Re: SAM Revival issue 25 now out! (And other recent releases!)

[Gavin Smith]

My copy arrived yesterday. I’ve missed a couple of issues lately but this is 
definitely the best SAM Revival issue that I’ve ever seen. It’s so packed with 
stuff that you’d be forgiven for thinking it was the early 90s again :) Love 
the original Robin Evans artwork too, can’t believe you tracked him down to get 
new SAM robot doodles. Colin, you’re a maniac. 

Thanks for a fantastic read!
Gavin


> On Oct 11, 2015, at 12:27 PM, Ian Spencer  wrote:
> 
> Hi Colin,
> 
> thanks obviously a lot of work and a really great issue. Enjoyed reading it 
> from beginning to end.
> 
> Best wishes,
> Ian (Spencer)
> 
> Am 11.10.2015 um 12:31 schrieb Colin Piggot:
>> Hi Folks,
>> 
>> It's finally out! SAM Revival issue 25!
>> 
>> 56 pages packed with SAM goodies for the 25th Anniversary of the computer.
>> 
>> What's in the magazine? Well, let's take a look at the cover first. I 
>> commissioned a new drawing by Robin Evans - the original artist for the SAM 
>> robot, you'll be familiar with all his doodles in the SAM Coupe User Guide 
>> and the early MGT adverts from 1989/1990. Well he dusted off his memory of 
>> drawing the robot and has came up trumps with the drawing for the cover. As 
>> part of the commission I've also got a couple of prints of the cover artwork 
>> which Robin has hand signed - the first of which will be auctioned on eBay 
>> on 20th October 2015 - I'll post up some photos over the next few days on my 
>> website and twitter and a link to the auction once it's started. Although I 
>> paid for the comission of the artwork from my own pocket all proceeds from 
>> the auction will be used towards my ongoing work developing new products for 
>> the SAM Coupe. Stay tuned for more details of that nearer the time...
>> 
>> Inside the magazine, a mammoth news section kicks off after the editorial, 
>> covering news from around the SAM scene, with all the details of new 
>> hardware, software and demos for the SAM Coupe as well as previews of 
>> projects that are being worked on.
>> 
>> Feature articles shows off all the work undertaken by Phil Wilson with the 
>> customising of his SAM, plus shorter articles about several other 
>> customisation projects. The Developer Diary section looks at the new game 
>> that's Warren Lee is preparing, and a quick look at TRINload from Simon Owen 
>> which is a utility to transfer data from a PC to the SAM via the Trinity 
>> Ethernet Interface.
>> 
>> Smaller articles look at patching some demos to make them compatible on mass 
>> storage devices. I also take a look at some of the rarer and more unique 
>> items I've collected over the years for the SAM Coupe.
>> 
>> Throw in the usual SAM Snippets, SAM Correspondence and SAM Comment sections 
>> and that wraps up this gigantic 56 page issue of the magazine.
>> 
>> SAM Revival issue 25 comes with not just one, but two cover disks. On the 
>> first is the classic SAM Coupe game 'Vegetable Vacation' from Fissionsoft, 
>> which was originally released in 1992 by Revelation/SAMCO. Next up is 
>> 'MobyDX' from Black Jet - a new release especially for SAM's anniversary - 
>> thanks guys!
>> 
>> The first coverdisk also features plenty of software for the Trinity 
>> Ethernet Interface - starting off with a new version of B-DOS. This version 
>> (1.5t beta 6) allows the Trinity to use SD/SDHC cards up to a whopping 64GB 
>> in size. An installer is also included on the disk to store the new DOS on 
>> the Trinity Ethernet Interface's EEPROM if you use the optional BOOT ROM. 
>> Plus, there are the first few TCP/IP demo programs for the Trinity Ethernet 
>> Interface. The first demo downloads a screen/music from the internet, the 
>> second demo downloads the full game 'XOR' from the net directly to your SAM. 
>> This all really shows what's on the horizon for the SAM now it's connected 
>> to the internet. My thanks to all those involved with pushing the Trinity 
>> forward - Adrian Brown, Simon Owen, Chris Pile, and content for the 
>> downloadable demos from Warren Lee, David Sanders and Howard Price.
>> 
>> The second coverdisk is dedicated entirely to mind blowing megademo from 
>> MNEMOtech's Andrew Collier - 'Stars and Sprites'. Andrew has done some 
>> really impressive coding for the fantastic graphical effects and great 
>> music! Plus one of the scrollers does mention something about a hidden 
>> part... H!
>> 
>> SAM Revival 25 costs £4.99 with UK postage, £7.99 with EU Airmail postage 
>> and £8.99 with Airmail postage for the rest of the world.
>> 
>> To order by PayPal or debit/credit card please see my website at: 
>> www.samcoupe.com
>> 
>> 
>> Other recent releases from myself include:
>> 
>> ** SID Soundchip Interface - 2014 Edition
>> 
>> Originally released back in 2003, my SID Interface allowed the SAM to use 
>> the soundchip from a Commodore 64. This all stemmed from my own small pet 
>> project exploring old forms of computer sound - with it's unique sound the 
>> SID 

Re: The return of Jowspam on WOS?

[Gavin Smith]

I'd put money on it being him! Luckily, he never seems to capitalise his 
comments, so they're easily spotted (and ignored) in the Recent comments box.


On Jun 6, 2013, at 11:03 AM, Chris Pile chris.p...@blueyonder.co.uk wrote:

 A little heads up for Andrew:
 
 Someone called jamesrjatkinson is spamming World Of Sam.
 
 Looks like Jowspam gibberish to me - especially as one of
 the links posted takes you to his YouTube.  :( :( :(

Re: The return of Jowspam on WOS?

[Gavin Smith]

I'm perfectly calm, thank you. When I went to the site for a second visit after 
the initial posts, there were even more of his jibberish, filling up nearly the 
whole Recent Comments box, masking legitimate and interesting posts, that's 
what I find frustrating. 

Glad to see it's gone now.


On Jun 6, 2013, at 2:47 PM, Andrew Collier and...@intensity.org.uk wrote:

 Hi,
 
 Please calm down, most of those comments were on the web for less than
 three hours. In any case, a couple of other people *do* already have
 admin privileges over comments.
 
 It's not quite as simple as me handing out admin accounts left right
 and centre because the version of drupal running the site is quite old
 (and I can't update without rewriting most of the site) and apparently
 slightly incompatible with the php version now on the server, meaning
 that parts of the admin interface are a bit broken. This is not a UI
 that I would expect most people to want to deal with.
 
 Andrew
 
 On 6 June 2013 14:03, Gavin Smith gavinsm...@me.com wrote:
 For goodness sake, can a few of us not get admin rights and remove this 
 nonsense when he posts? It puts me off going to the site, sifting through 
 this crap.
 
 Sent from my iPhone
 
 On 6 Jun 2013, at 11:22, Adrian Brown adr...@apbcomputerservices.co.uk 
 wrote:
 
 We do attract some odd people ;)
 
 -Original Message-
 From: owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no [mailto:owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no] On
 Behalf Of Chris Pile
 Sent: 06 June 2013 11:15
 To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
 Subject: Re: The return of Jowspam on WOS?
 
 You're right - capitalisation and grammar are pretty much out the window on
 his comments!  Also notice the RJ initials in the middle of Mr James RJ
 Atkinson!  ;)
 
 
 On 06/06/2013 11:08, Gavin Smith wrote:
 I'd put money on it being him! Luckily, he never seems to capitalise his
 comments, so they're easily spotted (and ignored) in the Recent comments
 box.
 
 
 On Jun 6, 2013, at 11:03 AM, Chris Pile chris.p...@blueyonder.co.uk
 wrote:
 
 A little heads up for Andrew:
 
 Someone called jamesrjatkinson is spamming World Of Sam.
 
 Looks like Jowspam gibberish to me - especially as one of the links
 posted takes you to his YouTube.  :( :( :(
 
 
 

Re: SimCoupe / Trinity

[Gavin Smith]

I don't buy the argument that emulation helps or hinders sales of physical 
products, at least not these days! I think anyone who wants to use real 
hardware is probably already using it and anyone who doesn't want physical 
hardware probably isn't going to change their mind.

In any case it's pretty academic, Colin has been consistently against his stuff 
being emulated so that's the way it is. 

Sent from my iPad

On 3 May 2013, at 17:10, Tommo H tomh.retros...@gmail.com wrote:

 I've no personal opinion beyond than that Colin's decision should be
 respected — but the law graduate part of me couldn't let it lie so,
 for the sake of playing devil's advocate:
 
 (i) people would be more likely to buy the hardware because it would
 be more likely that developers had produced software for it; and
 (ii) in any case they'd be no less likely to because if they don't buy
 hardware that is emulated then they don't have a Sam to plug it into.
 
 I would phrase the other argument more that:
 
 (i) emulation reduces the perceived value of hardware, so will either
 push prices down or affect sales; and
 (ii) in any case is a fundamentally different experience from that
 Colin intended, so could accurately be described as an unapproved
 gross distortion of his efforts. Which is naturally not something he'd
 want.
 
 On 3 May 2013, at 08:42, Adrian Brown adr...@enliten.force9.co.uk wrote:
 
 But you have to look at it from the other point of view.  It takes a lot of
 time and money to develop hardware.  If it was readily available on
 emulation why would anyone buy the hardware?
 
 -Original Message-
 From: owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no [mailto:owner-sam-us...@nvg.ntnu.no] On
 Behalf Of Marcos Cruz
 Sent: 03 May 2013 15:25
 To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
 Subject: Re: SimCoupe / Trinity
 
 En/Je/On 2013-05-02 23:09, Stefan Drissen escribió / skribis / wrote :
 
 Sorry Stefan, I'm still against my hardware being emulated in
 SimCoupe.
 
 That's a pity, it's your right of course, but I think you are
 preventing your work from flourishing in a larger (emulated) audience.
 
 Allowing emulation may get some odd sods, myself included, wanting to
 write something for it, resulting in enough momentum for it to become
 interesting for a real SAM user, resulting in a sale for you. Sounds
 like egg and chicken basics to me.
 
 I agree with you, Stefan.
 
 Creating software and hardware for the real SAM is great and desirable, but
 emulation is the way most people can use, program or even meet a SAM.
 
 In my opinion, emulating a good interface is an avail for its seller and for
 the real machine users, because the interface becomes potentially more
 useful, and more desirable.
 
 Marcos
 
 --
 http://programandala.set
 

Re: SimCoupe / Trinity

[Gavin Smith]

A super SAM-type project has been talked about since Bob Brenchley kept us all 
going about his SamSon idea! If it's ever to happen, it will take someone to do 
it off their own back and just see it through because most of us on this list 
will be too skeptical and jaded to lend much support! I think such a project 
might even have had a wider market if it had been done years ago, before the 
Raspberry Pi. 

Colin has already got a 20+MHz Sam working with his prototype mayhem 
accelerator and the last time he mentioned it in his mag, he was looking at 
CPLD to reduce logic. He has also hinted in SR that a special issue would cover 
a secret project he was working on so maybe it's related to a Quazar Super Sam?

Sent from my iPad

On 3 May 2013, at 19:30, Leslie Anderson lezander...@gmail.com wrote:

 Would anybody buy it ??? How many SAM users would want one ?? And I'd have to 
 do costings to see how much the final unit would cost ! But if there are 
 people interested just let me know.
 
 
 On 3 May 2013 19:13, david brant davidcbr...@yahoo.com wrote:
 Well what you waiting for if it that easy! No idea with hardware myself.
 
 On 3 May 2013, at 18:46, Leslie Anderson wrote:
 
  Perhaps it's time for someone to design a NEW SAM COUPE. SAM II + or
  Super SAM.  What was done on the original SAM in dozen of chips could now
  be done in about 8 distinctive ICs Then everyone could have a Super 
  SAM!
 
  Z84C0020   Z80 CPU.. 20MHz
  K6T4008 512Kx 8 bit SRAM
  W27C010128K EEPROM
  MAX EPM7512   CPLD  512 macrocells
  SAA1099   Sound   (PSG)
 
 
  The MAX EPM7512 would be used to generate video, perform I/O, Memory
  Decoding etc. The original ZX Spectrum ULA used about 144 macrocells, so
  512 should be enough.
 
 
  On 3 May 2013 18:03, david brant davidcbr...@yahoo.com wrote:
 
 
  How about some means that you need the hardware to work on the PC,Mac etc
 

Hotline tapes

[Gavin Smith]

Some time back, someone on the list mentioned that they had the MGT Hotline 
recordings in a cassette - I think they were going to upload them. Was this 
ever done? Are they available somewhere?

http://www.worldofsam.org/node/438

Thanks
--
Gavin
Twitter: @gvnsmth, @libapp

Re: Hotline tapes

[Gavin Smith]

Cheers Mr Piggot.

