - Original Message - From: "Stuart Brady" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Tuesday, August 02, 2005 2:22 AM Subject: SAM Coupe Keyboard Relay for Linux Hi all, I've written a few programs and a Linux kernel module that allow a SAM Coupe to be used as a keyboard under Linux. To use this, you'll need the SAM Comms interface and its driver disk, and a serial cable. For the programs, and information on how to use them, see: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/wholehog/stuart/samkbd/index.html It's very slow at the moment (but good enough for me to write this email). I will try to write a faster version in machine code. BTW, it uses the standard PC layout. If you want to use the SAM's layout, it's best to create a new keymap and load it with loadkeys. Questions and feedback are welcome! Cheers, -- Stuart Brady
Re: samcoupe.org
Who would be interested in hacking it? - Original Message - From: "DAVID LEDBURY" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Monday, August 01, 2005 2:37 PM Subject: samcoupe.org Has the site been hacked?
Re: 10th Anniversary!
Really? Ehm, I bought Sam in july 1991. In the ad & prices sheet there was also Quazar Surround. It was advertised like Prince of Persia years before it actually came out, or what was it??? --Mgr.(MSc.) Ale Keprt (also known as Aley)[EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182Dept. of Computer Science, VB Technical UniversityOstrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz-- - Original Message - From: Matt Craven To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Sent: Sunday, May 01, 2005 3:04 PM Subject: Re: 10th Anniversary! Well done Colin - congratulations on the 10 year anniversary. Sounds like a great idea to convert the Gremlin games. I seem to recall someone on the list saying something about Auf Wiedersehen Monty a while ago. Do you know what happened to that? Here's to ten more years! ==Matt. Colin Piggot <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Well yesterday was a special day the 10th Anniversary of Quazar!For it was on the 29th April 1995 when I had a stand at the third Gloucestershow, where I unveiled the (2nd) prototype of the Quazar Surround soundcard,marking the start of Quazar!And that was just the beginning of what has really taken up a heck of a lotof my time since then! As you may be aware a few new products are in thepipeline such as the Mayhem Accelerator, and issue 12 of Sam Revival isnearing completion and will be being sent out shortly.And here's some juicy tidbits of news taken from the next issue of SamRevival to wet your appetites about a few other things I am working on whenever I get a few free minutes...Hydrasoft Games---I have recently bought the rights to several old Sam games, and a pile ofunreleased stuff from Pete King, formerly going by the name Hydrasoft. Petehad two games released back in 1996 and 1997 - Conquest and Mage Fire, whichwere published to a limited extent by Zedd-Soft (run by Michael Stocks /Zodiac Magazine). I was also involved with the two titles way back then byadding support for the Quazar Surround soundcard to both of the games.I had previously secured permission from Pete to use Conquest and Mage Fireon the Sam Revival coverdisks (and you'll find Mage Fire on the coverdiskwith Sam Revival 12) but now with owning the titles I can go further withthem and I am already planning a revamp of Conquest to update all thegraphics and sounds. What I have to do now is go through a massive pile ofdisks to look at all the unreleased games. Expect more news soon!Gremlin Graphics Games--I have received permission from Andy Davis of Alchemist Research to use oldGremlin Graphics games on th e Sam. Now instead of just adapting the ZXSpectrum versions to run on the Sam under emulation (as was done on the oldBlitz diskzine back in the late 1990's) it is my aim to create full Samversions of some of the classic games for inclusion on the Sam Revivalcoverdisks.The first game I am looking at is 'Thing on a Spring', originally releasedback in 1984 for the Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC only. Thing on a Spring isa bouncy and fast platformer and with some carefully planned scroll routinesit should make the transition to the Sam with few problems.Now the music for any game is very important for me, and I am planning tofeature the original SID based music (for use with the SID interface) aswell as a new rendition of the tune for the normal Sam SAA1099 soundchip. I'm pleased to say that initial work on the game remake is underway, and theSAA1099 version of the music is already complete! The SAA1099 music trackwas carefu lly composed by David Suzuki-Sanders (who also composed the 'Aboutas SID as its going to get' SAA1099 track on the audio CD with the lastissue of Sam Revival.)The second game I am looking at converting is 'Harlequin', one of the firstgames I ever played on an Amiga, and one that immediately impressed me withits graphics, music and playability. Harlequin is another scrolling platformgame, based in a fantasy dreamworld with very colourful graphics and athumping soundtrack, and was released only for the 16 bit machines in 1992 -the Atari ST and the Amiga.So why should the Sam be left out of such a great game? No reason I think!So far I have converted over the graphics for the first level from the AtariST (easier to capture via an emulator than the Amiga version), and for themain scenery and characters only 12 colours were used so this conversion wasquite straight forward. My aim is to convert across the whole of the first< BR>level as a test, to see how well I can get the game engine to work. Howeveras this game does inv
My Sam pages udpates
I've updated all my Sam pages at http://www.keprt.cz/sam/ The only reason is that w3c html validator always complained that my pages don't follow any HTML standard and listed thousands of error in my 8 (yes, eight) short html pages. Wow! Who the hell created these standards, when 99.99% pages don't follow them...? :-) (That's just a theoretical question...) After a long work I managed to fix all my Sam pages, and they are now validated against HTML 4.0 Transitional. -- Mgr.(MSc.) Aleš Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VŠB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz --
Fuxoft music
All Fuxoft music lovers, go there: http://www.fuxoft.cz/tmp/dl/mp3/remixes/ There are some new remixes of traditional chip tunes, all done by Frantisek Fuka/Fuxoft. They are all in mp3 format, but the sound is classic ... :-) Which one do you like the most? :-) /--- Aley
Re: Bring back the Wispa!
Oh God, what is Whispa? (Or: Am I too young, or too far away?) -- Mgr.(MSc.) Ales Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VSB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz -- - Original Message - From: "Geoff Winkless" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2005 3:03 PM Subject: OT: Bring back the Wispa! I know this is offtopic but in the best traditions of comp.sys.sinclair, where crisp/sweet discussions were almost on-topic... http://www.PetitionOnline.com/wispa91/ Come on, let's get the Wispa back! So much nicer than the nasty Nestlé Aero and Cadbury's replacement (Bubbly) isn't as nice :( Geoff __ This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System. For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email __
Re: SAA 1099 Cards
And, obviously, you need a computer with an ISA slot - that also can be problematic these times... -- Mgr.(MSc.) Ales Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VSB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz -- - Original Message - From: "Stuart Brady" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Wednesday, March 02, 2005 9:57 PM Subject: Re: SAA 1099 Cards On Wed, Mar 02, 2005 at 08:44:08PM +0100, Aley Keprt wrote: Yes, I know this. Somebody contected me a few year ago, wanting me to add a native support for this sound blaster card to my SAA player for Windows. So, although I've never saw this piece of hardware, my SAA player can play tunes using a Z80 emulator and a real SAA on Sound Blaster. :-) Actually, I was thinking about writing a Linux driver, but it's not as straightforward as mapping a few registers. Well, not if you want it to have sequencer support, anyway... It would mainly be for SimCoupe, but I won't have much of a motivation for it unless I get my hands on an early Sound Blaster. -- Stuart Brady
Re: SAA 1099 Cards
Yes, I know this. Somebody contected me a few year ago, wanting me to add a native support for this sound blaster card to my SAA player for Windows. So, although I've never saw this piece of hardware, my SAA player can play tunes using a Z80 emulator and a real SAA on Sound Blaster. :-) -- Mgr.(MSc.) Ales Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VSB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz -- - Original Message - From: "Stuart Brady" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Wednesday, March 02, 2005 2:31 AM Subject: SAA 1099 Cards Hi, This probably isn't news to many of you, but I thought I'd share what I've just found (from Wikipedia): Creative Labs' first sound card (the C/MS or Game Blaster) had two SAA 1099s on it. This is why the Sound Blaster 1.0 had two SAA 1099s, and you could add them to the Sound Blaster 1.5. I'm not sure if there were any other cards that had SAA 1099s. Does anyone know how hard these are to get hold of? Cheers, -- Stuart Brady
Re: Sam Coupe Hot-Line
Please could somebody explain what are all you talking about? I don't undrstand it at all. /--- Aley - Original Message - From: "Ian Spencer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Thursday, February 17, 2005 1:18 PM Subject: Sam Coupe Hot-Line Colin included a recording from one weeks news on the latest Sam Revival CD. Are these recording really rare? I'm sure I have almost all of the Hot line recording on tape somewhere ? Is it worth me trying to find them in amongst my several tons of junk. or do they already exist somewhere in the Sam world? Ian
Re: How to erase sectors?
Unfortunately, I don't have any of them. Where can I get them? I also tried Master DOS and its BACKUP "d1" TO "d2" command, as it is known to copy only used sectors. But there are still some unwanted bits copied. I don't understand, what's wrong here... -- Mgr.(MSc.) Aleš Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VŠB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz -- - Original Message - From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2005 6:04 PM Subject: Re: How to erase sectors? [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So I assume the best idea is to have a program which scans directory structure for unused sectors and fills them with zeros (including direc= tory entries of erased files). Does anybody know what program can do this? Look up SDU or IBU that I used to flog. Although not ideal they are written in basic and so will be easily modified. They scan the directory and calculate which sectors are "live" and copy only those. So erased files wouldn't copy to a blank disk. hth Nev
How to erase sectors?
In order to archive=upload to NVG some of my lovely text editors which are still missing there, I need to erase the private text files I have on them. But how to do it? - If I just erase the files, the private data actually still reside on the disk and anybody can udelete and read my private stuff - There are MasterDos (sub)directories, and many hidden files, which in together makes quite unpossible to copy the disk to an empty disk, since all disk copiers I have either don't fully support subdirectories, and/or have problems with hidden files. - There are more than 80 file slots in directory structure So I assume the best idea is to have a program which scans directory structure for unused sectors and fills them with zeros (including directory entries of erased files). Does anybody know what program can do this? -- Mgr.(MSc.) Aleš Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VŠB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz --
Re: Anyone going to E3 this year?
E3 isn't open to all audience, is it? (Or do you mean the same E3 as I do?...) /--- Aley - Original Message - From: Simon Cooke To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2005 7:27 AM Subject: Anyone going to E3 this year? I will be there! Yay! (Oh, and I just got made Lead Engineer of the Tools Division @ Surreal Software :-) double yay!)
Re: Ideas for the ultimate emulator :)
A game console doesn't "emulate" anything. It's a commercial product on its own. There are other news groups devoted to emulation and hardware emulation, and this discussion will DEFINITELY craete a huge amount of discussion not connected in any way to Sam Coupe. But Sim Coupe itself is a Sam Coupe clone, so I can hardly see any (even a very small) reason of not including it here. Sam or Sim... that's pretty the same if you can see the merit. "Ideal emulation" isn't like SimCoupe. [This is my last comment to this topic.] -- Mgr.(MSc.) Ales Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VSB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz -- - Original Message - From: "Jason Thacker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Saturday, February 12, 2005 6:40 PM Subject: RE: Ideas for the ultimate emulator :) I take you also think that games consoles don't have a place, after all they only "emulate" what is already available in the arcade. This idea behind this was to allow us the fond memories of lying on our stomachs in front of the TV playing those old favourites, as for buying a new version of (for example) a Sam Coupé, have you seen how rarely they come up on e-bay? Most of the people who would want a Sam will probably never be able to get one, as the originals are either in the bin or a treasured part of somebodies collection. As for having nothing to do with the Sam Coupe, there is already a healthy discussion on SimCoupe running on this list, so why not look at other possible ways in which a Sam, or any other machine for that matter, may be emulated? SimCoupe may be (and is) a great emulator, but I am sure that there would be room out there for other options. Jason -Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Aley Keprt Sent: 12 February 2005 16:04 To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Ideas for the ultimate emulator :) I think you should discuss it off the list. It has nothing to do with Sam Coupe. (And surely there is a usenet group usable for this discussion.) And, I personally don't like the idea of creating a new hardware nonsense to "emulate" something you can either emulate on a standard computer (PC), or buy an original hardware at eBay. -- Mgr.(MSc.) Ales Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VSB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz -- - Original Message - From: "Andy Chandler" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Jason Thacker" Sent: Saturday, February 12, 2005 4:42 PM Subject: Re: Ideas for the ultimate emulator :) I like your idea. I had a couple of thoughts "The main processor is a 400MHz+ XScale CPU running embbedded Windows CE. This allows many emulator writers to take advantage of their current skills in Win32 development systems. This CPU would also be powerful enough to emulate most, if not all, 8-bit and 16-bit machines." How would this compare, roughly, to an x86 processor in terms of processing power? To emulate an OCS / ECS Amiga takes some serious CPU cycles while AGA is still sluggish without some seriously powerful PC hardware even now. The custom ICs takes some conversion time due to it's use of planer gfx and not chunky-RGB. This would be nice to emulate PlayStation 1 and N64 stuff. I like the use of SD. Maybe Compact Flash might be a possible alternative as well if necessary. (See M/B below). If CPU power wasn't hugely important, you could probably build a slightly larger, but still silent version, using the ITX boards from VIA, like this one http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/info_5475.html Rgs, Andy Saturday, February 12, 2005, 2:13:22 PM, you wrote: Jason> Hi guys, Jason> I have been putting down some of my (admittedly random) thoughts on how to Jason> get the best possible emulation experience and I have weeded out some of the Jason> best at Jason> http://www.koriel.net/EmulatorIdea.htm Jason> I would really appreciate it if some of you would deign to look at the page Jason> and even (Shock! Horror!) give me some ideas for how this may be improved in Jason> some way. Who knows, maybe somebody with the skills to build these things Jason> (i.e. not me!) may even take some of them on board! Jason> Thanks, Jason> Jason
Re: Ideas for the ultimate emulator :)
I think you should discuss it off the list. It has nothing to do with Sam Coupe. (And surely there is a usenet group usable for this discussion.) And, I personally don't like the idea of creating a new hardware nonsense to "emulate" something you can either emulate on a standard computer (PC), or buy an original hardware at eBay. -- Mgr.(MSc.) Ales Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VSB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz -- - Original Message - From: "Andy Chandler" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Jason Thacker" Sent: Saturday, February 12, 2005 4:42 PM Subject: Re: Ideas for the ultimate emulator :) I like your idea. I had a couple of thoughts "The main processor is a 400MHz+ XScale CPU running embbedded Windows CE. This allows many emulator writers to take advantage of their current skills in Win32 development systems. This CPU would also be powerful enough to emulate most, if not all, 8-bit and 16-bit machines." How would this compare, roughly, to an x86 processor in terms of processing power? To emulate an OCS / ECS Amiga takes some serious CPU cycles while AGA is still sluggish without some seriously powerful PC hardware even now. The custom ICs takes some conversion time due to it's use of planer gfx and not chunky-RGB. This would be nice to emulate PlayStation 1 and N64 stuff. I like the use of SD. Maybe Compact Flash might be a possible alternative as well if necessary. (See M/B below). If CPU power wasn't hugely important, you could probably build a slightly larger, but still silent version, using the ITX boards from VIA, like this one http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/info_5475.html Rgs, Andy Saturday, February 12, 2005, 2:13:22 PM, you wrote: Jason> Hi guys, Jason> I have been putting down some of my (admittedly random) thoughts on how to Jason> get the best possible emulation experience and I have weeded out some of the Jason> best at Jason> http://www.koriel.net/EmulatorIdea.htm Jason> I would really appreciate it if some of you would deign to look at the page Jason> and even (Shock! Horror!) give me some ideas for how this may be improved in Jason> some way. Who knows, maybe somebody with the skills to build these things Jason> (i.e. not me!) may even take some of them on board! Jason> Thanks, Jason> Jason
Re: Where can I get latest SimCoupe?
