New downloads on S4E
	What news today? Some more downloads available on S4E, that's what. You can go there to grab the following: v1.08 of the Rotronics Wafadrive ROMs ROMs for the KAY1024, as included in the recent release of z80Stealth Profi 1k ROMs (I think these may be new, so I'll mention them) The recently released ROMs for the +2C by our very own Namco. Hmm. Time to chill.
	[icabod] - 21/02/2001 @935

	z80Stealth v0.410 released
	Yep Yep! Another installment of z80Stealth greets us today. Packaged into it's neat, ehm, package you can find the following new/altered featurettes: KAY1024 emulation has been added. ...in with which is support for a real KAY1024 hard drive. bugfixes to do with 16Mb of RAM. Hmm. Not a huge amount there, but it's the quality of the changes, not the quantity. Look like a couple biiig changes, too.
	[icabod] - 20/02/2001 @885

	Blah! Again!
	It's late and I wanna get to bed, but first here's a little post to keep you going: My mate Zahg pointed me to this article over on Gamasutra. It's explaining the PC demoscene to people who don't understand it, but I think it's relevant for all demoscene's. Couple new ROMs on S4E, namely spanish versions of the 48k and Pentagon ROMs. I think. Had a crash while checking the page, so I lost some of the changes. Arse. chiptune.com appears to be down. Has been for the last couple days. From my short investigation, one of the DNS servers appears to be dead, but I could be wrong. If anyone has any news about this site, let me know. Lastly, got a mention on POS. About the mentions I give them. Thanks <g> 'Nite.
	[icabod] - 20/02/2001 @050

	New files on DJH
	Quick post. There's a few new files available over at DJ Hooligan's download page. Amongst other things, you can grab v2.1b of Excess Deluxe Paint, a demo, and a 1k intro. 'Nite.
	[icabod] - 18/02/2001 @975

	Quick note-lets
	Just a few notes to wrap up the afternoon. Gasman has now joined Hooy Program, a sub-group of Raww Arse. Don't worry, this won't affect Pondlife or SE#3. Oops. Cut-n-paste error. Thanks to Himik of POS for pointing out a mistake in my results of Final Shoque. 'Tis now sorted. Codemasters have just announced a game not dis-similar to Ocean's classic The Great Escape. Check out Prisoner of War. Nice. Couple new links you may like to check out: CSS Folklore (information about CSS, funnily enough); and specchums.org (a site about people who like the Speccy, basically). If you're interested in AY music, you could do worse than check the links on DMOZ:AY.
	[icabod] - 17/02/2001 @712

	Announcing NuoTrauka virtual party
	Yep, spotted this over on Virtual TRD. There's a new virtual demoparty been announced (virtual meaning that there's no actual party, it's all done online). Organised by Constellation, entries for NuoTrauka have to be sent in by April 1st, and come in 5 flavours, namely: AY Music; Graphics; 1k Intro; ASCII graphics; and Announcement competition. This last one is interesting. You have to guess the winners of the other four competitions. Heh, wonder how many people will vote for themselves?! One of the highlights of this vParty is, for me, the lack of a preselection committee. In other parties, some good work hasn't seen the light-of-day due to not passing the preselection. The only way work won't be including in NuoTracka is if it fails to live up to the rules. Which is fair enough. (or if the work is blatantly shite). So go check out the site for information. It's even in English.
	[icabod] - 17/02/2001 @698

	Virtual TRD Downloads
	A few more downloads have appeared over on Virtual TRD, covering the recent Millennium and Final Shoque parties. There's also a plugin for one of my favourite file-managers, FAR, providing support for HRiP, and a tool called HardCore v3.01, for editing your chunk graphics. They've also pointed me to the site of a new virtual party, NuoTrauka which you can read about in the next post...
	[icabod] - 17/02/2001 @687

