Topic: General news

Quick mention of some new docs uploaded over at Speccy4ever - they're for the KAY-1024T/3SL/Turbo, the KAY Beta-Turbo, and the docs for IDE/IS-DOS v1.0. The KAY is a clone of the ZX, while the other download documents another IDE interface for the ZX (or at least for some ZX clones). Sadly the docs are all in Russian, and so don't mean much to my western eyes, but I'm sure they're of use to some of you.

Sergey Bulba has provided a very handy ZX program on his site for playing all variations of Pro Tracker 3 modules. During the course of Pro Tracker 3 development the format of the modules changed, and this player should play them all. It comes in a precompiled binary (to 0xC000) and also source for the ZXAsm Cross Assembler (which may be this one?). It shouldn't take much effort to convert the source to your favourite assembler.
Very handy for demos, especially if you're writing the music-player for an AY competition.
Oh and the file you're looking for is VTIIPT3ZXPlayer.7z. It's hidden amongst the other source code. Hehe.

At the end of last week a new version of ZX-Emul was released, the next in what will surely be a spate of quick releases. v0.27b brings with it mainly bugfixes, but there's also some debugging functionality added, and a ROM browser. If you use this emulator, it's worth the update.

    _______    _______    ___ ___    ___ ___
   /       \  /       \  /   |   \  /   |   \
  |    |_   ||    |_   ||    |    ||    |    |
  |    ^    ||    ^    ||   _|_   ||   _|_   |
  |        < |       __||___ _____||_____  __|___  ___
  |    |    ||    | /       |     \      \/      \\\  \
  |    |    ||    | \    _  |   _  \   _  |_     _|    \
   \___|___/  \___|__\   \  |   \   \  \  /_ \   \____  \
    \04/02/2005\      \   \/ \   \   \  \   \ \   \  _\  \
     \05/02/2005\      \   \  \   \   \  \   \ \   \/     \
      \06/02/2005\      \___|  \___|___|__|___| \___|_____/

There's a new poll up, and it's keeping to the "party" theme. This one is based on how many scene parties you have been to in the last 12 months. So that's September 2003 until September 2004. Personally my count is very low, as it's not easy to get away at the moment. But there will be people like Gasman who need to take off their shoes and socks to count the number of parties they've been to. It'll be interesting to see if most partygoers are the same group of people.
Regarding the previous poll, which was based on whether a party should take place in the UK to celebrate the 5^th birthday of this website... well, it seems that it's not financially viable for a lot of people, which I can understand. It's cheap for people from the UK to go to many places in Europe where the scene is big, so it must be expensive the other way around. Then again, I only planned a small party. Hmm.

Gerard Sweeney has been at work on his ZX surfing tool, "Speccy Search Bar". If you're a devoted ZX fan then you need to add this to your current internet suite - it's a toolbar for Internet Explorer (spit!) and Mozilla Firefox (yay!) that allows you to easily search a selection of ZX-related sites. Think of it as a specialised googlebar. This version adds searching of Lo ZX Spectrum in Italia, and the WOS forums, and there's also changes to the way that raww.org is searched.

Aside from an apology for the delay in getting the Chaos Constructions releases on to Demotopia, Gasman has let out the news that demoscene portal Pouet (home of the funky random logos) are joining forces with Demotopia. Well, not quite joining forces, but there's now the ability to associate Spectrum entries in Pouet with the correspondin Demotopia page. Pouet being something of a community project, it just requires people to go in and add the link id's. So get to it... you've surely nothing better to do today!

Noticed a rather large post from Hangy over on Scenergy regarding a new project titled something like "Encyclopedia of ZX Spectrum". I'm kinda guessing at the name as the site is sadly all in Russian, and babelfish isn't coping well (you may like to try OT - slightly better results). It's a pity, as the site looks set to be a great collection of information about the Spectrum and the scene, and being based on a Wiki engine it allows it to be something of a community affair. My limited understanding of any language other than English (I know, I'm pathetic) shows some good sections on Demo Party's and things of that ilk.
Worth checking out if you can find your way through the online translations.

If you're reading this page then there's a good chance you'll have some interest in the ZX Spectrum and it's CPU the Z80. Indeed, it's essential to know the workings of this chip if you're a code-monkey, and the Official Z80 Support Page is the place to go for information. There's been a few updates to the site recently, linking out to a whole host of Z80 data sheets by Zilog. There's also a new document by Christian Dinu detailing the decoding of Z80 opcodes.
There's also news of a new Wiki dedicated to the Z80, and actually aimed at being a new version of the z80.info site. The "Zilog 80 Information Center" already contains a lot of stuff about the processor (and quite a few links back to the .info site) so it's certainly worth a look. And as it's a Wiki, it's a community project. Add your knowledge. You know you want to.

Prompted by a forum post @ WorldOfSpectrum (the post is here - try opening in a new window), I visited Sintech while my boss's back was turned. Sure enough, they're currently taking pre-orders for the MB03+, the successor to the MB02+. It's "512 K SRAM, 32K Flash Rom, PS/2 Mouse & Keyboard support, Smart-Card-Reader, IDE-Support"...
That's all there is in the way of details, and if you look at the product page it states that "... it is not clear, if the MB03+ will be finished." The price is about what I paid for my MB02+ (around £200), likely to get cheaper the more people who pre-order it, with 50 pre-orders being the minimum required to make it worthwhile. Having just bought a house, one of those people won't be me, sadly. Unless they decide to offer a trade-in scheme.
I may decide to invest in one of those VGA convertors, tho'. Hmm.