Compatibility: An open letter to the Russian scene By Gasman / RA I'm writing this letter to ask you to make some simple changes to the way you write demos, so they can be enjoyed by many more people around Europe, and the rest of the world. As you may know, I run the world's largest archive of Spectrum demos at http://www.demo.eu.org/ . I take a lot of care to get all the demos in .tap format, with a loader in BASIC, so they can be copied to any disc system and made to run just by altering the BASIC loader. A few people have asked me why I don't use Hobeta or .trd format instead. It's because TR-DOS is not very common outside Russia, so most people would have to convert the demos to their own disc system - and that isn't always possible, because the loader is written in machine code specially for TR-DOS, and needs to be 'cracked'. Instead, a .tap file can be copied automatically to any disc system, including TR-DOS - try ftp://an.balticdata.lv/Speccy/PC_Files/Utils/TAP2TRD.ZIP Unfortunately, this means that some of the most important demos - 'Refresh', 'Anamnesis', 'Napalm' - are missing from the archive, because nobody has managed to crack the loader. Why do they have these loaders? Why can't they use a simple unprotected one instead? The only reason I can think of is that it stops your discs being filled with files like 'DEMO', 'demo1', 'demo2', 'demoĐ—'... To this, I reply: What's more important - sharing your work with hundreds of sceners around Europe, or having a slightly better -looking directory on your disc? Every time I see a demo with a custom TR-DOS loader, it feels like an insult, saying "We don't need the scene outside Russia. The Russian scene is the only one that matters." The demo scene is all about exchanging releases freely - we shouldn't need to crack them for our own systems. So, this is my first request: Please give your demos simple BASIC loaders, NOT customised TR-DOS only loaders. My second request is about a hardware problem on original Spectrums that you might not know about. When the I register is set between 40 and 7F, the computer crashes. Please think of this while you're coding, and arrange your code so that there's space to put it higher in memory. I really don't think this is hard to do. When I looked at the Whim 16K intro from Paradox 2k to try and fix this problem, I discovered that it could be fixed just by changing ONE BYTE! It would be impossible for me to go through all the demos and fix them, so this is what I'm asking: Please don't put interrupt tables in the memory between 4000 and 7FFF. This is one response I've heard: "Why can't you watch our demos on an emulator instead?" Emulators suck. They're getting better and better, but they're nothing like the real computer. Also, quite a few people don't have PCs to run emulators on - one of the most popular magazines from the UK is 'Crashed', and it's the only one [apart from Subliminal Extacy ;-) ] to cover the demo scene in detail. Dave Fountain, the editor, writes and designs it all using only a Spectrum. Obviously, he can only review the demos if they work on an original Spectrum. Coders: What would you think if I put this code in my demos... LD A, computer_type CP pentagon JP NZ,demo DI HALT Stupid, isn't it? But it's just the same as what you're doing. I could just tell you to run it on a emulator instead of a Pentagon, but that wouldn't change the facts. You'd be angry, because THERE'S NO REASON FOR IT. There's no reason to make your demos only for Pentagon and Scorpion, either. So, to repeat, this is all I ask: 1. Do all of the loading within BASIC: for example, RANDOMIZE USR 15619: REM : LOAD "demo1"CODE 2. Don't put an interrupt table in memory between 4000-7FFF. Using 8000-BFFF is best. Without these changes, we can't watch your demos at all. The changes won't make everything work perfectly (for example, multicolour might not look exactly right) but these are the most important ones. Fixing multicolour would be a lot harder (or impossible, if a Pentagon is all you have), and that's why I'm not asking you to do that. We just want to be able to see your work, even if it doesn't look exactly right. When you make your next demo, please think about us! I'd be interested to hear any comments or questions about this issue, and I'll try to reply to them all. E-mail me at gasman@raww.org . Thanks! -- Gasman / Raww Arse - gasman@raww.org www.demo.eu.org/ - the home of the Spectrum demo scene /// // "Standing in my yard, where they tore down the garage / to make room for the torn down garage"