THE GHOST by M Harris Now I've come across some pretty unintelligible programs in my time, but this one really takes the chocolate digestive. From what I can make out (but don't quote me on this) it converts your Spectrum +2A or +3 into a normal, friendly, cuddly 48K Speccy, as far as is possible, so that 48K- only games will run. But surely, you cry, that can be done by selecting 48K Basic after switching on. Not so, according to former Hacker Of The Month M Harris, the guy who wrote the program. Doing it the usual way apparently won't work with older games. But with The Ghost, as it's curiously called, even titles like Bombjack, Frank Bruno and Locomotion can be fooled into working. Some things won't though, like Speedlock-protected games and (I quote) "others that check 0000 for what should be there but isn't". Eh? Getting it going Right, so off we go then. The procedure is non-standard but pretty simple. Just type in the first program, save it just in case (but you don't need to keep this bit) and then run it. The computer will appear to reset. Now type in the second program and RUN 20. It will save a copy of itself, plus a copy of the code the first program generated, so have a fresh tape handy. If you now reset the computer, and reload the thing you've just saved, you should find your +2A/+3 has become a 48K. Techno Twaddle There's always someone who wants to know more, who's never satisfied. It makes my life so much harder. (Just get on with the job. Ed) Sigh. Righto, as I really haven't a clue what all this is about I'll quote Mr Harris directly ... "Blah, blah, blah ... puts a copy of the 48K ROM into page four, then shuffles the memory map into one of the special configurations (so it would, if you could actually see the pages, be in the order four, five, six, three). The only problem is that as the ROM will be in page four, and that page is in the contended RAM list, everything happens slowly (including the Load/Save). So I've changed the delay loop in the Loading routine, but left the Save one alone ... blah, blah, blah ... replaces all the bits that Amstrad moved ... fills new 128K code area with C3s to generate a new interrupt table for all those games that use the blank addresses that used to be there ... instead of jumping to FFFF on interrupt (using 39-3C as the vector) it will now jump to C3C3 which will then redirect to FFF4 ... if loading problems arise, try POKEing 1512 with numbers around five to nine (originally seven) ..." And so he goes on. And on. I hope all this makes sense to someone. I was okay up to the interrupt bit, but then everything went all black and I woke up inside a spaceship and ...