Due to a distinct lack of "major" news today, here's some bits'n'pieces cobbled together from what I have (mostly from an email I received from Mac Buster -- but not all):

• First off, Martijn van der Heide of WOS is disappearing for a few weeks, so I'm not expecting any updates for a while. Of coz, I could be surprised, and he may have found someone else to do the dirty work. We'll see.
• More GMX info... seems that the emulation isn't quite like a real Pentagon. As I mentioned earlier, it seems more robust, hehe. But I want to know why we can't all use standard grey-case +2's, eh? On that note, if anyone has one for sale... <g>
• About my suggestion for a .AZX-player for the Spectrum, MacB says that the final files would be just too damned big, and require mucho processor power (more than the 3.55MHz we have to play with). Of course, I was thinking of the .VTX format (nice and small). Checking out the specs for .AZX, I can see what he means. It's the quality/filesize compromise. Good for "desktop"-players, tho'. Hmm.
• Lastly, MacB also pointed me to a (hopefully better) Russian online-translator, over at Promt. If all goes well, there should be less gaps in the news. Failing that, I'll just ask a few people to translate for me... it'll enhance the "community spirit".

So, there ya go.

As you'll know from a previous post, I've subbed myself to a mailing list (ZX_Spectrum@egroups.com - check it out over at egroups). Well, most of the posts on the list are in Italian (and we all know how good I am with non-English). However, through the power of Babel/Altavista, I can get the general gist of what's going on. It was while doing this that I found this site, mentioned by Davide Barlotti. Speccy4ever looks to be in the early stages, but the ROMs section has thousands of Spectrum ROMs to download (note: I may be exaggerating a little). They can be used in emulators, etc, and include "bug-fixed" classic ROMs, Russian and other clones, and even ROMs for addon boards. Worth checking out, but I just wonder why none of the sites that offers this kinda service (Sinclair-Hotline is another) have ROMs for 8bc's MB02+ disk interface?!? Maybe someone should start!!

Just got an email from WiLL about ZX-Party. There's a new URL for the site, and it's been updated a fair bit. There's still the application form, but now there's also a map to the party-place (Virtual Internet Cafe in Wroclaw, Poland), and some more information. I'll leave you to figure out the details... jump to it!

Finally tonight (phew, I'm tired), I had a mail from Richard Tarjan about... the GMX-board (you may remember this from previous posts about Scorpion/Pentagon info). Richard has written a "*very* comprehensive Speccy-hardware review in a PC-mag. It contains all recent Speccy-hw in 2000". It's all available online, but only in Hungarian (natch). I've not been able to translate it, but I can at least look at the pictures and read up on some of the specs. And he's right, it does look very good -- maybe some of the people on CSS should check this out to prove the Speccy is still alive [private joke].
As I said, the mail was about the GMX Mainboard, and here's a brief translation that Richard provided:

" - GMX: Graphic Memory eXpander: It is emulating Pentagon with 90+% of success (95%?, 99%?-who knows the deepest secrects of a Pentagon...)
- also emulates 4 other Speccy variants and the pure Speccy also
- it has 2MB of RAM (2*1mb blocks)
- new color mode: 640*200*16 (graphics), 80*25 (text)
- CPU: 3,5/7 MHz Z80B, and 14 MHz is being developed "

The more I find out about this board, the more I like it. <homer>Mmmm, new gfx modes</homer>.
I also checked out the rest of the site (Sinclair-Hotline), and would recommend it to any Spectrum-fan (despite the lack of an English interface). It's one of those "browse-around-and-you'll-find-something-nice" sites. While I was looking, I found around 60(!) ROMs to download. Should be good for any emulator-writers.
Anyway, I think that's enough for tonight. Have fun.

Raww Arse's very own LaesQ pointed me to another speccy-based .da.ru-site, this time under the ownership of Scene Team. It's another Russian-language site, but the rest of us can at least browse around and check out the downloads. Tho' having said that, content seems a bit thin on the ground in the Speccy section (heh, like I can talk). But check out the "our works" section for some demos and such. Anyway, I'll add a link to the bar on the right, and you can do your part by checking the site. I like it :]

There's been a couple updates on speccy.scenews over at Chaosite. The first is about Born Dead, posted by unbel!ever^x7m. But more than that I can't work out, as it's all in Russian. And frankly Altavista's Babelfish translator isn't much cop when it comes to Russian.
The other post is from Random. Seems he's set up a CC000 discussion board. You can head on over there and "ask everything you've wanted to ask about CC000 :)". So go do it!!

After a few quiet days, we can usually rely on Gasman to pop out some news. And sure enough, he's not let us down. Spotted news of another demoparty over on Demotopia. It's being held in Riga, Latvia, (wasn't Riga a horrid fruit drink?) and is ingeniously titled Demo 2000. We find out about it at quite short notice, as it's being held on 29th and 30th of July, clashing with CAFe 2000.
This actually looks like a good party, with the emphasis being on PeeCee and Speccy competitions, although there's a distinct lack of a Speccy-gfx compo. Unless anyone's found a way of forcing the little devil to produce images of 640*480*256.
Alas, if you want to look at the site you'll need Internet Explorer, as my Netscape kindly displays a blank screen. And before anyone goes on about Netscape being crap, it's coz the <frameset> tags don't add up. Kinda funny coz the website is designed by "realbad team". Ahem. If all else fails, jump straight to the menu and work your way around.

Couple little globs of news to delight you:

• Saw an update to the .AZX music format over on WOS. Mac Buster has released v1.03 of the spec. In case you're wondering, this is a nice little file-format for storing AY-tunes, to be played by the various AY-Emulators out there (my personal faves being vbAY and AY-Emulator). Anyone know if there's a Spectrum-based player about? It'd be kinda sweet.
• While I was ill the other week, I got bored of daytime TV and so decided to play about with WML, the markup language used on WAP-phones (I got one, see). Well, there's some setting up needed on the server, but I can view it, which is a start. There's not much there now, but if enough people want, I may add a small headlines section. Or something. You can check what's there by pointing your WAP-browser at /index.wml. Like I say, this is just a test, so let me know if it screws up. And before anyone starts... I know it doesn't work in the Gelon browser. That's a server-problem.

Hmm. Gonna go grab some food. Enjoy.

Okay, I had the day off work today, due to feeling a bit ill (some would say I'm sick already, hehe). But I'm not letting that stand in the way of news. So here's a couple more nuggets of information...

• Just missed the deadline for the last Blah!, but Relict/Phantasy mailed me to say that K3L now have a new member... him! Looks like their recent "member-search" paid off.
• Over on WOS I see that there's been a new release of ZX-Spectrum Navigator, a Norton-Commander-style browser for various Spectrum disk-formats, making it easier to skoot through those crazy .TRD-files.
• Also on WOS, I see a fix for a FAR plugin. The plugin allows the viewing of Spectrum disk-formats in FAR (by Eugene Roshal, the author of RAR archiver). FAR is a Norton-Commander-style... uhm... am I the only one getting deja-vu?

Enjoy your sweets.

...then get busy with this. Spotted an update at Demotopia following up on a little "argument" currently flying around comp.sys.sinclair. Seems there's some argument about which is better, music on the Spectrum, with it's lovely AY-chip, on the C64's SID. Of course, C64-freaks stand by the fact that the SID sounds better than the AY. Well, Gasman's helping to settle the score by posting a few "classic" AY-tracks on his site, among them some demo-tunes by X-Agon, TDM, and Raww Arse's very own LaesQ.
When I checked there earlier, the "grab the lot" link was duff, but hopefully that'll be fixed by now.