	POS goes Euro
	Got a mail from those lovely people at POS concerning the scene language barrier that I've so often commented on. Well, they now have started to produce "double posts", with information in both Russian and English. Should help out me with this page, and more importantly the scene as a whole. Very nice.
	[icabod] - 17/02/2001 @685

	Is the scene dead?
	There's an interesting discussion going on on the x-board (like the abbreviation?). The discussion covers the deadness of the scene. There are some interesting points-of-view coming out, and I reckon this could end in violence. Or perhaps not. Either way, take a trip over there to read up, and maybe input a little yourself.
	[icabod] - 14/02/2001 @935

	+2C ROMs released
	Yeah, Raww Arse's very own Namco has released the latest version of his 128k +2C ROMs. At it's most basic level, it's a bugfix for the original ROMs in the 128k +2. A couple commands have been removed/replaced, and the full information is contained in the rather-detailed text file that accompanies the ROMs. You can grab the file simply by clicking here.
	[icabod] - 14/02/2001 @930

	RealSpectrum update
	Nope, not a new version. Not yet, anyway. Instead it's more of a "progress report". Kinda like I fail to give to my boss every week. I won't cut-n-paste the whole post (which you can read over on the RealSpec site), but I'll point out the goodies. full Scorpion SMUC emulation various IDE/ATA HS interfaces (+3e, SMUC, etc) Opus Discovery and D80/D40 emulation NetPlay Convert between disk formats and images Ooh, nice. Look forward to it in the next release <g>
	[icabod] - 14/02/2001 @920

	Award for the WoS DoS
	Now DoS attacks on servers are a nasty idea, especially when the server houses the harmless and frankly damned good WOS. I think the problem has been sorted out, and all the proper snitching has been done. On a plus side, WOS has received another award, this one from Eye Site. Hey, that's two years in a row... going for the hatrick???
	[icabod] - 14/02/2001 @910

	Grand Rom Max Move
	Heehee. Could I have been the cause of this? Or does MacB have his finger in other pies, too. Over at S4E the GRM ROM has now moved from the Pentagon section over to the "Other Clones" area. Not overly important, but I thought I'd inform you all.
	[icabod] - 14/02/2001 @905

	Millennium report available
	Spotted over on the site of Heaven Aeroplane that there's a new download for the bug-fixed Millennium Photo Gallery. It's a multimedia presentation for Win9x, of last years party in Minsk. Even includes some muzak.
	[icabod] - 14/02/2001 @900

	Welcome to papaya.raww.net
	Finally for tonight (phew!) I bring news of an update over at Raww Arse Archive. Or rather I don't. LaesQ has been having some problems with site updates, and so has transferred the site over to the raww.net server. You can now access the site of Raww Arse, E-3 and Papaya Dezign at the new address papaya.raww.net. LaesQ has been a busy chap too, celebrating the move with the release of a new tool, an MB02 Disk Imager. This should help get some software out there for us users. And users of RealSpec. Of note, it has fixed a major bug which could render a floppy drive useless after use. Yeah. I know this bug. Happened to me at work, of all places. I just switched computers and hoped no-one would notice <g>. Anyway, pop on over there and check it out.
	[icabod] - 12/02/2001 @999