1. I like when it's anti-aliased. 2. I would vote also for 150% option. -- Mgr.(MSc.) Aleš Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VŠB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz -- - Original Message - From: "Dan Dooré" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Friday, February 11, 2005 12:56 PM Subject: Re: Where can I get latest SimCoupe? Simon Owen wrote: I can't reproduce either of these here - can anyone else? Nope - I too often run with sync turned off and it always remembers (which often gives me a shock if I load up something with music in it). Incidentally, when DirectDraw is enabled the screen is all anti-aliased - is this a feature of my GPU driver or is it set in SimCoupe as I'd like to have it look the same as the software-emulated mode but run at the speed it does in DirectDraw mode as the fuzzyness twists my melon after a while. Also whilst I'm doing the wish list thing is it possible to have a selectable speed (or just a 100%/200%/400% choice) so that I can a) Code at 200% which is surprisingly nice and b) Play Lemmings at high speed - but not that fast :-) Dan.
Re: Text conversion
I have plenty of disk images, and simply don't have time to do anything with them. In the past, many times somebody said he will look at it, unpack and sort the software, and upload it to NVG, but actually nobody ever did anything (except "getting" the stuff from me)... :-( -- Mgr.(MSc.) Ales Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VSB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz -- - Original Message - From: "Dan Dooré" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Monday, February 07, 2005 3:29 PM Subject: Re: Text conversion Andy Chandler wrote: KEYIN - That was the little devil I was thinking of ;-) KEYIN was a corker of a command, when I think back to the amount of times I crashed by blue footed friend with that one I go all misty-eyed and the missus has to poke me with a stick to bring me back. I have converted the text BASIC file that was in ftp://ftp.nvg.ntnu.no/pub/sam-users/missing/bcdsk10.bas using the most excellent PCSUITE and it works a treat, It will be uploaded to NVG as part of my weekly update. Speaking of which, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, does anyone have copies of these files in ftp://ftp.nvg.ntnu.no/pub/sam-coupe/missing net_23.TDO treaty MikeAJTrackerModules 1 and 2 etrackerdemo lib30a lib30b Prntfx TIFF LCB commix Also, please take a look at the stuff on NVG as there is an awful lot more on there than there ever was before and if you have stuff that is missing or just not there then either: a) If it is in DSK format, has DOS and an AUTO file ZIP it and upload to ./incoming/ b) If you can't be bothered to tinker with the format then email me the files in any compessed format you have them (although ZIP for preference) and I will sort them out. NOTE: Please check NVG *BEFORE* sending me stuff but anything is welcome, apart from non-converted emulator snapshots of course. Dan.
Re: Re[2]: Text conversion
You can use any "printer". Just install it with file as output port (instead of LPT), and you get the text file from Sim Coupe. At least my Windows does it this way. Then it asks me each time where to save this file (surely not windows system32 directory). ASCD emulator writes everything directly to file, not using any kind of Windows printer "drivers". But SimCoupe in Windows is usable as well without any problems. --Mgr.(MSc.) Ale Keprt (also known as Aley)[EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182Dept. of Computer Science, VB Technical UniversityOstrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz-- - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Sent: Sunday, February 06, 2005 2:33 PM Subject: Re: Re[2]: Text conversion to get listings from Sam basic in to a text file for pdfs this is what I did. install a new printer in windows that prints to text. a Generic / Text Only printer. from sim coupe just point to that printer, which prints the listing to the file. one thing to remember that by default windows will put the file into the system32 windows dir. So when the input box appears to type in the file name make sure you put in a path c:\temp\somename.txt and you will find it in your C:\temp if you have one. That may of no use to you and may be obvious to others but thats all I do. regards Steve
Re: Re[2]: Text conversion
I must add one important point: Converting anything from Sam to PC is very simple. Just run an emulator and print what you want to convert. "print" feature in emulator writes a text file on the hosting system. Nothing can be easier. :-) (And one curious note: I wonder if the current sim coupe still uses my printer emulation code, or not. I remember it was originally not emulated, so I added it there like tape support, which was recently discussed here. It's another feature not very widely used... :-) -- Mgr.(MSc.) Ales Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VSB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz -- - Original Message - From: "Ian Spencer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Sunday, February 06, 2005 1:16 PM Subject: Re: Re[2]: Text conversion - Original Message - From: "Ian Spencer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Saturday, February 05, 2005 5:28 PM Subject: Re: Re[2]: Text conversion - Original Message - From: "Andy Chandler" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Aley Keprt" Sent: Saturday, February 05, 2005 2:22 PM Subject: Re[2]: Text conversion That's true, but many years ago, I remember I bodged a small program together, which took a text file and wrote it in to SAM line by line using a MasterBasic command. That's also the way PCSUITE does it. Ian Can't remember the command off the top of my head (been a long time), but as long as the syntax was correct, it would enter it as if you were writing the line. Almost forgot but working in the other direction, if your working on a PC with SIMCOUPE then my PCPRINT program can read a basic file from a .dsk image and convert it to a text file in typical PC format. Ian It's sad but these days I can't even remember what I called my programs, it was of course SCPRINT. Ian
Re: Text conversion
Paolo, as I wrote, STI converts text files from Sam to PC. Not vice versa. In simple words: Only Sam ---> PC. Bytes 10 and 13 are not present in Tasword, what is the default input encoding. So that's why STI writes those error messages. Also, I have to add one IMPORTANT note: SAM BASIC USES SPECIAL FILE FORMAT, NOT JUST TEXT FILES!!! If you want to write Basic program, use the Sam Basic. You can't write it in a text file!!! That will never work without a special Basic simulator/converter. Original Sam Basic uses format similar to ZX Spectrum basic, including all numbers in binary format, line numbers in binary format, tokenized commands/keywords (i.e. single byte per keyword), and variables stored in binary form with the Basic program in a single file. -- Mgr.(MSc.) Ales Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VSB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz -- - Original Message - From: "Paolo Borzini" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Friday, February 04, 2005 10:01 AM Subject: Re: Text conversion Hi Aley, Aley Keprt wrote: you can import texts from Sam to PC also with STI. It's a part of "Aley's Sam Utils", see www.keprt.cz/progs/ I've downloaded the file "Aley's Sam Utils" and also Net Framework 23Mb file ;-( I've wrote a simple basic program with MS-Dos Edit. But in converion step with STI, the program tell me a few error: Unknown code 13 and code 10 at various position. Probably not recognize the CR and LF . Perhaps, I've used the wrong options with STI converter ;-( Many thanks. Ciao, Paolo Borzini
New software
You can download new software from http://www.keprt.cz/progs/ 1. New release of Aley's Sam Utils 2. Some new stuff for PC (two "games" and a "demo") /--- Aley -- Mgr.(MSc.) Aleš Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VŠB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz --
RE: Sam`s Spreadsheet Mauanls as pdf.
Title: Zpráva At least, I would like to see it. I have never seen it before. Aley -Original Message-From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED]Sent: Friday, February 04, 2005 2:52 PMTo: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.noSubject: Re: Sam`s Spreadsheet Mauanls as pdf. In a message dated 02/04/2005 13:33:32 GMT Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I've not seen it in the NVG DSKification/GoodSAMC trawl but I would guess that Steve has a copy given that he's been taking screenshots from it :-P yes, I do have a copy should a disk image be uploaded then? please advise. if not who has the rights to it? Do they need a disk image? so I can make this happen steve(spt)
RE: Text conversion
Microsoft Visual Studio can also open and save text files in almost any text format. But it's not free. :-) /--- Aley -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Edwin Blink Sent: Friday, February 04, 2005 1:16 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Text conversion From: Paolo Borzini <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Probably not recognize the CR and LF . This freeware editor can do a lot and can 'convert' CR/LF by selecting the format you want.. To convert to 64Col/Outwrite format use one of the SAM utils mentioned. http://www.crimsoneditor.com/ Edwin
Re: Fastest memory transfer (on Sam)
Edwin, when I started this thread I just wanted to hear some simple recommendation on how to copy memory into display, move text in scroller, etc... And what details I got instead... :-) I have another question: On Spectrum, it was the basic asm knowledge that JR is shorter but slower than JP. But how does it work on Sam? I assume (without any exact computation) that due to the contention, JR is probably faster than JP in general cases. Am I right? (I consider conditional jump when the condition is true as the most important, i.e. general case.) -- Mgr.(MSc.) Ales Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VSB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz -- - Original Message - From: "Edwin Blink" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2005 10:22 PM Subject: Re: Fastest memory transfer (on Sam) From: Geoff Winkless <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Please understand that I'm not trying to be awkward; I just don't comprehend the logic. No prob. I hadn't looked this close on ROM Display contention before so it is interesting to look into and discuss it, also a reminder to get on with a Z80 T-States list for SAM I hope this makes it little less confusing and help you understand the logic a bit more: The ASIC allowes the Z80 to access RAM only once in every 4Ts(RAM) or 8Ts(Display) at the exact same moment. For convenience, lets say only on the 1st of every 4Ts or 8Ts. Now when the Z80 tries to access RAM on the 2nd the ASIC tells the Z80 to wait for 3Ts or 7Ts. Before I used the notation 3+5 to tell the NEXT memory cycle in RAM will be delayed by 5 Wait States. It is more confenient to write it like this. But it can be confusing. To make it less confusing I will use the following formulas to tell how many wait states there will be on a RAM memory cycle. RAM contention: Wait states = 4-(T MOD 4) Display contention: Wait states = 8-(T MOD 8) where T is the number of Tstates passed before the cycle starts. So looking at the LDIR again with Z80 is in 'in sync' (the moment where (T MOD 4)=0 or (T MOD 8) =0) with ASIC. The numbers in [] are the number of Ts passed before the cycle: 1st: LDIR [0] 4,4 (LDIR) >in ROM, no contention [8] 3 (read from RAM) > 8-([8] MOD 8)=0 wait states [11] 5 (store in RAM ,adjust regs) > 8-([11] MOD 8)=5 Wait States [21] 5 (BC<>0 PC-2) > internal, no wait states 2nd LDIR: [26] 4,4 (LDIR) >in ROM, no contention [34] 3 (read from RAM) > 8-([34] MOD 8)=6 wait states [43] 5 (store in RAM ,adjust regs) > 8-([43] MOD 8)=5 Wait States [53] 5 (BC<>0 PC-2) > internal, no wait states [58] The 1st LDIR takes 26T when Z80 is 'in Sync' then the 2nd to 2nd last will take 32T each The last one takes 21T. In case of the call to the ROM LDIR routine the first LDIR will take 31Ts(5Ts to get in sync) and after the last one there will be an extra 7 wait states for fetching the LSB return address for RET ie: [21+(BC-1)*32] 4 RET > in rom, no contention [25+(BC-1)*32] 3 LSB from stack > 8-([25+(BC-1)*32] MOD 8)=7 wait states [35+(BC-1)*32] 3 MSB from stack > 8-([35+(BC-1)*32] MOD 8)=5 wait states Is it less confusing now or did I give you an headache ? I'll save the ASIC I/O part for a later time ;-) For a list what would you prefer or would be less confusing : RET 10 (4,3,3) 12 (4,1+3,1+3) 24 (4+4,5+3,5+3) 1+.. Number of Wait states added. or RET 10 (4,3,3) 12 (4,3+1,3+1) 24 (4+4,3+5,3+5) ..+1 Number of Wait states added. Edwin
Re: Text conversion
Besides what Ian Spencer wrote, you can import texts from Sam to PC also with STI. It's a part of "Aley's Sam Utils", see www.keprt.cz/progs/ It supports several Sam file formats, and international char sets, outputting to Unicode, ANSI or other Windows-based char set. /--- Aley - Original Message - From: "Paolo Borzini" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2005 4:16 PM Subject: Text conversion Hi all, I have another question ;-) Are there an utility for translate a PCText (as Notepad or Edit) to SamCoupeText and viceversa ? Thanks Paolo
RE: Fastest memory transfer (on Sam)
And what are those numbers after semicolons (in the asm code below)? I originally though it's number of T-states, but POP must take at least 12T, definitely not 4T. /--- Aley -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Edwin Blink Sent: Tuesday, February 01, 2005 1:48 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Fastest memory transfer (on Sam) >I already tried many LDI's and PUSH/POP system on my own, but >unfortunately the process of changing SP makes PUSH/POP slower than >sequence of LDI's. The fastest scrollleft code I could think of is the folowing code snippet which should be repeated 9*height times and It's best to write a routine to generate it runtime and fill in the proper SP values. ;2 pixel scroll left code element 224Ts or 16T/byte ;AF' and index registers are note used as they slowdown the avarage speed. LD SP,&8001 ;12 HardCode address for each element POP AF;4 POP BC POP DE POP HL exx ;4 POP BC POP DE POP HL dec sp;8 push hl ;16 push de push bc exx push hl push de push bc push af It's 20% faster and takes 29% less space then LDI's. BTW These timings (and earlier mentioned) are RAM timings when the ASIC is NOT updating the display. Edwin
RE: Fastest memory transfer (on Sam)
But ASIC is usually updating the "paper" area most of the time... So I'd like to know how does it perform in "paper" area. Also, I made the following change to my program: I removed the FRAME interrupt handler and replaced it with LINE 191 interrupt handling. This way I put the top and bottom border areas. I think it runs a bit faster, if I put the LDI code at the start of the interrupt handler, because it runs in the border area. :-) A. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Edwin Blink Sent: Tuesday, February 01, 2005 1:48 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Fastest memory transfer (on Sam) >I already tried many LDI's and PUSH/POP system on my own, but >unfortunately the process of changing SP makes PUSH/POP slower than >sequence of LDI's. The fastest scrollleft code I could think of is the folowing code snippet which should be repeated 9*height times and It's best to write a routine to generate it runtime and fill in the proper SP values. ;2 pixel scroll left code element 224Ts or 16T/byte ;AF' and index registers are note used as they slowdown the avarage speed. LD SP,&8001 ;12 HardCode address for each element POP AF;4 POP BC POP DE POP HL exx ;4 POP BC POP DE POP HL dec sp;8 push hl ;16 push de push bc exx push hl push de push bc push af It's 20% faster and takes 29% less space then LDI's. BTW These timings (and earlier mentioned) are RAM timings when the ASIC is NOT updating the display. Edwin
RE: And what about ZX Spectrum memory contention - just to compare with Sam
To be honest, I already read that document. And totally forgot it... ;-) Thank you. /--- Aley -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Stuart Brady Sent: Monday, January 31, 2005 11:04 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: And what about ZX Spectrum memory contention - just to compare with Sam On Mon, Jan 31, 2005 at 10:41:52PM +0100, Aley Keprt wrote: > I know this is not "Spectrum users", but I must ask: how does Spectrum > memory contention work? How is it possible to run Spectrum software on Sam, > when it [Spectrum] definitely uses very different memory contention scheme? > > I remember that memory 16384-32767 seemed to be the only contended > area. See http://www.sinclairfaq.com/cssfaq/reference/48kreference.htm#Contention You're right. On the 48k/128k/+2, the memory can be accessed for two t-states in every eight. On the 48k, only 16384-32768 is contended. On the 128k/+2, banks 1, 3, 5 and 7 are contended. On the +2A/+3, the memory can be accessed for one t-state in every eight. Banks 4, 5, 6 and 7 are contended. AFAICS, the SAM's MODE 1 contention will affect Spectrum software even when it's using memory outside of 16384-32767, but since most games spend most of their time manipulating video memory anyway, this seems like a reasonable approximation. When I read about the SAM's extra contention in MODE 1, I couldn't help feeling that this was a shame, since there are Spectrum games that benefit from being played at a slightly faster speed. Cheers, -- Stuart Brady
And what about ZX Spectrum memory contention - just to compare with Sam
I know this is not "Spectrum users", but I must ask: how does Spectrum memory contention work? How is it possible to run Spectrum software on Sam, when it [Spectrum] definitely uses very different memory contention scheme? I remember that memory 16384-32767 seemed to be the only contended area. -- Mgr.(MSc.) Aleš Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VŠB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz --
Sam memory contention - I am totally confused
A SimCoupe source code comment says:
// if we are in the main screen area, or one of the extra MODE
1 contended areas:
// CPU can only access memory 1 out of every 8 T-States
// else
// CPU can only access memory 1 out of every 4 T-States
Let's assume we are executing while in ray is in screen mode 4 ("paper"
area).