--
Gavin
Twitter: @gvnsmth, @libapp



On Mar 11, 2013, at 7:46 PM, Colin Piggot qua...@clara.net wrote:

 Don't remember where exactly they were uploaded to, but I did download them 
 at the time - will pass them on to you.
 
 Colin
 =
 Quazar : Hardware, Software, Spares and Repairs for the SAM Coupé
 1995-2013 - Celebrating 19 Years of developing for the SAM Coupé
 Website: http://www.samcoupe.com/
 Twitter: @QuazarSamCoupe
 
 
 - Original Message - Some time back, someone on the list mentioned 
 that they had the MGT Hotline recordings in a cassette - I think they were 
 going to upload them. Was this ever done? Are they available somewhere?
 
 http://www.worldofsam.org/node/438
 
 Thanks
 --
 Gavin
 Twitter: @gvnsmth, @libapp
 
 
 
 

Re: New Game - Dave Invaders

[Gavin Smith]

Have to send a me too post - really impressed. Love the graphics. That's two 
good new SAM games in the last year (Rob's Garden Centre Of The Universe game 
being the other one) - what's going on?!

--
Gavin
Twitter: @gvnsmth, @libapp




On Jan 28, 2012, at 7:38 PM, James R Curry wrote:

 Very nice -- very Manic Miner, though visually quite different.
 
 I like the backgrounds a lot, and in fact, the only graphical complaint I 
 have is that the things you're meant to collect can get a little lost against 
 it.  (Perhaps if they blinked or changed colour or something).
 
 Otherwise, I can't fault it.  Good work!
 
 On Fri, Jan 27, 2012 at 7:49 AM, Andrew Gillen a...@joua.net wrote:
 Hi folks
  
 I've finished writing my first game for the SAM. In fact it is pretty much 
 the first game I've ever programmed in assembler (certainly on the SAM 
 anyway) . I've tinkered with various high level languages over the years but 
 have nothing to show for it.
  
 You can grab it from this rather minimalist website:
  
 http://www.joua.net/
  
 You need a 512KB SAM for it (although when playing it  you'd be forgiven for 
 asking why..).
  
 Just a run of the mill single screen platfomer, really, but I appreciate any 
 feed back. I've learned a heck of a lot of the year programming it and should 
 be taking the experience gained to improve my skills (what skills?!) when 
 tackling new projects which will be forthcoming!
  
 If you find the frame rate somewhat lacking on some levels then you can turn 
 off the music (e-tracker mods) to gain some processing time. Or just turn it 
 off anyway of course if you don't like it!
  
 Anyway, enjoy.
  
 Cheers
 Andrew.
 
 
 
 -- 
 James R Curry
 8...@itdoesntsuck.com

Re: The Garden Centre of the Universe.

[Gavin Smith]

On Sep 11, 2011, at 11:45 PM, Stefan Drissen wrote:

 Nice little game! BUT... level one really is too difficult. After at least
 10 attempts the little robot bugger is still getting his rocket ship just a
 bit sooner. The first level should be a bit easier to have a nice learning
 curve and prevent the player from feeling like an idiot.

Hmm, I have to say, I like the fact that it's so hard. It's old-school! I 
dislike iOS games that have 200 levels, but the first 50 are there to just be 
walked through. Bores me. This is a game on an 8-bit platform and it should be 
hard ;)


 =I also do not like having three operating modes, it makes gameplay
 'complicated'. I'm a seasoned first player shooter and iPad gamer... 

Yes, it did take me a little while to get used to it and it's sometimes a 
little annoying when you're trying to squash bugs. I might suggest that the 'M' 
key squishes bugs no matter what mode you are in, assuming you are standing in 
a square with bugs. Also, I sometimes find it hard to see if the bugs have been 
squished or not, when I'm squishing them - perhaps the circle the bugs fly in 
should be bigger, maybe around the girl's head?

I really enjoy this little game - how many levels do you envisage for the final 
game Rob?

Gavin

Re: The Garden Centre of the Universe.

[Gavin Smith]

On Sep 10, 2011, at 8:41 PM, the_wub ! wrote:

[snip]
 I'm not sure what I need to do to approve it for download, I can't
 remember for the life of me what I did on the page for wubtris...
 As soon as it is available I would be very grateful for feedback on
 how it plays, too hard/easy/boring etc...!

Hey Rob
Lovely wee game, very nice presentation, love the graphics and storyline  - had 
a go at the first level five times but still can't quite beat it! 

Any hints or am I just being dumb? :)

Cheers
Gavin

Re: New SAM!

[Gavin Smith]

Erm, in my infinite intelligence and perfectionism, I listed the new  
SAM as a SAM Coupé. This means that if you search for SAM Coupe  
you won't find it. DOH! It ends today (Weds) at lunchtime for anyone  
interested - I say this just in case someone searched for SAM Coupe  
and couldn't find it. No more spam, promise ;)


http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItemitem=220245979532



On 13 Jun 2008, at 2:17 PM, Thomas Harte wrote:


That's quite a find. But one thing, the auction says:

One of my pics shows the power supply without the plug and if you
look closely you can see that the wires are tied up and completely
unused., and:
I have uploaded pictures of the test that I carried out.

But the listing only seems to have one picture (the Sam in blue
wrapping) and no obvious links to other photos. But maybe I'm being a
dunce?

On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 1:49 PM, Gavin Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED]  
wrote:
I've a brand new SAM on eBay at the moment! It was won in a CVG  
magazine
competition many years ago and stored in a cupboard all these  
years. Check

it out if you're interested:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItemitem=220245979532

Gavin

Re: New SAM!

[Gavin Smith]

The TV screenshot is a crap pic - the overlay on the SAM test screen  
is from the TV itself (for adjusting colour etc).



On 18 Jun 2008, at 12:09 PM, Leszek Chmielewski wrote:

That's a bit bad, unfortunally it is not possible to edit (at least  
one day before auctions end), a eBay fault! There will be no second  
time for you to try, unless you stop the auction, but I would write  
something like SAM Coupé (SAM Coupe). I myself have two SAM Coupé  
so no need for it at moment, I just need a new drive, but this SAM   
does not have one, right? The current price is okay for a new SAM,  
so if I didn't had purchased a car this month, it would be a nice  
buy, even for a higher price and without drive. The TV Screenshoot  
looks a bit strange (cannot zoom it), maybe bacause it was the first  
ROM version?


LCD

Gavin Smith schrieb:
Erm, in my infinite intelligence and perfectionism, I listed the  
new SAM as a SAM Coupé. This means that if you search for SAM  
Coupe you won't find it. DOH! It ends today (Weds) at lunchtime  
for anyone interested - I say this just in case someone searched  
for SAM Coupe and couldn't find it. No more spam, promise ;)


http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItemitem=220245979532



On 13 Jun 2008, at 2:17 PM, Thomas Harte wrote:


That's quite a find. But one thing, the auction says:

One of my pics shows the power supply without the plug and if you
look closely you can see that the wires are tied up and completely
unused., and:
I have uploaded pictures of the test that I carried out.

But the listing only seems to have one picture (the Sam in blue
wrapping) and no obvious links to other photos. But maybe I'm  
being a

dunce?

On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 1:49 PM, Gavin Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED]  
wrote:
I've a brand new SAM on eBay at the moment! It was won in a CVG  
magazine
competition many years ago and stored in a cupboard all these  
years. Check

it out if you're interested:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItemitem=220245979532

Gavin

New SAM!

[Gavin Smith]

I've a brand new SAM on eBay at the moment! It was won in a CVG  
magazine competition many years ago and stored in a cupboard all these  
years. Check it out if you're interested:


http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItemitem=220245979532

Gavin

Re: New SAM!

[Gavin Smith]

I know, it's a bit unclear. I might put a gallery of pics on the web  
somewhere for people to see.


Gavin

On 13 Jun 2008, at 2:19 PM, Thomas Harte wrote:


No, wait, the small picture at the top has arrows below it to flick
back and forth. I was in fact being a dunce.

On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 2:17 PM, Thomas Harte [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
 wrote:

That's quite a find. But one thing, the auction says:

One of my pics shows the power supply without the plug and if you
look closely you can see that the wires are tied up and completely
unused., and:
I have uploaded pictures of the test that I carried out.

But the listing only seems to have one picture (the Sam in blue
wrapping) and no obvious links to other photos. But maybe I'm being a
dunce?

On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 1:49 PM, Gavin Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED]  
wrote:
I've a brand new SAM on eBay at the moment! It was won in a CVG  
magazine
competition many years ago and stored in a cupboard all these  
years. Check

it out if you're interested:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItemitem=220245979532

Gavin

Atom-Lite for sale

[Gavin Smith]

Anyone interested? It's the original Atom-Lite (which is in the  
archived news section of SAM Newswire if you want to see pics of it).  
Replacing it as I need the Dallas clock in the AL+ so selling it on  
(with Edwin's blessing) for a few quid.


Any offers? Comes with the boot ROM too.

--
http://www.samnewswire.co.uk
SAM Coupé News and Info, regularly updated

[no subject]

[Gavin Smith]

who

iChat/AIM users

[Gavin Smith]

Perhaps you guys are all on Bebo or FaceBook or whatever today's  
fashionable social site is, but if any of you are on iChat or AIM and  
fancy a SAM chat now and then, feel free to add me - my address is  
[EMAIL PROTECTED]


Cheers!

Re: Mind Games II

[Gavin Smith]

Andrew, would it be possible to have three pages that automatically  
compile to separately show which titles we have permission to  
distribute, haven't yet got permission and have been denied? Just 3  
very simple pages showing the title and publisher for each status.


I know we have the Copyrights page but it's still kind of hard to  
tell at a glance how far along we are with these things.


Cheers!


On 17 Sep 2007, at 9:18 PM, Adrian Brown wrote:


Ive uploaded a dsk image for Mind Games II, although I imagine we will
have the same copyright issues as for mind games I, but at least its
another title in the archive :)

SAM Revival issue 19

[Gavin Smith]

SR 19 just arrived through my letter box. I really don't want to come  
across as ass-licking towards Colin, nor do I want people to think  
I'm doing some sort of guerilla marketing for Colin... but this is a  
seriously good issue. I'll not spoil the surprise just yet in case of  
what's on the cover and what the new hardware is in case some of you  
haven't got your post yet, but you'll be impressed!


A quick flip through and the mag seems to have matured into a really  
excellent read with much less Quazar propaganda! Colin knows that  
I've had a go at him several times about better coverage for non- 
Quazar stuff and he's really nailed it with this issue. Lots of  
coverage of stuff from other developers and a whole new article  
series from Adrian Brown which looks fantastic.


If you're ever going to bother to buy an issue of SAM Revival, I  
highly recommend you start with this one.

Re: Sam Revival issue 19 out now!

[Gavin Smith]

On 12 Sep 2007, at 5:47 PM, Edwin Blink wrote:



From: Colin Piggot [EMAIL PROTECTED]


Onto the magazine. The cover gives away what I've been working on  
recently
myself - the Trinity Ethernet Interface, bringing ethernet to your  
Sam


When I read about your surprise project called trinity I had to  
think about the Matrix
Movie and wondered if it would be network related. Cool to see it  
is ! Can't wait for your mag to arrive and read more about it.


Mmmm Trinity, ethernet interface...

Mmmm, Carrie-Anne Moss...

WOS spam

[Gavin Smith]

WOSam is currently getting spammed like crazy by a user called  
brianbaker. Andrew or Dan can you guys delete his account? Is there  
an easy way to delete all his comments?


Gavin

Re: Sam Revival issue 18 out now...

[Gavin Smith]

Issue 18 - that's longer than most SAM mags ever reached! Sounds good, looking 
forward to my copy sir.

Gavin

 
On Wednesday, May 30, 2007, at 10:48AM, Colin Piggot [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
wrote:
Issue 18 of Sam Revival is now out, and it's a jam packed issue!

Let's kick off with what's on the disk. First up are the three brand new
emulators from Simon Owen which are truly stunning! He's been busy and has
completed his Galaksija and Orao emulators which were announced in the
previous issue. The Galaksija is a Z80 based computer from Yugoslavia, while
the Orao is a 6502 based Croation system so that's using Simon's latest 6502
CPU emulator core. Both are now fully emulated on the Sam and there's a pile
of games on the disk for each system. To finish off his hat trick Simon has
also released an Apple 1 emulator too!

It doesn't stop there! Also on the coverdisk is the latest version of Chris
Pile's Sam Defender, and also Captain Comic - a classic platformer by Lars
Perrson which was first released back in 1994 and was a remake of a freeware
PC game. Wrapping up the coverdisk there's also a demo I've coded up to copy
an old school effect from the Amiga and includes the source code.

