Hi,
I have been writing a Spectrum emulator as a distraction and am
starting to feel comfortable with the way the ZX Spectrum works. Not
that I care too much about the ZX Spectrum, because I had a SAM Coupe!
Unfortunately I was too young to know anything real about computers at
the time,
Hmmm... beginning to wonder if I should just do what 99% of people here at
MS do -- ignore it all, and just don't get involved in online debates.
Hehe - if you work at Microsoft, say 'Hi' to the Mindcraft people for
me!
-Thomas
Hi,
I received SC-ASM the other day, and being not ill acquainted with z80
assembler and the workings of the ZX Spectrum, I've programmed a few
basic things. You know, like pressing different keys activating
different border colours and little things like that. I therefore notice
that
Erm... No. You probably meant to say four /bits/ (a nibble). Four bytes
is 32 bits per pixel? Not likely, on a SAM. The Kaleidoscope wasn't too
bad, IIRC... But no programs supported it.
Yeah, four bits, absolutely! It was late. And as for the Kaleidoscope,
didn't the Newsdisk carry a
I bought my Sam in Feb 1990 - very early on one of the chips went funny so
the picture occasionally went black and white. I got this replaced shortly
after SamCo appeared and I'd got my v3 Rom.
Mine still does that black white thing, and I had it replaced once,
back in the day.
I've got a spare manual here that I could rip up, but if you insist...
If you've got a spare manual, I don't suppose you feel like sending it
to me?
-Thomas
Has anyone had any dealings with Persona in the last couple of months? I
ordered some software 6 weeks ago and still haven't received anything. I've
also tried mailing [EMAIL PROTECTED], but haven't heard anything back
from there either.
He has definitely been about. You know,
I really want a free browser, written by people who care about it's
quality, instead of staying one step ahead of the competition. It's just
sad when you can't even view the W3C's site without having to enable
override document colours in your web browser. W3C is truly pathetic.
Tried
BTW, if anyone feels like sending me a nice new 21 inch monitor...
Well I had one spare, but I was sort of bored so I ripped it up!
-Thomas
Hi,
My brand new copy of SAM Elite is sitting mostly unplayed due to the
continuing deterioration of my SAM power supply and so on. The disk uses
some crazy format, so neither samdisk (the useless gives up on bad
sectors or the DJGPP does all sectors but crashes in dos boxes versions)
Or you could download a copy of the spectrum 48k version, which is
basically the same thing
Well, yeah, but with the obvious changes that it :
a) wouldn't be able to load saved games from .dsk files meaning
that
any play on my tempramental SAM would have to be
You could always just save a snapshot file instead
Does SAM Elite load those, or would I end up using SPECTRE and just
owning a copy of SAM Elite for a bit or a laugh.
Also : I just realised this morning that the silly cut-down SAM I was
thinking of is the SAM Gamestar . . .
Hi,
I've never been too sure about the memory layout of Mode-X and so on,
so I am asking one simple question, would it be faster to :
a) blit 144 32x27 tiles to a Mode-X screen arranged so as to
form a
rectangle of 384x324, or
b) blit the same tiles to a
Sorry,
wrong mailing list. I promise to not send at least three mails I
otherwise would have to make up for it . . . .
-Thomas
Can anyone explain to me how can i transfer dsk files downloaded from the
internet vie a PC to a Sam computer?The software needed and any problems I
On NVG there are two programs that can do this for you - samdisk and
samdsk. Neither has any real advantage when transferring to floppy,
Since Si Owen doesn't want to release his sources (I hate him for this),
I can't do much and I'm affraid Linux is out for now, since DOS is out too.
Hey, Sim Coupe was distributed under the GPL license. If Si doesn't
want to surrender the modified source then he is breaking the law, and
squabble squabble squabble Linux *squak* *squak* *squak* WIN32, squabble
Simcoupe
*squak* Linux, Linux GPL squablle, *squak* *squak*!
Here is an interesting fact : Si has broken the distribution agreement
with which he got the source for Sim Coupe. If you think that is an
acceptable
Point 1: Oh no he hasn't.
