FAQ on ZX-Spectrum echo conference

*** Revision dated February 27, 1998

Hello, All!

Q: Which Sinclair emulators are the most convenient and with which you can get
toys?
A: Convenience is a rather slippery question... And the most popular among the people
are emulators that support TR-DOS:
- Lunter emulator, adapted to work with TR-DOS;
(imho, one of the first emulators working with this OS)
- UKV v1.2 emulator (also works with real tr-dos floppy disks);
(the advantage of which is the presence of a built-in debugger, plus
fairly broad support for non-standard tr-dos formats)
- Shalaev emulator (works with floppy disk images).
(Well, this one is still a leader among emulators, since it does not require
a powerful computer to operate)
Recently, several more quite original
emulators have appeared (both our authors and foreign ones), a pleasant surprise
was their support for Scorpion-256 and Pentagon-128. However, they have not yet become quite popular, since they require at least a Pentium for
full-fledged operation. However, it depends. ;)
By the way, the author Nikolay Shalaev has a fidosh address, and even /;)/
reads the echo ZX.SPECTRUM. His address is 2:5020/378.40
A: (Michael Markowsky, 2:5020/378):
Nikolai is not reading echoes now. You can contact him by e-mail:
ns...@usa.net
Or continue to write to /378.40 - it will redirect me to e-mail
through gate 5020/128.

Q: What kind of files are with the extension *.$b, *.$c?
A: Hobet file. That is, a file copied by the hobeta program from a tr-disk floppy disk. The letter most often denotes belonging to some type. (.$w is text in Sinclair's ZX-Word format,
.$s is a picture for a screen printer...) The extension in principle can be
anything. It depends on the authors of the program that uses these files.
A: (Michael Kondratyev 2:5030/362.1) Its (hobet file) structure:
The first 13 bytes are an exact copy of the hardcode header. Next are two bytes of length
in sectors; because it is a multiple of 256, then the first is always zero, and the second is
the number of sectors. And the last two bytes are the checksum. It is calculated
simply - all the previous 15 bytes are summed up, the number is multiplied by
257 and the sum_of_numbers_from_0_to_14 is added, i.e. 105.
In the procedure on the Z80 Asm:
; to input de = header address
ld hl,0
ld b,15
m1: ld a,(de)
add a,l
ld l,a
jr nc,m2
inc h
m2: inc de
djnz m1
add a,h
ld h,a
ld c,105
add hl,bc ; hl = Hobeta sum

Q: And the extension .$z?
A: Hobeta file, packedon the Spectrum with the zxzip program (by Michael
Kondratyev), which has become the de facto official packager of programs for ZX.
To unpack it, you need zxunzip. The author still wrote zxunzip
for IBM. There is an analogue of zxzip on IBM, but in an obscene form.

Q: People. Help pls. how to read this format .
A: Dmitry Grigoryev (2:5020/689.31):
Yes. Do you have one or more files with a .$ extension? How to launch them
depends on the existing emulator, one way or another supporting
TRDOS format (formats similar to .z80 or .tap will not help - now
most programs have sub-loads, you can’t automatically transfer them to tap)
Let’s say the file name is online80.$b ;-)

Option 1. You need a Z80TRDOS emulator and hobeta and utilities hofrmt.
1) Take a floppy disk, insert it into drive A and format it:
hofrmt a: /80d
2) Launch hobeta - copy online80.$b to this diskette with the F5 key.
3) Launch z80trdos.
4) In the menu that appears, select TR-DOS and enter RUN "ONLINE80"
Note: to work with 3-inch disks, you need special versions
of utilities.

