Spectrumpedia - the Spectrum encyclopedia.
Dear fellow Spec-chums,
it is with great pride that I present you the result of an intense work of research I have been carrying out lately.
It is my personal tribute to the Spectrum and it is called Spectrumpedia - a comprehensive repository of knowledge, 704 pages long, which aims at collecting, trying to strike a delicate balance between completeness and conciseness, everything essential you need to know about the Spectrum: history, technical specifications, the most important software houses, its clones, historical and modern peripherals, expansions and new graphic and audio modes, programs for developing new software for it, the possibilities of emulating it on other systems, the Spectrum in Italy and much more!
First impressions from the Italian Spectrum enthusiasts scene have been overwhelmingly positive so far. I am presenting it to the rest of the world although I must warn you that the book is currently only available in Italian, in the hope that if there will be enough interest in it, an English translation will be made and maybe even a printed edition - which has already been requested for the Italian version
Read more and download it in PDF format from the mini-site within my personal web site.
Comments are welcome!
it is with great pride that I present you the result of an intense work of research I have been carrying out lately.
It is my personal tribute to the Spectrum and it is called Spectrumpedia - a comprehensive repository of knowledge, 704 pages long, which aims at collecting, trying to strike a delicate balance between completeness and conciseness, everything essential you need to know about the Spectrum: history, technical specifications, the most important software houses, its clones, historical and modern peripherals, expansions and new graphic and audio modes, programs for developing new software for it, the possibilities of emulating it on other systems, the Spectrum in Italy and much more!
First impressions from the Italian Spectrum enthusiasts scene have been overwhelmingly positive so far. I am presenting it to the rest of the world although I must warn you that the book is currently only available in Italian, in the hope that if there will be enough interest in it, an English translation will be made and maybe even a printed edition - which has already been requested for the Italian version
Read more and download it in PDF format from the mini-site within my personal web site.
Comments are welcome!
Post edited by Alessandro Grussu on
Comments
I can see there's oodles of info on games, utilities, emulators and other esoteric subjects. So well done Al! Quite a monumental work there.
Bytes:Chuntey - Spectrum tech blog.
is homebrew missing from the your list of 2009 games?
Looks good, English version would be great :)
One small little niggle from my point of view... no mention of z88dk in dev tools :P Of the games you list between 2006 and 2012, around 20% of them were written using z88dk. I realize this sort of thing is probably completely unknown to most people. Also what I would consider important are the apis developed by winston (spectranet) and pheonix (esxdos) but then maybe things haven't taken off with that stuff yet and maybe that is too esoteric for a brief overview.
Write games in C using Z88DK and SP1
As for the APIs you mention, you guessed it right - I wanted first of all to explain what Spectranet and ESXDOS are, while indicating the sources for my information in the eighth chapter, for those who wish to delve deeper into such topics.
I tried to do my best into striking the balance between completeness and conciseness, and I am sure there will be some other (hopefully small as yours ;)) complaints from someone who would have liked to find even more in my book.
Nice to see two of my programs mentioned, thanks!!
If there are some more requests I will begin an English translation. Be warned though, the sheer size of the book means it will take some time ;)
Unfortunately the only thing I can say in Portuguese is 'obrigado', therefore I'm afraid there won't be any translation in your language, unless someone who knows both Italian and Portuguese volounteers for it!
I'm glad to say you achieved it. Great work!
This book is obviously based on a deep knowledge, extensive research, a lot of work to select and organize each subject, and the final text is very well written. How can you doubt if there will be interest for an English translation? :)
This is the reason you should have a page like this one I created for Boriel's ZX BASIC. Feel free to copy the format if you want.
Considering the existing z88dk page here, it's no surprise that this sort of thing is probably completely unknown to most people. :)
Moreover, I discovered just today that an Italian tape magazine which appeared from 1984 and 1985 (Computing Videoteca) seems to hold original (ie not pirated) software. I also found an interview with one of the publishing house editors - who was responsible for the C64 edition, however - who confirmed that they just published original programs coded by the contributors. This new revelation will of course appear soon in Spectrumpedia's seventh chapter.
As i told you, i have been trapped from the first page to the last, it has been the first italian book that i ever read 8-)... i don't know italian, but my spanish help a lot :-D
My favourite chapters the "sesto" and "settimo" (i love to know about the zx experience in other countries ;-) ), thanks to you a part of the zx story, that only existed in the mind of a few persons, is now avalaible for the rest of community.
Grazie Mille!!! :) :) :)
Update: A new PDF file has been uploaded to Altervista. Modifications are as follows:
The PDF file is as usual available from the Spectrumpedia web page within my personal web site.
English version is ablolutely needed. I can say in Italian only "Buon giorno" and "Ti amo" :) I can guess by names and pictures what you're writing about but that's not the way to do it properly.
You did a mammoth work gathering all these info together. I beleive that there shouldn't be many suprises and unknown facts for a true Spectrum fan but it looks just like a good read.
Still everybody may learn something from it. For me it'll be clones section. I've never realised that there were so many of them.
oh... all my games have pictures in the book! Cool.
Well done! (I didnt know there were so many clones.)
Games List 2016 - Games List 2015 - Games List 2014
To WhizzBang (and anyone willing to do the same): Proof reading will surely be welcome, since English is not my mother language and mistakes will most probably occur although I will try to correct them myself before submitting the translation to the WOS community.
Small update: I was asked to add a mention of the Videoface digitizer. I did so and also briefly wrote about the ROMBO Vidi-ZX interface, of which I read a review back in the day in Sinclair User, together with the unofficial Czech version of the Videoface mentioned by Velesoft in this thread. Both peripherals can now be seen at page 158, together with the picture taken from Your Sinclair's Rage Hard feature in issue 29.
this could be the subtitle of the book.
I've tried a few times over the last couple of days but have not been able to download this :-(, however, I'm pleased to hear there will be an english translation for an ignorant englishman like me and other non-italian speakers :-).