He has modified GPL source to produce the development version of SimCoupe
Win32. But since he is not distributing a binary of SimCoupe Win32, he is
under *no* obligation to release his modifications to the source.
Actually I am told there is a binary in
How come all we ever talk about these days is copyright issues?
Strictly speaking that is part of the reason for GPL! The coders want
the right to share source again, man. But this isn't the thread for all
that.
I always thought we were developers - not lawyers. Maybe it's a new trend?
[cut]
thinking about one of the posts I read, and it gave me an idea...
Actually this is the one consideration that keeps me bothering to even
think about writing anything for the SAM since my real machine is far
too beyond useful life to make it worth it. Shame really. It is a nice
Hi,
to aid me in my continuing attempts to write some code that does
something interesting, please feel free to answer the following
questions :
- is LDIR the fastest way to draw sprites to random positions
on the
screen (random in the same way as random access memory is
Frankly I'm amazed you're giving him such hassle. I might have thought
you'd actually be pleased that someone was taking the time and trouble to
port SimCoupe to your favourite platform.
Even more so since DOS compatibility is apparently 'out' as far as
windows 2000 is concerned. That
Hi,
I have a need to duplicate a BBC style ADFS single density disk, but
have discovered that every IBM PC I can find has broken single density
floppy disk compatibility, such that none of the physical sector copiers
will work.
However, I remember picking up a SAM disk magazine
Book Sale in Stratford had them at 1.50. Until I bought them all.
Dixons / Currys / whatever seem to be happy to do them from some
regular source for £2.50 or £2.00 or something like that . . .
-Thomas
Well... A Sam screen file is a plain simple 1, 2, or 4-bit bitmap, with
a palette (also storing line interrupt info). A BMP is a horizontally
Anyone able to say where the palette comes (before or after) and in
what form?
-Thomas
PCX is compressed, so it *can* be smaller than BMP.
Should save quite a bit with the usual SAM graphics, especially since
you are going to need 12 palette changes to go over the single pixel
encoding limit.
Just by the way (and my reason for posting), you are aware that some PC
Hi,
I have a couple of utilities that will take a file from a DSK format
image file and store it on my hard drive, but are there any available
utilities (for my PC - I am aware of a few for my SAM) that go the other
way?
-Thomas
Hi,
while tidying up a bit today, I discovered that I still have a load of
semi-complete SAM stuff I had entirely forgotten I owned. I found the
'boxes' but not the disks for the following :
Splat!
Pipemania
the LERM Spectrum Emulator (SAMTape?)
and the
Hi,
I downloaded some games to try on my real SAM, but on trying some of
the GamesMaster games, I was reminded of an interesting phenomenon - on
my MGT 256kb SAM, all GamesMaster displayed games consist of nothing but
grey rectangles presumably where the sprites are meant to be. Is this a
Hi,
Having sent it already to the wrong mailing list (although thanks to
everyone here for helping me on Mode-X when I made a similar error on a
different occasion), I'd like to say:
in about 1993 I was due to receive the schematic to make myself
a 256kb SAM upgrade, which the
Hi,
I understand the tragic circumstances surrounding Malcolm Mackenzie,
however just before christmas I spoke to him by e-mail and he wrote I
have also found a shop that has about six SAM`s right at the back of his
store shed, the only problem with this guy is he wants to make as much
Hi,
probably of little interest to anyone, but at
http://www.btinternet.com/~t.harte/SAM1.jpg
you can find a 255kb hardly compressed 72dpi scan of the Dyzonium and
Waterworks inlays, and at :
http://www.btinternet.com/~t.harte/SAM2.jpg
a
Hi,
I picked up while flicking through some earlier posts that either :
a) someone said a snapshot file format would be nice, or
b) someone implemented a snapshot file format
If this is b), from where can I get such a SIM Coupé details of the
For other files, I have a program (quickly hacked together in C, most
of which should be totally cross-platform except calling the Open and
Save dialogue boxes) which can transfer files to and from a .dsk
image. I guess I should upload it to mnemotech.ucam.org or
somewhere...