	Various site news thingies
	Hmm. At the expense of seeming lazy, I'm putting a heap of news about various sites into here. So here we go... ZX Downloads has had a revamp courtesy of DJH. You can pop over there now and check out the new design, along with party reports and a section all about the ever-popular Dizzy games. LaesQ pointed me to a neat site by DirtyFly. There's not a huge amount there, apart from a Spectrum museum. And this interesting photo of a Canadian +3. Hmm. On closer inspection this is abviously a fake... but it's a nice idea. Added a link to another site pointed out to me by LaesQ. chiptune.com does what it says on the tin. You can download music made for soundcard chips (as opposed to using massive samples). There's even a Speccy section, featuring the theme to Raww Arse's BOA. Sweet. Worth checking if just for the neat Java. ...and talking of neat Java, it's written by an Atari and Java demogroup. Worth noting for some of the retro/old-skool effects, I recommend a visit to Equinox. Okay, this really isn't site news apart from the fact that I read it over at POS. In badly babelised text. So the details are a bit shady. But it seems an (ex?) member of POS has just become a father. Congrats to... ehm... Jack. I think. Another note about POS comes from a mail I received a little while back. Well, it got lost amongst all my mailing-list crap, but surfaced again after some random filtering. Anyhoo, it seems that the team are looking for someone to take on the task of translating news and articles from Russian into English. The sooner this happens the better, as we'll get an English version of the site, then <g>. Any volunteers should contact the guys on the site. Aah, the sweet smell of burning silicon. DOH!
	[icabod] - 12/02/2001 @990

	MindResources...
	Okay, I wasn't planning on mentioning anything about the MindResources demoparty, as it was a purely non-Speccy affair. But according to a report over on Scenergy, there were some presentations made on the Spectrum. Hmm. Well, as a little helper, here are some links to MRS sites that you could check out: official MRS page unofficial MRS page party report unofficial results Sorted.
	[icabod] - 12/02/2001 @985

	Final Shoque Final Results
	Well, the final results are out for the Final Shoque competition. As you should be aware, this competition was just for artists, held in December. I'm gonna cut to the chase and put up the top 3 from the categories: Visualise Competition 1 - Keep ZX! - ZSV/MIU/CTL 2 - DoUlike? - TAE/Sinclair Club 3 - Lost - Prof/4D Technics Competition 1 - Keep ZX! - ZSV/MIU/CTL 2 - Pain - GAS 13 3 - My Army - Surv!v0r There you go. "Keep ZX!" was the clear winner. And well deserved, too. You can download the entries from Scenergy and view the full results over at Demotopia.
	[icabod] - 12/02/2001 @980

	More ZX-Party photos
	Yeah, I decided to give myself a hard kick up the arse and put up the new photos. Only four more, and you can find them neatly nestling at the end of Mike^zt's gallery. Which is kind of fitting, as they're his photos. Hope you like 'em.
	[icabod] - 12/02/2001 @885

	Where's the photos, eh?
	Again, the additional photos taken at ZX-Party didn't come out. Sorry about this, but I've had another busy few days. I'm whittling down my news-list again, with a couple little posts tonight. I'll see what I can do tomorrow.
	[icabod] - 12/02/2001 @035

	Pentagon FAQ update
	Actually, I got another mail from MacB saying that he's updated his Pentagon FAQ to version 1.0.2. Changes here mainly cover typos, but there are also a few new questions: Q. What does complete Pentagon look like? Q. What are disadvantages of Pentagon? Q. What type of floppy disk drive may be used with Pentagon? If you have any queries that aren't listed in the FAQ, just drop him a line.
	[icabod] - 12/02/2001 @035

	icabod Goes back to school
	Well, not quite, but it seems from a mail I had from MacB that I've done the old 1+1=3 trick again. Well, from the evidence you can hardly blame me. The Grand Rom Max isn't, it seems, a Pentagon. It's a different clone, with again it's own hardware, timing, etc. So, why the confusion? It was in the damned Pentagon section of S4E. Aah well. Thanks again for putting me straight, MacB.
	[icabod] - 12/02/2001 @025

	No News?
	Well actually there has been some news come in today, but I'm not posting it. Not just yet anyway. The reason? Well since you ask, I've had to do a bit of important "admin-ing" on raww.net. As I write this I'm just waiting for a reboot of the box. So. How 'bout I get that news to you tomorrow, eh? That's a good idea. I'm getting tired.
	[icabod] - 08/02/2001 @995