Option 2. You need the Shalaev emulator and the zcop utility.
1) Create a disk image and copy the program to it:
zcop trdos.trd online80.$b
2) Launch the emulator with the “inserted” image:
spectrum trdos.trd
[or in the emulator using F5 after starting, select the disk image:IG]
3) Click "Launch emulator"
4) Similar to step 4 of option 1

Option 3. You need a UKV emulator and the zcop utility version no lower than 1.0
1) Create a disk image and copy the program to it:
zcop -f trdos.fdi online80.$b
2) Launch the emulator with the “inserted” image:
sp_emu -vatrdos.fdi
3) Similar to step 4 of option 1

If there are several files, you need to copy them all in a logical
order :(
[but this is not always a necessary parameter :IG :)]

Q: How and in what emulsion can you work in iS-DOS?
A: (Roman Alexandrov, 2:5030/446.11):

1) The method is the simplest and slowest: You take UKV and work with a real
disk.
Advantages: simple.
Disadvantages: slow, new (bootable) disk does not format, from (to)
Typ-Dos (MS-DOS) you cannot rewrite.

2) Advanced method (published by Igor Gruzdev): Take UKV,
a natural IS-DOS disk (as disk A, for example) and an empty FDI
(as disk B, for example). Loading using create.com you create
on FDInon-bootable 640 KB disk Is-Dos, you copy onto it
what you need from the real disk. After which, having configured the system as
you need (drivers, tables, RAM disks, residents, etc.)
you throw it into the Z80 (by the way, the system image files is-dos.sys and the image file
of the RAM disk image.sys or image.img to the FDI do not need to be copied -
the disk is all It’s not bootable and space will be freed up). Next you write
a batch file for this whole thing, so that when you start UKV it will load the Z80 and
connect the FDI.
Advantages: Works quickly
Disadvantages: requires preliminary preparation, there is no possibility of working
with MS-DOS and real Tp-DOS disks

3) Rules method: Take the Scorpio emulator (from MOA). Using the ANADISK program, you create a dump of the IS-DOS disk, shove it into the emulator (it will convert it into its own FDD format). If necessary,
turn on hard drive emulation and create on it the required number of
IS-DOS partitions of the required size. The ability to work from Is-Dos with
Typ-Dos disk images has not been tested, but IMHO it should work.
Advantages: obvious
Disadvantages: no ability to work with natural disks,

4) Carry out the sequence described in paragraph 2, convert FDI to TRD
and launch the entire structure from Z80 and TRD under emulatorShalaeva
(using Z80.add)
Advantages: obvious for those who love the Shalaev emulsion more than UKV.
Disadvantages: the same as in point 2, plus the absence of a debugger
and work with real disks.

A: (Vladimir Frunze, 2:469/32.7)
Everything is simpler for me - we run makefdi.exe -c -d isdos.fdi and telemarket!
With the key -d (detailed analyses) the disk is successfully created, without -d - not.
/IG: I didn’t succeed. :( Constantly swears at disk error/

Q: Who has a converter for .Z80 files to .$* and vice versa?
A: Recently this program appeared:
unZ80 v0.1b (c) 1998 by HalfElf Converts Z80 into a set of Hobeta format files.
came by echo zx.spectrum. With its help and a few gestures you can
convert .z80 to hobeta. Or use the below and
work manually ;)
A: (Vyacheslav Mednonogov, 2:5030/461.12):
Quick conversion of .z80 to magic file format is done as follows:
-load UKV 1.x
-press ESC
-select snapshot type = z80 (in the first menu)
-load snapshot name.z80 (in the same menu)
-press F9 to continue working in the emulator
-press F10 (analogous to the magic button)
-all

(I’ll add: if you need to convert to .z80 in in particular, then
after downloading UKV 1.x and running it (from a floppy disk or imagedisk)
of the desired program, a similar sequence is performed, only after
selecting the type of snapshot and entering a name you need to save it. The Lunter emulator also
allows you to save a snapshot. And to convert
hobet - .z80 you need a version of the Lunter emulator with tr-domain support.)

Q: What kind of file with the .fdi extension?
A: An image of a tr-dos disk in the UKV emulator format. You can work with it in the same way
as with .trd using zcop v1.2. There is also a utility from Mikhail
Kondratiev fdi2trd, designed for converting from one disk image
to another.