Do
Does anyone know why Outlook Express will not remember my password.
A common windows 95/98 password forgetting problem can be brought down
to
'.pwl' files in 'c:\windows' (or wherever) - delete your .pwl file (it is
associated to whatever name you state in the 'login' window when you
Does anyone have version one. If so, when you press the edit key does the
top line of the screen flash waiting for an input.
I seem to remember having a version 1 which did the flashing top line
thing.
Might be confused, but I am fairly sure. Alas that disk (and most everything
else)
Famous Five, Witchin Hour, Lemmings, Ore Warz 2 (NEVER
RELEASED!), Labyrinth, Bombs Away, Invaders, Muncher, PoP,
Quizball, Defenders, bulgulators, dyzonium (which are shareware
anyway iirc), batz n ballz, manic miner, eftpotrm, klax,
Anybody know which of these I could use with SIM
Hi,
I noticed David L selling a SAM on comp.sys.sinclair, but was under the
impression he was currently in charge of Persona. So I went to
http://www.persona.clara.net/ to see if it was being closed or anything only
to get everybodys favourite error : error 404.
So which
The game images plus some general background information can be found here:
Since no-one else seemed to have, I'll just say : thanks for this!
Since all
my other commercial games are long dead, this will be about the only thing I
have that actually works correctly all of the time on my
I've been writing some simplistic ZX Spectrum programs for a bit now,
and
feel I am ready to move on to trying to write something for the SAM (one of
which I actually own). Of course I understand that there isn't any extra
complexity in writing for the SAM (at my level) once the graphics
though I didn't think anything of it at the time, I receieved when I was
younger a SAM disk featuring the Spectrum games Chase HQ, WEC Le Mans and
Tetris 2 appearing exactly as they would on a 128kb ZX Spectrum. Also, some
old ZX Spectrum emulator appears.
Since I have been
To quote Robert Wilkinson I've sent Outwrite! and a Morse code tutor to
David Ledbury to place on the Persona site.. But to summarise the thread
'Persona dead?', that web site no longer exists, and probably won't for a bit.
So has Outwrite! been uploaded anywhere else?
Anybody played vegetable vacation recently? ha ha ha
Yesterday actually. Still don't like it, but I found the disk (for
which I
paid 50p to retrieve from a local shop's bin of cheap disks) suddenly and
thought I might see if it still works. Alas it does.
Is it really a terrible
Arcade perfect, is it? Does it have the coloured strips? Eh? Eh?!
Surely the coloured strips would be the easiest thing to get arcade
perfect
because of the ease of switching palette entries halfway down the screen?
-Thomas
Hehe,... SCADS eh? Ahh, them were the days :)... I was always a bit
Hey, if you have SCADS, any chance of uploading a DSK file to nvg to
replace
the td0? I'm one of the many people who can't use teledisk any more, but I'd
really like to see SCADS.
-Thomas
But you can... on your Linux desktop.
Or indeed any other UNIX, or Macintosh, surely?
-Thomas
1. 4MB SIMM - 1/3
2. ZX128 emul - 1/3
3. DMA - 0/3
4. ISA cross- 0/3
5. Interlacer - 0/3
6. Amiga HDFDD - 1/0
7. 28MHz CPU- 0/0
Alright, I vote for 28MHz CPU and DMA . . .
-Thomas
Just be glad you don't get Terry Wogan on your Eurovision Song Contest
coverage.. yuck!
Surely being in America saves you from any Eurovision anyway?
-Thomas
Secondly, did anyone actually get the source included to compile? Mine kept
complaining about missing header files; don't remember exactly which, I'll
check tomorrow.
You did realise that the SimCoupé DOS releases from Aley only contain
as much
source as has been changed since the
thus enabling me to experience the sheer joy (irony) of Flash once
It isn't that bad if you use the mouse version, I always thought - it
certainly speeds things up!
-Thomas
It's been a while since I wrote that so, to be honest, I really can't answer
any questions about error messages, bugs, or features!
