Topic: General news

It's only eight days until raww.orgy and things are progressing well. Kinda. I've had a call last night to say that the prizes are ready for collection. I'll do that tomorrow so I still have a week to "tweak" them if I desire. However there aren't many competition entries yet - I only have a couple 256b Intro's, two screen$, and a single AY tune. Perhaps people are busy working on last-minute entries? Who knows. Just remember to get them to me as early as possible so I can include them in the player (which is almost finished - it's simple, but I don't have much spare coding time).
So there you go. 8 days to the party, 8 days to finish your work. Get to it!

Today, I have a good news for all MDOS3 divIDE users who want to SAVE stuff from their Speccy to a CF/HDD, easily transfer it to a PC and aren't much into those damned Linux tricks :) The first public release of MDOS3 Tool in version 0.5 BETA by diZZy allows you to make virtual D80 disks for use with MDOS3 easily from a Windows GUI. Just add your favourite TAP files (not implemented yet, but you can use TAP2D80 utility from this pack) into a D80 image, save the whole content to your CF card and put it into the CF reader on divIDE. Or vice versa, of course :) No more Linux hacking and manual files joining. How easy! English Readme is included. Go and use the advantages of MDOS3, go!

At the weekend I received an email from bugsy\hds, the maintainer of OpenSourceZX, saying that the site has had a bit of a relaunch. As bugsy himself admits the site since it's inception has been a bit of a "files trashcan", but that's set to change to a more structured project - sources are well-categorised, with screenshots of the "end result". There is also a plan to convert the source into plain text, making it readable from your browser (or at least a text editor) - very handy if you just want to see how routine X was done.
With this change comes a translation to English, which (in my opinion) is rarely a bad thing. It makes checking the site for updates that much easier. Hoorah!
So head on over and check out some code. And submit your own, too.

I was just sitting at my desk thinking "I really should post some news" when I checked the WOS forums and lo, Garry Lancaster has being doing some work. He's announced the release of new versions of both ResiDOS (v1.92) and the +3e ROMs (v1.30).
ResiDOS is a modification of BASIC designed to work with the ZXATASP IDE interface - it's also supported by a couple of other systems. The new ROMs for the +3e tho' are particularly interesting to me, if only because it gives me a chance to try out my recently-acquired PROM Programmer. Read the thread on WOS to find out what's changed - for the +3e users like me there's a few bugs fixed, aside from the additional support for SD/MMC Interfaces.

What is mbIDE2? For those who have never heard, with mbIDE interface you can connect any IDE device to your MB-02+ just like a hard drive or a CF card. In mbIDE2 Poke Edition, many bugs were removed and there was corrected functionality with Compact Flash cards. Together with a right software like dr0n's HDDPatch or LMN's EasyHDD you can patch BSDOS and use your hard drive or CF as a virtual set of floppies. The project will process in the following order. LMN will make PCBs, Poke will program modified GALs and Noby will assembly the whole thing with ICs and parts. The price will depend on the amount of interested people but it couldn't get over the price of divIDE, so don't hesitate and make your order right now! As Logout said: "There are only two types of people. Those, who have problems with floppies and those, who are using mbIDE2 Poke Edition :)" Send your orders directly to Logout at logout(e)1-2-8.net or kukac(e)ppf.cz.

Following on from the recently-published (and almost sold-out) ZX Spectrum Book book by Andrew Rollings (I'm still waiting for my copy to arrive...) comes the C64 Book. Covering roughly the same time-span (1982 to 199x) author Andrew Fisher is aiming to do a similar job as with the ZX book - detail a selection of stand-out games from the history of the machine. Personally I've never had a C64 so I'd be unlikely to look at the book with teary, reminiscing eyes, as I hope to do with the ZX book, but it could be a nice addition to the fanboy's collection.

Wiki's are odd things. On the one hand they're a source of information provided by Joe Public. On the other hand they're a source of information provided by Joe Public. Providing Joe is having a "good day", that can mean we get a lot of useful, accurate information. And if we don't agree with it, we can change it. Hooray for freedom of speech.
Retropedia is a new Wiki with an aim to be filled with user-generated content about "Retro" gaming machines... you know, Atari, C64, ZX, the old IBM-Compatibles. It's also being designed to act as a "portal". It's all good fun if the community jumps on board. Not a huge amount there at the moment, but that's the way with all Wiki's at the start. Go edit.

Large Capacity Storage systems are all the rage for "old" computers at the moment. On the ZX we have several options (the most popular being the DivIDE). So it was interesting to see an update of a project from around 6 years ago to incorporate an IDE controller (it actually may have always had that). I actually think I've not mentioned the Interface 1-bis before, more through ignorance than anything else. The project, as the name suggests, is to provide a device that's compatible with the Interface 1 with some additional features for using mass storage - including the obligatory tape routine traps so you can load in emulator files. If you've already seen the project then the new design is much sleeker, using a single CPLD and SRAM chip... the IDE controller is a separate device. Go have a look.

If you're in the mood to start work on coding a game rather than a demo (tho' why would you be? Do both!), then you may like to know that the next Minigame competition has been announced. Unlike the most recent compo, the categories are 1k, 2k, and 4k, I guess the 8k competition didn't work out as popular as was hoped? The competition officially starts in February, so check out the site for more information.

Quick thanks go to Equinox for spotting that the raww.org RSS Feed had disappeared. I guess it must have gone missing in a recent upgrade. Ho-hum, it's back now.
As a non-related side-note... I just had a parcel arrive with some stuff for the raww.orgy. It's like Christmas all over again!