Written by Dan Gill
Wire Strippers, Beer and a Spectrum: Part 1
Wire Strippers, Beer and a Spectrum: Part 2
Wire Strippers, Beer and a Spectrum: Part 1
Wire Strippers, Beer and a Spectrum: Part 2
With the keyboard membrane replaced, I was all set to load
up some games. I hooked up the off-white
Sanyo cassette recorder to the Speccy, put in the copy of 'The Hobbit' (which
had clearly been lovingly recorded to a 15 minute Boots cassette some 30 odd
years ago), typed LOAD “”, pressed ENTER, then PLAY. Nothing. No screeching, no lines on the
screen, not even a coloured border. At
this point I thought it must have been the volume on the cassette
recorder. Nope. Perhaps the 'Format' switch on the player
should be set to normal instead of data?
Nah. Maybe it's the lead? Not on your life.
After spending what seemed like an eternity fiddling around
with both cassettes at my disposal and all the settings possible on the
recorder, I managed to progress to a screen with a red border and nothing
else. Something was clearly not right,
and I was hoping it was the cassettes.
With this in mind, I hit eBay again in order to procure an original
cassette. I spotted the original 'Dizzy'
for £2 (as a 'Buy it Now'), and bought it.
Sadly this meant I would have to play the waiting game again, at least
as far as running cassettes went. I
remember reading an article about running cassette based games using
alternative methods, and figured this would be the best time to try them out.
In the article I read, the author had managed to load Speccy
games using his iPod, on which Spectrum games were played as MP3s or WAV
files. This makes perfect sense when you
think about it, as all the cassette recorder is doing is playing data to the
computer as an audio file. This then
reads the code and spits a game out all over your telly.
In order to convert the files I downloaded several
programs. The first was OTLA (http://code.google.com/p/otla/ ). This program is great in the respect that it
takes seconds to convert titles, will output to MP3 or WAV, and will even speed
up the loading times, meaning most games are running within a few seconds
(something that wouldn't have seemed possible to computer gamers back in the
early 80s). My first conversion was
Matthew Smith's classic, 'Manic Miner' (available legally and for free – as are
many others – from http://www.worldofspectrum.org/). Once I'd copied the file to my phone and set
the volume correctly, I was able to load the game almost instantly. The black magic works! Truly, we're living in a technological golden
age.
Now I knew how to convert files, I simply had to try some
others. I downloaded some more files
(they're tiny, so I grabbed loads), and began to convert more. The success rate wasn't the best, sadly. Some titles loaded fine, others would get so
far and return to the Speccy's boot screen, and some wouldn't even attempt to
load. As awesome as it is to load games
instantly, I needed more compatibility.
I found some success in TZX2WAV (ftp://ftp.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/tools/pc/TZX2WAV_02b.zip),
which maintained the original loading times, and coped admirably in faithfully
converting anything I could throw at it (everything played through the Spectrum
too), but I felt that converting a file seemed an unnecessary process at this
point, and started looking for a better alternative – something which would
play the files in their original TAP or TZX format.
I found PlayTZX (ftp://ftp.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/tools/pc/Playtzx-win32.zip)
to work brilliantly. It played TZX files
perfectly by dragging them to the program's executable, then output straight
from the headphone socket of my laptop and into my Spectrum. Unfortunately I'm a little bit picky, and
still felt the process could be streamlined even further. I did what I should have done to begin with
and checked on the Play Store on my phone, and the App Store on my iPad.
For my phone I found TeeZiX (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=dk.rift.tzxdroid
– Free) to to the job. Just throw a load
of TZX, TAP or ZIP Spectrum files onto your phone, play them through this and
you're sorted. Well, mostly. I found that a few games just wouldn't load,
but it was only a few. If you're looking
to play Spectrum tape files through your Android device, this is the way to
go. However, Speccy Tape for iOS (https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/speccy-tape/id460743976?mt=8
– Free) is, in my opinion, the best way to play Spectrum tapes to your computer
outside of having a working tape deck. I
shows you on your device what is loading in real time (you know, the screeching
noises, lines on the screen and so forth) so you know what you should be seeing
on the real Spectrum. So far I've run
into no problems loading games. This is
now my second weapon of choice for loading games, as will be explained.
While I was waiting for my copy of 'Dizzy' to arrive, I
received a gift from my good friend “Muppet Man” Kev – a copy of futuristic
sports game 'Xeno'. I must admit it
wasn't a game I'd even heard of before, but I was grateful for an actual,
genuine game to run on my Spectrum from cassette. Sadly, the copy of 'Xeno' pretty much
confirmed that no audio was coming from the cassette recorder. It looked like another purchase was required
in order to get that authentic experience of loading tapes.
My copy of 'Dizzy' arrived a couple of days later (I tried
to run it anyway – no luck), and decided to go looking locally for a
replacement cassette recorder. Living in
Exeter's city centre is ideal, as there are a plethora of charity shops and
pawn brokers to be found. I nipped ten
minutes down the road to the nearest charity shop to me (and on of the shops
which sells electricals. So may don't
these days). Amazingly they had one in
stock for £10. It was practically on my
doorstep all along. I promptly bought it
and returned home, connected it up and (after more volume adjustment and
waiting) had 'Dizzy' loaded. My quest
for a fully working ZX Spectrum 48k setup was finally complete.
So, after a week or so of rigorous eBay combing, component
switching and general fannying about, I was able to create the authentic early
80s computer gaming experience I was after.
Even with the cost the new keyboard membrane and replacement cassette
recorder I still feel I bagged a bargain, and am thoroughly happy with my new
addition to the retro collection. Now I
just need to get a few more cassettes for this, and I can start on my next
conquest – fixing up my Amiga. But
that's another story for another day.
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