Onto the paper side. 40 pages jam packed with news and articles. The
Developer Diary is bursting at the seams with information from Simon about
all three of his new emulators, and there's also the first screenshots of
ISAAC - the port of Rebelstar that's being developed by Stuart Brady and
Warren Lee.

This issue also sees the start of a new programming column. I've looking at
recreating some demo effects from the Amiga on the Sam, and tackle a two
layer tile based scroller.The issue wraps up with the compulsory sprinkling
of Sam Snippets with bits of trivia from the Sam world. Hope you enjoy the
issue!

This issue of Sam Revival costs £3.99 for the UK, or £4.79 for EU including
Airmail postage. You can also subscribe for three issues at a discounted
price of £10.99 (UK) or £13.49 (EU) and save yourself some pennies!

It's easy to order - for PayPal payments (or Credit/Debit card through the
PayPal checkout if you dont have a PayPal account) just click on the Buy Now
buttons on the website. Or for cheque and postal orders email me directly
and i'll be happy to pass on my postal details.

Subscribers copies went out in the post earlier this morning, so should be
with you in a day or two.

All the best,

Colin
=
Quazar : Hardware, Software, Spares and Repairs for the Sam Coupe
1995-2007 - Celebrating 12 Years of developing for the Sam Coupe
Website: http://www.samcoupe.com/

Re: New Stuff

[Gavin Smith]

On 24 May 2007, at 10:51 AM, Dan Dooré wrote:

[snip]


But maybe World of SAM could keep a page of current projects?


Something like this do? http://www.worldofsam.org/node/575

Dan.


Cool. My only problem with WoSAM is the lack of visibility of certain  
sections. I realise there's the RSS feed but I'm thinking of people  
who stumble across the site for the first time. How would they find  
the above page if it hasn't been updated for a while? I think the  
front page could be better used to link to more sections than it  
currently does.


Gavin

Re: New Stuff

[Gavin Smith]

:(

Still, it's not too late! ;) This is your enigma! You could do a demo  
and call it Puddles Of Water and silence us all forever? ;)


Gavin


On 24 May 2007, at 10:26 PM, Simon Cooke wrote:


Ouch. I'm hurt. :D

Of course, no way to work on it now. No idea where all my equipment  
went. I
had a bunch in the loft at my Dad's place. But it's not there any  
more :(


So no discs, no source material :(


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:owner-sam- 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

On Behalf Of Geoff Winkless
Sent: 05/24/2007 3:20 AM
To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
Subject: RE: New Stuff

Dan Dooré wrote:

But maybe World of SAM could keep a page of current projects?


Something like this do? http://www.worldofsam.org/node/575


You missed off Status of Ice

G


_ 
_

This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System.
For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email
_ 
_

Re: New Stuff

[Gavin Smith]

On 23 May 2007, at 4:57 AM, Andrew Park wrote:

There seems to be some more activity on this list which is good  
news which
has got me thinking, like me there are probably people out there  
that are
trying to write new games for our beloved SAM but lack that final  
bit of the

jigsaw whether it be some routines, music or graphics.

Would it be a reasonable suggestion to make that we set-up some  
resource
centre so that everyone can submit ideas or source so that we all  
can use. I
understand people thinking about others getting something for  
nothing and it
would probably end up being the same few submitters but I think it  
would

help the community.


It's a pretty good idea but I'm not sure there's *that* much going  
on. It would seem to make sense if people just talked a little more  
about their projects on the list and that way people could contribute  
if required. But maybe World of SAM could keep a page of current  
projects?


Gavin

Grrrr...

[Gavin Smith]

http://www.meanmachinesmag.co.uk/feature/89/mm-staff-love-in.php

Back in those early golden days of MegaTech when we were still on  
the same floor as Mean Machines, it was a privilege to work for  
absolutely fuck all. Of course, we still needed to eat (mainly baked  
beans on toast), so to pay for that we would A. Borrow money off Oz.  
B. Do freelance for a sister magazine. If that magazine was Mean  
Machines, great! Because we'd probably already played the game and we  
just needed to do extra screenshots. Occassionally though it was  
Sinclair User.


Don't get me wrong, the editor, Alan Dyke, was a great bloke. But  
reviewing 48k Spectrum games that needed to load after playing  
Megadrive was fucking horrible. Rad and I mainly used to do it, and  
on this fateful night I think I was down in the Sinclair cellar  
reviewing Jim Bowen's Bullseye on the Sam Coupe (a kind of nerd-built  
super Spectrum: and, god, if you thought reviewing Spectrum games was  
tedious, imagine trying to load them on a Sam Coupe. What the fuck is  
a Sam Coupe? I wrote a comparison test on it for Sinclair User and I  
still don't know what one is. Verdict: bigger and whiter than a  
Spectrum. Has Sam Coupe written on it). 

Re: Atom-Lite on you tube

[Gavin Smith]

Hey, you didn't tell us it came with mind reading capabilities!

Nice vids :) In the second one, you realise we can see you b*llock  
naked in the relection of the TV screen?


Gavin

On 20 May 2007, at 4:58 PM, Edwin Blink wrote:


Here are some movies on the Atom-Lite.

http://www.youtube.com/v/xKIsEr660HA

http://www.youtube.com/v/QBVsGCV4sPA

Sorry for the poor  quallity. but it's a you tube thing. I don't  
have some place to store the original

40Mb and 20Mb versions

Edwin

Re: Atom-Lite CF interface

[Gavin Smith]

Hi Edwin
I've emailed you directly about getting one of these. Just wondering  
though, why wouldn't all Atom software work? I know the vast majority  
will work, I'm just curious.


Looks like a lovely little bit of hardware.

Lots of wee bits and pieces happening in the SAM scene this year, cool!

Gavin


On 18 May 2007, at 1:13 PM, Edwin Blink wrote:


Hi  everybody

I'm pleased to see the list so alive lately. I like your game  
Calvin ! it reminds me of the early 80s handheld games. Simple  
gameplay but
very addictive. I hope we will see finished version in the near  
feature.


I have some good news too. After a long time I finally have made
a CF interface for SAM that  comes in  a light version of the Atom.
Light meaning it is has 8-bit wide databus. CF-card are accessed
in 8-bit mode.So no capacity is lost and speed  is even faster. It's
designed in such a way that it fits in the right floppydiskdrive bay
whitout the need to open up SAM.
It is also compatible with most existing Atom software (some minor
changes are needed in some cases though) for example I didn't need
to make any changes for the Atom versions of Price of Persia 
Lemmings.

Here are some piccies:

http://home.orange.nl/edwin.blink/samcoupe/hardware/A-Lite/A-Lite- 
top.JPG


http://home.orange.nl/edwin.blink/samcoupe/hardware/A-Lite/A-Lite- 
side.JPG


I've got parts for another 3 Anyone interested ? Contact me directly.

Edwin

Re: Testing new routines - shiddy Tomato Antics

[Gavin Smith]

On 17 May 2007, at 11:33 PM, Calvin Allett wrote:

  I`m thinking four or five, but all different, the original demo
game back in `92 has a space shooter for level two, but only two ships
attacking, If I can speed it up and add in more aliens then I may  
still use that... but it`d take a few months to polish that turd :D


I was wanting a continous scene, as Metempsychosis always
impressed me with that demo (that I can`t find) of a wood, with day  
to night, owls flying, and constant leaves dropping from trees,  
sqirrels scuttling and climbing the trees etc etc... So


I wanted to have a pixel sized UFO visiting that planet in the  
distance, leaving it, then see the planet explode, then after a  
while, an asteroid
would come hurtling down, strike the ground, and the stars would  
tilt, and

the level would then be at roughly 45 degress with Tom the Tomatoe
rolling or bouncing down a hill, having to jump over stuff... I  
need to use
SAM Paint though to calculate how to rotate stars, and that  
sequence would happen possibly by flipping through 16 already drawn  
screen$




Heheh, I like your way of thinking! Keep us informed if you make  
progress!


Gavin

Re: Testing new routines - shiddy Tomato Antics

[Gavin Smith]

Actually, there's some really nice ideas in that! I like the little  
weather effects, and the flowers and grass moving in the wind.  
Reminds me a little of Astroball.


Looking forward to seeing it progress - how many levels are you  
thinking of?


Gavin


On 16 May 2007, at 2:46 AM, Calvin Allett wrote:



Just to say I`ve put a demo of level one up of Tomato Antics. Still  
not really
a proper game yet, but spent a lot of time trying to get it to as  
fast a speed

as I can, so that I can start adding in game elements.

It`s more of a reintroduction to SAM Basic and a test to see what can
be got out of the language.

anyway, it`s far too easy at the mo, and there`s a cheat enabled  
for a 1000 lives,
but if you persist through the boredom for about 5 minutes, till  
it`s rained and
stopped then I`d like your opinions on the new way of using the Put  
routines (there severely

limiting for game design though :(  )

I`m thinking that using something like this, it should be fairly  
feasable to do

the Skeet shooting level of Hypersports at a similar speed, and other
similar simple games.

link is :-

http://www.4shared.com/file/16034007/a826cff5/SAMs_Antics_- 
_April_2007.html



Oh, redefining keys or selecting Sinclair won`t work, as there`s  
temporarily

two copies of the game, so keys are:-

O - Left,  P- Right, and M to jump higher if you hold it down, five  
superjumps


Thanks, Cal...

The all-new Yahoo! Mail goes wherever you go - free your email  
address from your Internet provider.

LCD TVs

[Gavin Smith]

Any of you guys use an LCD TV with your SAM? I'm thinking that one of  
those small little LCDs might make a nice SAM display but I'd be  
concerned with picture quality, lag time etc.


Anyone have any experience?

Gavin

That RGB demo...

[Gavin Smith]

...the one from Fred, many years ago (naturally). The one that didn't  
work first time and needed a patch. Was it just me or did the patch  
not work either? My memory might be completely wrong, but I don't  
think I ever did see the demo and I don't see it up at World of SAM.


Anyone...?

Thanks!
Gavin

Re: That RGB demo...

[Gavin Smith]

On 12 May 2007, at 12:56 AM, Andrew Collier wrote:



On 12 May 2007, at 00:49, Gavin Smith wrote:

...the one from Fred, many years ago (naturally). The one that  
didn't work first time and needed a patch. Was it just me or did  
the patch not work either? My memory might be completely wrong,  
but I don't think I ever did see the demo and I don't see it up at  
World of SAM.


Anyone...?

Thanks!
Gavin


Until someone gets round to uploading it at WOSam, there's a copy  
available at:


http://intensity.org.uk/samcoupe/download.html


HTH,
Andrew


Cheers Andrew - I was actually on your site 10 mins before posting  
and overlooked it...


Gavin

Re: Majordomo results

[Gavin Smith]

On 18 Apr 2007, at 12:11 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:


--


who

Members of list 'sam-users':


[snip]


96 subscribers


Is it just me, or has the mailing list had around 90-100 members for  
pretty much ever? :)


Gavin

Re: SAM Defender - Updated and Improved!

[Gavin Smith]

*Very* cool. Thanks for your work Chris!


On 20 Mar 2007, at 7:47 PM, Chris Pile wrote:


Hi SAMsters,

I've updated SAM Defender!

Why?

Well, basically I did all of the things I *should* have done back  
in '98.  Things that have been

annoying me for years!

Below are a list of the things changed, plus any new features and  
also a link to where you can

get this - finally (probably!) final - version!

=

List of things changed to match the arcade coin-op:

* Hyperspace is now a 25% chance of death on re-entry - was 50%  
before.


* Homing enemies do not home to the hyperspace re-entry position -  
they did before!


* Landers appear in groups of five, as they always have.  When you  
shoot the last Lander
in the current world state, the next available group is warped in  
immediately.  Before, you
could have an empty world while the counters for the next group  
timed-out.  So, now its

never an empty world!  :-)

* Climbing Landers that once carried a humanoid (which you've now  
shot!) that reach the
top of the screen will now warp in at a random world X position.   
Before, they would warp

in at the same world X position they disappeared at.

* Hunting Landers will now pick a new humanoid target if their  
current target gets captured
or destroyed.  Before, if their target vanished they would hunt  
blindly over potential victims

and *never* pick them up...  Total pants!

* Humanoids are now scattered randomly over the planet surface.   
Before, they were put
at a uniformed distance apart - depending on the number of  
humanoids in the world.


* Enemy shots now have a little randomness to their ultimate  
destination.  Before, every

shot was deadly accurate to the player's ship.