For example LD (HL),N is 2 bytes long and writes 1 byte to memory. So it has
3 memory accesses in total, what gives the total execution time of 24T when
screen is drawn.
Note that classic Z80 specs. says 10T for this instruction. So it's a quite
big difference.
Also, Edwin Blink wrote that for sprite drawing I should use the sequence of
LD (HL),nn
INC L
which is 16 T per byte - but how can it be 16T in total when each memory
access takes 8T?
Or do I understand it wrongly? Please tell me... :-)
/---
Aley
RE: Fastest memory transfer (on Sam)
Title: Zpráva Sorry, it should stay **I regularly use...**, obviously not you. Aley-Original Message-From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Aley KeprtSent: Monday, January 31, 2005 10:20 AMTo: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.noSubject: RE: Fastest memory transfer (on Sam)I really miss some features in that debugger, and documentation as well.**U regularly** use ZX Spin emulator. It can't emulate Sam Coupe, but contains a very strong debugger, and also assembler compiler.But, of course, I use SimCoupe to develop my new demo. It has so tight timings, that I wonder how it will look on the real machine. (I will testlater.) ;-)Aley-Original Message-From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Simon OwenSent: Monday, January 31, 2005 4:15 AMTo: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.noSubject: RE: Fastest memory transfer (on Sam)Aley Keprt wrote:> I need to move (video) memory on Sam, what's the fastest routine?Despite its unfinished state, the SimCoupe debugger can be used to time blocks of code. Whenever you enter the debugger the T-diff value in the bottom right of the display shows the number of _real_ tstates that have passed since the debugger was last active. If you're single-stepping it shows the time for the previous instruction, and if you step over a call or hit a breakpoint you'll get the time for the whole block.In the absence of a debugger page-change function, a DI and HALT can be used to conveniently stop execution at the start of your code. Call your code then enter the debugger and use Ctrl-Down to advance past the blocked HALT. If you've followed that by a CALL to your test code, press '8' on the numeric keypad to step over the CALL and read off the T-diff value for the entire sub-routine (including the CALL and RET). Alternatively, scroll down and double-click on the final RET to set a breakpoint, then press Esc to exit the debugger and continue execution until the breakpoint is hit.Of course, the ASIC/memory contention will depend on the current raster position, so you'll need to anchor the test starting point for consistent results. You could perhaps use an EI/HALT/DI after the blocked HALT above or simply disable the screen for the duration of the test.Si
RE: Fastest memory transfer (on Sam)
I really miss some features in that debugger, and documentation as well. U regularly use ZX Spin emulator. It can't emulate Sam Coupe, but contains a very strong debugger, and also assembler compiler. But, of course, I use SimCoupe to develop my new demo. It has so tight timings, that I wonder how it will look on the real machine. (I will test later.) ;-) Aley -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Simon Owen Sent: Monday, January 31, 2005 4:15 AM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: RE: Fastest memory transfer (on Sam) Aley Keprt wrote: > I need to move (video) memory on Sam, what's the fastest routine? Despite its unfinished state, the SimCoupe debugger can be used to time blocks of code. Whenever you enter the debugger the T-diff value in the bottom right of the display shows the number of _real_ tstates that have passed since the debugger was last active. If you're single-stepping it shows the time for the previous instruction, and if you step over a call or hit a breakpoint you'll get the time for the whole block. In the absence of a debugger page-change function, a DI and HALT can be used to conveniently stop execution at the start of your code. Call your code then enter the debugger and use Ctrl-Down to advance past the blocked HALT. If you've followed that by a CALL to your test code, press '8' on the numeric keypad to step over the CALL and read off the T-diff value for the entire sub-routine (including the CALL and RET). Alternatively, scroll down and double-click on the final RET to set a breakpoint, then press Esc to exit the debugger and continue execution until the breakpoint is hit. Of course, the ASIC/memory contention will depend on the current raster position, so you'll need to anchor the test starting point for consistent results. You could perhaps use an EI/HALT/DI after the blocked HALT above or simply disable the screen for the duration of the test. Si
RE: Newbie would like help ... Please!
I think the best one to start with is a "Sam Coupe users's Guide". It's excellent, and it'sa vailable in a PDF format from ftp.nvg.ntnu.no server (and possibly also www.simcoupe.org - I'm not sure). /--- Aley -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jason Thacker Sent: Sunday, January 30, 2005 12:20 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Newbie would like help ... Please! It had to happen, after nearly thirty years of using all sorts of computers I saw a Sam and said "There is an 8-bit machine I want to develop for!". One snag, I haven't got a clue how! I have a Sam on the way courtesy of E-Bay, but no manuals :( I am desperately trying to track down online resources for teaching programming on the Sam, I haven't had too much success so far, but does anybody have any ideas where I could find this type of information? Thanks! Jason
RE: Fastest memory transfer (on Sam)
Thanks! I did some tests on my own, and the profiling says that the most slowest part is the text scroller. I already tried many LDI's and PUSH/POP system on my own, but unfortunately the process of changing SP makes PUSH/POP slower than sequence of LDI's. You know, the TASM doesn't support clever macro's so I can simply use REPEAT statement to compute LD SP,nn for each cycle of PUSH/POP. When using dynamic scheme, i.e. LD HL,16; ADD HL,SP; LD SP,HL; it's way too slow. Push 16T and POP 12T? I believe what you say, but that Z80 timings document which I got from somebody here (last week) says PUSH 11T and POP 12T. So what's the reason of these differences? I assume that's something with memory contention on Sam, and probably all those Z80 instruction timings documents are pretty useless on Sam. Btw. Those assembler compilers I got from Sam users are not very good. If I understand it correctly, PYZ don't use ascii files. So I use TASM, but it uses nonstandard syntax (I hate it!), so I had to rewrite the original Comet source file (Comet uses quite good syntax - I think it's Zilog Z80 standard). Also, I extremely miss REPEAT and preprocessor variables, like Borland's TASM or Microsoft's MASM has on i8086 CPUs. Having the clever macros, it would be easy to write optimized memory copying code. (That stupid Z80 crossassembler TASM even can't include a binary file.) I would like to write something like: COUNTER = 16 REPEAT lines*128 LD SP,16 POP ... PUSH Counter = counter + 16 ENDM It's it great in it's simplicity? But it's not supported by those Z80 compilers. :-((( :-((( :-((( A. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Edwin Blink Sent: Sunday, January 30, 2005 2:44 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Fastest memory transfer (on Sam) I need to move (video) memory on Sam, what's the fastest routine? I expect it must utilize push & pop instructions, since they take just 10T to move a byte, but I am unsure what is exact look of the whole routine. Please can somebody help me? There is not a single fastest routine for everything. To get the fastest routine it must be tailormade for it's task. For clearing or filling use PUSHes 16T per two bytes For scrolling use PUSH/POPS 28Ts per two bytes For copying use many LDIs 20 T per byte For sprite drawing use LD (HL),nn,INC L 16 T per byte Note that a PUSH qq takes16T and a POP qq takes 12T Edwin
Fastest memory transfer (on Sam)
I need to move (video) memory on Sam, what's the fastest routine? I expect it must utilize push & pop instructions, since they take just 10T to move a byte, but I am unsure what is exact look of the whole routine. Please can somebody help me? -- Mgr.(MSc.) Aleš Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VŠB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz --
RE: Development tools wanted
Thank you very much. tasm301.zip contains documentation in another packed file. It has .zoo extension. How to read or unpack it? /--- Aley -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Edwin Blink Sent: Friday, January 28, 2005 4:25 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Development tools wanted >cross-assembler for PC could be better for me. (But I need to convert >the Comet source to it somehow.) Any advices? Convert Comet sources in both ways: http://home.wanadoo.nl/edwin.blink/samcoupe/software/comet/comcon.zip Cross assembler that supports Z80: http://home.wanadoo.nl/edwin.blink/avigo/programming/tasm301.zip Edwin
RE: Development tools wanted
Title: Zpráva Oh, I use the simple method: Shorter source = faster binary. :-) It isn't exact, but still within reach of the orange manual - you just need to count number of source code lines. But, of course, thank you very much. I'll use it. /--- Aley -Original Message-From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Geoff WinklessSent: Friday, January 28, 2005 4:13 PMTo: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.noSubject: RE: Development tools wanted Bleagh. At least use something with instruction timings in it. http://www.ticalc.org/pub/text/z80/z80time.txt is an example, although bear in mind that the Sam's timing is somewhat, erm, fuzzy, generally :-) - IIRC everything's rounded up to multiples of four in contention time. Actually, what is the timing issue, I don't think I ever really properly understood it... is it every contended memory access is 4 cycles? G From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED]Sent: 28 January 2005 14:57To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.noSubject: Re: Development tools wanted In a message dated 01/28/2005 14:53:15 GMT Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I still use the original orange ZX Spectrum manual as a Z80 instructionsreference. I have a version of this as pdf if you want it , or anyone else just email me! regards Steve__This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System.For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email __
RE: Where can I get latest SimCoupe?