Any chance of posting the source? So that some of us can try and fix it
for
DOS boxes?
-Thomas
I've been persuaded that rather than messing about with mode 2
interrupts,
since I can on the SAM, it would be better to put the screen into 32768+, get
rid of the ROM and use the low 32kb for program and data. Though Andrew
Collier did post some example to do this ages ago when I asked
Is there anything special about the SCART socket that makes it not a
normal
SCART socket? I've tried connecting it up to a few devices (TVs and videos),
but it only seems to produce a blank, black screen. Maybe mine is broken?
-Thomas
Just to say thanks for everyone who posted follow ups. Using the
relevant
information I've been able to use a regular scart to scart and snip enough of
the 'un-necessary' wires to create a fully working lead! I'm probably now only
using the composite signal, but if it gets the picture to
Though MasterDOS doesn't seem to be available for download in an
assembled
form, I noticed that Andy Wright has made the source available. I've never had
/ used / tried MasterDOS, but I thought I might so I am wondering - should an
assembled version be available somewhere I haven't
At current, in my development process (using a DOS based package to
cross
assemble), by far the longest wait is for SIM Coupé to quite finish booting,
so I am wondering - is there a fast booting ROM available for download
anywhere on the internet?
-Thomas
I'm busy writing my first SAM Coupé game, and so far the results are
encouraging - I have a rotatable spaceship and asteroids that sort of rotate
of their own free accord and move about. No gameplay or anything, but I'm only
a learner.
So I am wondering what I am meant to be doing
STAX was fantastic - the best freebie game ever, save for Tetris.
Anywhere I can get a copy?
-Thomas
I might be able to get a second hand Sam from a friend who is happy to use
Simcoupe..
If you have two SAMs but don't wish to run them at the same time, I'll
make
you an offer for the spare power supply. Though Bob Brenchley has been really
nice and
sent me a new power supply - SAM lead
Hey - I never claimed it was anything other than a quick hack
And I never claimed it was anything other than deeply useful for
non-repetitive purposes (e.g. using those files on nvg which are intended for
a real SAM and so aren't DSK files or anything useful like that)!
Couldanybody email me the original SAMDSK or point me to it at the
ftp?
Can't find it on FTP, but I'll send it if you can't get it any other
way.
-Thomas
Hi,
just to announce that I'm winding down all internet activity before I
go to
university, and so am un-subscribing from this list. I know it won't really
matter to anyone, but I thought it polite to say.
Anyway, bye.
-Thomas
I was on this list ages ago, and have returned because I am informed it is the
best place
to find out about the current status of copyright on many SAM products. I
stopped using
my SAM in 92 or 93, so excuse me if my knowledge of available software isn't
quite up
to date.
Anyway, I notice
Alas, neither SamDsk nor SamDisk seem to want to work on my shiney new PC
(running Windows XP).
Is it just me?
Is there another tool out there I'm missing that'll do the job?
No, due to extra controls excerted, including DOS programs, by NT/2000/XP the
direct
hardware access that these
If we're heading off topic anyway, I don't suppose if someone with the magazine
could
check quickly whether my small emulator, ElectrEm (it does the Acorn Electron)
is in
there? They don't seem to stock it at local newsagents, so I'm curious.
-Thomas
I realized recently that here on this list (and
maybe not on this list), I have access to some of the best and brightest in
the
game development world. So... any ideas?
Ummm, I'm hardly the best or the brightest, and I'm not even in the
professional game
development world, but I've been
Just like PowerVR's gfx chips with tile rendering, which process
the z-buffering for the screen in small blocks and render only
what is visible.
This is common practice across all modern cards. A hierarchical approach is
taken - there
is a full z-buffer for all pixels, then a version with
I also wonder whether the extra memory would be of particular benefit.
Yes, at least if you're drawing in Mode 4. Do you remember a demo
called DWC (Dead Wild Cat) by Marc Broster on Fred 50? It drew rotating
3D wireframe objects and usually kept up to 50 fps. He used most of the
Sam's memory to
From : Andrew Collier [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date : Sun, 12 Jan 2003 17:01:15 +
I don't quite see what you're getting at with your descriptions above...