* Swarmers - their logic has received a major overhaul.  Before,  
they fired in any direction
using the same shot-logic as the rest of the enemies.  They also  
flew around the player
like a swarm of bees.  This was bollocks - nowhere near the same as  
the coin-op original,
and something that's annoyed me for years!  The coin-op Swarmers  
will *only* fire when
they are flying *toward* the player - they also use a different  
shot style and sound.  This
means you can let Swarmers fly past you, quickly turn and chase  
them in the knowledge
that they won't fire at you - providing you keep close to them.   
They only change direction
when they go beyond a certain distance from the player.  In SAM  
Defender it wasn't possible
to use this chasing trick...  But it is now - as Swarmers now  
mimic the coin-op.  :-)


* Upon player death all screen contents are preserved - including  
any warping enemies
and explosion fragments.  Before, all fragments and warpers were  
erased due to the way
their engines worked.  Not good - and not like the coin-op!   
Fixed!  :-)


* Baiters and Mutants now mimic the coin-op more closely - slight  
changes to their logic.


* Background stars now twinkle faster - a closer match to the coin- 
op's twinkle speed.


* Some sound priorities rearranged, to closer match the coin-op.   
Even though the sound

is still shite!  ;-)

=

List of (internal) things changed from the last version:

* Faster and more random random number generator.
* Faster processing of the linked-list used to handle the world  
entities.

* Optimisations of the sprite engines and scanner dots engine.
* Cleaner final stage to the merging Defender logo on the attract  
mode.  No empty block!
* Coin-op timing for the appearance/disappearance of the 500  
sprite during attract mode.

* General removal of redundant code - such as...
* Removal of light-pen detection code.  I doubt this was needed -  
how many had a light pen!
* High-score table is now 8-slots, and contains the same initials  
and scores as the coin-op.


=

List of things removed from the last version:

* Initial Persona logo.
* Rotating Digital Reality logo

As both of these were seen once only - at initial game boot-up -  
their code and data have

been removed, saving around 8k on the final program size!

=

List of things added to this version:

* Coin-op style rug test-pattern during initial game boot-up!  As  
per coin-op power on!
* Coin-op style INITIAL TESTS INDICATE UNIT OK message!  As per  
coin-op power on!

* An ALL TIME GREATEST high-score table!  As per coin-op.
* Saving of the ALL TIME GREATEST scores to non-volatile RAM if  
you have Edwin Blink's
  Dallas real-time clock interface.  The coin-op saved the ALL  
TIME scores to NVRAM.


* Saving of your control key choices to NVRAM too.

See the readme.txt file in the Defender .ZIP for information  
about SAM Defender's NVRAM

saving capabilities.

=

So, there you go!  Some improvements and changes I've been meaning  
to do for years!  If you
carry an image of SAM Defender on your website, or if you bundle it  

Re: WINSGD

[Gavin Smith]

Cool!

(So what is it? :) I clicked the link but it has no info either and I can't 
download it in work as FTP is blocked - I blocked it, doh!)

Gavin
 
On Thursday, January 18, 2007, at 04:35PM, Martijn Groen [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
wrote:
Hi everyone,

First version of Winsgd is available on World of Spectrum.
Follow the following link:
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/utilities.html#databases

Martijn van der Heide: thanx for hosting it!

Greetz,

Martijn Groen

Happy New Year

[Gavin Smith]

Hey Sammers, happy new year chaps.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/R-B-I-Baseball-2-SPECTRUM-SAM-COUPE- 
boxed_W0QQitemZ280065591817QQihZ018QQ


Seeing as I've never heard of this title on the SAM, I'm 99.99%  
sure that when it says SAM Coupe compatible on the box, that it  
actually means might play on the SAM if you've a decent emulator -  
right?


Gavin

Re: Quazar News Update

[Gavin Smith]

I remember being thrilled when I first heard about Colony and I was  
really pleased when I (finally) got it - it seemed to me to be just  
the kind of game that SAM needed. But when I played it, I couldn't  
for the life of me stop my colony from dying within minutes. I never  
did get a long game out of it - anyone else? I'm sure there's a  
strategy I was missing - I'd love to give it another shot when I get  
my SR.


Gavin

On 16 Dec 2006, at 12:46 PM, Colin Piggot wrote:


Sam Revival
---
Sam Revival 16 will be sent out just before the new year, and features
'Colony' on the coverdisk. Written by Derek Koselo, Colony is a  
'Sim' styled
game where you setup and run a planetary mining colony. The  
magazine itself
features an interview with Derek, a look back at the development  
work I
undertook on Chrome, as well as the regular columns, news, letters  
etc.


Sam Revial costs £3.99 in the UK, or £4.79 including EU postage. 3  
issue
subscriptions give a bit of a discount, costing £10.99 for UK, and  
£13.49
for EU. Back issues are still available - see the www.samcoupe.com  
website

for pricing.

You are also welcome to pickup the current issue (15) at a special  
offer

price of £2.99 (UK) and £3.79 (EU) saving one pound. Issue 15 featured
'Legend of Eshan' by John Eyre on the coverdisk, and the magazine  
featured a
look at the Kaleidoscope interface from SamCo, and the completion  
of the

Mayhem prototype.


Mayhem Accelerator
--
The designing of the final PCBs was completed at the start of the  
month, and
I ordered a couple for testing. They arrived back with me a couple  
of days
ago and i'm in the process now of building them up to go through  
all the

final testing before I go ahead and ordering a full batch. More news
soon...!


Price Drops
---
Price reductions on a few pieces of software:

Stratosphere - now £4.99 (Previously £9.99)
Money Bags 2 - now £4.99 (Previously £9.99)
Super Byke Championship - now £4.99 (Previously £7.99)
Soundbyte (issues 1 to 76) - now 75p each.

and hardware:

Quazar Surround Sampler Module - £19.99

For more information, photos, screenshots of what's mentioned here  
check out

the full details at my website at: www.samcoupe.com

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: Sam or SAM or ...?

[Gavin Smith]

The real name is SAM Coupe - there was supposed to be machines to follow the 
original so you'd have a range of SAM machines (and no, I don't count the 
elite!)

I think they're kind of interchangeable now though. I tend to still write SAM 
as it looks right to me. I know that Colin P uses Sam as his preference.
 
On Friday, July 14, 2006, at 12:41PM, Simon Owen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Someone recently asked whether it should be written as Sam or SAM, and I
had to admit I didn't really know!

Is there a correct/official version or are they completely interchangeable?
Does one refer to the machine and another the robot, or is that mix and
match too?  Or is the machine simply the Coupé?

I tend to think of Sam being the robot and SAM being the machine, so I
generally write SAM.  Or is Some Amazing Machine a backronym?

Si

Re: Sam coupe + loads of acccesories sold on ebay last night

[Gavin Smith]

You do realise this is a mailing list with around 100 people on it? :)

Gavin
 
On Tuesday, March 28, 2006, at 12:50PM, Paul Brooks [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:


Original Attached
Dont suppose you know anything about the Sam that went on ebay last night? It had loads of accessories  software with it..., I lost track of the item, I was hoping the buyer would sell me the Kaleidoscope and the Splat! game out the package! Any ideas??..do you have any more second hand stock??? Thanks.
	
		Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. PC-to-Phone calls for ridiculously low rates.

Re: Newbie would like help ... Please!

[Gavin Smith]

Hi Jason,
There's lots of documentation up at http://www.samcoupe.org/docs.html 
and also at NVG at ftp.nvg.ntnu.no/pub/sam-coupe. The samcoupe.org 
project is also intended to archive all SAM software released so that 
it's not lost over time and the site will also cover new releases.


Finally, believe it or not, Colin Piggot (Quazar) runs a very 
professional SAM magazine! Check it out at http://www.quazar.clara.net 
and sub up as it won't be long until the next issue is out.


Congrats and welcome to the SAM!
Gavin

On 30 Jan 2005, at 11:20 am, Jason Thacker wrote:

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: Christmas Present

[Gavin Smith]

Quoting Aley Keprt [EMAIL PROTECTED]:

 That's very nice. I have never seen the Mesenger (except on adv.
 materials...). How much was it?

Speaking of the Messenger, I just won one on eBay (along with a very, very dirty
SAM and a pile of software) 

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItemitem=5157322243ssPageName=ADME:B:EOAB:UK:6

There's a couple of things I want to get my hands on, including Grubbing For
Gold and Oh No More Lemmings, neither of which I originally had and would like
to finally see...

Gavin

Re: Spectrum on Sam games at NVG

[Gavin Smith]

Sorry, you're right, I've a memory like a sieve these days - the general consensus seems to be to include them if they're in any way modified to work on the SAM, but to include them in a seperate section. Sounds good to me.

Cheers,
Gavin

On 20 Jan 2005, at 3:09 pm, Wolfgang Haller wrote:

We had a good talk about it and everyboday can have a look at

http://www.mail-archive.com/sam-users%40nvg.ntnu.no/

Theme: Let's discuss ZX Spectrum games

Wolfgang



Gavin Smith wrote:

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
--

Re: samcoupe.org update

[Gavin Smith]

 2) If we're going for as a complete list as possible, then it'll need 
 more details.  It'd good if as well as publisher it included details 
 such as the design team etc.  would also want links into the ftp site, 
 and be able to do nice cross linking without thinking about it.

Hi Tim,
Yep, the intention has always been to have a full page for each and 
every item of software. The page will contain anything and everything 
that we can find, as well as all the normal bits and pieces of info 
such as publishers and programmers.

The intention of the Wiki is to get together a list of software to get 
permission to release freely, but the final product will be much, much 
more detailed and in a proper linked database. I think the Wiki is 
really important as it gathers together all our knowledge and gives us 
a great starting point. After all the big titles are done (probably 
within the few days at this rate), then it will be a matter of titles 
springing to mind, for example during lunchbreaks, that will finish it 
off and I hope people will take the time to click the Edit link and add 
their knowledge - it's quick and easy, I promise. Wolfgang has also 
sent me a list of all the software on his SAM hard drive, which has 
revealed a few rarer titles which I'll be adding.

Happy New Year!

Slightly tipsy,
Gavin

Re: samcoupe.org update

[Gavin Smith]

2) If we're going for as a complete list as possible, then it'll need 
more details.  It'd good if as well as publisher it included details 
such as the design team etc.  would also want links into the ftp site, 
and be able to do nice cross linking without thinking about it.


Hi Tim,
Yep, the intention has always been to have a full page for each and 
every item of software. The page will contain anything and everything 
that we can find, as well as all the normal bits and pieces of info 
such as publishers and programmers.


The intention of the Wiki is to get together a list of software to get 
permission to release freely, but the final product will be much, much 
more detailed and in a proper linked database. I think the Wiki is 
really important as it gathers together all our knowledge and gives us 
a great starting point. After all the big titles are done (probably 
within the few days at this rate), then it will be a matter of titles 
springing to mind, for example during lunchbreaks, that will finish it 
off and I hope people will take the time to click the Edit link and add 
their knowledge - it's quick and easy, I promise. Wolfgang has also 
sent me a list of all the software on his SAM hard drive, which has 
revealed a few rarer titles which I'll be adding.


Happy New Year!

Slightly tipsy,
Gavin

Re: Samcoupe.org`s board AOL

[Gavin Smith]

Hi Steve,
I did a quick search on the phpbb site and they have indeed mentioned a problem of AOL users getting logged out regularly, I hadn't realised this - is this your problem? If so, there is a small change I can make that may help.

Cheers,
Gavin

On 1 Jan 2005, at 10:40 am, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Is there a problem with the php bb code and AOL users?
 
I seem to be having a problem with it, I did have a problem with  spectaculator.com until John change something..
 
regards,
 
Steve(spt)

Re: Samcoupe.org`s board AOL

[Gavin Smith]

Hi Steve, 
I did a quick search on the phpbb site and they have indeed mentioned a problem 
of AOL users getting logged out regularly, I hadn't realised this - is this 
your problem? If so, there is a small change I can make that may help. 

Cheers, 
Gavin 

On 1 Jan 2005, at 10:40 am, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 



Is there a problem with the php bb code and AOL users? 
  