Win32 doesn't have standard output (except when in console mode), but you can still have -version and -help options. You can open the message box and write options list or version number information there (I use it in some my programs). Aley -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Stuart Brady Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2005 10:55 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Where can I get latest SimCoupe? Also, on platforms that support standard output, "-help" and "-version" would be cool, as well as warning messages for unregonised options. Cheers, -- Stuart Brady
Development tools wanted
Hello everybody! After 11 years I decided to refresh one of my unfinished projects, which was just about to be completed when I got my PC 486. :-) I found both literature and software in my archive, but I'd like to get some better software if there is one. I write this e-mail to ask for help. I still use the original orange ZX Spectrum manual as a Z80 instructions reference. I originally used Comet 1.4 for programming, I liked it much. I found both dikette and manual, so I can use it atill, but maybe there is a newer (and free) version, or preferably something yet better - I think that a cross-assembler for PC could be better for me. (But I need to convert the Comet source to it somehow.) Any advices? And, finally, E-Tracker. I have original version. Is there any new version, or possibly a new player routine (some bugfixes?). The original player routine works perfectly for me. I don't know wether there were more versions, or any known bugs in there. I just wonder why does it read from memory addresses around 0 - I tested it yesterday in ZX Spin debugger and SamPlay SAA player, and found that E-Tracker player reads memory at addresses around zero. Does anybody know, what does it mean? Some kind of "random" numbers? This is important also for my SAA player "SamPlay" for PC, because it doesn't contain ROM, and if E-Tracker needs ROM there, it probably doesn't play 100% as on original Sam. Any experiance? /--- Aley
RE: Christmas Present
Oh, I know it's called "Messenger", but my fingers write what they wish, not what I wish... Sorry. :-) /--- Aley -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Aley Keprt Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2005 1:36 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: RE: Christmas Present That's very nice. I have never seen the Mesenger (except on adv. materials...). How much was it? ...but I unintentionally did the similar thing without buying the Messanger. As soon as I saw that there is no ZX ROM at Sam, I took my ZX Spectrum+, and typed SAVE"rom"code 0,16384, then loaded this file to Sam BEFORE starting the MGT/Samco's emulator. This way I was able to run much more Spectrum games. :-) It's very simple, the only remaining problems was(/is) the tape loaders. Even the cracked games sometimes failed to load due to a incompatible loader. If we had problems, we either got a version with properly cracked-removed loader, or did a D80 snapshot, and saved that snapshot back to tape, what made a tape version loadable to Sam's emulator. (Those times, D80 was our local most popular disk drive for Spectrum, while +D was a hugely overpriced top-edge hardware which I've never seen anywhere in our country - former Czechoslovakia.) /--- Aley -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ian Collier Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2005 11:16 AM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Christmas Present On Mon, Jan 24, 2005 at 01:33:25AM +, Stuart Brady wrote: > BTW, does anyone know the format used for the messenger snapshots? It > really ought to be in the CSS FAQ. (Unless it's the +D format, in > which case it's already there.) As far as I know, a Messenger snapshot is a 64K file containing a complete memory dump (including ROM). The contents of the registers are stored in a 22-byte block which ends at 0x3d00 (um, so that'd be 0x3cea starting address) in the same format as the register block of a Sam/+D SNAP file (where the register block is stored starting at byte 220 of the directory entry). Which seems to mean that they are in the order: IY IX DE' BC' HL' AF' DE BC HL Ir SP "Ir" is actually a spare byte followed by the contents of the I register. The R register, interrupt flag, value of AF and the execution address (PC) are all popped off the stack once the snapshot is loaded. imc
RE: Christmas Present
That's very nice. I have never seen the Mesenger (except on adv. materials...). How much was it? ...but I unintentionally did the similar thing without buying the Messanger. As soon as I saw that there is no ZX ROM at Sam, I took my ZX Spectrum+, and typed SAVE"rom"code 0,16384, then loaded this file to Sam BEFORE starting the MGT/Samco's emulator. This way I was able to run much more Spectrum games. :-) It's very simple, the only remaining problems was(/is) the tape loaders. Even the cracked games sometimes failed to load due to a incompatible loader. If we had problems, we either got a version with properly cracked-removed loader, or did a D80 snapshot, and saved that snapshot back to tape, what made a tape version loadable to Sam's emulator. (Those times, D80 was our local most popular disk drive for Spectrum, while +D was a hugely overpriced top-edge hardware which I've never seen anywhere in our country - former Czechoslovakia.) /--- Aley -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ian Collier Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2005 11:16 AM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Christmas Present On Mon, Jan 24, 2005 at 01:33:25AM +, Stuart Brady wrote: > BTW, does anyone know the format used for the messenger snapshots? It > really ought to be in the CSS FAQ. (Unless it's the +D format, in > which case it's already there.) As far as I know, a Messenger snapshot is a 64K file containing a complete memory dump (including ROM). The contents of the registers are stored in a 22-byte block which ends at 0x3d00 (um, so that'd be 0x3cea starting address) in the same format as the register block of a Sam/+D SNAP file (where the register block is stored starting at byte 220 of the directory entry). Which seems to mean that they are in the order: IY IX DE' BC' HL' AF' DE BC HL Ir SP "Ir" is actually a spare byte followed by the contents of the I register. The R register, interrupt flag, value of AF and the execution address (PC) are all popped off the stack once the snapshot is loaded. imc
RE: Christmas Present
"spconv"? I think already have it somewhere. I probably frogot... :-) /-- Aley -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Frode Tenneboe Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2005 12:00 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: RE: Christmas Present On Tue, 25 Jan 2005 10:40:57 +0100 "Aley Keprt" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Oops, it's not in the CSS FAQ, it's in the Ramsoft DISCiPLE/+D > > Technical Guide -- > http://www.ramsoft.bbk.org/tech/mgt_tech.txt > > -- > > Stuart Brady > > Oh yes, thank you very much. I read the Ramsoft's manual. Now I know > how complicated that snapshot files are. They even use directory entry > (tracks > 0-3) to store snapshot data! Oh, I wish they have used .Z80 format instead. > :-) > I will try to make a converter snap-->z80. Henk de Groot did that 13 years ago. Look for spconv. -Frode -- ^ Frode Tennebø | email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ^ | Ericsson AS | Isebakkeveien 49 | | N-1788 Halden | Phone: +47 45 24 99 39| | with Standard.Disclaimer; use Standard.Disclaimer;|
RE: Christmas Present
> Oops, it's not in the CSS FAQ, it's in the Ramsoft > DISCiPLE/+D Technical Guide -- http://www.ramsoft.bbk.org/tech/mgt_tech.txt > -- > Stuart Brady Oh yes, thank you very much. I read the Ramsoft's manual. Now I know how complicated that snapshot files are. They even use directory entry (tracks 0-3) to store snapshot data! Oh, I wish they have used .Z80 format instead. :-) I will try to make a converter snap-->z80. Another interesting point is that in my Sam manual there isn't any message, even a short sentence, describing how to make snapshots with the Samco's/MGT's original emulator. I remember that it was a real mystery. :-) And it is now desribed in Ramsoft's +D manual - I see that Sam Coupe original Spectrum emulator behaves identically to the +D hardware. I would like to know where this was actually documented for Sam users 15 years ago, when it was important for us. I knew nothing those times, was it my personal fault? /--- Aley
RE: Christmas Present
Where is that +D snapshot format described? I mean I have a few old snapshots done with the original Samco's Spectrum emulator, and I am unable to convert them to any other format (to be used in other emulators). /--- Aley -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Stuart Brady Sent: Monday, January 24, 2005 2:33 AM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: Christmas Present On Sun, Jan 23, 2005 at 11:59:47PM -, Johnna wrote: > They're just for dumping Spectrum ROM's onto a coupe for those games > that couldn't load because of difficult loaders. We'd usually load games on the Spectrum and then transfer them across... There were some that didn't like the NMI (Paperboy springs to mind), but I never actually tried loading them using the Coupe! If your Spectrum's keyboard was useless, you could copy the initial state from the Spectrum to the SAM, type LOAD "" on the SAM, copy it back to the Spectrum, play the tape, and then copy back to the SAM! > Handy if you've a load of Spectrum games you want to convert, but not > necessary now we have the Internet and access to ROM files. AFAICS, there were only really three main reasons for using the SAM to play Spectrum games -- you didn't have a working spectrum, you wanted to play with the palette, or you wanted snapshots. :-) BTW, does anyone know the format used for the messenger snapshots? It really ought to be in the CSS FAQ. (Unless it's the +D format, in which case it's already there.) Cheers, -- Stuart Brady
Where can I get latest SimCoupe?
Where can I get latest SimCoupe, or some other utility that could create empty SAD image? I was at sourceforge, the CVS sources in ZIP there are more than 2 years old. I was at NVG, there is only version from year 1999! I was at simcoupe.org, it's pretty the same... A cynic would say "If SimCoupe existed, it would be the best sam coupe emulator, but it actually doesn't [exist]." Well, I only wanted to create an empty disk image with 15 tracks (150KB of zeros). I tried to use my personal simcoupe (I don't remember where I got it, it's version 0.90 beta 4), but it's "new disk" dialog always crashes, regardles the entered values. Can somebody help me? -- Mgr.(MSc.) Aleš Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VŠB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz --
Re: Fuxoft [Re: Still no tapes received]
Alright, some tunes were programmed by Fuxoft, but not composed by him. I am sure he wrote all credits to Jarre, Hubbard and others in the rolling text which was deliberately removed by Sinclair User... AFAIK those times it was absolutely normal to convert real music to Spectrum (or Amiga, mainly Amiga...). As I remember, Fuxoft wrote in his demos that he simply loves Hubbard's tunes and they are the best ever made on any computer. (I personally don't share this opinion, but it isn't important.) As far as I remember, the most famous Sam Coupe tunes of all times called "music1" and "music2" which appeared in at least 5 different demos and games were written by Fuxoft as well, but at least one of them is converted from C64 as well. Do you remember these tunes? -- Mgr.(MSc.) Ales Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VSB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz -- - Original Message - From: "Simon Cooke" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2005 6:37 PM Subject: RE: Fuxoft [Re: Still no tapes received] Aley Keprt wrote: Exactly. I looked at it, and there is - changed name of the proggie - no author name - no country info - no description of tunes Originally the proggie contains a detailed description of all 26 tunes. I think it is one of the best AY music demos ever written (all 26 tunes were written by Franisek Fuka himself), and the vast majority of people that saw it don't know it is from Fuxoft (and they will never know...). Except for the ones written by Rob Hubbard, Ben Daglish, Martin Galway, and Jean Michel Jarre, sure. (A) is a Rob Hubbard tune (Monty on the Run?). (C) is a Jean Michel Jarre one (which Ocean also reused as a C64 tune at one point). Most of these tunes are ported SID tunes from the C64 - and I mean, seriously, all credit to Frantisek for being able to port them, but he didn't write them. I mean shit, (F) is Crazy Comets by Rob Hubbard (or one that he did later that I can't remember the name of based on the same basic lines), (J) is another Hubbard tune. (L) is Ghostbusters by Adam Bellin (and Ray Parker Jr.), M is Axel F (not sure which game), N is from the Neverending Story or Starwars or something, O is another Jean Michel Jarre one (Equinoxe?), T is a Genesis tune (Land of Confusion), U is another Jean Michel Jarre tune, V is from a James Bond game, X is another C64 game tune, Y is from an Indiana Jones game, and Z is yet ANOTHER Jean Michel Jarre tune. Since SU 111 is dated may 1991, I see no reason why they didn't contacted the author. It was 18 months after eastern block collapsed, so there were no political problems when trying to contact anybody anywhere in the east. It looks like it was rewritten by the guy who did their game cheats, so they'd trust what he said. Si
Re: "Spectrum on Sam" games at NVG
But I think that 128k, AY and tape->disk converted games should stay. They have always been a part of the SAM scene, so it does feel like they belong in the archive. I'd still be tempted to keep them in a different category from native SAM software, to make sure people are aware they're still conversions. Definitely. There should be "spectrum" directory, which would say it all. A cynic would say: If you want some crap, go to "games", if you want some good stuff, go to "spectrum" subdirectory... Si Aley
Uploaded stuff at NVG
I uploaded this stuff to NVG. Please let somebody (Frode?) move it from incoming to the right places. original Sam tapes: --- Batz 'n' Balls demo.tap.zip E-Mon.tap.zip F-16 Combat Pilot.tap.zip Kaboom.tap.zip Kreuzen.tap.zip Prince of Persia demo.tap.zip Screen Squash.tap.zip Shanghai [warez version].tap.zip [all tapes in total: 160KB] All tapes work with ASCD 0.96, except Shanghai (dosk version doesn't work in ASCD too, I don't know why :-). I also have several Spectrum games, which need to be sorted before upload. Anybody want to look at it, remove the prohibited marks, possibly non worikng ones and upload the rest to the NVG FTP? I can send you the 5 MB pack of 12 disks by e-mail. Note: Only 128k, AY and tape-->disk conversions are included. No pure 48k stuff! -- Mgr.(MSc.) Aleš Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VŠB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz -- Batz 'n' Balls demo.tap.zip E-Mon.tap.zip F-16 Combat Pilot.tap.zip Kaboom.tap.zip Kreuzen.tap.zip Prince of Persia demo.tap.zip Screen Squash.tap.zip Shanghai [warez version].tap.zip
Re: "Spectrum on Sam" games at NVG