	Good Cheer to you Sir!
	Well, it's time for some birthday greetings. And todays greet goes out to... raww.org!!! Yes, it's actually the 1st birthday of this website. Who'd have thought it would last a year!? Anyway, there's nothing here that'll astound you by way of a birthday treat (although I do have some more pictures to add to one of the ZX-Party galleries, but they'll come tomorrow). Instead, I'll leave you all to celebrate in your own way. Vast quantities of beer, is my guess. I had actually planned a huge post for this event, but really, there's not much point. Thanks to everyone who's stuck with it in the last year. Cheers!
	[icabod] - 07/02/2001 @970

	Impulsive behaviour
	Short post, this one, just mentioning that there's a new homepage for the 'zine Impulse. Here you can view all previous issues as HTML, or download them. I think. Heh. Go check it, and remember Babelfish.
	[icabod] - 07/02/2001 @940

	Real Software downloads
	There's been an update at RealSoft, too. Heaps of new files to download from the archives. To cut a long story short (hey, there's something on TV I just have to watch), i'll just list a couple things here: z80Stealth version 0.406 Excess Deluxe Paint 2.1b Tasm 4.12 Aah hell, you go work it out. Who am I? Ya mother?
	[icabod] - 07/02/2001 @935

	4Ever updates
	Yep, there's been some more action over at Speccy4Ever. This update includes a Pentagon ROM, the Grand ROM Max. Yeah, I've never heard of it either, but there are also some screenshots of it booting up in the Hardware section, and I have to say it looks rather nice. Also in this update is a ROM for that most beloved of my "bits-o-kit", the Prism VTX 5000 modem. Well, it was beloved until i managed to melt it along with a Speccy +2. Perhaps now I can try rebuilding? Hmm.
	[icabod] - 07/02/2001 @930

	Power Of Sound
	Well, now that I have a decent translator added to my bookmarks, POS will no longer remain a mystery. Which is just as well, as they've recently added a music section. They're providing space for any music downloads that you wish to add, in SoundTracker, ProTracker, and other formats. There's only a few there right now, but it's only the beginning. In addition to this, POS have released a new demo advertising their web-hosting services. Hehe, seems that someone else has a server, too <g>. All the details are in Russian, but it's a nice little demo anyhoo. You can grab it here. While we're on the subject of web-hosting, I know things are taking a while to sort out with raww.net. The reason? Over-worked and underpaid, as usual. I will soon be getting raww.org moved over to the server, and shortly after I will have much of this news-posting lark fully automated. Meaning I get a much easier time. Haha!
	[icabod] - 04/02/2001 @725

	Custom Hardware Frenzy
	Whittling down my "needs-to-be-sorted" news-list, I find a few updates over at S4E. The changes? Well, since you ask, you can find a load of new photos on the Hardware section. The photos are mainly for techy-types, but go check them out. Drives, chips, resistors... It's a veritable toolbox of bits. Pop on over and see if it floats-your-boat.
	[icabod] - 04/02/2001 @715

	'Zines-a-plenty
	Hehe. I'm cleverly managing to avoid using another Blah! so far. Here's another way around it, by grouping together all the 'zine releases/updates I've spotted on the numerous sites in the last couple days. Scenergy has a download for the new issue of Indentation, a paper-zine which you can grab in .PDF format. Meanwhile over on Virtual TRD, there is... hell, there's just too many to mention! This could of course be just me being lazy. There's new downloads for some "classic" 'zines (read that as old), along with all the new releases. There's also mention of a visit to the Mindresources party, which is being held this weekend. But I couldn't find much mention of Speccies on the site, so I won't mention it here. DOH!
	[icabod] - 04/02/2001 @710

	Sonic Project to end?
	Games again. At slow times, games are always a backup. But this is a project that some sceners may take an interest in. You probably know about the Sonic the Hedgehog conversion project, but according to this post on "the board", Anestis is thinking of calling it quits. He's willing to send all the latest work to anyone who wants to take the project on. Come on, there has to be a games developer out there who'll do this.
	[icabod] - 04/02/2001 @705

