Thursday, September 29, 2011

Speccy 2010 updated again to support SounDrive/Covox interfaces

This time in addition to TurboSound it adds SounDrive and Covox support. Supported modes are SounDrive Mode 1, SounDrive Mode 2, Covox #DD,#B3,#FB and Profi/BB55. The volume level is lower whn you turn on the Covos with Turbosound or Ay but this is on purpose to get the full usage of D/A converter and avoid distortions. In case of bugs just let me know.
Fetch here and enjoy. 

Speccy Tape updated to 1.2.1

Go to iTunes to download it as usual.

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Updated Speccy 2010 ....

I've spend some time to update the wonderful Speccy 2010 to support a TurboSound interface. I'm not a VHDL masta but this was a rather trivial change and should be ok. Will try to push a Speccy 2010 author to include the patch in next release.

You can download a patch to rev51 and binary file here or here.

Speccy Tape is available in iTunes

Hi,

 Just to let you know a 1.2 version of the app is available in iTunes. Go to Speccy Tape to download it. 


Tuesday, September 13, 2011

My first official production for iPhone - SpeccyTape

    A few weeks ago I've meet an old friend who is collecting vintage computers. He have a lot of them. ZX Spectrums, Atari 8/13/32 bit, Jaguar, Amigas...basically you name it he have it. I've got a chance to get one of his babys the ZX Spectrum +2B. I started to play with but figured out that there is something wrong with the computer. After a while I figured out that there was a faulty clock generator circuit to the CPU.
    But the harm has been done I took a bait and started to play with my old stuff I wrote 2 decades ago. Then I started to think how to load all the nice stuff from WorldOfSpectrum.org. A partial solution was to buy a DivIDE+ which is a simple ZX interface to the PATA/CF. So I did. But still I wanted to download the TZX files with beatiful sound of the original experience. A quick search showed that I can use Windoze or the command line on my Mac to do so. I've started to convert the TZX and TAP files to MP3s but the process was boring, messy, long ...and simple not an "Apple way"....so I've created this little utility called the Speccy Tape.


    With it you can download programs directly from thew WOS site and unzip them directly on the device. You can also open a mail attachment or put the files via the iTunes.


    The downside is the fact that some (?) of the iPhones/iPods have a reduced output signal levels so feeding the signal directly from the device to ZX Spectrum won't work. So I've made a simple amplifier based on the op-amp (LM358) to address this issue (schematic coming soon). From the other hand my iPad1 has enough output level to feed the ZX Spectrum +128K (didn't tested on other versions, counting on the feedback). I personally use the ZX Spectrum +2(grey) and use the simple car cassette adapter (works like a charm).

    There is not much to describe here how the program works as the screens and video seems to be self-explanatory.






Search through a huge WorldOfSpectrum.org archives directly within the app. You can also open e-mail attachments or use iTunes to upload your favorite games and demos.
Choose from a selection of available TZX or TAP files. You don't have to do anything just press the "Get it!" button. The zip file will be fetched automatically. You can unzip the file directly in the app by unpacking it into main directory or create a new dir entry.



The simple log window will list all the section currently being processed/played. If you miss the section you can always press the PREV (<<) button.
No much to set here. You can chose your machine type, discard annoying popups or...yes you can increase playback speed. It should work till x4 speed but on some productions x8 will also work (especially on those without the protection/non standard speed scheme).