Eh, we discussed this a week ago. :-) At first it obvious that any standard 48k games which don't need any changes to run on Sam should be removed. I don't understand why these games are at NVG in sam-coupe directory. But I think that 128k, AY and tape->disk converted games should stay. Better said, these title don't seem to be present at NVG, so we can upload them. And finally, I must add that Sam Coupe is a Spectrum clone. You can't shut your eyes and don't see this fact. 99% of good games on Sam are Spectrum games. I personally never spend much time playing that crappy Defenders, Sam Strikes Out or void Sphera. Instead, I converted Spectrum Sim City to save games to samdisk and built my cities, did great battles in 128k North and South, shoot'em all in Exolon, did assaults in 128k Laser Squad Remix, etc. I mean that any Spectrum emulation related stuff, including games should be there, except those ones that can be used in original form. For me, 90% of Sam Coupe is just a bit too expensive pseudo 128k Spectrum with a disk drive and pseudo-AY. Of course, we don't want to waste all the disk space with Spectrum stuff, so we omit all the titles which originally didn't load due to a protected loaders failed to work on a Sam's different CPU speed, if these titles can be run from a 48k SNAP file like .Z80, .SNA or .MUL. -- Mgr.(MSc.) Ales Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VSB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz -- - Original Message - From: "Gavin Smith" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2005 3:39 PM Subject: Re: "Spectrum on Sam" games at NVG This is probably a good time to ask people's opinions on including Speccy games that have been made to run on a SAM, on samcoupe.org - my opinion is that they are still Speccy games and they should initially be left out. What do others think? Gavin Quoting Aley Keprt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: There is "Explosion" emulator at NVG (it does Spectrum on Sam). There are also lots of games for this emulator. Does anybody checked that there aren't any of the Codemsters, US Gold, Ultimate and other explicitly forbidden titles? -- Mgr.(MSc.) Ale¹ Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, V©B Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz --
"Spectrum on Sam" games at NVG
There is "Explosion" emulator at NVG (it does Spectrum on Sam). There are also lots of games for this emulator. Does anybody checked that there aren't any of the Codemsters, US Gold, Ultimate and other explicitly forbidden titles? -- Mgr.(MSc.) Aleš Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VŠB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz --
Some newer emulator needed [Re: Let's discuss ZX Spectrum games]
- Original Message - From: "Wolfgang Haller" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, January 09, 2005 12:50 PM Use Martijn Groens emulator for 48K ones, it works with TAP, Z80, and PLUS D format. I set a manual to the community list, but I can send this as PDF to anyone who is interested. Where can I get this emulator (and manual)? Are there any other emulators which natively support TAP/TZX and/or Z80/SNA files? (Besides my one.) I mean natively, i.e. without any conversion. /--- Aley
Re: Fuxoft [Re: Still no tapes received]
Exactly. I looked at it, and there is - changed name of the proggie - no author name - no country info - no description of tunes Originally the proggie contains a detailed description of all 26 tunes. I think it is one of the best AY music demos ever written (all 26 tunes were written by Franisek Fuka himself), and the vast majority of people that saw it don't know it is from Fuxoft (and they will never know...). Since SU 111 is dated may 1991, I see no reason why they didn't contacted the author. It was 18 months after eastern block collapsed, so there were no political problems when trying to contact anybody anywhere in the east. -- Mgr.(MSc.) Ales Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VSB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz -- - Original Message - From: "Simon Cooke" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2005 8:32 AM Subject: RE: Fuxoft [Re: Still no tapes received] Aley Keprt wrote: Frantisek Fuka told me, that ALL texts of his 128k demos Fuxoft Soundtrack part 3 or 4 were removed, including the country of origin. I don't know what issue of what magazine it was, otherwise we could possibly compare it to the original version. (Fortunately, both these demos are preserved with their original texts because they were formerly converted from 128k to Sam Coupe. :-) ) Sinclair User magazine, Issue 111. http://newton.sunderland.ac.uk/~specfreak/Magazines/SinclairUser/su1991.html
Fuxoft [Re: Still no tapes received]
If a program really is PD, then they don't need permission to distribute it. I only wanted to say that YS didn't knew it. I mean even if it was PD, they [YS] weren't sure, unless they asked the author. You cannot believe to the in-game text. Is my opinion now clear? his origin is Czechoslovakia. We both think there is no reaon of removing the country name. Did the program previously say that, and end up not saying it? Frantisek Fuka told me, that ALL texts of his 128k demos Fuxoft Soundtrack part 3 or 4 were removed, including the country of origin. I don't know what issue of what magazine it was, otherwise we could possibly compare it to the original version. (Fortunately, both these demos are preserved with their original texts because they were formerly converted from 128k to Sam Coupe. :-) ) /--- Aley
Re: Still no tapes received
Thank you very much! I never heard about this. But, technically, they surely didn't own the written permission of Shanghai's author (1) to do the changes (2) to distribute in on a cover tape (3) saying that it really is a PD (public domain title) Let's imagine that somebody take Manic Miner, change the in-game text to let it say "this is Manic miner by p*ssoft, it is public domain", and then give it to Your Sinclair. Do you think they are allowed to publish it? (And change the name of "author".) I think they need a written permission in each case, regardless what's written in in-game text. Frantisek Fuka aka. Fuxoft told me today, that he don't know that Shanghai was ever published in any magazine. It is a completely new information to him. (I didn't ask him whether he is lucky, or angry... :-) He just told me that he remembers they published another his program without a permission, and changed the text too, especially removing any notice that the author is Franisek Fuka and his origin is Czechoslovakia. We both think there is no reaon of removing the country name. Is Czechoslovakia offensive? [This must be a joke.] -- Mgr.(MSc.) Aleš Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VŠB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz -- - Original Message - From: "Andrew Collier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Wednesday, January 19, 2005 8:22 PM Subject: Re: Still no tapes received On Wed, 2005-01-19 at 18:41, Aley Keprt wrote: I really don't understand how "publisher's PG language guidelines" can allow change of the copyrighted material. It seems to me like Italian Load'n'Run - they also changed everything they got and re-published without allowing with changed names. I remember "Il Meccanico" instead of "Automania" and many other titles. I don't like these warez "releases"! I don't know whether it was Your Sinclair who changed the name in that version, or released the changed version; I just mentioned that whenever his name came up in the pages of Your Sinclair (in the PD demos column for example) it became Franksoft. When someone wrote into the letters page to ask why the name got changed, that was more or less the reason they stated. It doesn't matter whether that the name wasn't chosen with any intention of being offensive, it's just that to an English reader, there's only one way of pronouncing the word spelt "Fuxoft" and that is clearly inappropriate for the pages of a magazine intended to be suitable for children and teenagers. Your Sinclair *did* have a history of changing some of the programs which went onto the Smash Tape - for similar reasons, removing swearwords from scrolly messages, for example. Now - those demos were usually referred to as "P.D.", a legal term which would give YS every right to make those changes. But are they really Public Domain? The authors usually called them such, but also put copyright symbols on it. This is legally inconsistent, but a lot of people did it, and I can see how YS would have difficulty making the distinction between PD and Freeware, especially in the case of an author (who had done P.D. Spectrum demos in the past) releasing a product, but expecting the copyright terms to be different without explicitly saying so. Was Shanghai ever intended to be distributed commercially? Andrew -- ---Andrew Collier http://www.intensity.org.uk/ --- -- r<2+ T<4* cSEL dMS hEn/CB1.1.4
Re: Still no tapes received
Here is a description of what Fuxoft means. I cite Frantise Fuka: " First of all, I am from the Czech Republic and "Frantisek Fuka" is my real name. To be more precise, there is a weird thing above the letter "s" that cannot be reproduced in ASCII. The whole name sounds somehow like "Fran-tjee-shek Foo-kah" (the "Foo" is short). "Fuxoft" is my nickname which I "invented" when I was about 12 years old and started programming first games for 8-bit computers. It was derived from "Fuka" + "soft[ware]" and is supposed to be pronounced "Fooksoft" (again, "foo" is short). I really don't remember if I had any idea back then (in the year 1980) what certain four letter English words mean, but if I had, I didn't care. (BTW, "Fuka" is certainly not usual Czech name and "Frantisek" means "Franciscus" or "Frank".) " I really don't understand how "publisher's PG language guidelines" can allow change of the copyrighted material. It seems to me like Italian Load'n'Run - they also changed everything they got and re-published without allowing with changed names. I remember "Il Meccanico" instead of "Automania" and many other titles. I don't like these warez "releases"! -- Mgr.(MSc.) Aleš Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VŠB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz ------ - Original Message - From: "Andrew Collier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Wednesday, January 19, 2005 7:07 PM Subject: Re: Still no tapes received On Wed, 2005-01-19 at 18:01, Aley Keprt wrote: I have a question: Where are these tapes from? Especially Shanghai. It says: "Franksoft 1990", but hey! Shanghai is from Fuxoft. Who made this "Franksoft"-copy? At least it looks so genuine... :-) Your Sinclair always changed the name to Franksoft whenever they mentioned it, presumably because the real name didn't meet with the publisher's PG language guidelines. Andrew -- ---Andrew Collier http://www.intensity.org.uk/ --- -- r<2+ T<4* cSEL dMS hEn/CB1.1.4
Shanghai
Look to the enclosed screenshots. I asked Frantisek Fuka (just now) why there is "Franxoft 90" at the title screen of "Shanghai" game I received on a tape from Simon Owen. He replied that this must be a work of a cracker. -- Mgr.(MSc.) Aleš Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VŠB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz -- Shanghai-Franxoft.png Description: PNG image Shanghai-Fuxoft.png Description: PNG image
Re: Still no tapes received
Oh, I forgot to add that Shanghai does load but doesn't run correctly. This is not related to tape loading, since as you know Shanghai never run correctly in old SimCoupe/ASCD. (I don't know why.) -- Mgr.(MSc.) Ales Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VSB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz -- - Original Message - From: "Simon Owen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Monday, January 17, 2005 1:02 PM Subject: RE: Still no tapes received Aley Keprt wrote: A few days ago, I asked here if somebody could possibly send me his Sam Copue tapes in TZX format to let me test them in emulator. Up to now, nobody sent me anything :- I missed your post about this too, though it could have been in the bunch that were lost when I switched mail servers. I've just e-mailed you the 8 TZX files I have (all untested), which include some demos from Crash/YS cover tapes. Si
Re: Still no tapes received
Well, I tested your tapes. Good tapes, thank you very much. All of them works in ASCD when converted from TZX to TAP. I am quite happy for this, since some of them are quite nonstandard. I mean those TZX contain some garbage, which is movet do TAP as well. But ASCD proved to take only what Sam needs from those tapes. :-) I will support add TZX later. Currently I have combined TZX/TAP loader finished, just need some time to incorporate it into ASCD, since the current source code is Win32 only and the release version ASCD 0.96 is DOS only. Oh, I did the port 2 years ago and never finished it... :-) I have a question: Where are these tapes from? Especially Shanghai. It says: "Franksoft 1990", but hey! Shanghai is from Fuxoft. Who made this "Franksoft"-copy? At least it looks so genuine... :-) Thank you for you help. If you have some more tapes, plase send them too. Best regards, Aley Keprt -- Mgr.(MSc.) Ales Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VSB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz -- - Original Message - From: "Simon Owen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Monday, January 17, 2005 1:02 PM Subject: RE: Still no tapes received Aley Keprt wrote: A few days ago, I asked here if somebody could possibly send me his Sam Copue tapes in TZX format to let me test them in emulator. Up to now, nobody sent me anything :- I missed your post about this too, though it could have been in the bunch that were lost when I switched mail servers. I've just e-mailed you the 8 TZX files I have (all untested), which include some demos from Crash/YS cover tapes. Si
Suspisious files at NVG
Hello everybody, I found some suspicious files at NVG. The directory "missing" contains some ZIP files marked as "cannot unpack". I unpack these files without problems. So why are they marked "cannot unpack"? I assume that the man who did the so-called NVG dskification process used some old PkUnzip version. Please get the latest version and try again! :-) Good luck. /--- Aley
Still no tapes received
Hello everybody, A few days ago, I asked here if somebody could possibly send me his Sam Copue tapes in TZX format to let me test them in emulator. Up to now, nobody sent me anything :- Yesterday, I played around with TZX files, and it seems pretty well. You can use Ramsoft's "MakeTZX" utility (downoad from www.WorldOfSpectrum.org). It is assured to fully support Sam tapes. I tested it and it works 100 correctly with my 15 years old cheap Sony HF-90 tapes! :-) It's simple, but very good. I will definitely add TZX support to emulator (ASCD for sure, maybe also SimCoupe if Simon Owen will let me to do so :-), because it supports blocks > 65535 bytes, and that is the major problem of TAP usage on Sam Coupe. So, please send me some tape images. At last! I have only some test files I personally save on my real Sam Coupe. They works, but it's not enough for real testing. Thanks. /-- Aley
RE: SAM Newsdisks
Seems that there were more disk magazines on the market than machines sold... :-) /--- Aley -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of david Sent: Sunday, January 16, 2005 8:55 PM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: SAM Newsdisks --- Edwin Blink <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > 5 - although part of Newsdisk 6 became SAM Prime 1 > > Thanks and SAM Prime became Blitz ? > > Edwin > I think the linage was ... SAM Quartet - became the SAM Newsdisk (and some split off to become SAM Public Quarterly with Sam Buchanan) - which split off to become SAM Prime (disk then later paperzine, the paperzine after a couple of issues had a cover disk made by myself, the later by Steven "Pickasso" Pick) SAM Prime then later became Blitz when Malcolm took over publishing of Phoenix titles.
RE: Comet->ASCII
Then, technically, it runs on a PC too, since "Sam runs on a PC". :-)) Aley -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Simon Cooke Sent: Friday, January 14, 2005 7:33 AM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: RE: Comet->ASCII Edwin Blink wrote: > From: Simon Cooke <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > Hey! Mine converts both ways too! > > For PC too ? Nah, runs on the SAM itself. But it converts to and from ASCII and COMET formats, with your own choice of line terminator.
