ZX Spectrum emulation

[Darwock]

I know there are a million and one different emulators to do the job, but without a doubt the best of them was always Ramsoft's RealSpectrum.

Having just got around to thinking about emulation on my current PC I popped over to Ramsoft's website only to find it has gone - a bit of googling and it turns out they abandoned the scene in 2004, and requested all sites hosting RealSpectrum to take it down. All this with nary a word of explanation to any of the fans

Rather than settle for an alternative I went on the hunt and found a d/l copy of the final RealSpectrum release on a german website! Hooray!

The download doesn't contain any of the Spectrum ROMs you need though (48.ROM, 128.ROM, PLUS2.ROM etc), and the copies I have tried from other emulators don't seem to work. Not sure what the legal position is on these things, whether I can ask for help finding them or not.. er...

[vanpeebles]

ftp://ftp.worldofspectrum.org/pub/si...s/x128roms.zip

If its on world of spectrum its legit and the speccy OS roms are fine for distribution. Good luck spec-chum!

[Darwock]

Cheers mate, thanks to you I was able to get RealSpectrum to start by renaming one of those files to 128.ROM. I can then switch to the 48K image which has the same name. However I'd like to put it into +2A mode (for the quick loader) and it needs a file called PLUS2.ROM - I tried renaming some of these but none of them give me the +2 loader.

Don't suppose someone has the original Ramsoft ROM files?

[vertigo]

As far as I'm aware, Ramsoft recently chucked a strop and withdrew their software.

Why don't you try out Spectaculator or my personal favourite ZXSpin? These both emulate +2A and more.

Also, if you're a DS card user, give ZXDS a bash. The emulation is excellent and the matching screen resolutions mean no scaling or borders and the Speccy graphics look really lush on the backlit screen

[importaku]

Also, if you're a DS card user, give ZXDS a bash. The emulation is excellent and the matching screen resolutions mean no scaling or borders and the Speccy graphics look really lush on the backlit screen

This man speaks the truth, that particular emulator is like a dream come true its pretty much perfect & looks fantastic the spectrum never look so sharp & nice.


For the pc i use ZX32, it's a very nice windows one.

http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Bay/9932/

[Darwock]

Thanks for the tip on ZX Spin - tried it and it's lovely. It seems to be missing the one feature I really loved about RealSpectrum though.. I'm gonna sound really insane for this, but it allowed you to load TAP and TZX files the original, slow way... with the loading sounds and the coloured bars. I absolutely loved to watch and listen to the games loading, lol.

edit - never mind, you can do it! Fantastic! No need for RealSpectrum any more I guess

I'm not a DS user unfortunately, but I can't see how it would really be all that great, as it is lacking a keyboard..? I've never got on with console based spectrum emulators, with the exception of the Dreamcast one (cos I had a kb!)

[importaku]

zxds emulates a full 48k & 128k keyboard on the touchscreen as well as pretty much every joystick.

There are some very old games that use keys only but the majority can be used with joystick for controls & then pressing the odd key thats needed on the keyboard.

[vertigo]

You can also define the keys onto the pad and buttons in ZXDS, there are spare spaces under the control options. If you're playing a text adventure on it I recommend pressing the keyboard button again to get to the + version keyboard as it's less cluttered and has its own delete key instead of Caps-0.