06 June 2007, 09:46 | #1 |
Zone Friend
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Codemasters CD Games Pack (ZX Spectrum) - games on CD for a Spectrum! :O
I just stumbled over this video on Youtube and I found it very interesting.
Codemasters released a game collection on CD for the Spectrum and I believe the C64 and one other system as well back in '89.. called the Codemasters CD Games Pack. If you're curious how it worked, here is the video showing it in action - [ Show youtube player ] |
06 June 2007, 10:07 | #2 |
Global Caturator
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Cool, tho wouldn't want to mess around with all this stuff to play just one game I can get a better version on easier-loading platforms anyways
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06 June 2007, 10:17 | #3 |
uber cool demi god
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Yeah thats definately cool, i have one of those cables and have never known wtf it could be used for, i mean audio to joystick? Now i do know, lol. Nice one laffer. I had an Amstrad CPC 464 btw, not one of those shitty speccy things, lol.
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06 June 2007, 10:41 | #4 |
Global Caturator
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I currently have a friend's CPC 464, never used it, wonder what'll happen when i'll play some amiga mods into it's joyport?
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06 June 2007, 11:15 | #5 |
move.w #$4489,$dff07e
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Interesting video - liked it. Although I hope I never get stuck in a lift with that guy, he freaks me out a little
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06 June 2007, 11:23 | #6 |
Global Caturator
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Come on mushi, we can't all be Leo's DiCaprio's
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06 June 2007, 12:17 | #7 |
Thalion Webshrine
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Very strange interface....
I've only ever seen people connect Audio CD players to the TAPE-IN interface. I had heard that the quality of the sound can be made good enough to be recorded and played back at 2x speed, but never seen it in action. This loader was working at much higher than 2x speed. |
06 June 2007, 13:12 | #8 |
move.w #$4489,$dff07e
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Is it possible the gamedata is compressed as well? Something simple with a high decrunch speed, like RLE. (Or possibly LZ77). It could then unpack while loading... but maybe the Speccy couldn't handle that... ?
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06 June 2007, 13:44 | #9 |
Thalion Webshrine
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Looking at the screen in the video it's just accelerated regular loading.
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12 June 2007, 22:41 | #10 |
Junior Member
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I had the C64 Version of this cd game collection and it came with a little dongle you plugged into the tape interface port. Im kicking myself for selling it years ago because I couldve tried loading games direct from the pc's soundcard.
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13 June 2007, 01:22 | #11 |
Ya' like it Retr0?
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if i am not mistaken, the baud rate of the kepston interface is better than the analouge of the tape in something like 2300 compaired to 900? its been a while i may need to revise those specs lol.
I also believe that theres a smidge of circuitry in there two, mainly because, as alexh suggests it was going a little quicker than a hyper loader. strange how the dude didn`t know the difference between a sinclair SJS joystick port and Kempston. but hey... it was cute to see... now where did i put them plans to mod an IDE hard drive to an interface 1 port... heres a somewhat quicker way using my old buddy CF http://www.rwapsoftware.co.uk/spectr...m_storage.html |
15 June 2007, 07:31 | #12 |
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I just found the cracked loader of the CD loader from a few years back (done by RamSoft) to load from normal audio source instead of the joystick ports and created a TZX file from a few games on the CD (it uses standard loading scheme (the speed is around 7x faster than normal) with 4 sync pulses instead of two, for those interested). It works fine in emulators, but the baud rate is really high and I wasn't succesfull loading it from the PC's soundcard into the normal ZX spectrum with any setting
Works like a charm in the emulator though. Here are two screenshots of it loading BMX Simulator 2. Last edited by tomcat666; 15 June 2007 at 07:37. |
15 June 2007, 07:34 | #13 | |
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Quote:
Tomaz |
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15 June 2007, 14:32 | #14 |
Junior Member
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smart stuff I bought that spectaculator, excellent program
That joystick cable looks like it could have electronics combined with the plug. I wonder if it can be opened and cloned? Also does anyone know how I could get *.tzx and *.sna games onto plus3 disk? |
15 June 2007, 16:07 | #15 |
Retro Freak
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I am not a Plus/3 user unfortunetly, so I can't help you there. But I am sure there are some converters for snapshots to plus/3 format on WOS.
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07 April 2010, 04:58 | #16 |
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Pardon for the random bump, but I was always intrigued by this for years and always wanted to see how exactly it worked. The video certainly helped! But I wonder if anybody still had a copy, and if so would it be possible for a CD image to be made and shared around?
I've read that RealSpectrum can supposedly emulate the CD, which is a good start. |
07 April 2010, 19:23 | #17 |
Gets there in the end...
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I doubt it as it's Codemasters, they are against any form of imaging and distribution. They wont let World of Spectrum host their games even after this many years.
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08 April 2010, 16:03 | #18 |
uber cool demi god
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Codemasters CD Games Pack [Compilation/1989] for the Sinclair is now on UG. Dunno if it was upped by one of you guys or not?
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08 April 2010, 16:18 | #19 |
Professional slacker!
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08 April 2010, 17:33 | #20 |
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