I seem to be having a problem with it, I did have a problem with  
spectaculator.com until John change something.. 
  
regards, 
  
Steve(spt) 

samcoupe.org Wiki now online

[Gavin Smith]

Hi folks,
As promised, I've added a Wiki page so that we can start building a complete
database of SAM software that has been produced (whether commercial or not).
Please contribute to this as much as possible. Most of you will probably know
what a Wiki page is, but basically it allows ANYONE to edit the page live. In
other words, you can click the Edit page link and change the webpage itself.
A quick Google will get you more info. It's a great way for a community to
collaborate on a project.

http://www.samcoupe.org/ is the main site URL
http://www.samcoupe.org/board/ to let us know what you have uploaded (although
I'd rather people didn't let this step put them off, so it's entirely
voluntary) - thanks to those who have already uploaded stuff. Would people
prefer the board to be a wiki?
http://www.samcoupe.org/wiki/ is the new section - visit it and then please
contribute

Happy New Year guys!
Gavin

samcoupe.org Wiki now online

[Gavin Smith]

Hi folks,
As promised, I've added a Wiki page so that we can start building a complete
database of SAM software that has been produced (whether commercial or not).
Please contribute to this as much as possible. Most of you will probably know
what a Wiki page is, but basically it allows ANYONE to edit the page live. In
other words, you can click the Edit page link and change the webpage itself.
A quick Google will get you more info. It's a great way for a community to
collaborate on a project.

http://www.samcoupe.org/ is the main site URL
http://www.samcoupe.org/board/ to let us know what you have uploaded (although
I'd rather people didn't let this step put them off, so it's entirely
voluntary) - thanks to those who have already uploaded stuff. Would people
prefer the board to be a wiki?
http://www.samcoupe.org/wiki/ is the new section - visit it and then please
contribute

Happy New Year guys!
Gavin

Ice Chicken

[Gavin Smith]

Hi chaps,
Was Ice Chicken a Persona title? From memory it was - there's a question mark in
the Publisher field on the wiki (http://www.samcoupe.org/wiki/) and it's making
me uncertain myself. Did Phoenix originally publish this? Did ESI release it
freely afterwards? Dave L, if you're about, maybe you could help us here?

Cheers,
Gavin

Ice Chicken

[Gavin Smith]

Hi chaps,
Was Ice Chicken a Persona title? From memory it was - there's a question mark in
the Publisher field on the wiki (http://www.samcoupe.org/wiki/) and it's making
me uncertain myself. Did Phoenix originally publish this? Did ESI release it
freely afterwards? Dave L, if you're about, maybe you could help us here?

Cheers,
Gavin

RE: Ice Chicken

[Gavin Smith]

Really appreciate what you've added so far Johnna - I know the two game pack
you're talking about although I can't think of the name of the snake game
either (it wasn't just called Snake was it?!) - do people think such
compilations should be listed under their pack name or should we break out
individual titles? That raises the question about major items on disk mags too.
I think initially we should just list under disk mag/compilation title but
that's just my opinion.

Gavin


Quoting Johnna [EMAIL PROTECTED]:

 Another note Dave might be able to help with - there was a Snake game
 released with Craft by Persona and I can't for the life of me think what it
 was called.
 
 Still got tonnes more to go up there too. 
 
 -Original Message-
 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
 Behalf Of Gavin Smith
 Sent: 31 December 2004 15:46
 To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
 Subject: Ice Chicken
 
 Hi chaps,
 Was Ice Chicken a Persona title? From memory it was - there's a question
 mark in the Publisher field on the wiki (http://www.samcoupe.org/wiki/) and
 it's making me uncertain myself. Did Phoenix originally publish this? Did
 ESI release it freely afterwards? Dave L, if you're about, maybe you could
 help us here?
 
 Cheers,
 Gavin
 
 
 
 
 

RE: Ice Chicken

[Gavin Smith]

Really appreciate what you've added so far Johnna - I know the two game pack
you're talking about although I can't think of the name of the snake game
either (it wasn't just called Snake was it?!) - do people think such
compilations should be listed under their pack name or should we break out
individual titles? That raises the question about major items on disk mags too.
I think initially we should just list under disk mag/compilation title but
that's just my opinion.

Gavin


Quoting Johnna [EMAIL PROTECTED]:

 Another note Dave might be able to help with - there was a Snake game
 released with Craft by Persona and I can't for the life of me think what it
 was called.
 
 Still got tonnes more to go up there too. 
 
 -Original Message-
 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
 Behalf Of Gavin Smith
 Sent: 31 December 2004 15:46
 To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
 Subject: Ice Chicken
 
 Hi chaps,
 Was Ice Chicken a Persona title? From memory it was - there's a question
 mark in the Publisher field on the wiki (http://www.samcoupe.org/wiki/) and
 it's making me uncertain myself. Did Phoenix originally publish this? Did
 ESI release it freely afterwards? Dave L, if you're about, maybe you could
 help us here?
 
 Cheers,
 Gavin
 
 
 
 
 

Re: samcoupe.org update

[Gavin Smith]

Quoting Dan Dooré [EMAIL PROTECTED]:

 Stuart Brady wrote:
 
 I can't seem to log in anonymously.
  
  I'm in work and I can't FTP out the way - can someone confirm? Password is
  blank...
 
 Works for me, but not as anonymous it has to be [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
 as the userid and the password is blank/anything you like:

Cheers, forgot to test it last night at home, and now I'm back in work...

By the way, if you find leaving a message on the forum is putting you off
uploading software, then don't worry about it (perhaps a Wiki would be
easier...) - it's better that we get the stuff uploaded, so feel free to logon
to the FTP site and dump all you can dump.

Cheers,
Gavin

Re: samcoupe.org update

[Gavin Smith]

Quoting Dan Dooré [EMAIL PROTECTED]:

 Stuart Brady wrote:
 
 I can't seem to log in anonymously.
  
  I'm in work and I can't FTP out the way - can someone confirm? Password is
  blank...
 
 Works for me, but not as anonymous it has to be [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
 as the userid and the password is blank/anything you like:

Cheers, forgot to test it last night at home, and now I'm back in work...

By the way, if you find leaving a message on the forum is putting you off
uploading software, then don't worry about it (perhaps a Wiki would be
easier...) - it's better that we get the stuff uploaded, so feel free to logon
to the FTP site and dump all you can dump.

Cheers,
Gavin

samcoupe.org update

[Gavin Smith]

I was going to post this yesterday (Tuesday) afternoon but I had some problems
accessing the site from home so I held off - specifically, I could access the
site at http://samcoupe.org but not http://www.samcoupe.org which just timed
out. I also had intermittent problems with the ftp site. I've just come into
work (ARRRGH!) and all works fine here so please let me know if you
have problems.

Anyway, anonymous uploads are go - ftp://ftp.samcoupe.org and the login is
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Please upload anything and everything SAM related,
whether it's full games, apps, demos, disk mags, memorabilia - the lot. Except
of course the obvious stuff such as Quazar's and David L's. Nothing will be
made available until the 1st of April 2005 (we'll fool them all with the
wonders of the SAM) which gives us our agreed three months from the 1st of Jan
to contact as many authors/copyright holders as possible.

I've put a forum up (and desperately hoping to avoid all php worms!) and I'd be
grateful if you could make a note in there of any uploads you make, especially
if they're remotely rare or unusual (in which case if you'd also make a note
regarding anything you know about the upload such as author, year etc). The
forum is at http://www.samcoupe.org/board - again I had problems with the www
part, so if it fails for you, try it without. No need to register etc unless
you've time!

Next stage of the journey is to get a couple of wiki pages on the site - I
thought we could try and compile a list of every known SAM title, with details.
The other wiki page will refer to what contacts we have for who (although the
details won't be published on the page of course). I'll get those up for this
Friday, it will be great to have a complete list of what we know has been
published for the SAM (with hopefully more to come?!)

Anyway, login to ftp.samcoupe.org and get uploading - please don't let any
programs get lost to the passage of time, go through those old disks over your
Christmas holidays - yes, mine are over, but that's because I used up my
holidays when it was actually busy in here, figuring it would be nice and quiet
this week!

Gavin

samcoupe.org update

[Gavin Smith]

I was going to post this yesterday (Tuesday) afternoon but I had some problems
accessing the site from home so I held off - specifically, I could access the
site at http://samcoupe.org but not http://www.samcoupe.org which just timed
out. I also had intermittent problems with the ftp site. I've just come into
work (ARRRGH!) and all works fine here so please let me know if you
have problems.

Anyway, anonymous uploads are go - ftp://ftp.samcoupe.org and the login is
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Please upload anything and everything SAM related,
whether it's full games, apps, demos, disk mags, memorabilia - the lot. Except
of course the obvious stuff such as Quazar's and David L's. Nothing will be
made available until the 1st of April 2005 (we'll fool them all with the
wonders of the SAM) which gives us our agreed three months from the 1st of Jan
to contact as many authors/copyright holders as possible.

I've put a forum up (and desperately hoping to avoid all php worms!) and I'd be
grateful if you could make a note in there of any uploads you make, especially
if they're remotely rare or unusual (in which case if you'd also make a note
regarding anything you know about the upload such as author, year etc). The
forum is at http://www.samcoupe.org/board - again I had problems with the www
part, so if it fails for you, try it without. No need to register etc unless
you've time!

Next stage of the journey is to get a couple of wiki pages on the site - I
thought we could try and compile a list of every known SAM title, with details.
The other wiki page will refer to what contacts we have for who (although the
details won't be published on the page of course). I'll get those up for this
Friday, it will be great to have a complete list of what we know has been
published for the SAM (with hopefully more to come?!)

Anyway, login to ftp.samcoupe.org and get uploading - please don't let any
programs get lost to the passage of time, go through those old disks over your
Christmas holidays - yes, mine are over, but that's because I used up my
holidays when it was actually busy in here, figuring it would be nice and quiet
this week!

Gavin

Re: Working copy of RGB demo?

[Gavin Smith]

From memory, the fix never worked. At least, I never got it to work and I remember other peeps with the same problem. I always wondered how the original RGB demo got past quality control when it took up so much room on the disk ;) Anyway, maybe no-one has a working copy? :)

Gavin (top posting and it feels GOOD)

On 27 Dec 2004, at 1:09 am, Simon Cooke wrote:

Just out of interest... does anyone have a working copy of the RGB demo from Fred 74 too?
 
Whenever I try to run the one from the GoodSAMC library, it does nothing and then crashes. Even if I use Andy Collier's fix from Fred 80.
 
Thanks,
Si

Re: Working copy of RGB demo?

[Gavin Smith]

From memory, the fix never worked. At least, I never got it to work and I 
remember other peeps with the same problem. I always wondered how the original 
RGB demo got past quality control when it took up so much room on the disk ;) 
Anyway, maybe no-one has a working copy? :) 

Gavin (top posting and it feels GOOD) 

On 27 Dec 2004, at 1:09 am, Simon Cooke wrote: 


 Just out of interest... does anyone have a working copy of the RGB demo from 
 Fred 74 too? 
   
 Whenever I try to run the one from the GoodSAMC library, it does nothing and 
 then crashes. Even if I use Andy Collier's fix from Fred 80. 
   
 Thanks, 
 Si 
 

Re: MasterBasic PDF Version 1 [ now ready ]

[Gavin Smith]

Quoting [EMAIL PROTECTED]:

 [ now looking off a Sam pfd project , what would you like? ]

Do you have the wee manual that came with Nev's IDE interface? Colin, do you
still have the software? (Nev has given us permission for both)

Cheers,
Gavin

Re: A Comprehensive List

[Gavin Smith]

Quoting Johnna [EMAIL PROTECTED]:

 Just a thought - does anyone have a comprehensive list of software that was
 release on the SAM?
 
 A complete list of commercially released games and a utilities, a list of
 magazines that were available etc.
 
 On the new site it would be nice if each bit of software could be
 accompanied by screenshots and reviews from the magazines, or links to
 places like YS Rock n Roll Years with the SAM reviews on.

That's exactly what will be on it, for all titles, even if we aren't allowed to
distribute the actual software.

 Is compiling a comprehensive list something that we should be looking into
 doing, so that we know what we're going to try and ask permission for, or is
 there one already available.

I was hoping we'd have a wiki page up by now that people could add to as titles
came to mind but the webhosts are having problems with the server that we are
using (called Banana) - it took over 24 hours to upload the SAM User Guide for
example - so it's all rather painful at the moment. They've promised a
resolution some time today and then things will move quicker.

Gavin

Re: MasterDos Manual pdf Version 1

[Gavin Smith]

On 9 Dec 2004, at 5:21 pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Hi folks
 
I had 10 mins spare today so here is MasterDos manual pfd version 1.
 
Now , my Masterdos disk was version 2.1, then updated on 6/6/92 to version 2.3.

Downloading it now - my had a blue cover, was that just a Format re-release thing?

Gavin

Format returns

[Gavin Smith]

Well not quite, but I was reading the latest issue of ZXF there 
(http://www.woodcock88.freeserve.co.uk/zxf/zxf.html) and there is news 
of WorldOfSpectrum gaining permission from our old friend Bob Brenchley 
to scan and distribute Formats! As the article points out, this is 
something of a surprise that Bob has allowed this. I wonder if he'd 
speak to us lot? :) I won't even mention my SAM_Clock and other money 
he owes me this time ;)


As for our own archive, please don't try and email me at [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
yet, as the password they supplied me with to login and set addresses 
etc up isn't working. I've been able to login and put up a plain 
index.html to stop the naked directories of the webspage being browsed, 
and I've typed up a little history of the project so far. Assuming I 
get the email addresses sorted tomorrow, we can get cracking on 
tracking people down etc - I'll email again tomorrow.


Night chaps,
Gavin

Re: SDI a nef diskimage format ?

