A new website of Hood/MB Maniax has been launched. There are some interesting MB02+ tools for download, like for example the latest version of NMI Menu (current version 1.35) or a patched version of ResiDOS for MB02+ with improved installer, "dot" patch (replacing . character instead of % before keywords) and some more useful things. You can read the full info file inside the article.

FF20 is a formatting utility for MB02+ with MBHDD add-on, replacing the old Busysoft's FF17. You know it already. Now, Shrek/MB Maniax presented the final version 1.0, with a new Fast Format feature, so the formatting of your CF will no longer take minutes, but just seconds. You can get it from here. So get it.

Just a quick note that the MB Maniax site is back, bringing fresh news and rumours from the Czech Speccy scene. In Czech language, naturally.

[Updated] Someone knew it, someone didn't. The next year of IVP has been held last weekend in Polish town of Krakow. Anyway, there was a little demo compo, so we can bring you final results and stuff. Browse over IVP site to find everything you need. For those who want the compo stuff directly, here are the links: Photos and here are the demos. The CPC demo wasn't finished and is not included in the zip file. It will be later released as a post party production. The original text by Yerz follows...

If you browse over the CI5 site, you can find out there is a bunch of three new MDOS3 tools written by Sweet Factory at Kaplicon 2008. Maker, Mover and Enlarger. Maker formats a fresh MDOS3 partition made using zxfdisk or Linux fdisk with ID 49 on your media (zxfdisk can be found inside the MDOS3 distribudion package). Mover is a batch copier from real D80 disks to MDOS3 images. You need a real D80 to be connected with DivIDE at once (with a little data cable hardware mod). It can skip non-empty images and is able to make the images for 94x9 tracks while a classic MDOS disk has normally 80 tracks. Thath means the final image on the CF has 846K instead of 720K. Finally, Enlarger does the last step as Mover does but with any existing image - enlarges the size of it to 94 tracks without data loss. Handy.

Kaplicon 2008 is over and I'm bringing you exclusive photos from the event. There weren't many attenders, but it was fun and that's the most important. Coding, boozing, drinking beer and playing Tekken in a local pub, that's Kaplicon. Now, look at the pictures.

Update: New set of Kaplicon 2008 photos by Logout!

Quick post to say Happy (belated) Birthday to Speccy Live, a quality news-site that turned one yesterday. Ah, one year old... so young, so impressionable. Long may the site continue. It's a great news source, so it is.

Head on over to the 8-bit Company webpage and you can download some new documentation relating to the MB02+, a device that seems to be coming back into fashion. First up is a document of modifications to the original MB02+ design, including replacing the EPROM with a Flash chip and other hacky things. There's also a print routine should you be connecting a printer to the MB02. Finally there's the new version of the MB-IDE interface, which has better compatibility and a new design. Lovely.

I don't really follow ZX Spectrum Orchestra (tho' I do have a single of theirs on vinyl that I've never actually heard). However it turns out they've been featured in an article on "lo-fi production" in Computer Music Magazine (link?). In the article they talk about creating sound on a ZX Spectrum, including some Z80 Assembler, and over on their Myspace blog there is some further explanation.
Now... if someone wants to provide a link to the original article, that would be lovely.

A few changes lurk in the latest release of multi-platform AY tracker-player AYFly. It's now up to v0.0.15, and there are a bundle of changes since I last reported on v0.0.12. The important ones that stand out are a fix to the Z80 interrupt timing, some fixes to various Symbian builds, and the addition of support for ASC Sound Master, PSC, and SQ-Tracker formats.