Topic: General news

Another long day in the office produces another tired icabod. It also produces a stress-reducing Blah! post to get rid of some news build-up.

• Yet another version of SpecView SE has been released. Again mainly a bugfix, v2.1.10 also features a new experimental inverse feature.
• DB sent me a mail a few days ago detailing a new device available for the Speccy. It's called TI-of-TTL, and details can be found (cut-n-paste alert) here.
• Also from DB are a couple more ROMs added to S4E. The updates are for the d80 disk interface for the Didaktik, and the HDT-ISO ROM. Can't give you any more info about that one tho', as the text file wasn't there when I checked.
• I'll soon get a site sorted out for Spectrum SE. Really.

Aah, done. Again, apologies for the shitty reporting in the last couple days, but I get paid for work, so it has to take some priority :[

Just a note to say there's no news tonight. Well, there is, but I'm gonna leave the reporting of it 'til tomorrow. The reason? Well, I've been doing a few updates over on the server, and having a bit of a "play" with it. Tomorrow night I should hopefully be installing the latest version of PHP, the server-side scripting language. I like to keep up-to-date, see.
Once this has been done, I'll be setting up a couple sites over on it. We already have (nearly) all of the Demotopia collection residing there, and I'm in the process of creating a proper frontpage for the server itself. We're getting there.

Well, I've heard back from Andrew Owen about the ongoing Spectrum SE project, and I now have a list of the specs for this machine. However, in case you hadn't noticed, the official site is no longer running. I'm going to sort out a site on the raww.net server, and put the information up there. But until I do that, here's a taster of what to expect:

• Based on TC2048 (Portuguese machine) motherboard.
• 128k ROMs, using original 48k ROM, +3DOS, and SE BASIC.
• 2048K of RAM.
• Additional BASIC commands.
• Additional screen mode.

Looking very nice, I think, but then I've seen the whole spec. It's very detailed, and an interesting read. So I guess I'd better hurry and get something set up on the server.

Well, I've been quiet for the past couple days, but the news has kept flooding in, so now I guess I should do something here.

• After much announcement of the event, ExcessTeam have finally released Excess De Luxe Paint v2.1b on their site. There's nothing like advanced warning, eh?!
• Also on the ExcessTeam site is the announcement that CrazyAlex is no longer a member, being replaced by hAlt and Xtarget.
• Checked out the site ZX the other night. Seems that there's a bit of paranoia there that no-one's posted anything on the message-board. I know the current thread is about games, but go join in, and have your say.
• A new emulator was announced during the weekend. Titled Spectrum Emulator 0.02 (nice!), there doesn't seem to be a website for it yet. From the post on CSS, it's for Windows, using DirectX. You can download the emu in English and Spanish versions.
• Due to the translator down-time, I obviously can't get at the news posted on Scenergy in the last couple days. For those who can read Russian, there's news about Final Shoque from Blade^Triumph, some info about Miracle (a 'zine), some downloads from Phat0, and a post about the upcoming Paradox 2k+1 demoparty. I think.

Aah, another slice of news-pie goes down a treat.

Okay, this is just a small personal request. I've been looking at the information for the Sprinter-board, and am quite interested in it. Perhaps even interested enough to get one myself. However, a point was raised by someone about the "scene" for the board. I mean, the MB02 has many users, so I happily bought one... just wondering who out there has a Sprinter, or who knows where there are some resources for it. Any information will be much appreciated. Send it to the usual address.

Got a mail today from Andrew Owen, creator of the, slightly quiet, ZX Spectrum SE project. Well, it seems that during his time in Australia (the reason the project went a bit dead), he's actually been doing some work on "the new machine."
I don't have much info at the moment, but I hope to soon get the new specifications, most of which (with the exception of the 32k video modes) can be bolted onto a TC2048 or a Pentagon. As soon as I have them, I'll post them on the site for all to see. There's also some talk of getting someone to work on hardware emulation of the machine, but I'll get back to that when I have the specs.

Spotted this post from Garry Lancaster on CSS last night. To save me some time, it's just gonna be a cut-n-paste:

"
At long last I've got around to updating the +3e ROMs!
I hope you'll agree the new version (v0.87) was worth waiting for; there are a large number of useful changes, including:

• full support for two IDE drives
  
• additional compatibility with some previously unusable drives
  
• new commands for renaming partitions and showing current drive mappings
  
• ability to map floppy drives and RAMdisk to any drive letter (yes, you can now have your 3.5inch external drive as A: and the 3inch internal drive as B: if you want!)
  
• extensions to several commands so that drive mappings, default drive, Editor/BASIC colour schemes etc can be automatically set up each time you turn the +3e on
  
• improved boot speed for single-harddisk systems
  
• several fixes to minor +3 problems
  

You can get the ROMs and full details from the new website (don't forget to update your links/bookmarks!) which is now at: http://.../zxplus3e/
Enjoy! (And don't worry - the next release is being worked on already!)
"

There. Looks quite interesting. After the recent photos of it, and seeing some of the comments in the newsgroup, perhaps I'll try modding one of my +3's.

Over on World Of Heaven Aeroplane you can now download the new version (newer than the one released a couple days ago) of SpecView SE. The main change, aside from a couple bugfixes, in v2.1.9 is support for .TRD files. Now you can view pictures from TR-DOS disk images. Nice.

Okay. Two sites have changed, one I noticed myself, and the other one I managed to completely miss. Hehe. I've lumped them both in here because... well one of the doesn't seem to have changed much at all!
First I need to mention the new, and frankly sweet-as-hell, design over on ZX Banner Network. The reason I'd missed this was due to pages being renamed, but enough of the excuses. Go check this place out, if you've not seen it already.
Next, I saw that Sinclair Tech Info Library has changed. But I've looked, and all I can find is a corrected email address. Perhaps there's something hidden in one of the many tech-files on the site. Best go read them all thoroughly, eh?

Got a mail from MacBuster today stating that he's put an updated version of his Pentagon FAQ online. Now, I can't, I'm afraid, give you a rundown of what's new in this release, as I've not actually been monitoring this beast. But it's definately a worthwhile download. I've learned a lot from it, and that's after only reading a couple of the questions ;]
So if you're new to the Pentagon machine, or if you just want to find out something you didn't know, then check this out.