[Gavin Smith]

On 9 Dec 2004, at 1:24 pm, Edwin Blink wrote:


I gave it some thoughts and here's what I've come up with.
The Idea is to make it possible to handle it on a real SAM using
CD-ROM and CF in the future.

--
SDI or Sam DiskImage is a new diskimage format to replace the
.DSK .MGT and .SAD diskimages. Key features are crc protection,
a flexible format and smaller diskimages. Diskimage sizes are
reduced by not including unused or empty sectors on a disk.
Information to keep track of the sectors that are used is
achieved with a minimum of overhead.


I don't quite understand it all but I did read through it and it does 
sound like it meets all our needs - looking forward to the more techy 
people discussing this.


Gavin

Re: Sam User Guide PDF version 1

[Gavin Smith]

If someone can tell where to dump it to the new sam archive
site so I can upload it.


I'm not sure anything exists site-wise yet - Gavin?


The DNS servers should now be propagated and the domain should now 
point at our webspace for everyone as of yesterday (or was it Monday 
evening?), so we can get cracking from tonight. I intend to put up a 
few basic pages tonight with details of the project etc - the design of 
the site isn't overly important yet. I'll also be putting up a list of 
stuff that's already free to go on there - Dan's offered to put his 
excellent Fred site up there, so that will make a fab start to the 
site.


Steve, can I add your PDF to the list?

Gavin

Re: Users Guide Errors Do you know of any?

[Gavin Smith]

Can I ask that you create a PDF of the original unchanged User's Guide and then make a second PDF with any changes/additions?

Thanks,
Gavin

On 7 Dec 2004, at 8:00 pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Hello Everyone,

 

     Some of you we be please to know that  The User’s Guide by Mel Croucher has now been finished and we be available as a pdf. Before I compile the word Doc into a pdf. I want to ask if there was any thing else you would like adding or  know of any errors in the manual that need correcting. As I write this message the thought of adding another  Appendix  for the 1 meg memory pack instructions and the SAM BUS   any others?

 

Regards,

Steve Parry-Thomas  [ Steve(spt) ]

 

www.samcoupe-pro-dos.co.uk 

 

RE: Sam's 15th Birthday!

[Gavin Smith]

Quoting Geoff Winkless [EMAIL PROTECTED]:

 Colin Piggot wrote:
  Well, December 2004 see's the 15th Birthday of the Sam Coupe! Did
  anyone here receive their Sam in December 1989 when they were
  released, and did it live up to your initial expectations?
 
 Yes and yes. I'd spent pretty much all my pennies from my paper-round and
 was well chuffed when it arrived. Business Post.
 
 I remember being disappointed about the disk not working but then going
 through the demo tape and being utterly gobsmacked when the screen grab of
 the astronaut came on screen.
 
 Simpler times :)

Happier times too! You appreciated things in those days much more. I spent hours
upon hours with my first couple of Fred disks and Prince Of Persia, just
because that was all I had at the time, and I got huge amounts of pleasure out
of all of them. *sniff*

Gavin

Re: Sam's 15th Birthday!

[Gavin Smith]

 _www.samcoupe-pro-dos.co.uk_ (http://www.samcoupe-pro-dos.co.uk) 

Hey, that's a really nice site - I've never really bothered with Pro-dos or CP/M
on the SAM (beyond glancing at it for a SAM Community news item), this looks
like a nice roundup.

Gavin

Re: Sam's 15th Birthday!

[Gavin Smith]

Quoting Edwin Blink [EMAIL PROTECTED]:

 Got mine februari. 
 
  I remember being disappointed about the disk not working
 
 there where several problems of it's rushed release. But without them
 I probably wouldn't have done the things I did and would't be as close
 to MGT as I was then.
 
 While at it I remember there was a SAM Hotline, I hated my phone
 company for not being able to dial those 0800 numbers. I got one
 taped recording from Alan Miles crediting me for the Kim Wilde
 Sample (I still have it somewhere).
 I wonder what happend to all the other recordings ?

You still have the sample or the tape recording?? :) How nice would it be to get
Mp3s of those Hotline recordings for the archive!

Gavin

Re: Sam's 15th Birthday!

[Gavin Smith]

Does anyone else still have their order confirmation cards?  Here's 
mine:

http://www.simonowen.com/images/samorder.jpg

I remember it feeling quite an alien machine to code for at first, 
after

years of familiarity with the Speccy.  It certainly lived up to my
expectations though :-)


*Makes a note to make a memorabilia section on samcoupe.org* ;)

Re: Fwd: [FJV-59346]: Hosting question - urgent please!

[Gavin Smith]

Quoting Ian Collier [EMAIL PROTECTED]:

 On Sat, Nov 27, 2004 at 10:34:54AM +, Gavin Smith quoted from Rob:
   Games that are at least five years old and not sold by companies anymore.
 They
  are generaly considered illegal but the copywrite has expired. Sometimes
 the
  game company re-issues the game as a classic and then it is not
 abandonware
  anymore. 
 
 (a) it's copyright, and (b) it hasn't expired - otherwise it wouldn't be
 illegal to copy it!

Yeah, I noticed that (and other mistakes) but you get the drift and all we
really have to care about is that they won't pull the site down at a moment's
notice thinking it's a warez dump.

Hosting is in the process of being setup by the way, so the domain will soon
point to our empty space - by this weekend I'd hope we can start pulling
together a list of software/authors that we wish to gain permission for/from
and then get to work on it! While that's ongoing, we can start putting PD stuff
up there, along with any disk mags etc that we've permission to use.

Anyone fancy lending their graphic skills for a samcoupe.org logo? :)

Gavin

Re: Domain name - voting ends Fri night!

[Gavin Smith]

Hi chaps,
Okay, time's up for the voting nonsense, and samcoupe.org was the narrow winner
(even if you take into account Tarquin's last minute vote off the list, when I
was actually purchasing the domain!). samcoupe.org is now in the process of
being registered for us and by next weekened we'll have something online to
represent the project. I reckon that should also be the start date of our 3
month campaign to contact authors etc.

Thanks to everyone for their support and help so far!
Gavin

samcoupe.org
Andy Chandler
Calvin Allett
Dan Doore
Dumitru Florin (Zecut0r [EMAIL PROTECTED])
Edwin Blink
Frans van Egmond
Frode Tenneboe
Gavin Smith
Johnna Teare
Ray Ennifer(surname correct?)

worldofsam.org
Andrew Collier
Andy Monk
Colin Macdonald
Geoff Winkless
Ian Spencer
Matthew Craven
Simon Owen
Wolfgang Haller

samcommunity.org
Adrian Brown
Colin Piggo

Fwd: [FJV-59346]: Hosting question - urgent please!

[Gavin Smith]

The email below is from Catalyst2, the web host I'm going to use for the
archive. Sounds spot on.

Gavin


Hosting question - urgent please!

Gavin,

What you describe seems to me to fall into the category of 'abandonware':

 Games that are at least five years old and not sold by companies anymore. They
are generaly considered illegal but the copywrite has expired. Sometimes the
game company re-issues the game as a classic and then it is not abandonware
anymore. 

Our terms and conditions state:
[snip stuff about MP3s, cracks etc]

The idea that the site will be public domain and freeware software initially, is
therefore fine. And it seems reasonable to me that any authors you cannot
contact's software will be posted. The only thing that I must stress, is that
if you, or Catalyst2 receive notification by said authors that they do not want
their material online, it must be removed immeditately.

Other than that, this sounds OK.

Rob


   
 
 
   
   
 Hosting question - urgent please!

Gavin,

What you describe seems to me to fall into the category of 'abandonware':

" Games that are at least five years old and not sold by companies anymore. They are generaly considered illegal but the copywrite has expired. Sometimes the game company re-issues the game as a classic and then it is not abandonware anymore. "

Our terms and conditions state:

"1. Hosting accounts provided by Catalyst2 may not be used to host material to which the user does not own the copyright to, or have prior permission from the owner of the copyright to distribute. This includes the distribution of MP3 files, software, and other pirate material.

1.1 In addition to this, the hosting account may not be used to host utilities to aid the violation of a copyright licence, such as software cracks and key generators.

1.2 Catalyst2 reserve the right to question any user as to the copyright ownership of material displayed on a user's hosting account, and reserve the right to suspend accounts if violation of copyright is suspected."

The idea that the site will be public domain and freeware software initially, is therefore fine. And it seems reasonable to me that any authors you cannot contact's software will be posted. The only thing that I must stress, is that if you, or Catalyst2 receive notification by said authors that they do not want their material online, it must be removed immeditately.

Other than that, this sounds OK.

Rob







  
 
  

 
  Rate this ticket: Helpful  Not Helpful

	 
  Ticket ID:
  FJV-59346

 
  Tracking URL:
  Click Here

 
  Department:
  General

 
  Created On:
  26 Nov 2004 10:01 PM

 
  Last Update:
  26 Nov 2004 10:01 PM

 
  Status:
    Closed
  

  
  
  


  
  

Re: SAM Software Archive

[Gavin Smith]

Quoting Andrew Collier [EMAIL PROTECTED]:

 - .dsk is a very simple format, it will describe only unprotected disks 
 but is well understood and there are many programs which can read/save 
 into this format.
 
 - .dsk can be compressed as dsk.gz, which then can be used in almost as 
 many programs as the raw .dsk image.
 
 - there is a format called .sad which can describe more formats that 
 .dsk, but doesn't cover all the bases.
 
 - current versions of SimCoupe are able to read a format .sdf, this was 
 designed by Simon Owen for use in SimCoupe and can describe all Sam 
 disks. However there is no support for it outside of SimCoupe

An important consideration for the archive is to make sure it's easy for owners
of actual SAM hardware, to get the stuff onto a disk as easy as possible. I did
a (very) quick Google and I can't see any tools to do this. If we do a CD, then
it would be a nice to be able to easily move the stuff directly from the CD
onto a CF or HD without any intervention from a PC. 
 
We've got some time to choose the format though, because our first three months
will be mainly getting the site going with PD and other similar stuff.

By the way, I still plan to get the domain sorted tomorrow evening so if anyone
has an opinion on what domain they'd like us to use, shout out today or
tomorrow - it looks like samcoupe.org is in the lead at the moment. I'm really
looking forward to all this - thanks for all the offers of help etc, I'm
archiving all your offers into a seperate mail folder for future use so be
warned ;)

Gavin

Re: SAM Software Archive

[Gavin Smith]

   - current versions of SimCoupe are able to read a format .sdf, this was 
   designed by Simon Owen for use in SimCoupe and can describe all Sam 
   disks. However there is no support for it outside of SimCoupe
  
  An important consideration for the archive is to make sure it's easy for
 owners
  of actual SAM hardware, to get the stuff onto a disk as easy as possible. I
 did
  a (very) quick Google and I can't see any tools to do this.
 
 Well, with access to a PC it's easy enough to copy a .dsk or .dsk.gz
 onto a standard floppy disk using, for example, Edwin Blink's Diskimage
 manager from

Sorry, I worded that badly - I was referring to the sdf format.

 NB. For an archive of original software, if the original disk was
 protected I think it is historially more important to maintain the same
 protected format disk, than to hack it onto a standard disk image even
 if that may be more convenient.

Yep, agreed, I said that in a previous post.

 Interesting idea -- I guess this boils down to two problems, a) how to
 get the Sam to read the image files, and b) how to get the Sam to
 transfer a given image file onto a real floppy disk (or other media).
 
 a. I don't have an IDE interface so I don't know exactly what the SAM
 will be able to read. Is there software to make it understand an ISO
 filesystem? (Certainly I think that a CD dump of the site needs to be
 viewable by PC/Mac systems, so a Sam-specific filesystem probably isn't
 going to be great)

I know of a few people with a CD drive connected - Wolfgang, you have this setup
don't you? I haven't tried it, but from what I understand, it's possible to
bung a CD containing .dsks into a drive connected to a SAM - it's then possible
to write the .dsk to an Atom connected HD or CF card. I thought that was rather
nice and I'd like to keep that going if possible.

If possible, though, I'd like us to use one format and one method of
compression. Would it therefore be easier to make everything .sdf in the first
place and work on tools to work with these files?

Gavin

RE: SAM Software Archive

[Gavin Smith]

Quoting Geoff Winkless [EMAIL PROTECTED]:

 Gavin Smith wrote:
  By the way, I still plan to get the domain sorted tomorrow evening so
  if anyone has an opinion on what domain they'd like us to use, shout
  out today or tomorrow - it looks like samcoupe.org is in the lead at
  the moment. 
 
 ?
 
 I vehemently believe this to be the wrong approach. People _will_ remember
 the wrong thing and type .com.

It's an easy domain to remember though, easier than worldofsam.org or something
similar.

