What are /r/zxspectrum's favorite Products & Services?

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If you type PRINT PEEK 23733 into basic and it returns 255, then it's a 48k model. If it says 128, then it's a 16k model

There are apps you can get for both android and ios that allow you to connect your phone to the Ear socket on the spectrum and play a .tap file through it (e.g: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.baltazarstudios.playzxtapes&hl=en). That way you could tell if it's an issue with the tape player you have or something internal that's broken, in which case I have no idea as I'm generally clueless on electronics

Scroll a little way down this link you'll get a load of pdf versions of type in books. These are the classics! And all free.

https://usborne.com/gb/books/computer-and-coding-books

Gary Plowman wrote a book a few years ago with some simple type ins too

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0993474403/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_glt_fabc_B06K3HC077CRTDCPWWSD

Finally there should be PDF of Speccy magazines from the early part of the 80s that have type ins. Spectrum Programs, Sinclair User Your Spectrum all had listings. Should be on the Spectrum Computing website or World of Spectrum or Archive.org

I'm assuming its a +2 ?

For the games may i suggest a tape with 3.5mm adapter and THIS app.

And for the general condition of the lot.... I guess it comes down to if your happy with what you paid or not.

Remembering good quality well looked after comes at a price.

Tapes for example that may look nice, may have faded data.

Perhaps if you make contact with the seller and list the things your not happy about, he/she may offer a partial refund, bringing the price down to an amount that reflects the condition better?

But dont take my advice, Im sure if you posted some pics here along with what you paid, then this community will give you an honest appraisal.

Sounds like a bar count track. When mastering music you might have a separate track with someone counting to sync the rest of the tracks to. Maybe when this tape was being mastered it accidentally got mixed in.

I don't know much about music mastering so it's just a guess. I only know this much because on the War of the Worlds Musical Collectors Edition they included a few parts of their bar count in the extras. Scroll down on this Amazon page and you can hear previews of the "Bar Count" tracks.

You can use THIS app

On an android device along with whatever adapter you need to get the audio into your version of spectrum.

On my 128 +2 model i use one of THESE adapters.

(Not necessarily from this seller)

I've loaded a game or two from a YouTube video into my +2 using a old tape adapter with a 3.5mm headphone jack into my phone.

But mostly i just use this app

LÖVE.

Here's a video of it in action.

The game data comes from disassembles of the original game and the graphics are rendered to canvas sprites when the game loads. In the video it flicks between some graphics modes. The black and white is what the sprites really look like and the coloured version is actually using a shader to simulate the way the speccy handled colours, limiting the colours per 8x8 cell to just two. You'll see the colour clash effect when the mobs touch Willy. The mode with multiple windows is my debug screen, showing the "ink" and "paper" elements separate. The last mode is using sprites from Andy Noble's PC port from 97.

Player movement is what I'm working on now. Trying to get my head around the methods used in the original Z80 assembly and picking out what is needed to maintain the feel of the controls and what can be dropped to maintain my sanity ;)

Assuming you have an Android device with an audio out, THIS app should open a world of games and programs to try out.

Enjoy 🤠

Get one of those tape to 3.5mm jack adapter things or a 3.5mm to 3.5mm adapter depending on what speccy you have.

Along with THIS app and your good to go.

If anyone was waiting for the OS X version, that's now available as well: https://sourceforge.net/projects/fuse-for-macosx/ Pretty much exactly the same stuff as the main version, but with added Apple goodness.

I’ve used a lot of different emulators for Windows over the years, and Fuse is still good, but my current go to is ZXSpectrum4.net

This is interesting. I've tried doing something similar using LÖVE and a shader to do the colours. Old blog post I wrote about it here. I should look into it again.

What are you trying to achieve? The Spectrum's UHF and audio output to the RF input of an analogue TV?

Won't work; you need to modulate the audio signal into the UHF signal, along with the video.

If you just want a video cable, it might be better to buy one ready-made if you're resorting to chopping up cables and splicing them: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07SRFZJTD/

I guess you mean that one: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Racing-Beam-Computer-Platform-Studies/dp/026201257X Seems to be about the Atari VCS but sounds interesting neverless, thanks! :)