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  • Hacking the SjASMPlus Z80 assembler

    Posted on November 1st, 2016 admin No comments

    I like SjASMPlus because it is small, portable (one exe, no install) and supports writing SNA format, which means it can directly assemble the source into SNA emulator snapshot file. This is very handy if disassembling a snapshot, reverse engineering the code, then comparing the compiled source with the original snapshot. However it has a minor drawback.

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  • Atarisoft’s Pac-Man

    Posted on January 6th, 2015 admin No comments

    In December of 2000 I started a Pac-Man game conversion from the ZX Spectrum. It was one of my favourite Spectrum game in the 80s. Simple but addictive. My original intention was to build a 4K or 16K game for DOS, however I lost my interest during the process. It is playable, so I decided to save it from the dust.

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  • Disassembling the MICRO-POKEer ROM firmware

    Posted on December 31st, 2014 admin No comments

    The MICRO-POKEer is a Multiface-like device for the unexpanded 48K Spectrum, introduced around 1988-1989 by a Hungarian company, Micro-Studio.

    Basically it is useful to cheat games (i.e. poke infinite lives), save snapshots (e.g. save game progress, hack programs, remove copy protections) and save active screen content (e.g. print, game maps).

    MICRO-POKEer capabilities:

    * Freeze programs (NMI button)
    * Load/Save screen content (16384 – 23295, 6.75 KBytes)
    * Load/Save the entire RAM (16384 – 65535, total 48 KBytes)
    * Turbo Load/Save (double speed)
    * Peek/Poke/Jump to memory location
    * Warm reset the Spectrum
    * Hard reset

    I own one device and reverse-engineered it in 2010. Firmware version is 1.6

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  • Cambridge Z88 Copy tool

    Posted on November 18th, 2014 admin No comments

    Not entirely ZX Spectrum related but this is my first and only contribution to the Z88 world so I don’t want to separate it from other Speccy stuffz.

    It’s not a big deal. You can transfer files between your Cambridge Z88 and Windows PC via a serial port in both direction. The COM number, the baudrate and the software Xon/Xoff mode can be changed optionally. Supports multi file transfers and wildcards.

    You can download the binary executable for Windows or the complete Free Pascal source code. Enjoy!

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