 Of course Colin could put a link to the other site from his, but that just
 tends to make people think he's trying to get free advertising by using the
 .com, even though it's actually the other way around, and will reflect badly
 on him.

Ach, I don't think so, I think you're worrying too much :) We'd both simply be
using the computer name as part of the domain name, seems sensible. Colin uses
the .com for his commercial stuff, we use the .org for our non-profit making
organisation stuff.

 Can we have some sort of proportional-representation vote-transferral
 system? :)

It's one man, one vote, seems fair to me :) I was just pointing that it appears
that samcoupe.org is in the lead at the moment. And there's no cheating going
on, because it's all done on the list ;) I don't think it matters hugely but I
do think samcoupe.org sounds nice but whatever gets the most votes for tomorrow
night will do fine.

Gavin

Re: SAM Software Archive

[Gavin Smith]

Quoting Wolfgang Haller [EMAIL PROTECTED]:

 To the name voting: First I prefered samcommunity.org, but a community 
 is a connection of persons, who have ALL the same interest. I can´t see 
 this community.
 So I prefer worldofsam.org as it comes nearest to the things that are 
 planned.

Perhaps worldofsam.org is now in the lead! Not sure, I'll have to tally up
later. To me, it's enough for people to state their preference on the list -
but people want something more formal that's fine by me. Just remember that
we're representing the archives of the SAM Coupe computer - SAM Coupe might
ring a bell with someone, just using the name Sam in a domain will conjure up a
million other images first!

Gavin

RE: SAM Software Archive

[Gavin Smith]

Quoting Andy Monk [EMAIL PROTECTED]:

 Just my thoughts on the Sam Archive site project:
 
 
 1)  It'd be nice to have a section dedicated to all you guys, names, 
 photos, a brief paragraph or two regarding your involvement in the Sam 
 scene etc... 
 2)  An 'online' music player (maybe something in Flash) that can play 
 Sam audio files (Etracker etc...)

Both great ideas actually :) I used to love your E-Tunes on Fred...online Java
SAM emulator like the Speccy has? :)

Gavin

RE: SAM Software Archive

[Gavin Smith]

There you go Matthew...just occurred to me, if we do call it worldofsam.org,
we'll be WOS as well as the Speccy one...:)

Quoting Matthew J. Craven [EMAIL PROTECTED]:

 Hi Gavin,
 
 I vote for worldofsam.org. Haven't been able to post for ages, as
 Frode keeps sending me emails saying I am emailing from a non- 
 subbed address. But upon request to say which address he has 
 subbed, no information is given.
 
 So if you can post my vote for me, I'd appreciate it.
 
 Thanks,
 
 --Matt.
 
 
 --- Forwarded message follows ---
 Date sent:Thu, 25 Nov 2004 12:54:27 +
 From: Gavin Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 To:   sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
 Subject:  RE: SAM Software Archive
 Send reply to:sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
 
 Quoting Geoff Winkless [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
 
  Gavin Smith wrote:
   By the way, I still plan to get the domain sorted tomorrow evening
   so if anyone has an opinion on what domain they'd like us to use,
   shout out today or tomorrow - it looks like samcoupe.org is in the
   lead at the moment. 
  
  ?
  
  I vehemently believe this to be the wrong approach. People _will_
  remember the wrong thing and type .com.
 
 It's an easy domain to remember though, easier than 
 worldofsam.org or
 something similar.
 
  Of course Colin could put a link to the other site from his, but
  that just tends to make people think he's trying to get free
  advertising by using the .com, even though it's actually the other
  way around, and will reflect badly on him.
 
 Ach, I don't think so, I think you're worrying too much :) We'd both
 simply be using the computer name as part of the domain name, 
 seems
 sensible. Colin uses the .com for his commercial stuff, we use the
 .org for our non-profit making organisation stuff.
 
  Can we have some sort of proportional-representation
  vote-transferral system? :)
 
 It's one man, one vote, seems fair to me :) I was just pointing that
 it appears that samcoupe.org is in the lead at the moment. And 
 there's
 no cheating going on, because it's all done on the list ;) I don't
 think it matters hugely but I do think samcoupe.org sounds nice but
 whatever gets the most votes for tomorrow night will do fine.
 
 Gavin
 --- End of forwarded message ---
 --- End of forwarded message ---
 

Domain name - voting ends Fri night!

[Gavin Smith]

Just a reminder that I'd like to get the domain name for our archive sorted out
tomorrow night so if anyone hasn't voiced their opinion, can you do so ASAP? In
an attempt to avert a stand-off similar to Ukraine's, I've listed the votes so
far below - if I've got any wrong, can you let me know by tomorrow evening,
thanks!

IMHO, the SAM isn't a Spectrum and we therefore shouldn't be copying a Speccy
site ;) We should proudly have its full name in the domain name of a site that
is intending to archive all the software (and thus our memories) of the
machine. To me, samcoupe.org sounds great - we didn't demand a new name for
SimCoupe in case people got confused between SAM Coupe and SimCoupe, did we? ;)
Each to their own though, majority rules, so speak your mind while you have the
chance! :)


worldofsam.org
Andrew Collier
Geoff Winkless
Ian Spencer
Matthew Craven
Simon Owen
Wolfgang Haller

samcoupe.org
Calvin Allett
Dan Doore
Frans van Egmond
Gavin Smith
Johnna Teare

samcommunity.org
Adrian Brown
Colin Piggot

Re: SAM Software Archive

[Gavin Smith]

  This, on the other hand, is probably going to be watched eagle-eyed by 
 people who were actually around at the time and have some idea what 
 they're talking about. Provided there's some feedback mechanism (and 
 it's okay to have a single point of contact now, because all the 
 software is legit) that should provide some quality-control in itself. 
 Perhaps such feedback could take the form of a webboard associated with 
 each particular page of software? Or in fact, the entire site could 
 probably be composed of a wiki.
 
Yeah, a wiki is a great idea for some parts of the site.

 Use gzip rather than zip, then SimCoupe can load them directly.

What does anyone else think about this?

 Well, SimCoupe's already got one format (sdf), but if you have plans to 
 prefer different, more standardised one I think the archive needs to be 
 using the latest format.

This is something I need some input on because I've used a real SAM much more
than an emulator so am only really familiar with .dsks - I don't think I've
ever used anything else! I'd like it to be as easy as possible to transfer any
images to an actual SAM disk though.

 Has anything been started on the design of the web pages? I think the 
 page for each piece of software should also include cover art, where 
 possible, and details like author, publisher, original publishing date 
 where known etc. I assume the proposed hosting will allow you to run 
 custom php and/or cgi?

Beyond planning it in my head, nothing has been done yet in terms of design,
although I've a fair idea of what I'd like it to look like - of course, we can
play with the design quite a bit for the first three months. I would definitely
like to see the cover art plus scans of any instructions etc included along
with the details you mentioned. 

Yep, the hosting allows us to use custom php and cgi and pretty much anything
else we want.

Gavin

RE: SAM Software Archive

[Gavin Smith]

Quoting Johnna [EMAIL PROTECTED]:

 Perhaps we could divide the site into:
 
 Official games releases
 Official utils releases
 Official disk mag releases
 PD Single program files (eg. Not disks with Tetris AND something else on,
 just Tetris on it's own?)
 Warez collections (eg. Speccy 128 conversions etc.)

Yep, this was the breakdown I had in mind too - I'd also like a document/manual
section - hopefully pdfs - of things like the User Guide and Tech Manual and
anything else we can get our hands on. (I always wish there was more techy SAM
material to read).

Gavin

RE: SAM Software Archive

[Gavin Smith]

Quoting Geoff Winkless [EMAIL PROTECTED]:

 Dan Doore wrote:
  A World Of Spectrum style semi-official archive for SAM software,
  housed on the web and built by the members of sam-users.
  
  Bang on.
  
  BTW another vote here for samcoupe.org
 
 While I agree in principle that samcoupe.org would be the best for the site
 I think that as Colin has samcoupe.com it will serve to confuse.

Do you think? I kind of liked the symmetry - Colin with his software, hardware
and second hand SAMs is the closest we have to a major SAM company in its
heyday, so the .com fits him. Similarly, our .org is a non-profit making
organisation, the sort of community run SAM site. I thought it worked quite
well, although I see what you're saying.

 What sort of bandwidth do people think it would use? I already have a shared
 (with a few old uni mates) linux host (on which I have root access) and
 would be happy to host it if we're expecting a gig or so downloads a month -
 that much we can absorb into the spare bandwidth we have, if it's more I'd
 have to discuss it with the others.

I had a long think about hosting and our options and ways of doing it on the
cheap but in the end I thought it would be nice to spend a fiver a month and
get our own meaty bandwidth etc and not worry about taking advantage of other
people's generosity or the site suddenly going down etc.

 Note to Gavin: I'm not trying to take over here; if you'd rather host it
 yourself I won't be offended :)

I wouldn't think you're trying to take over, I would really hate it if people
thought of this as my pet project because I honestly think it's 100% a
sam-users thing. :)

Gavin

RE: SAM Software Archive

[Gavin Smith]

 The only problem I have with services like catalyst2 (the site you
 mentioned) is that you don't have full control: it's a hosted service, so
 you have the restrictions of what you can do with it. I have full ssh root
 access so if (eg) you want to run some bizarre forum software you don't have
 to argue with a clueless support guy for an hour. Further, if one of my
 sites goes down I know it's either down to me to fix it, it's a hardware
 problem or it's the internet (and since it's in telehouse that would
 generally mean the whole UK web is screwed :))
 
 You also have the advantage that the people who administer the machine have
 a combined unix and website admin experience of about 40 years, the other
 two guys are both sysadmins at university (with tens of unix servers to run)
 and I was admin for an ISP for a fair while.

I've used Catalyst2 before which is why I'm thinking of going with them - I had
full access to do whatever I wanted (within my space of course) - and they were
very reliable. They're also based about 10 miles from me which is nice to know
and they are clueful. 

 All this is a Good Thing when it comes to hosting software of slightly
 unknown legality: hosted services tend to be a bit more trigger-happy when
 it comes to removing sites which have potential warez.

Yep, I had thought about this, and have been emailing them regarding our plans
so they're aware of what we're doing.

 OK, then I should have written the caveat to everyone :) - my point is I
 don't want to be seen as imposing my thoughts on others.
 
 Anyway, the offer's there, I shan't mention it again unless asked - I have
 no axe to grind, it'd only mean work for me after all :)

Appreciate the offer, and I'll definitely keep it in mind, along with Frode's
offer of a mirror - cheers guys.

Gavin

SAM Software Archive

[Gavin Smith]

I've been thinking a lot about this software archive idea we've been talking
about, so thought I'd write up a little summary of what my thoughts are.

Proposal:
A World Of Spectrum style semi-official archive for SAM software, housed on the
web and built by the members of sam-users.

Reasons:
(1) So that warez style GoodSAMC collections are not needed
(2) To prevent software getting lost as floppies continue to deteriorate over
time
(3) To allow people who didn't experience the SAM at its (erm) peak to enjoy
it now
(4) To allow us to get more use out of our SAMs by providing more software to
run

In practice:
A three month period has been decided upon as a reasonable length of time to
track down as many authors/copyright holders as possible - between us all, we
should be able to cover the majority of the SAM back catalogue. For those first
three months we would get the site established and start filling it with PD
plus all software that permission has already been granted to distribute.

After the three months, we put the rest of the software online that we have
gained permission to release or that we can find no good reason to withhold
(something we will discuss among ourselves on the list). Software is then
provided in .dsk format, zipped up and placed on the web. Each software title
will be posted with at least one screenshot and hopefully (over time) scans of
any documentation it originally came with. There would also be links to
previews/reviews/other press articles of the time. If at any time the author or
copyright holder requests the software be removed, it will obviously be done so
as soon as possible. In any case, permission to distribute software will always
be continually sought. Where permission has been denied, the software will
still be listed for historic purposes, but without a download link - the title
will also be listed in a sort of blacklist, so that we know we are not free to
copy it among ourselves.

Finally, there will be a page on which we list software and/or authors and what
stage we have got to in tracking down an author. 
For example: 
Nigel Kettlewell (Days Of Sorcery) - address found - letter sent - no reply as
yet
Martin Bell (Waterworks 1 + 2) - no contact details found

Website:
I've been looking for the cheapest options over the weekend and I think I may
use Catalyst2 (http://www.catalyst2.com) which I've used before and found
reliable. They have a £4.99 a month Linux hosting option, that gives us 500MB
disk space and 5GB transfer - that should be enough to get us going. I'm happy
to pay out of my own pocket initially, but it would be nice to sell a CD of the
archive at the yearly show in Norwich, for a fiver for example - if we sold ten
a year, we'd almost cover costs. At the end of the day, I'm not hugely fussed
if I'm a little out of pocket, it's not a huge amount - and if we do happen to
sell a load of CDs, I want to point out that the site is strictly non-profit
making! I'll make sure all finance stuff is put on a page that we can access so
everyone knows what is going on.