However, the way I see it; every byte that you clear costs time. The
ideal situation is when you're only clearing bytes which were used in
I picked up one with a second hand SAM, which looks like it was made
for the
SAM, and certainly fits well enough. There are no labels on it tho, so
I'm
not sure how official it is.
It's made of a greyish plastic material with a leathery texture, and has
brown material stitched around the
Hi,
I've just discovered pyz80 and am having a fresh bash at some Sam
projects. As I'm simultaneously working on a Freescape interpreter for
the PC, my thoughts have inevitably turned to 3d on the Sam, even if
it means a Freescape-style non-realtime display. I'm therefore curious
about
of those (x^2)/4 table solutions reducing it all to a couple of table
lookups and two or three adds and subtracts, but dividing looks like
it'll eat quite a few cycles.
On 8 Apr 2008, at 14:58, Colin Piggot wrote:
Thomas Harte wrote:
I've just discovered pyz80 and am having a fresh bash
My original Sam only had 256K. And it really annoyed me later on when
half the stuff on Fred wouldn't work, without warning. I think
Gamesmaster programs were the worst offenders — you'd get the game
clearly working, but with a bunch of monotone grey blocks moving
around instead of the
have the speed of mode 4 pixel plotting to deal with. So
maybe it's [parts of] the line drawing code?
On 9 Apr 2008, at 01:49, Andrew Collier wrote:
On 8 Apr 2008, at 14:35, Thomas Harte wrote:
I know there are some demos with bits of 3d graphics, but I figure
that spending 256 kb on getting
I've recently acquired a Sam from eBay (correction to my earlier
comments: not from Colin — that was a misunderstanding on my part of
the actual seller's advert) and it was advertised as coming with a
Kaleidoscope. My problem is that having identified which box must be
the Kaleidoscope by
, this is what my Sam is doing:
http://members.allegro.cc/ThomasHarte/temp/Kaleidoscope1.mp4 (about
8.2 mb)
http://members.allegro.cc/ThomasHarte/temp/Kaleidoscope2.mp4 (about
8.3 mb)
Is that really all that it is meant to do?
On 9 Apr 2008, at 20:19, Colin Piggot wrote:
Thomas Harte wrote:
1) should
and not break it. So I'll probably
leave it. Better a Sam with heavy ghosting than one that doesn't work
at all.
On 9 Apr 2008, at 21:26, Colin Piggot wrote:
Thomas Harte wrote:
Actually, now that I'm looking really, really closely, I can see some
extremely minor variations on the red
Message - From: Thomas Harte [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
Sent: Tuesday, April 08, 2008 3:35 PM
Subject: Attempts at 3d on the Sam?
Hi,
I've just discovered pyz80 and am having a fresh bash at some Sam
projects. As I'm simultaneously working on a Freescape interpreter for
the PC
Hi,
I notice that the following files from /pub/sam-coupe/disks/games/
Commercial are given read/write privileges only for 'owner', with
'group' and 'others' being given only execute privileges (so, e.g. the
files can't be downloaded):
Craft.zip
MindGames1Bombed
Is it correct to say that a 204x192 (204 is approximately 256 *4/5)
image on the SAM will occupy approximately the same amount of space on
a TV screen as a 256x192 image on the Spectrum?
As I previously said, and as mentioned in the current Sam Revival, I'm
experimenting with 3d on the Sam. At the minute I'm just playing with
vector graphics, since they move reasonably quickly, making it easy to
observe problems with the algorithms.
I'm not doing too terribly (see
In fairness, I'm not completely comparing like for like in that video.
I am doing realistic 3d engine stuff of creating one view matrix to
represent the orientation and location of the camera, a separate
transformation matrix to represent the orientation and location of the
model, then composing
routine?