Re: How ROM knowns wheter a disk is "bootable"
Nice. :-) I would possibly add an option to ASCD to create such "better" disks where DOS is outside the first 80 tracks. But how to do it exactly? What procedure uses the regular SAMDOS2 to load itself? It uses the standard procedure? I mean does it check two last bytes of each sector to find the next one? I am suspicious about this. As fas as I remember sometimes I had hard times trying to add a DOS to a nonbootable disk, and I always though it is not only the first sector, but whole SAMDOS what must be placed at the start of the disk. Or maybe the sectors must be used one after another? Anybody knows this? It is different in MasterDOS. I never has any problems making a disk bootable with master dos, so it surely can be anywhere, as long as the first sector is at 4-1. -- Mgr.(MSc.) Ales Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VSB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz -- - Original Message - From: "Edwin Blink" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Thursday, January 13, 2005 1:11 PM Subject: Re: How ROM knowns wheter a disk is "bootable" From: Frode Tenneboe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> But you could put the rest of the DOS anywhere you like on the disc. Cookie did that to "good" effect in MaxiDOS/QDOS where he put the DOS on tracks 80-82. Just side one BTW if you wish you could store DOS anywhere into the directory as long as there is one slot before it that has both filetype and 1st char of filename zero to mark end of directory. When storing the remaining 19 sectors of SAMDOS at track 2,sector 2 then there would be room for 41 files on such a disc. :-) Edwin
Re: How ROM knowns wheter a disk is "bootable"
On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 06:38:06 +0100 "Aley Keprt" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Oh, and does it mean that I can have SAMDOS at arbitrary directory slot as long as its body occupies tracks 4 and 5? If you say that ROM loads directly track 4... :-) The SAM ROM only loads the sector at track 4, sector 1 Of course, it's >technically< impossible to create this kind of disk is with a standard SAVE command on Sam, because SAMDOS always store files at the lowest free tracks. (So I can't have track 4 free, and directory slot #01 used alredy.) But I could possibly create it manually in Sam basic. What about creating an empty disk, make it bootable (save samdos to it), then read track 0 sector 1, copy first 256 bytes to the other 256 bytes, save back that sector, and delete original DOS file. Now there is a samdos image in directory slot #02, and the disk is still bootable and fully correct. Am I correct? :-) No. The ROM does not have a concept of directory or files. Just that one sector. Will it work? No. But you could put the rest of the DOS anywhere you like on the disc. Cookie did that to "good" effect in MaxiDOS/QDOS where he put the DOS on tracks 80-82. Please read again what I suggested. If you say that Sam ROM reads just track 4 sector 1, it means that I AM correct. Yet again, if you say that Sam ROM doesn't know about directory, that means I AM correct. /--- Aley
Re: How ROM knowns wheter a disk is "bootable"
Oh, and does it mean that I can have SAMDOS at arbitrary directory slot as long as its body occupies tracks 4 and 5? If you say that ROM loads directly track 4... :-) Of course, it's >technically< impossible to create this kind of disk is with a standard SAVE command on Sam, because SAMDOS always store files at the lowest free tracks. (So I can't have track 4 free, and directory slot #01 used alredy.) But I could possibly create it manually in Sam basic. What about creating an empty disk, make it bootable (save samdos to it), then read track 0 sector 1, copy first 256 bytes to the other 256 bytes, save back that sector, and delete original DOS file. Now there is a samdos image in directory slot #02, and the disk is still bootable and fully correct. Am I correct? :-) Will it work? :-)) -- Mgr.(MSc.) Ales Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VSB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz -- - Original Message - From: "Edwin Blink" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Thursday, January 13, 2005 2:50 AM Subject: Re: How ROM knowns wheter a disk is "bootable" I have a little technical question: How does Sam ROM know whether the file no.01 is DOS, or not? track 4 sector 1, offset $0100 the word "BOOT" bits 7 and 5 of each char is ignored If it finds it sector which was loaded at &8000 will be executed &8009 as the first 9 are part of (inherited from GDOS) file header which is unused. Edwin
Re: How ROM knowns wheter a disk is "bootable"
Thank you (thanks to Andrew Collier as well). So what's GDOS? A system software from MGT's ZX Spectrum disk interface Disciple or Plus D? I'd like to know what are those 9 bytes at the start of each file for. The existence of these 9 bytes is quite well known for everyone, who ever tried to read Sam disks by sectors. But what's inside? If I want to add file to a sam disk myself, what should I put to these 9 bytes? It seems that these 9 bytes contain the same information as is stored in directory entry of a file. Please, can somebody tell me what should I write there if I would like to mimic the behaviour of Sam DOS? Thanks. -- Mgr.(MSc.) Ales Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VSB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz -- - Original Message - From: "Edwin Blink" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Thursday, January 13, 2005 2:50 AM Subject: Re: How ROM knowns wheter a disk is "bootable" I have a little technical question: How does Sam ROM know whether the file no.01 is DOS, or not? track 4 sector 1, offset $0100 the word "BOOT" bits 7 and 5 of each char is ignored If it finds it sector which was loaded at &8000 will be executed &8009 as the first 9 are part of (inherited from GDOS) file header which is unused. Edwin
How ROM knowns wheter a disk is "bootable"
I have a little technical question: How does Sam ROM know whether the file no.01 is DOS, or not? It doesn't blindly load anything there, is it? Does "bootable" disk have some special contents in track 0, sector 1? Or possibly the special contents are at track 4, sector 1? (I'd expect there is something at track 0, sector 1, but I'm not sure what exactly. Please tell me.) -- Mgr.(MSc.) Ales Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VSB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz -- - Original Message - From: "Simon Owen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Thursday, January 13, 2005 12:30 AM Subject: RE: Let's discuss ZX Spectrum games Edwin Blink wrote: Hey I've got Lerm assembler on take ! I'm sure there where some things that where on tape Shouldn't the archive aim to store software in its original format? Some titles were released on both disk and tape, so it would make sense to preserve both disk and tape images, and not just the most convenient format. Converting existing disk titles to tape files seems wrong to me, and would also make them much less convenient for use on real machines. Of course, I've nothing against new software being written out as tape images if that's what the author wants! (my e-mail has been down recently, so apologies if I've missed anything that has already covered this) until simcoupe has a 'replacement boot' feature (hint hint !) that boots dos from a virtual drive when attemting to boot from a nono bootable disk. I've implemented a quick test version that does a temporary disk image switch when attempting to boot from a non-bootable disk. It loads only DOS from the switched disk, returning to the original disk for the AUTO* file search (if required). In the options you just specify the path of the disk image or .SBT file containing DOS. Does that fit your requirements? It might even be nice if SimCoupe had a built-in DOS image so the option could be enabled by default, to help out new users... Si
Re: Let's discuss ZX Spectrum games
My opinion is: 1. Original commercial software should be stored in original format. PLEASE SEND ME ALL >ORIGINAL< SAM TAPE ARCHIVES YOU OWN. (If it's possible.) I need these files to test ASCD tape capability. (Both TAP and TZX files are welcome, if they are perfect originals.) 2. Underground software, free software and anything "it started to exist when I made it at home and copied it to my friend" doesn't have any "original" format. In Czech Republic, 90% of software if this kind of free stuff. People always copied "anything anywhere", mening that if somebody wanted to get a program, he just found a diskette where this program can fit, and added this new program to the existing program on that diskette. Many people even copied new free stuff to a diskettes of commercial programs, just to better use the space. :-) So I consider pretty pointless and unrealistic when somebody still talks about "original" format generally. Original format of 90% Sam software is "just files". There is no :original: data storage, only the contents, i.e. the files are original. And you can copy these file anywhere on a real Sam. So that's I wanted TAP (or possibly ZIP with decorated file names containing all additional information normally hidden in headers - it's still my favourite one!). I must also add that the programs were originally spread on disks, not tapes. My willing to store something like TAP files was not aimed to be able to load these program via tape loader. I just wanted to store programs file-based, and enable a simple TAP to DSK copy software with it, so let anyone can create his own :compilation: as hw wish. This way it would be the real "original" way of spreading Sam software. Shortly: I don't want any tape mayhem. In the future, I am going to make the utilities which will 1. allow to copy files from DSK/SAD to ZIP or TAP, or vice versa. This copying will perfectly keep all the contents of the file, including its original Sam name, starting address, basic run line, screen$ palette, file type, etc. if you extract some files from DSK/SAD to ZIP, and then copy them from ZIP back to DSK/SAD, that DSK/SAD will work on a real Sam. 2. allow to use DSK/SAD and TAP files in Total Commander or Windows shell as virtual folders. I.e. you will be able to open such a file like a directory and copy files from it or to it easily. -- Mgr.(MSc.) Ales Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VSB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz -- - Original Message - From: "Edwin Blink" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Thursday, January 13, 2005 1:44 AM Subject: Re: Let's discuss ZX Spectrum games Shouldn't the archive aim to store software in its original format? Some titles were released on both disk and tape, so it would make sense to preserve both disk and tape images, and not just the most convenient format. I agree Converting existing disk titles to tape files seems wrong to me, and would also make them much less convenient for use on real machines. I disagree on that part. I've seen several SAM go on ebay without discdrives and I'm sure there are many more and SAMs with faulty discdrives too. TAPes can can be easely converted into WAVs and burned on a audio CD and can then SAM users without floppy drive can enjoy some of that stuff on the real machine too. I've implemented a quick test version that does a temporary disk image switch when attempting to boot from a non-bootable disk. It loads only DOS from the switched disk, returning to the original disk for the AUTO* file search (if required). In the options you just specify the path of the disk image or .SBT file containing DOS. Does that fit your requirements? Excellent. It might even be nice if SimCoupe had a built-in DOS image so the option could be enabled by default, to help out new users... Good Idea and I think it would nice for experienced users too. Edwin
Re: Let's discuss ZX Spectrum games
I don't think SAMDOS should be on each disk. It is convenient for using the disk with simcoupe until simcoupe has a 'replacement boot' feature (hint hint !) that boots dos from a virtual drive when attemting to boot from a nono bootable disk. Edwin I think that in the real world a DOS >is< on each disk (or at least 98% or so). Having 32KB ROM full of rarely used stuff instead of DOS is one of the biggest mistakes of Sam designers. (I remember Atari ST did the same way when it was launched back in 1985. But the initial mistake was detected soon after and replaced by a different ROM containing DOS inside.) I would rather let tape users load basic from tape, than disk users to load dos from a disk. (Big sorry to all tape users... :-) I think that booting from a virtual disk would be very good. Wow, who will implement it? :-) /-- Aley
Re: Sam Coupe TAP files
I know SAM and ZX header length are not the same so when a spectrum(emu) tries to load a SAM header there will be a checksum error and it will try the next part in tap file. Correct me if I'm wrong. There is no checksum error. Headers have different ID (ZXS uses 0 for header, while Sam doesn't), so ZXS will never load a Sam header. Reversely, Sam ROM uses a very special approach resulting in that it actually loads anything from either ZXS or Sam. I implemented this into my handler too, so if you put a ZXS tape into ASCD, it will load in Sam mode (but you get nonsense when loading Basic program). Summary: ZXS and Sam tape images can live together. /-- Aley
Re: Let's discuss ZX Spectrum games
The only problem is that most of the stuff on discs was only ever in that format and sequential format like TAP is kind of no-sensical - what happens when you want to write the high score table back to disc? Update a file? Discs was (and still is) the standard way of distributing SAM software. The only reason for any TAP support must be to archive the Flash! tape, the SAMDOS tape and the two games ever released on tape in a reproducible format. I dodn't say we have to use exactly TAP! I just wanted to say that a file-based format could be better than a physical copy of a sam disk. If you don't like TAP, I can offer you ZIP or something... We can store all additional information (like start line number of a basic program) to file names inside ZIP. If you ask how to load and use this TAP or ZIP, I say: The emulator (or another utility) simply copy these files to a disk, add "samdos2" image and "auto" loader, and boots it. The advantage of a file-based format si that it allows to combine several programs, i.e. to put several different programs to a single disk. If you have a file-based archive, you know exactly what files belong to a program, and you can work with it easier. There is no practical reason for having separate single-file archives (as opposed to discs). The extra amount of a compressed SAMDOS2 file takes is a minuscle 7K and if one is unhappy with the layout, one can always change it oneself. :) I see this reason: It is very convenient to have 15 games on a single disk (if they can fit there). To have 15 different diskettes for 15 short games was never very popular approach. You don't see this reason "practical"? From the server point of view, I think we can always store a classical DSK/SAD disk image, and add any other file-based archive as a secondary source, if somebody would be interested in using it. /-- Aley
Re: Let's discuss ZX Spectrum games