Domain name:
I'm hoping we can agree on a name between us all. IMHO, it should definitely be
a .org as we are non-profit making and also global in nature. The three I
suggest are samcoupe.org, samcommunity.org (yes, yes I know, but I've always
thought it was a good name) or samusers.org/sam-users.org - they're all
(currently) available. I'm really not sure, so I'm obviously open to all
suggestions. I'd like it if we could have it chosen by this weekend though, so
I can register it then.

This all looks anal and pedantic but I wanted to lay it out like this because I
know there are a couple of people who are very worried about this although they
are now broadly on side - I don't think Colin will mind me saying that he was
one of them and we really have talked for hours on this subject because I
wanted to try and find away to have his support (if not his software!) I really
think it's the lesser of two evils, as I've said before and would only help to
keep the SAM alive, not do it damage.

This is not anyone's pet project or anything of the sort - this is an archive of
our software and our memories as well as providing a great place for someone to
get to know the SAM - it's something we can build as a community and then be
proud of! /rousing speech

Debate away, nothing is set in stone in the slightest but I hope the above is at
least a good starting point.

Gavin

SAM software archive

[Gavin Smith]

After hours of intense negotiation over the weekend with a couple of 
SAM people (I'm not joking, the United Nations would be proud!), 
particularly yesterday, we're getting somewhere in terms of putting 
together an official SAM archive. We're having one more day to think 
about things, and then I'll post a wee proposal to the list tomorrow 
and we can all get involved and get this thing done right, once and for 
all.


Anyway, just thought I'd let you know that it looks like we'll soon 
have a World Of Spectrum type site dedicated to the SAM and one that 
respects author's rights as far as humanly possible too.


Next week, Colin Piggot and I will be tackling negotiations between 
Palestine and Israel - should be a breeze compared to this SAM stuff ;)


Gavin

Re: SAM software archive

[Gavin Smith]

On 22 Nov 2004, at 1:04 pm, Edwin Blink wrote:




Anyway, just thought I'd let you know that it looks like we'll soon
have a World Of Spectrum type site dedicated to the SAM and one that
respects author's rights as far as humanly possible too.


Great. Is there also going to be a blacklist of stuff that's not 
avialable

to uphold the owners respect like 'Davids' stuff ?

Edwin


Definitely, although I'd like to sort of integrate the stuff into the 
archive in terms of listing it with details such as author name, 
publisher, year and also screenshots - where there would normally be a 
download link, it will just say something like Distribution Currently 
Denied.


Gavin

Re: SAM software archive

[Gavin Smith]

On 22 Nov 2004, at 1:44 pm, Geoff Winkless wrote:


Gavin Smith wrote:

Definitely, although I'd like to sort of integrate the stuff into the
archive in terms of listing it with details such as author name,
publisher, year and also screenshots - where there would normally be a
download link, it will just say something like Distribution Currently
Denied.


Can I ask that the wording is a bit kinder? You're making it sound like
people are being unreasonable, which is something that is (IMHO) bad 
form.


Something like the author has requested that this work is not 
distributed

and put some contact details for further info.

It basically says the same thing but it's what I was talking about 
before

about respect.


Wasn't meant to sound unreasonable - I haven't thought of wording or 
anything like that, we can decide all that among ourselves. There's no 
point in debating any of this until tomorrow anyway, I'll email then 
with what we've come up with and we can all fight it out.


Gavin

Re: Dare to share (was re: Days of Sorcery)

[Gavin Smith]

However, I do take your point that floppy disks have a limited 
lifespan, so we should try to make sure that everything is imaged and 
catalogued. Perhaps we could maintain a list of what images exist - 
not necessarily to release the images right now, but to make sure that 
everything will still be available, as and when we can agree on what 
is the right thing to do with it.


It's 2004, how many more years are we going to talk about it? :) My 
suggestion was that we have a consultation period (bit of a fancy term 
when referring to SAM software!) of about 4 weeks for each and every 
bit of software before we post the image online. If we can get the 
author's written permission in that time, great. If we can think of a 
reason not to post the image (or indeed if the author refuses 
permission), then obviously we don't.


Isn't that the lesser of two evils? One evil is to let the stuff rot 
away (we're the last few remaining who give a stuff about the SAM 
remember so let's not lose perspective), lost forever - the other evil 
is to go to reasonable lengths to gain permission, and failing that we 
post images that we think aren't too controversial. I really think it's 
the most sensible of the two.


I'll have something on the net before the weekend is out and we can 
debate it - it will give us something to talk about at least ;)


Gavin

Re: Dare to share (was Re: Days of Sorcery)

[Gavin Smith]

I have already spent time over the last couple of months tracking down
programmers and have been able to secure the re-release of some Sam 
games
which will be appearing on future Sam Revival coverdisks under the 
heading
'Classic Coupe Collection'. The first coverdisk with issue 9 which 
featured

Manic Miner was the start of this.

Along the way, I've also discovered some unreleased Sam titles too, 
such as
Invasion II that is on the current issue of the magazine, and along 
with

some totally new Sam programs there will be quite a variety of
never-seen-before programs to spice up the Sam Revival coverdisks.


That's all fair enough, and I don't want to step on anyone's toes but 
at the same time, it's not the same as an archive? Wouldn't it be 
better to ask authors if we can share it freely on the net, rather than 
put the stuff on yet another floppy disk that's still going to get lost 
to time?


Gavin

Days of Sorcery

[Gavin Smith]

Anyone ever buy this? I kept intending to, because I thought the demo on Fred
looked fab. Anyone have a .dsk of it and a scan of instructions (if there any)
or is the author likely to mind?

Cheers!
Gavin

Re: Days of Sorcery

[Gavin Smith]

Quoting Colin Piggot [EMAIL PROTECTED]:

  Anyone ever buy this? I kept intending to, because I thought the demo on
 Fred
  looked fab. Anyone have a .dsk of it and a scan of instructions (if there
 any)
  or is the author likely to mind?
 
 Nigel Kettlewell's not been seen around for a bit, and it would of course
 always be best to get the author's permission... i'll have a check and see

It would always be best but it's not practical and as time goes by the harder it
will be. My own opinion is that we (this group in general) know roughly what
shouldn't be distributed and anything else is okay to go on NVG with a
disclaimer that it will be removed immediately if the author does complain. I
think that's about as fair as we're going to get really - otherwise we start to
be pointlessly anal.

Gavin

RE: Days of Sorcery

[Gavin Smith]

I used to be dead against sharing SAM files but as time goes by, it really is
getting a bit pointless, EXCEPT for the obvious exceptions of anyone who we
know would be against it or for anyone still producing stuff that isn't free
such as Colin. I agree with most of what you said - basically we're talking
about a World Of Spectrum type setup. 

I previously had an idea of posting lists of SAM software on a webpage, each
with a date in brackets 1 month from time of posting. The idea would be that
this mailing list would consult the webpage, decide among ourselves what would
be insensitive to set free on the web, and then after 1 month, anything that
hasn't been complained about, would be published as a dsk. I'll maybe have a
crack at starting that this weekend.

At the end of the day, a lot of this is just being pedantic because the majority
of the software is out there on the net somewhere and we all know that. What
we're talking about here is a slightly more official archive - sanctioned by
us lot seeing as we're pretty much all the SAM has left!

Gavin

Quoting Johnna [EMAIL PROTECTED]:

 Well I've bid my time on here long enough playing by the polite 'rules' of
 not publishing other people's files. But I think that after all this time,
 it's getting a bit stupid. 
 
 I haven't got Days Of Sorcery, but if I had it, I would share it.
 Technically it's software piracy, but in reality it is only things like this
 that will keep our little machine alive.
 
 Most of the author's of the original software probably never give the SAM a
 second thought and I certainly think that a system whereby they are
 published on a site somewhere and the authors are allowed to ask them to be
 withdrawn if they wish is preferable to the current system where people who
 want to find out what the sam is all about cannot.
 
 That recent message from the Young McKenzie was the most incredible thing
 I've read on here - does he really believe that holding the secondary rights
 to software for a machine which even ten years ago was only a 'cult' thing
 is the route to a quick fortune?! It's a joke that we are still protecting
 the commercial rights of some of these authors - there is NO money to be
 made from the scene with regard to OLD software. If people wanted to buy it,
 they would have bought it ten years ago when it was published!
 
 So I say - Publish and be damned! Let's get a website up and running and
 dump EVERYTHING we've got on there that is SAM related and then maintain it
 as a homage to what was, once, a great machine. Nobody else is going to do
 this. We are almost the last bastions of the SAM World, even the original
 manufacturers of the machine show no particular interest in it anymore.
 
 Or of course, we could wait until the natural copyright expires in around 65
 years and do it then. Most of us will be dead, and those who aren't will not
 care any more.
 
 But sitting around and talking about doing something, although almost a
 great tradition of the Sam scene, will only end up with us losing the last
 remainging interest that reamins in the machine.
 
 
 -Original Message-
 
 It would always be best but it's not practical and as time goes by the
 harder it will be. My own opinion is that we (this group in general) know
 roughly what shouldn't be distributed and anything else is okay to go on NVG
 with a disclaimer that it will be removed immediately if the author does
 complain. I think that's about as fair as we're going to get really -
 otherwise we start to be pointlessly anal.
 
 Gavin
 
 
 
 
 

Re: ORSAM show report

[Gavin Smith]

 And by the way: I have put my pictures from Orsam to my website. GO TO: 
 www.womoteam.de/SAM/
 and choose Norwich Pics 2004.

Nice pics - did any of the videos ever surface? I'd like to see Colin's chat
about his new hardware in particular.

Gavin (currently SAMless and missing it)

Re: Poll: What do you get if you...

[Gavin Smith]

Quoting Colin Piggot [EMAIL PROTECTED]:

   3818: EB E3 ; k - c (+80) so Missing disk becomes Missing disc!!
 
 Ouch!
 
 I forgot about the whole cuffufle about the spelling of disk way, way back
 then...! Disk, short for Diskette I will always use disk myself!

Yeah, I think pretty much everyone was against Bob on that one, but he ploughed
on ahead regardless. Completely pointless change I always thought.

 At least DIR wasn't changed to CAT, I can remember Bob's argument being You
 don't DIR a directory, you CAT a directory

Hadn't heard about that one - was there a discussion about it or something?

Gavin

Re: Format is Back ;-)

[Gavin Smith]

Quoting Colin Piggot [EMAIL PROTECTED]:

   While on the subject there is company in Scotland called West Coast
 Computers.
 
 That'll be the PC shop that's in Irvine...
 
 Hearing about other companies called Format Publications or W.C.C. isn't
 surprising, I've had about five emails about manuals and remote controls for
 'Quazar' branded TV's in the last year! I think it's an american make.. not
 too sure...

Sue them! They're clearly trying to profit from your success in the SAM market
;)

Re: Format is Back ;-)

[Gavin Smith]

Quoting Colin Piggot [EMAIL PROTECTED]:

  Sue them! They're clearly trying to profit from your success in the SAM
  market ;)
 
 I really do wonder why they email me as the only place they could get the
 email from is my website... and there's no tellies or vcr's there!

You could start though? Buy a load of cheap crap tellies from Tesco or Argos,
rebrand them and resell them. Tunnel profits into a new SAM and rebrand SR as
YS. That would cheer me up today *nods*

Re: SimCoupé for OS X

[Gavin Smith]

Special thanks to Andrew Collier, Allan Skillman and Gavin Smith, for
answering my endless Mac-newbie questions and providing all-important
feedback.  The OS X experience has also impressed me enough to be 
looking

for a Mac of my own :-)



Thanks for your work Simon, Mr Piggot tells me you had an eMac had home 
for several days just working on these problems - I don't have a SAM 
anymore, so I use SimCoupe to keep in touch with my SAM roots :)


Gavin

Matt Round

[Gavin Smith]

I was pasted a link today: http://www.malevole.com/mv/misc/tribute/
Very funny but then I delved a bit deeper and realised the site was 
done by Matt Round (Malevolent) of much SAM goodness fame. He's even 
employed the notes on top of notes type of design on the front page 
of his site, that he used in Derf!


His company site is (guess!) www.malevolent.com

I must email him and tell him I still worship him. (Remember One Man 
And His Frog? Genius!)


Gavin

Re: SimCoupe 0.90 beta 10

[Gavin Smith]

I've also added BeOS R5 and QNX binaries to the download page at
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/simon.owen/sam/simcoupe/  I've got a
provisional OS X version too, but am holding that back until a strange
performance problem is fixed.  I'm hoping to have access to a Mac in 
work

soon to fix that...


An OS X version! Now you're talking my language! Give me a shout if you 
want a tester.


Gavin