	Added Sites
	Well, I've been quiet recently, but I now have a few things to add to this site. First up are a couple new links. The most impressive (or at least the most useful) is Babelfish translation engine. Yeah, I'm not sure when it happened, but finally they've added a decent Russian-to-English translator to the engine over at Altavista. Now I don't usually put links to things like this, but if it helps the scene... Well worth a check through if you've a mono-lingual dunce like me. In an effort to be fair, I'll also mention the other translation engines I make use of: translate.ru, powered by the Promt engine. Translation Experts' engine, Intertran. If one doesn't do the job, check the others. They're bound to help. Next up is a page by Demiurge Ash. Here you can find work including Graphics, articles and... well, go along and find out for yourself. A passing mention will now go to another site for the Forever SE demoparty. This one is mainly for the C64 sceners, but there's always more information about the party to be found here, including a list of C64-ers who have signed up to go. Now remember, we can all play friendly! Alexander Brienza has a few Spectrum "thingies" on his site, including various programs for the Speccy, details of a Hard Drive project, and more.
	[icabod] - 04/02/2001 @700

	Uncle Clive
	Spotted this little item mentioned on CSS. Now, I don't have any fancy satelite TV system, so I missed a program on the new UK channel e4 all about Clive Sinclair. Well, that's not strictly true, but he was in the program, anyway. And so was Matthew Smith, who some will know as the creator of the classic Manic Miner (personally, I think the game sucks big-time, but who am I to argue with the masses). Anyway, as you know, I don't usually mention stuff like this, but it's been a slow few days. Besides, it's a good chance to boost your download ratio, by grabbing .rm's of the relevant sections of the program over at sinclairspectrum.com.
	[icabod] - 30/01/2001 @865

	Blah!
	Another quick Blah! I've added a link on the right to Paradox demoparty, being held in July in Russia. More info when I get a chance, yeah? I got another button sent to me today for Power Of Sound. Like the others that are piling up, I'll put them on the next version of the site, once I've had a chance to do some re-coding. Got sent a link by Jose Manuel for the site El Trastero del Spectrum. It's a Spanish site, so get out your translation books. Worth a check as it's updated weekly. Includes ROMs and such-like. Done.
	[icabod] - 25/01/2001 @998

	Spectrum SE site hosted
	Another quick update tonight, as I'm still overworked. You all know the score, right? I'm also away for the weekend, so I thought I'd get this done now. I've set up a site on the raww.net server for the ZX Spectrum SE project, which I've mentioned a couple times recently. Currently there's only the latest specification available, but who knows what the future holds. It's worth mentioning that Andrew Owen is looking for someone who may be able to emulate the hardware he's detailed. Shouldn't be too difficult to alter the code to a standard Spectrum emulator, I guess. But what do I know? I only code for a living <g>.
	[icabod] - 25/01/2001 @995

	Announcing the SpeccyBOB
	Seems that custom-kit is all the rage, what with the recent updates to the Spectrum SE spec, and now the announcement of SpeccyBOB. Noticed this posted on the mostly-quiet speccy.scenews. Well, there's a turn-up. I'll leave you to find out all the main specs, but as with most of these things the claim is that it's 99% compatible with a classic Speccy. Highlights include 3 selectable clock frequencies (3.5, 7, and 14MHz), numerous new graphics modes (with the overclocked CPU), IDE support, and etc. It's still very much in the design stages, but it's worth keeping an eye on.
	[icabod] - 23/01/2001 @965

	Blah!
	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 :[
	[icabod] - 23/01/2001 @960

	raww.net Server updates
	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.
	[icabod] - 22/01/2001 @950

	Spectrum SE Preview
	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.
	[icabod] - 21/01/2001 @880

	Sunday Blah!
	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.
	[icabod] - 21/01/2001 @825

	Sprinter Request
	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.
	[icabod] - 17/01/2001 @999