Q: Aaah! I don’t have this utility, but I’m dead?
A: (Vitaly Samoylov, 2:5020/1190.7) Write a batch file using
zcop! How? Yes, like this:
This is for converting FDI -> TRD !
%1 - name *.fdi
%2 - name *.trd
───────────< Import File: "FDI2TRD.BAT" >───────────
zcop.exe -f -x %1
zcop.exe %2 *.$*
del *.$*
───────────< End File: "FDI2TRD.BAT" >───────────
Accordingly, for the reverse conversion TRD -> FDI, remove the "-f" key from the first
line and put it in the second, and then: %1 - name *.trd
%2 - name *.fdi

Q: The UKV emulator (the launched file is named sp_emu) on a floppy disk in the drive
swears, saying no disk, although it sees the hobeta perfectly...
A: (IlyaVasilyev 2:5030/461.22) It’s just that on fast cars for UKV you need to
delay the drive promotion, i.e. you need to launch it with
the -d key (and here you need to enter a number from 1 to 255 - the delay time);
For example, on the 133rd stump of the UKV you can start only with the -d255
key sp_emu.exe -d255
Another problem may be in wIN 95, this is a Mazda controls all direct
access to disks (even if it itself is not loaded, then the enti functions for it
execute dos 7.0, which the above-mentioned Mazda installs instead of others)
Sometimes this option helps: boot from the disk on which
the system from dos 6.22 or similar is installed, bypassing clean all the configs and start
subj with the -d key (see above).

Q: How to get a clean disk image file (.trd) for the Shalaev emulator?
A: Use zcop by Rick Murray. Running with the name of a non-existent
(*)disk image file creates one. Then you can simply copy this file.
There is also a small program from Mikhail Kondratiev (trdisk.com),
which is designed to format a disk image.

Q: We have a Shalaev emulator, a blank disk image (.trd), how to write to it
hobet file?
A: Use zcop. Namely - zcop name.trd 1.$c 2.$c ... Where name.trd is
(*)the name of the disk image file. 1.$c - names of hobet files.

Q: Is there a utility that does the opposite - extracts files *.$b, *.$c, etc. from *.trd
?
A: Oh... Use zcop. zcop name.trd extracts all files from the disk image
(*) into the current directory.
Although you can go the other way. We dump the disk image with the emulator (until 2.04
this was possible...) onto a disk formatted for tr-dos 5'25, then using hobeta
we copy the necessary files to ms-dos
A: Regarding the last three questions: recently a sufficient number of various zx-ibm commanders have passed through the ZX.Spectrum
echo,
to list them all unnecessary, especially since these are mostly beta versions,
but nevertheless, hobet files and .trd files can be processed in a very large
number of ways. And this is already the most malicious fact (in the sense of the FAQ) :).

Q: In August 1996, Enlight'96 took place in St. Petersburg - a party of demomakers.
For the first time, the Specrum platform was presented there. The results
shocked the world. :) But where can I get all the works that took part
in zx-compo? Preferably Internet servers...
A: (Peter Sobolev 2:5030/84)
All releases are at ftp.enlight.ru/pub/demos/enlight96/zx
Pages & Businesses Advertising - www.enlight.ru

Q: Есть Do you have any FTP or WWW pages?
A: (Sergei Novikov http://www.geocities.com/hollywood/8003
ftp.ogre2vsk.edu.lv/acid-nature/speccy/
http://www.uniyar.ac.ru/~phantom/museum/zx/
Subscribe to ZXNet website, pages: URL:
ftp://ftp.telecom.grodno.by/zxspectrum/

A: (Alexey Ivanov 2:5020/689.100):
www.corbina.ru/~recalder/spectrum/
www.chat.ru/~fatality
www.chat.ru/~liroy
www.uniyar.ac.ru/museum/spectrum/

/IG: Separately in the echo conference, a more complete table is often running,
which contains ftp dedicated to the Spectrum/

