Spectrum 48k Emulator for Amiga ------------------------------- V1.7 Short review by Phil Richmond This is a PD program and works on all Amigas. Some libraries even supply data disks containing loads of old speccy games to use in conjunction with it. If you connect a sound sampler to your Amiga's parallel port and a cassette player you can transfer most of your old tape favourites such as 'Manic Miner', 'Jet Set Willy', 'Paperboy' 'The Hobbit' + loads of old cassette text adventures! The emulator saves them as a complete 48k snapshot file, so it only takes a few seconds on an A1200 to load up a game using the BASIC command LOAD "" Incidentally, I recommend the 'Megalosound' sampler as an inexpensive but powerful tool for the job. I got one from Emerald Creative Software for 23.99 The sampler is also very useful for creating your own samples for use in your programs (sound effects, speech, jingles) and it comes with an excellent wire-bound manual and disk. There is a suite of sample editing facilities and it can handle IFF or RAW sample formats. I am very keen on text adventure games so one of the first things I did was to transfer a creator I still own called "Professional Adventure Writer" (PAW) on to a disk. It worked - no problem. Some of you may remember this wonderful creative piece of software from the mid-eighties. It allowed users to create their own text adventures and was released by Gilsoft Software in Wales. I can now save and load databases and adventures on disk to use via the Emulator. I had some fun re-playing an old game I designed in 1986 called 'Number Six in the Village' which was a text game based upon the popular cult 60's TV classic 'The Prisoner' starring Patrick McGoohan. (Great Series!) I have now (with the exception of the PAW overlays) got the complete PAW package on disk - including the PHOSIS, TEL and MEGA overlays. The Graphics options, text compressor, and Character sets also work fine. In order to transfer the PAW overlays 1,2,3,4,5 and H to disk I have to first load them into the Emulator individually using a BASIC command LOAD "PAWOVR 1" CODE n,n (where n is a number) and save them to disk using SAVE "PAWOVR 1" CODE n,n The trouble is I don't know the correct 'number's to type in. The first is an address in memory and the second is the size of the code file in bytes. I have written to Gilsoft explaining the problem but so far no reply. If anyone out there knows how they may be able to help me I would be most grateful. In summary, the Emulator is very good. You can type in your own programs and run them as you would on the Spectrum. There is a help file containing a picture of the Spectrum keyboard - very handy. Using it certainly brought back a lot of happy memories and it was interesting to see how programs looked and played in that bygone era of rubber keys and agonizingly long waits for tapes to load up and run. My favourite text adventures were those produced by 'Level 9 Computing'. Sadly I gave or threw all mine away. If anyone in Syntax land possesses any of these 'Level 9' 48k cassettes I would be interested to know as I can then transfer them to disk and play them on the AMIGA via the simple to use Spectrum Emulator. Sue, just a thought - it might be a good idea to have the Amiga Spectrum Emulator in the library. PD Disks could be put together containing loads of good old text adventures for use with it. Amiga owners could then play/replay some of the old classics not currently available on disk. Phil Richmond 66 Staining Road BLACKPOOL Lancs FY3 OAD @~There is a Spectrum emulator for the Amiga on PD 651 though I'm @~not sure if it's the one Phil is talking about. Richard is @~sending another which should be in the list this issue or next. @~I believe he has also sorted out Phil's queries but I have left @~his address in, in case any other emulator owners want to @~contact him and swap notes, games or whatever. - o -