Editorial 1

SCENE+ is published by:
L. C. D., Prager Str. 92/11/12, A-1210 Vienna, Austria
Phone: (01) 272 34 63 from within Austria, or +43 1 272 34 63 from abroad.
All classified ads and announcements are free of charge, as long as they are related to the Spectrum or SAM, and can take any format (text, screen, animation, etc.).

Hello SCENE+ readers!

Once again, I tore myself away from Indian Patience just to write these editorial pages (man, I really shot myself in the foot with that game — it's still addictive even after more than a year!).

The fact is that I spent the weeks leading up to this issue getting SCENE+ #25 ready, and literally not a single byte was left untouched. I completely rewrote everything from scratch, which optimized the entire magazine. Yes, the text viewer, which sometimes took two to three seconds to render a full page, now needs just one second (just compare that to issue 1). Loading is faster because the menu program now has a built-in text viewer and picture viewer. The fade-out effect has been noticeably accelerated. I could list quite a few more improvements, but you will see it all for yourselves starting in February. Maybe even earlier, if I decide to release an earlier issue (like #23 or #24) with the new system.

During the New Year's Eve fireworks, a gun exploded in my hand. I tried fixing it with superglue, but it doesn't hold well enough. Maybe I should try arc welding — any tips? (Hey, I'm talking about the gun, not my hand!)

You will notice that "VORTEX" is missing from SCENE #25, but that has strategic reasons: I would have had to publish Part 12, and that would be before Parts 10 and 11! Aside from that, I am already working out the concept for the follow-up story with the working title Shadow of the Zer. While "Vortex" will completely resolve all remaining mysteries from Shadow Nemesis and Lords of Zer, the "Shadow" story — originally conceived as a TV series — will lead us to the answers to the most important questions of the universe: Is there a God? What happens when we die? Will the Spectrum still be used in the future? What are the control codes for the extended Canon mode? (I'd really like to know that one too).

Here is another question for you all: Does anyone know how a 5.25" drive detects whether a DD or HD floppy disk is inserted? With my DD drive, I cannot reformat HD disks to DD format because every sector ends up with an error. With 3.5" drives, that's not an issue at all on DD drives, and on HD drives you just have to cover the HD detection hole with tape. But 5.25" disks have no HD hole — so how does the drive detect the format?

So far, I haven't received the Pentagon schematics, but I am still thinking about ways to make the Spectrum faster. A Z80 DMA would just be one solution that could be combined with others: for example, an add-on board that simply plugs in place of the Z80 A, featuring a RISC chip and ROM to emulate the Z80. With proper use of cache, pipelining, and clock-multiplier technology, one could really give the Spectrum wings. Introducing foreign processors could also lead to modifying the Spectrum ROM so that time-consuming tasks are handled directly by the co-processor — I'm thinking particularly of sine calculations and similar routines.

I know that the folks at Acorn did something similar with their ELECTRON to test their then-new RISC chip. Someone with more technical know-how should definitely look into this. I must admit that electronics is not my field of expertise (that would be quantum physics and BASIC programming). All I really want is for programs to compress much faster without having to resort to a PC — after all, I have to compress quite a lot for SCENE+.

Well, that's it for now. I'm off to play a round of Indian Patience to drown my frustration, and then I'll get back to work.

Yours,
L. C. D.