Topic: General news

Just seen that there's a new update over on Project AY. Nothing demoscene-related but there's a few nice tunes of newness. There's also a handful (3) of CPC tunes in the update collection, so why not go check it out.

In an attempt to be vaguely helpful, if you're a user of Firefox or some other Mozilla-like browser you may like to know that I've written a couple search plugins. One is for raww.org and the other is for Demotopia. You can find the links in the block to the right of the page (unless you're viewing this article on it's own, in which case you'll need to go back to the main page)... click on them and you should get the search plugins installed and useable. If there are any issues then please let me know and I'll try to fix it up. Oh, and if someone wants to design a better demotopia icon it would be much appreciated.
In case you're wondering, there's already a WOS plugin available over on Mycroft, where I should really submit these two sometime.

Just so you know, I'm in the process of doing some upgrades to the site. Don't worry if it looks weird for a while... it should all be back to normal shortly. <time passes> Done. You shouldn't really notice any difference on the site, but we're now all patched up. Lovely.

With the disappearance of Scenergy (link provided for "historical" reasons), there's not many places to get your up-to-date party information, so thanks to C-Jeff for sending me the results to ArtField'2006, which happened last weekend. Click on for the full results, and click here for a download pack - you'll need something that loads .TRD files to use it. Oh and it probably helps if you know how to use BestView.

It seems like modern versions of the ZX are all the rage - well, there's at least one more that I'd not heard of before (add to the list of ZX Bada-thing, SpeccyBob, ZXSE (more of a mod, to be fair), ...). ReSpecT is a clone that first appeared a whole month ago. The page is all in Russian but it looks like it's based on the SpeccyBob. I'll leave some other people to decipher it... I need to get on with some "real work".
Again thanks to ZXM for the news leechage.

Just spotted this over at ZX Magazin (it's in Czech, in case you wondered). It's the page of an "artist" (he/she/they) going by the moniker "ZX Spectrum Tribute" - at least that's what the page would suggest. They've produced a selection of remixed game tunes, including classics such as LED Storm (shit game, great music). It's not something I can currently check out, as my place-of-work frowns on mp3 downloads... but that's not stopping you from tuning in, eh?

Here's an interesting wotsit from the keyboard of one Dunny (he of ZXSpin and BASin fame). Following a bit of guesswork when he stated that the next evolution of BASin would be written in assembler, it's come to light that a new OS is in the planning stages. You can read the full details over on the WOS Forums (you may need to copy-paste that URL due to hotlinking issues), but it comes down to being an OS based around the ideas of the ZX ROM - you know, built-in BASIC and suchlike, but with a bundle of enhanced features. It's an interesting idea, not too far removed from ZX Emulator, a bootable emulator. I'm sure there will be people overjoyed to hear about this, especially considering this is from the brainstalk of the developer of one of the most popular emulators. I'm sure there will be others who will ask the questions "why?" and "what about zx compatibility?" - of course any real zx stuff would need to be emulated, but we already know that we can do this well.
So, read up about it on the forum, and watch this space for more detail when I find it.

Here's an interesting one, sent to me by bverstee (that's his raww.org username, anyway). He's been working on a prototype of the MB04, a follow-up to the popular (and huge) MB02 system. For those who don't know, the MB02 was a disc interface for the ZX which provided tape emulation (much like the various IDE interfaces of today). There was more to it than just that, as it included DMA (for fast moving of data), loading with interrupts on (so you can play music while you load, as can be seen in, uhm... MQM6 I think). I have one and it's quality. But I digress.
The MB04 has actually been in development for a couple of years (!), but in the last couple days some additional updates have been... updated on the website. This "sequel" is to include things like a PC keyboard interface, IDE (I think using the MBIDE adapter), CF adapter, etc. It looks like it could be a nice bit of kit, and you can watch progress on Ben's Website. If you've any comments on the interface, drop Ben an email.

Just a quick note mention that I'm going to be doing some system updates to raww.org in the next couple of days. There's some system upgrades to be done, but I'll also be trying to streamline things a little. Hopefully you won't notice, tho' I'll be removing the old "NooBloo" theme which some people have still opted to use despite the default theme being "NooBloo2" (the updated, nicer theme). Don't worry you shouldn't need to do anything unless everything stops working... in which case you can contact me for help.
There you go. Thought I'd warn you all now in case raww.org disappears.

Richard Tarjan, he of the ZX Hardware page, has written to tell me that he's been working on some information about ZX Games since the "demise" of the machine as a popular gaming platform. When I say "demise", I mean of course when Your Sinclair faded out leading people to stop paying attention to ZX games. But they should have paid attention as Richard points out with his article on ZX Games After '93. You can think of the article as a follow-on from the ZX Book I've previously mentioned. There's a fair bit of information there, covering games from the ex-Soviet Union, UK, Czech Republic, etc. Worth a read.
Also, while I have "games" in my head, I'll mention that Wierd Science Software are working on a game that they hope to release in time for Christmas. Yay.