Thank you Frode. I hope someday I will have spare time to extract these disks and look what's inside. :-) --- I must add that this GoodSAMC is a holy nonsense. Sorry that I complain once again, but really - eh - where is any good point in having all these non-official ZXS games "compilations" in a disk database? I bet every one of us have got his own 10 or 30 ZXS disks. Should we have all these "compilations" listed in GoodSAMC? I don't think so. The software like GoodSAMC is good for MAME or similar projects, where it is used only for official ROM releases which are always the same. But using it for private nonofficial ZXS games "compilations"? Hey, I call it silly. --- And as for archiving software, I would vote for a file-based format, like TAP or something silimar. If we had a litte smart utility, we can automate the copying of whole programs from one disk to another one. And what in the fact is "program"? I think it is a set of files. And what is TAP? It is a set of files in particular order. The only difference of disk-based "set of files" to a tape-based "set of files" is that you can't use LOAD"" when working with a disk (a filename must be specified), and you must store files in a specific order in a TAP to have them loaded correctly. Okay, it is a bit different. Maybe we could go another way: What about having a standardized logical disk contents format, which will in its basic form act as a regular DSK/SAD file, but will be stored in always the same way what will allow simple automatic copying of multiple source disks to a single disk. What I'm talking about is if we store a single program per disk, it will be OK for emulation. And I thing it is preffered over unofficial "compilations". But if we'd be able to automatically merge these disks into a disk containing all-in-one, that would be better for real Sams. (Having every single 40K proggie on a separate disk isn't very convenient.) btw. Is there a virtual DSK/SAD file system for Total Commander or at least FAR, which would be able to extract files from DSK/SAD or even copy then from one disk to another? I would like to make it if it isn't already done. -- Mgr.(MSc.) Ales Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VSB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz -- - Original Message - From: "Frode Tenneboe" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Monday, January 10, 2005 9:22 AM Subject: Re: Let's discuss ZX Spectrum games On Sun, 9 Jan 2005 11:44:58 +0100 "Aley Keprt" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: I found 12 diskettes full of ZX Spectrum 128k and/or multi-load games converted to Sam. I personally did mainly the tape->disk conversions, because it is the easiest part (and I was 13, eh, so it was quite hard for me either... :-). Later I also made a half-universal 48k+AY emulator, which supported 48k+AY snapshot files. Then I also converted some very simple 128k games (they just used 128k memory for AY music). In the early days I did some conversions as well, but I'm not sure where those are now. Hoever, there are a few disks on NVG now which contains Spectrum conversions in one way or another: GoodSAMC/Spectrum 128 - Myth and Escape From Singe's Castle (19xx).zip GoodSAMC/Spectrum 128 Music Disk 1 (19xx) (PD).zip GoodSAMC/Spectrum 128 Music Disk 2 (19xx) (PD).zip GoodSAMC/Spectrum Emulator (Sept 04) (1990).zip GoodSAMC/Spectrum Games (128K) Disk 01 (19xx).zip GoodSAMC/Spectrum Games (128K) Disk 02 (19xx).zip GoodSAMC/Spectrum Games (128K) Disk 03 (19xx).zip GoodSAMC/Spectrum Games (128K) Disk 04 (19xx).zip GoodSAMC/Spectrum Games (128K) Disk 05 (19xx).zip GoodSAMC/Spectrum Games (128K) Disk 06 (19xx).zip GoodSAMC/Spectrum Games (128K) Disk 07 (19xx).zip GoodSAMC/Spectrum Games (128K) Disk 08 (19xx).zip GoodSAMC/Spectrum Games (128K) Disk 09 (19xx).zip GoodSAMC/Spectrum Games (128K) Disk 10 (19xx).zip GoodSAMC/Spectrum Games (128K) Disk 11 (19xx).zip GoodSAMC/Spectrum Games (128K) Disk 12 (19xx).zip GoodSAMC/Spectrum Games (48K) Disk 1 (19xx).zip GoodSAMC/Spectrum Games (48K) Disk 2 (19xx).zip GoodSAMC/Spectrum Games (48K) Disk 3 (19xx).zip GoodSAMC/Spectrum Games (48K) Disk 4 (19xx).zip GoodSAMC/Spectrum Games (48K) Disk 5 (19xx).zip GoodSAMC/Spectrum Games (48K) Disk 6 (19xx).zip GoodSAMC/Spectrum Games Compilation 01 (19xx).zip GoodSAMC/Spectrum Games Compilation 02 (19xx).zip GoodSAMC/Spectrum Games Compilation 03 (19xx).zip GoodSAMC/Spectrum Games Compilation 04 (19xx).zip GoodSAMC/Spectrum Games Compilation 05 (19xx).zip GoodSAMC/Spectrum Games Compilation 06 (19xx).zip GoodSAMC/Spectrum Games Compilation 07 (19xx).zip GoodSAMC
RE: NVG DSKification
600 files? I never though so many programs for Sam can exist. :-) /--- Aley -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Frode Tenneboe Sent: Monday, January 10, 2005 9:31 AM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: Re: NVG DSKification On Sun, 09 Jan 2005 18:06:15 + Dan Dooré <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Gents, > > The DSKification of NVG has been uploaded and awaits Frode's magical > touch to move it into position. This has now been done. I have move the old stuff into ./OLD temporarily. Kudos to Dan for sifting thourgh almost 600 files of various formats! -Frode -- ^ Frode Tennebø | email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ^ | Ericsson AS | Isebakkeveien 49 | | N-1788 Halden | Phone: +47 45 24 99 39| | with Standard.Disclaimer; use Standard.Disclaimer;|
Re: NVG DSKification
A few missing ones? I have many other programs that nobody ever uploaded to NVG yet, but because I am too lazy to extract each program from my chaotic old diskettes. These are missing as well. :-) -- Mgr.(MSc.) Ales Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VSB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz -- - Original Message - From: "Dan Dooré" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Sam Users" Sent: Sunday, January 09, 2005 7:06 PM Subject: NVG DSKification Gents, The DSKification of NVG has been uploaded and awaits Frode's magical touch to move it into position. In the meantime here is the new structure, very similar to the old but with a few tweaks to separate native Sam stuff from PC/Emulation stuff. +---disks | +---adult | +---demos | | +---axoft | | +---entropy | | +---esi | | +---games | | +---lords | | +---metempsychosis | | | +---never_released | | | \---released | | +---mgt-samco | | +---mikeaj | | +---mnemotech | | \---thedvb | +---dos | +---games | | +---Commercial | | +---PublicDomain | | \---ZXSpectrum | | \---explosion | +---graphics | +---magazines | | +---fred | | +---Fredatives | | +---misc | | +---SAM-Paper | | +---sape | | \---scac | +---misc | +---music | | +---etracker | | | \---modules | | +---mod | | \---samples | +---prodos | \---utils | +---disk | | \---old | \---terminal-emulation +---docs +---emulation | +---ascd | +---ROMs | +---samemu | +---simcoupe | | +---CVS | | | \---SimCoupe | | | +---Allegro | | | | \---CVS | | | +---Base | | | | \---CVS | | | +---CVS | | | +---Extern | | | | \---CVS | | | +---SDL | | | | \---CVS | | | \---Win32 | | | +---Cursors | | | | \---CVS | | | +---CVS | | | \---Icons | | | \---CVS | | \---wincoupe | \---sound | \---songs +---incoming +---missing +---pics +---sources | \---HDOS-IDE \---tools +---pc +---rexx \---unix There have been no real additions to the archive since the idea was to make it more accessible for both real Sam and SimCoupe users and to have all the files in the same format for when they can be converted into the (hopefully) up and coming all-encompassing archive format. We are still missing a few items - thanks to Frode and Edwin for sorting me out with some from their collections - so when it's up please feel free to go into 'missing' and see if you have them: ./disks/games/colaris.lcb - cannot unpack ./adult/net_23.TDO - cannot read TDO file ./disks/misc/treaty - cannot unpack ./disks/music/etracker/modules/MikeAJTrackerModules 1 and 2 - cannot unpack ./disks/music/etracker/etrackerdemo - cannot unpack ./disks/music/samples/qltheme - cannot unpack/determine pack type ./disks/utils/disk/old/lib30a - cannot unpack ./disks/utils/disk/lib30b - cannot unpack ./disks/utils/disk/bcdsk10.bas - text file of BASIC program ./disks/utils/Prntfx - cannot unpack ./disks/utils/SAM81-ZX81Emulator - BASIC Broken in file ./disks/utils/TIFF LCB - cannot unpack ./disks/utils/terminal-emulation/commix - cannot unpack Dan.
Re: Another example why I dislike .DSK format
What "some people have since decided..."??? .SAM files are sample data! Of course, Ami Pro uses .SAM as well, I don't complain. But I used .SAM for sample data for years in several programs years before AmiPro came into public knowledge. -- Mgr.(MSc.) Ales Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VSB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz -- - Original Message - From: "Stuart Brady" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Sunday, January 09, 2005 3:39 PM Subject: Re: Another example why I dislike .DSK format On Sun, Jan 09, 2005 at 12:53:33PM +, Andrew Collier wrote: .dsk is very convenient for simple images. But there have been discussions here of a more expandable disk format which we can adopt as standard, and we can call it what we like. Does .sam mean anything yet? Yes. Samna Ami Pro, aka Lotus AmiPro (which was basically the first decent Word Processor for Windows). Unfortunately, some people have since decided that it's signed 8-bit sample data. *sigh* -- Stuart Brady
Re: Another example why I dislike .DSK format
But simple the support of DSK (or SAD) should be preserved too, since it's good for its simplicity and so many utils can work with it (them). -- Mgr.(MSc.) Ales Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VSB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz -- - Original Message - From: "Dan Dooré" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Sunday, January 09, 2005 3:16 PM Subject: Re: Another example why I dislike .DSK format Aley Keprt wrote: And of course, .SAM means "sample", it's used for years for sound samples. :-) And AMIPro Word docs and a myriad of others :-) > Don't we have SDF or something, which is a generic Sam disk format? From what I understand SDF is a discontinued format and this spawned the discussion on a generic format for representing all sam disk geometrys with headers for containing information and such like. The reason for persevering with the DSK format is for simplicity but as I have said in the NVG re-org mails but as soon as a format is available they will all get moved into this format and hopefully the complications of dealing with the mish-mash of DSK/TD0/SADv1/SADv2/MGT/PAK/LIB/SBT formats will be over. Dan.
Re: Let's discuss ZX Spectrum games
I must emphasize one point: Spectrum file formats used on Sam. They are many. If we look to classci 48k emulation, we have files from WoS database, which I call standard. They all could be loaded somehow to Sam. But there are also several Sam-specific snapshot file types not used at WoS. AFAIK these formats are older than formats used on WoS, so that's the reason they exist. Can somebody help me understanding these formats? (I would preferably make a converter from these old formats to classic Z80.) At least, I know of - The standard MGT/Samco's emulator without ROM. Is this somewhat similar or identical to the +D format mentioned by Womoteam? - This is the most wanted, since I still have got some old snapshots of games which are missing at WoS. - Fidzi's .MUL format. The most widely used one in Czech & Slovak republic. :-) - Fuxoft's format - They say this is the oldest Spectrum-on-Sam proper emulator and its snapshot format, but it has registers stored in Sam Basic, so the proper conversion is quite tricky. After appending the registers to the main file, I call this format .FUX and it's the only known and supported Spectrum-on-Sam snapshot format in ASCD.) - My own .AYS used for games with emulated AY music, (it's .MUL with two bytes added at the end). And here's my list of games (48k ones are skipped): AYS files: Mad House, Exolon, Captain Dynamo, MQM 2, Magnificent, Mega Phoenix, Sound Tracker, Fuxoft Soundtrack 4, Loopz, Rex 1+2, Tetris 2 Special third-party Sam tunes added to Spectrum games (quite uncommon :-), but it's really true): Dizzy 4, Dizzy 6, Laser Squad / Remix 128, F16 Combat Pilot (???) Dizzy 1+2+3+5 (???), Turbulence, Agent Toast ZX-1 Motos, Jet Bike Simulator, X-Out, Street Fighter, Time Scanner, The Way Of The Tiger, Tetris 2 ZX-2 Rambo 3, F.I.R.E., Power Drift, Nigel Mansell Grand Prix, Lemmings, Laser Squad, Daley Thompson's Olympic Challenge ZX-3 Hero Quest 1+2, Dragon Spirit, The Last Ninja 2, Exolon ZX-4 Chase HQ, R-Type, Iron Lord, Operation Thunderbolt, Cabal, Cybernoid ZX-5 Operation Wolf, Rainbow Islands, North & South, Myth, International Karate + ZX-6 Shinobi, Robocop 2, Shadow Of The Beast, Bubble Bobble, Terramex, Belegost ZX-7 Target Renegade, Stunt Car Racer, Turrican 2, Midnight Resistance, Spherical ZX-8 Wec Le Mans, Sim City, Batman The Movie, Pacmania, Ghouls'n'Ghosts, Platoon, Kendo ZX-9 Hostages, Arkanoid 2, Plotting, License To Kill, Turtles 2, P-47 Freedom Fighter, Thunderbirds /--- Aley - Original Message - From: "Wolfgang Haller" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Sunday, January 09, 2005 12:50 PM Subject: Re: Let's discuss ZX Spectrum games Aley Keprt wrote: Here is a fast copy of my 128K list for the SAM: 128K + Muliloader Emulation __ Record 5000: 128K Soft A Action Fighter ? Action Force 2 ? Altered Beast ? APB ? Arkanoid 2 ? Army Moves ? Atom Ant ? Auf Wiedersehen Monty ? Amageddon Record 5001: 128K Soft A2 Amaurote ? Ancient Fighters Record 5010: 128K Soft B Barbarian ? Batman ? Bionic Command ? Blastroids ? Bloodwych ? Boulder Dash ? Bubble Bobble ? Buggy Boy ? Battle for Midway Record 5020: 128K Soft C Cabal ? California Games ? Chase HQ ? CJ Elephant Antics ? Continental Circus ? Captain Blood Record 5021: 128K Soft C2 Captain Dynamo ? Combat School ? Commando ? Crack Down! ? Cybernoid ? Captain Fizz ? Chubby Cristle Record 5030: 128K Soft D Daley Thompsons Olympic ? Dizzy - Down the rapids ? Dizzy and the Yolkfolk ? Dragon Ninja ? Dragon Spirit ? Dan Dare 3 ? Dynasty Wars Record 5031: 128K Soft D2 Deathstalker ? Dizzy 2 (Dizzy On Treasure Island) ? Dizzy 3 (Fantasy World Dizzy) ? Dominator ? Dizzy 4 (Magicland Dizzy) Record 5040: 128K Soft E Enduro Race ? E-Motion ? Escape from Singe´s Castle ? Exolon Record 5050: 128K Soft F Fairlight ? Football Director 2 ? Foxx fights back ? Frightmare ? Fast Food ? Finders Keeper ? Future Knight ? Fire Record 5060: 128K Soft G Gauntlet 2 ? Ghostbusters 2 ? Ghosts´ n´Goblins ? Golden Axe ? Guerilla War Record 5070: 128K Soft H Head Over Heels ? Highsteel ? Hostages ? Hudson Hawk ? Hammerboy 1 ? Hammerboy 2 ? Hero Quest Record 5080: 128K Soft I Ice Palace ? Indiana Jones 3 ? Impossamole ? IK+ ? Iron Lord ? Ironman Record 5090: 128K Soft J Jaws Record 5100: 128K Soft K Kendo ? Killed to Death ? Knight Thyme Record 5110: 128K Soft L Laser Squad ? Led Storm ? Licence to Kill ? Light Corridor ? Line Of Fire ? Logic ? Logo ? Lords of Chaos Record 5111: 128K Soft L2 Loderunner Record 5120: 128K Soft M Magic Moon pt.1 ? Magic Moon pt.2 ? Magic Moon pt.3 ? Marauder ? Mask I ? Mean Streaker ? Midnight Resistence ? Mystical Record 5121: 128K Soft M2 Motos ? Myth ? Monaco Grand Prix ? Monte Carlo Record 5130: 128K Soft N Never E
Re: Loading Sam Tape into Sim Coupe
Why a printer port? That was used in ancient ages of emulators. Today you just use your soundcard to load tapes. Especially in Windows, it's technically impossible to use non-DMA sound input, because it would either failed to work or hurt the multitasking system core. BUT! SimCoupe emulator doesn't support tapes, and ASCD emulator supports just simple TAP files. So if you want to use some tapes, you currently must use a conversion program (look at www.worldofspectrum.org) to convert tape to TAP file. And I wouldn't bet it will work 100%, since Sam isn't 100% Spectrum. --Mgr.(MSc.) Ale Keprt (also known as Aley)[EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182Dept. of Computer Science, VB Technical UniversityOstrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz-- - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Sent: Sunday, January 09, 2005 11:57 AM Subject: Loading Sam Tape into Sim Coupe Hi all, This is something I have never done but with the talk of Sams tape I wondered if they can be loaded in Via the printer port , like the Z80 spectrum emulator? Do any of the emulator support this? As you could get a little gizmo [ from BG Services ] which fitted to the printer port - I still have one and would like to give it a try. Steve(spt)
