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For none of the Spectrum brethren
is a secret that for many years already
there is talk about what awaits Specky
in the near future: extinction, degradation,
or prosperity in peaceful cooperation
ve with other platforms? Or maybe
complete dominance? :)
Naturally, one of the most important topics on
today is about relationships
"ZX-Spectrum" with IBM PC class machines,
seized absolute dominance in com-
computer spheres of the planet. With this you can
of course, argue; someone thinks first
Speccy's competitor is the taxi Amiga, and not
which spektrumists were lured by beauty
the world of Sony Playstation and other similar ones
video fools (but then these people weren’t
never computer scientists!)...
But one way or another, an objective reality
The truth is this: at the moment,
Countless efforts are made so that these two
bring the platforms closer together. The most important thing
of such rapprochement is alive and well
has been in effect almost since its inceptiondeveloped Spectrum models. I mean
emulation.
Advanced Reader! Feel free to skip
next paragraph, because the following pre-
intended for those who understand the word "emulsion"
I went crazy for the first time just the day before yesterday :)
This is what we're talking about. Suppose we have in
at your disposal some Pentium and
would like to drive it, suppose
in Dizzy. But here’s the problem: they didn’t write Disey for
aibemok, but only for the native Spectrum.
And the stupid PENbtium doesn’t understand ours
Teerdos's favorite discs, they are everything to him
equal to a roughly cut piece of plastic
masses in the drive! WHAT TO DO? Thought
thought and came up with: to make such a thing for IBM
program that you just launch, and...
you want to work as if on the Spectrum!
Since before Speccy appeared all-
in the west, where the first ones arose
emulators. These things were squalor
rare, on which programs like there
"Tic-tac-toe" still worked somehow,
But more complicated things - not at all. However
anyway, a start has been made.
At the present stage we have great
many emuls; each of them has
their own characteristics, many emuls come in
updated versions to this day. From on-
the most popular in the CIS you can
name Unreal Speccy, Real Spectrum, Z80
Stealth, Shalaev Emulator, ZX-Mak and a number of
others. I don't plan heretouch especially
benefits of each emulsion (ungrateful
this activity), but I’ll just briefly touch on
fundamental issues. Those who
seriously interested in emulsions and their characteristics
tepuctukamu, I send to the Internet site
"Virtual TR-DOS" (http:\zx.dotnet.lv),
there you will find the newest emulators
Spectrum and their comparative characteristics
tics. I will only note that modern emu-
lyators allow you to create things that for
spektrumista-realist - sometimes unattainable -
It's a dream. What do you say, for example, about
a debugger with a full set of functions; or o
support for 5 types of sound cards; or o 20
different video modes?
In the meantime, here's what. Well the program has been written
to emulate another computer system,
but on her own she won’t do anything
det. How to transfer programs
the same Spectrum to the same IBM?
Historically for Speccy there were two
main methods of storing software: tape and
disk. By tape I mean exactly
tape cassette, and not, say, a tape
crodrive, which was never developed
in their homeland, nor (especially) here.
In general, there are many formats for recording information.
formation from a cassette into an MS-DOS file, but I
I won’t tell you anything about them for one simple reason -
that reason: you don’t need it. Unless
download exotic software from the Internet,
but this can be dealt withyourself. Yes-
better o more important - o transfer
information from Spectrum floppy disks in
some kind so that an emulator can work with it
torus
"What's so complicated about that?" - you ask. A
the point is this: of all the existing emu-
almost no lyators (except for "Real Spec-
trum", as far as I know) does not support
work with real TR-DOS disks. Usually
go the other way: with the help of a small
programs download all data from the disk to
file, and then work with this file.
I wanted to throw the file back to disk -
no problem! It's simple: one TR-disc
DOS corresponds to one MS-DOS file.
Again, there are several formats for
such files. The simplest and until recently
the most common one at the time is
TRD format (of course, short for
TR-Dos). It is simply consistent
all tracks of the physical
disk one after another. Accordingly
The file size is usually 640K.
Not long ago another format appeared,
successfully displacing TRD now, and the name
this daring guy was given SCL (SinCLair).
The main difference: the file size will depend on
the network does not depend on how many kilobytes are from
our disk is formatted, and it depends on how much
information is actually recorded on it. And
if we take a blank disk and distill
it in SCL, the file size will be very close
close to zero... Tothere is already talk here
not about the disk image, but rather about the group image
py files.
There are other formats, but the remaining ones
we may be interested, probably, only
FDI - Full Disk Image, full disk image
ka. This format will be needed if we have
I'm dealing with the disc, not quite standard
marked (at least any of the CV disks).
I was talking about recording “entire” discs.
However, there are problems with copying
ordinary TR-DOS files. After all, the way
storing service information in these systems
topics are different, and if you just copy
Spectrum file on IBM, some will be lost
what data stored in the dis-
ka.
To avoid these losses, it was developed
nerd principle according to which to the top
file is assigned 16 bytes from the directory
(actually 17, another byte has
purely service functions). File name is normal
but does not change, but to expand the spe-
Then we add a dollar (it turns out
for example boot.$b or readme.$W). This one
the principle is called "Header Of Beta",
or simply HoBeta; respectively, files,
processed in this way are also called
hobetnymi.
It is also entirely legitimate to want
create a program to support the emulator,
which will work with dis-
kami TR-DOS and MSDOS,work with different
data storage formats, and at the same time de-
do it all beautifully, quickly and reliably.
There is nothing completely universal yet
observed, but great achievements have -
Xia.
First of all, I would like to note the shell
ZX-Spectrum Navigator, which is similar to
DOS Navigator for absolutely everything: from the name
to the appearance and distribution of the keyboard
tours. This navigator allows you to log in
inside disk images, as in regular ones
subdirectories; view BASIC files,
texts, graphics; transfer files from TR to MS
and back; and can do a lot more.
But working with real disks is possible
is maintained extremely weakly by the Navigator. But
it doesn't matter: there's an AMD program for that
v0.01, which, although it does not pretend to be called
shell, but copies files to
five plus (but constantly conf-
rejoices with Windows, but this is not a problem
undecidable).
Speaking about Spectrum Navigator, I mentioned
zero about what he can view
Spectrum graphics. But viewing
The utility in it is quite primitive. But
there is a program ZX Screen Viewer (or also
Navigator? I don’t even remember now...), so
here you can view pictures in
normal scale and good magnification,
see flash-color, tricolor, etc.
"What about the music?" - you ask.
Well,a lot is being done in this direction
NI. Currently the most outstanding
the work is "AY Emulator" by Sergei
Bulba, written so that in appearance
its appearance and principles of operation are reminiscent of Win
Amp. And it reproduces ABSOLUTELY
EVERYTHING - I vouch for it.
And I would like to end with this: what would
no matter what they say, we believe in long life
our Spectrum and we will do everything for this
possible!
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