Dave
- Original Message - From: Thomas Harte [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2008 10:48 PM
Subject: In pursuit of Dead Wild Cat
As I previously said, and as mentioned in the current Sam Revival, I'm
experimenting with 3d on the Sam
Blink wrote:
From: Thomas Harte
... dead wild cat demo ...
I'm don't remember this demo Where can it be found ?
BTW If you need some help with optimizing your (multiply/devide) code.
I'm always in for some byte/T-state banging :-)
Edwin
by inlining, but then I'm probably pretty much done
unless there's some sort of special tricks for 16bit table lookups
that I haven't thought of yet.
On 17 May 2008, at 20:39, Dan Dooré wrote:
Thomas Harte wrote:
It's originally on Fred 50, but not really in the sense that you
have to expand
I'm using a variant on that page's square table method for my 10 bit
multiplies (though I always do (a + b)^2 - (a - b)^2), and something a
lot like his divide. But my divide is a lot messier. Specifically (in
pyz80 syntax):
;
; FIXDIV, works out BC / DE and stores it to HL (all 8.8
I'm about to finish my lunch break, sorry if I sound slightly short...
1) is there any pattern or logic to the values placed on the bus
during interrupts? I guess an equivalent question is: what realistic
options do I have on the Sam for catching and processing interrupts?
2) are there any
While thinking about it during the afternoon, I have decided that
since this table is absolutely fundamental to my program (it's part of
the table based 2.8x2.8 multiply), I'm just going to centre it on
address 0. Then I can cut the ld bc and the add hl, bc. I'm happy to
rearrange my
the first SET
instruction at all)
Edwin
- Original Message - From: Thomas Harte [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
Sent: Tuesday, May 20, 2008 3:03 PM
Subject: Short, short questions
I'm about to finish my lunch break, sorry if I sound slightly
short...
1) is there any
If you interrupt routine is small, could you not also just switch off
the first one or two scanlines of your display, and even grab a few
extra cycles out as a result? Or can you not enable and disable the
display per scanline?
And, yes, I know I'm missing the point with this question, I'm just
Really it was related to my first question - I was considering the
plausability of moving my data table to be positioned around address
zero when I wrote the post. And obviously a table that reaches 2kb in
either direction from address 0 covers address 0x0038.
Tests last night with an older,
no
means of producing interlaced video?
On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 3:58 PM, Andrew Collier [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 03:16:07PM +0100, Thomas Harte wrote:
If you interrupt routine is small, could you not also just switch off
the first one or two scanlines of your display
, Thomas Harte wrote:
Literally anything? On many of the machines I have written emulators
for, most things are usually completely changeable but some things are
loaded internally — especially on any machine that has a variable
screen start address.
Also, one further question: am I right to think
There's a timing difference between even frames and odd fields in the
syncs generated at the field end. Non-interlaced video essentially
sends only even fields.
That said, I'm not sure if non-interlaced video was ever an official
part of the PAL spec, so perhaps this TV is justified in its
: Attempts at 3d on the Sam?
Thomas Harte wrote:
I've just discovered pyz80 and am having a fresh bash at some Sam
projects. As I'm simultaneously working on a Freescape interpreter for
the PC, my thoughts have inevitably turned to 3d on the Sam, even if
it means a Freescape-style non-realtime
, that's about another 100-150T-States. That would be an
improvement
on 2000 cycles you said at the beginning?
Howard
-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:owner-sam-
[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Thomas Harte
Sent: 27 May 2008 14:16
To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no
Subject: Re
values.
Again, that's about another 100-150T-States. That would be an
improvement
on 2000 cycles you said at the beginning?
Howard
-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:owner-sam-
[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Thomas Harte
Sent: 27 May 2008 14:16
To: sam-users
, I'll definitely have to check out
moving some large projects over. It would be nice to finish some of these
projects lying around(!)
Howard
-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Thomas Harte
Sent: 01 June 2008 19:54
To: sam-users
I think I might have read that one while researching - the one in
which the argument is basically Wolfenstein 3d must be possible
because all the individual parts of the engine are simple versus
scrolling the screen is even more simple, but the Sam doesn't seem to
have the horsepower for that?
At
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
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