Re: Let's discuss ZX Spectrum games
Codemasters and a few others denied the distribution. Of course. We can check each game against WoS for sure. Ideally, we could make a real database with online connection to WoS database. (Who knows, everything can be done. :-) -- Mgr.(MSc.) Ales Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VSB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz -- - Original Message - From: "Andrew Collier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Sunday, January 09, 2005 2:13 PM Subject: Re: Let's discuss ZX Spectrum games Aley Keprt wrote: But what about - large games with multi-loading levels converted from tape to Sam disk - AY music converted to Sam Coupe Philips SAA chip - 128k-only games converted to Sam - nonworking games fixed to work on Sam I think these games can be counted, since you simply can't load a tape/snapshot file into an emulator and play it without any changes. Personally I think they should be kept separated from "native" Sam programs - I don't want to perpetuate the notion that the Sam was only good for playing Spectrum games. But it probably is useful to preserve the games which had to be changed in some way to make them run. However, if they are made available for download on samcoupe.org, then it's probably best to distribute only the ones which are already available through worldofspectrum - at least a couple of the ones in Wolfgang's list are by CodeMasters who have denied distribution, for example. Andrew -- --- Andrew Collier http://www.intensity.org.uk/ --- -- Have you lost your Marbles? http://www.marillion.com/
Re: Another example why I dislike .DSK format
Oh yeah, 819200 bytes certainly >is< Sam disk, but neither Total Commander, nor Windows Explorer knows it. So when you click on a DSK file, it opens the associated program. This problem is also realted to often used "ZIP for everything". Sometimes I think we'd need a tiny universal loader, which will be associated with the particular extension, load the file, examine the contents and/or file size and start the right program. Does an utility like this already exist? And of course, .SAM means "sample", it's used for years for sound samples. :-) Don't we have SDF or something, which is a generic Sam disk format? -- Mgr.(MSc.) Ales Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VSB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz -- - Original Message - From: "Andrew Collier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Sunday, January 09, 2005 1:53 PM Subject: Re: Another example why I dislike .DSK format On Jan 9, 2005, at 10:30 am, Aley Keprt wrote: No, that's a reason why you don't like certain operating systems' assumption that a three letter extension can uniquely identify a file type. We know, for example, that a file 819200 bytes long doesn't represent a +3 disk. .dsk is very convenient for simple images. But there have been discussions here of a more expandable disk format which we can adopt as standard, and we can call it what we like. Does .sam mean anything yet? Andrew -- --- Andrew Collier http://www.intensity.org.uk/ --- -- Have you lost your Marbles? http://www.marillion.com/
Let's discuss ZX Spectrum games
So what do you think: Are games converted from ZX Spectrum worthy? I mean should they be counted as "Sam Coupe games", or not? I assume we can skip regular ZX Spectrum 48k games which can be loaded (if we have got some luck :-) into a regular emulator. As I remember, I made a TAP file based emulator back in 1994, and I am sure many other good emulators do exist, which can load files from ftp.worldofspectrum.org without any conversions. But what about - large games with multi-loading levels converted from tape to Sam disk - AY music converted to Sam Coupe Philips SAA chip - 128k-only games converted to Sam - nonworking games fixed to work on Sam I think these games can be counted, since you simply can't load a tape/snapshot file into an emulator and play it without any changes. I personally made several conversions back in 1992-93, and I am sure other people did as well. So we could possibly build up a nice "Spectrum on Sam" game database. :-) I found 12 diskettes full of ZX Spectrum 128k and/or multi-load games converted to Sam. I personally did mainly the tape->disk conversions, because it is the easiest part (and I was 13, eh, so it was quite hard for me either... :-). Later I also made a half-universal 48k+AY emulator, which supported 48k+AY snapshot files. Then I also converted some very simple 128k games (they just used 128k memory for AY music). I also have some 128k-only games for Sam, like North & South (one of my all-time favourites :-) or Terminator 2. So what do you think, and - especially - what games do you have got? I'm waiting your comments. -- Mgr.(MSc.) Aleš Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VŠB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz --
Another example why I dislike .DSK format
According to several ZX Spectrum emulation pages, they use .DSK for Amstrad CPC diskette images, which are also identical to ZX SPectrum 128 +3 diskette images. They also define .MGT as +D diskette image, and that's exactly what Allan Skillman started to call .DSK. I bet that this "MGT" is the same MGT as we may think, since +D disk drives were manufactured by the same company as Sam Coupe. I am curious if we could change the extension to let our world is more compatible to the (much bigger one) Amstrad and Spectrum +3 world. :-) -- Mgr.(MSc.) Aleš Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VŠB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz --
Re: Sam Coupe TAP files
It's just a simple solution, since I have never seen a real Sam tape. I just know only what I personally saved with Sam Basic. I don't support neither TZX nor copy-protected stuff, since I simply have never seen any! Can't emulate nonexisting stuff (nonexisting in my life). In 1991-1993 I converted many many many so-called multiload games from 48k and 128k ZX Spectrum tapes to Sam Coupe, so I am quite experienced in tape handling asm routines. So I just looked to Sam ROM, and did some hooks there. That's all. :-) Btw. It was definitely easier than doing AY music conversions in ZXS games like I did in the past. :-))) While I was sometimes unsuccessful in AY code conversion, this TAP handler seems to be working. Both LOAD and SAVE. :-) Maybe it's also beacuse I was 13 when I did AY conversion, and today I'm more than twice as old.. :-) Look to ascd/tape.c. The tape handling code is quite long, since I tried to keep as much as possible from the ROM code. Even some custom loaders are supported, if they fallback to ROM at least for the core loop. It also needed to emulate some special behaviour of Sam ROM code regarding to ZX tapes loaded into Sam Basic (without emulator). You know, there's a special treatment for ZX tapes loaded directly to Sam Basic. (Tell me who knowed this before? I definitely not.) So this is fast-laod. Defenders don't take more than a few milliseconds. :-) But obviously, I'm sure that Simon Owen will also want to emulate the real slow loading. I'm not interested in this. :-) -- Mgr.(MSc.) Aleš Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VŠB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz -- - Original Message - From: "Edwin Blink" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Monday, January 03, 2005 2:05 AM Subject: Re: Sam Coupe TAP files > > 4. Note that original TAP file format can't handle all Sam Coupe files. > Obviously, it's limited to ZXS, which can't have files > 64KB. So I made a > little extension to the TAP format. If the files are < 64KB in size, it's > the real TAP, but if files need to be > 64KB in size, there's a little > extension. See ASCD source code for details. > > http://www.keprt.cz/progs/ascd/ascd096src.zip > > Had a quick look at it but my Cs not that good. > > Could your explain your solution ? > > > Edwin > > > > >
Re: Multiplayer Sam
Sorry, I am really busy now, so I really can't continue this. I will end up with a short message: IT'S ALREADY DONE AND IT WORKS! If this is not enough, I can't help you. Note that two years ago I also worked on a commercial PC game (Hidden & Dangerous 2), and I did the networking stuff., so I feel quite skilled. :-) Networks never be so fast, and it always worked. Gnerally, delay upto 100ms is usually quite acceptable in gameplay, and if you get roundtrip ping under 50ms, it's quite good gameplay. I think 50ms isn't unreal. -- Mgr.(MSc.) Ales Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VSB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz -- - Original Message - From: "Simon Cooke" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Monday, January 03, 2005 10:52 AM Subject: RE: Multiplayer Sam > Aley wrote: >> No complete dump! You just need to start with the same >> emulator.exe file, the same ROM files, and DSK/TAP file. Then >> you send keys (+ additional I/O input, if it's random). >> That's all you need to handle. >> >> Sam doesn't have any ability of real random number >> generation. It's never random. All pseudo-random numbers are >> generated from register values, which are always all the >> same, except I/O input. So I/O is the only thing you need to store. > > That won't work. Sorry. > > Games run on a 1/50th of a second clock. That's one tick every 20ms. > > It takes 10ms to get to the first hop outside of my home on the network. > > Which means that the minimum round trip - assuming perfect network > conditions - is 20ms. With that little leeway, the moment anything stalls, > everyones game will have to freeze. (Sometimes, I get 15ms to the local > backbone... Other times, I get 66ms). > > Modern games go to HUGE lengths to get around network lag, including user > action prediction, interpolation, etc etc. (take a look at how they did it > on Halo 2 - you can find the article on howitworks.com ). > > You could get Chaos to work, because it's a turn-by-turn game. That's > about > it. > > > >
Re: Sam Coupe TAP files
It's just a simple solution, since I have never seen a real Sam tape. I just know only what I personally saved with Sam Basic. I don't support neither TZX nor copy-protected stuff, since I simply have never seen any! Can't emulate nonexisting stuff (nonexisting in my life). In 1991-1993 I converted many many many so-called multiload games from 48k and 128k ZX Spectrum tapes to Sam Coupe, so I am quite experienced in tape handling asm routines. So I just looked to Sam ROM, and did some hooks there. That's all. :-) Btw. It was definitely easier than doing AY music conversions in ZXS games like I did in the past. :-))) While I was sometimes unsuccessful in AY code conversion, this TAP handler seems to be working. Both LOAD and SAVE. :-) Maybe it's also beacuse I was 13 when I did AY conversion, and today I'm more than twice as old.. :-) Look to ascd/tape.c. The tape handling code is quite long, since I tried to keep as much as possible from the ROM code. Even some custom loaders are supported, if they fallback to ROM at least for the core loop. It also needed to emulate some special behaviour of Sam ROM code regarding to ZX tapes loaded into Sam Basic (without emulator). You know, there's a special treatment for ZX tapes loaded directly to Sam Basic. (Tell me who knowed this before? I definitely not.) So this is fast-laod. Defenders don't take more than a few milliseconds. :-) But obviously, I'm sure that Simon Owen will also want to emulate the real slow loading. I'm not interested in this. :-) -- Mgr.(MSc.) Aleš Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VŠB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz -- - Original Message - From: "Edwin Blink" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Monday, January 03, 2005 2:05 AM Subject: Re: Sam Coupe TAP files 4. Note that original TAP file format can't handle all Sam Coupe files. Obviously, it's limited to ZXS, which can't have files > 64KB. So I made a little extension to the TAP format. If the files are < 64KB in size, it's the real TAP, but if files need to be > 64KB in size, there's a little extension. See ASCD source code for details. http://www.keprt.cz/progs/ascd/ascd096src.zip Had a quick look at it but my Cs not that good. Could your explain your solution ? Edwin
Re: Multiplayer Sam
Sorry, I am really busy now, so I really can't continue this. I will end up with a short message: IT'S ALREADY DONE AND IT WORKS! If this is not enough, I can't help you. Note that two years ago I also worked on a commercial PC game (Hidden & Dangerous 2), and I did the networking stuff., so I feel quite skilled. :-) Networks never be so fast, and it always worked. Gnerally, delay upto 100ms is usually quite acceptable in gameplay, and if you get roundtrip ping under 50ms, it's quite good gameplay. I think 50ms isn't unreal. -- Mgr.(MSc.) Ales Keprt (also known as Aley) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** www.keprt.cz *** ICQ: 82357182 Dept. of Computer Science, VSB Technical University Ostrava, CZ - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.cs.vsb.cz -- - Original Message - From: "Simon Cooke" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Monday, January 03, 2005 10:52 AM Subject: RE: Multiplayer Sam Aley wrote: No complete dump! You just need to start with the same emulator.exe file, the same ROM files, and DSK/TAP file. Then you send keys (+ additional I/O input, if it's random). That's all you need to handle. Sam doesn't have any ability of real random number generation. It's never random. All pseudo-random numbers are generated from register values, which are always all the same, except I/O input. So I/O is the only thing you need to store. That won't work. Sorry. Games run on a 1/50th of a second clock. That's one tick every 20ms. It takes 10ms to get to the first hop outside of my home on the network. Which means that the minimum round trip - assuming perfect network conditions - is 20ms. With that little leeway, the moment anything stalls, everyones game will have to freeze. (Sometimes, I get 15ms to the local backbone... Other times, I get 66ms). Modern games go to HUGE lengths to get around network lag, including user action prediction, interpolation, etc etc. (take a look at how they did it on Halo 2 - you can find the article on howitworks.com ). You could get Chaos to work, because it's a turn-by-turn game. That's about it.
RE: Comet->ASCII
And what's that pyz80?
/---
Aley
-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Andrew Collier
Sent: Tuesday, January 04, 2005 1:17 PM
To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
Subject: Comet->ASCII
Hi all (but Cookie in particular),
I have a copy of the COMET <-> ASCII converter program, which says it's
version 1.2. Is there a later version anywhere? I've got a couple of
comet files which seem to make it fall over.
NB. Anyone who's interested, watch out for a big update to pyz80 within
the next couple of days. I've made a lot of fixes over Christmas, I
just need to do a bit more testing before uploading the files.
Cheers,
Andrew
--
--- Andrew Collier
http://www.intensity.org.uk/ ---
--
Have you lost your Marbles? http://www.marillion.com/
RE: Sam Coupe TAP files
:-))) -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Simon Cooke Sent: Monday, January 03, 2005 10:59 AM To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: RE: Sam Coupe TAP files Edwin Blink wrote: > Had a quick look at it but my Cs not that good. > > Could your explain your solution ? > > Edwin OK... Gotta ask... What's your day job, Edwin? If you can write assembler like a demon, and not C, then we need to fix that. I'm willing to help in any way I can.