Q: Are there any files dedicated to the ZX-Spectrum?
A: Yes. This is fileha SPECTRUM. Its moderator is Nicolas Rodionov
(2:5030/25.0). Distributed in St. Petersburg, Moscow and several other
regions.
A: (eug...@mavlin.vt.rovno.ua (Tyukaev Eugene Vladimirovich):
there are a lot of questions about faeha for the Spectrum, well then
I'm ready to make you happy! after a long and persistent search, I found a ftp
on which a lot of fahs are stored, including SPECTRUM, here it is:
ftp://bbs.ogo.ru/spectrum/*.*

Q: I can’t do this read not a single Spectrum disk. :( Help me!
A: Well, what can I say... A multicard on IBM is not perfect. :(
The recommendations are as follows - use FUT (this is on Spectrum), do not
format in fast, not in turbo. Or you can use DCU 2.32. It is possible
to also format disks for tr-dos on IBM hoformat. If this
does not help, try sealing half of the index
hole on a 5'25 floppy disk. In some cases it helps.

Q: has anyone connected a Spectrum 5.25 floppack to a PC? And it (infection)
is 800 kilos, hence all the difficulties with connection. If anyone knows how,
then describe the process itself in full detail.
A: (Evgeny Milun 2:5057/18.73)
In order for the 720th floppy drive to work normally on the IBM, the first thing you need to
is to unhook the 2nd leg... The second thing is to return the jumpers to normal state
is the same as they were on the spectrum. Third - in some bios
put "5'25 drive 1.2Mb".

Q: Is it possible to connect a 3.5" drive to the Speccy? What modifications are needed?
A: (Danil Ermakoff 2:5080/43.30) Yes, a 3.5" drive connects to the Speccy
without any problems, just install the appropriate connectors on
controller and power cables. Don't forget that you need to use
720kb floppy disks (without the hole on the right side of the floppy disk), or cover
this hole on a 1.44Mb floppy disk. It is possible that you will also need
to ground the 2nd pin in the drive connector (DD/HD switching), but
everything works OK for me even without this!

Q: HoBeta refuses to read/write 3.5" disks. What should I do?
A: (Danil Ermakoff 2:5080/43.30) Indeed, at the whim of the author, HoBeta
cannot work with3.5" disks. Fortunately, this problem is solvable
not simply, but very simply, just replace one byte, and so:
HoBeta v2.15 unpacked length - 48014. At offset #0000B7C2 we replace
#01 with #04, and that's it! And remember: for normal operation of HoBet's disks on
Speccy must be formatted by programs DCU 2.32, FUT or
similar, but not the DOS format"xxxxxxxx" command!

Q: When I assembled Leningrad, I have since written quite a large
number of programs for my Speccy, and they all remained on cassettes.
How can I process programs on a cassette tape on IBM?
A: (From the dock on Zart by Rick Murray):
ZART allows you to work with a tape recorder connected to the LPT port,
for example, copy from a tape to .tap format. And you can process .tap
on the Lunter emulator or use the same ZART or other
utilities for translation into hobeta. In general, I recommend using ZART
for similar purposes.

Tape recorder adapter circuit for IBM PC.
Borrowed from G. A. Lunter.
LPT
Out 10k 120k
<─────██████─────■─────█ █████───────────────────■ PBO (2)
│
═╪═
│ 4n7
─┴─ ┌───────■ +5v (16)
│
To tape recorder 4k7 ▐█▌
▐█▌
│
25k ▐█▌ ____
▐█▌<──■──■ BUSY (11)
In 330 680n │ │
>─────────██████────────Ґ ───────────────┼────┘
│
■───────■ PE (12)
│
│
LPT connector means ■───────■ GND (19)
25-pin, i.e. which sticks out in the │
computer. In and Out ─┴─
with t.z. computer. Those. the output of the tape recorder is connected to In
┌───────■ (1)
│
└───────■ (10)

(*)
Notes: zcop's author Rick Murray has released a new version zcop, which also works
with disk images of the UKV emulator (sp_emu), there are some differences
from the first option. so read the document on it, it’s veryuseful
occupation. :)

With all kinds of regards and wishes.
Igor.

P.S. Not all answers have been personally verified by me, because if there is anything, I’m happy to hear
additions/corrections.
... Bureaucracy: the art of turning the possible into impossible.