Wow ,that has certainly moved the Speccy forward . And some of these arguments appear to be stronger as time passes. "PC Emulation symbiosis" also works in the Speccy's favour.
A lot of those issues mentioned by absinthe_boy are caused by Windows though. My work laptop runs Linux and it boots up in a matter of seconds and is fully usable almost immediately, with no performance hits.
It still doesn't boot up a quick as a Spectrum though!
I can understand some of that....I connect my PC to a TV there's always twitchiness, especially with an HDMI cable...It's OK most of the time, but there's occasions where I'll get a black screen on the TV, and have to fiddle around.
Never had that with a Speccy....Although one time I tried to connect my +3 to a monitor back in the day, and it didn't work....So who knows :))
Are there not games one could have a quick ten minute game of on a PC? I'm sure there are. If you have something like MAME there are probably loads of games of that sort. Of course that requires a download, and then to find the ROMS, whereas one can just load up the QAOP website and have access to dozens of spectrum games in a few seconds. :)
Yes but a lot of them are not any good . I remember being very disappointed with an early PC version of Trivial Pursuit . I did not think the questions were as numerous as on the Speccy version ( I could be wrong though , as it was a while ago).
You can have a very quick go of some PC games…Try running some really old MS DOS games in windows, and watch them run about a thousand times faster than they’re supposed to :))
Ah yes, Trivial Pursuit, I had that on the Spectrum BITD, I recall the colours on the board's hub when it was animated were really nice. No doubt they did their best with the PC version, but with the limitations of CGA graphics it doesn't look just as good.
Ah MAME.....Last year I tried to get into MAME again and spent several hours downloading the latest version, and some ROMS and succeeded in getting nothing working.
Last week I found a DVD-R that I burned about 15 years ago with the then current MAME and about a hundred ROMS from 80s arcade games. Actually runs about 20 of them
My Spectrum still runs all Spectrum games old and new. It never asks for new drivers, OS updates or throws a wobbly at software actually written for the system. It just keeps on doing it's thing....while occasionally learning new tricks such as SD card adaptors and ethernet adaptors - though I am still unable to get the latter to work with the Virgin hub 3.
! Standby alert !
“There are four lights!”
Step up to red alert. Sir, are you absolutely sure? It does mean changing the bulb!
Looking forward to summer in Somerset later in the year :)
OK I have to admit there are plenty of "quick play" PC Arcade games but a lot of them are not very good , or are expensive or of unknown quality . With the Speccy huge quantities of TZXs are available and the good games quality is known about . We do not have to worry about whether an unfinished game will be properly finished off , or if the DLC will be expensive , but PC gamers have to be aware of all these niggles. People with PCs can pay a lot for games and end up with an unfinished game or one that does not play well In contrast ,the Speccy has loads of cheap properly written , quality games still available on as tapes on Ebay and the TZXs are often available for free .
And there are nice surprises . This is especially true for someone like me who , back in the day , spent far too much time loading tapes and not enough time actually playing the games .My latest surprise ( at just how good it is) is the Zynaps 128K mod by Goodboy . This Russian modder has kept the basic Hewson structure of the game and made it 128k . My emulator can cope with the Russian Speccy version so I gave it a whirl . It was nice to revisit a game I played so long ago I had forgotten about how good it was and is ! When you have forgotten stuff and it appears again for free and it is still very playable , it seems like a win win.
The big advantage the Speccy has is that it can "piggy back" on a PC with a TZX file using Speccy emulator . This does not work the other way round . This means that loads of Speccy games can loaded quickly and played on a PC in a wide variety of game genres.
With the PC ,the big studios with big budgets now tend to concentrate on just a few game genres , like open world , first person shooter and role playing games .So the output in the other genres can be a bit limited . And with the Speccy back in the day , it was less defined as to which games genres would be profitable in the future .This simply was not known at the time . And so I would argue that the Speccy therefore benefitted from a better "game genre distribution" !
I have not played it myself yet but it appears to be a mind blowing concept . I have been told that it has been modded to help prevent Epilepsy risk ( from all the explosions etc )
! Standby alert !
“There are four lights!”
Step up to red alert. Sir, are you absolutely sure? It does mean changing the bulb!
Looking forward to summer in Somerset later in the year :)
Have a Win10 HP laptop that's fitted with a poor performing AMD processor, it stutters and struggles just watching YouTube videos. Laptop is only a few years old too.
Have a Win10 HP laptop that's fitted with a poor performing AMD processor, it stutters and struggles just watching YouTube videos. Laptop is only a few years old too.
Have a Win10 HP laptop that's fitted with a poor performing AMD processor, it stutters and struggles just watching YouTube videos. Laptop is only a few years old too.
yet it still performs better than a Speccy streaming YT vids...
Have a Win10 HP laptop that's fitted with a poor performing AMD processor, it stutters and struggles just watching YouTube videos. Laptop is only a few years old too.
yet it still performs better than a Speccy streaming YT vids...
Yes but when Rick designed the +128, he made sure the voltage regulation was done in the computer and not the PSU like previous models. Hence it having a nice heatsink to keep your hands warm on while your game loaded. Don't get designers putting those personal touches in PC's these days.
Yes but when Rick designed the +128, he made sure the voltage regulation was done in the computer and not the PSU like previous models. Hence it having a nice heatsink to keep your hands warm on while your game loaded. Don't get designers putting those personal touches in PC's these days.
Umm, the ZX80, ZX81, ZX Spectrum 16K/48K/+ all had the voltage regulation done in the computer. Hence they all are hand warmers. It was only the Amstrad +2A/+2B/+3 models that had all the voltage regulation in the PSU.
! Standby alert !
“There are four lights!”
Step up to red alert. Sir, are you absolutely sure? It does mean changing the bulb!
Looking forward to summer in Somerset later in the year :)
Yes but when Rick designed the +128, he made sure the voltage regulation was done in the computer and not the PSU like previous models. Hence it having a nice heatsink to keep your hands warm on while your game loaded. Don't get designers putting those personal touches in PC's these days.
Umm, the ZX80, ZX81, ZX Spectrum 16K/48K/+ all had the voltage regulation done in the computer. Hence they all are hand warmers. It was only the Amstrad +2A/+2B/+3 models that had all the voltage regulation in the PSU.
Yep sorry maybe not too clear as I mention "like previous models" in my quote, probably should of added like/same/as etc, but that was what I meant. I say previous models anyway. When you think back to those days it amazes me how devices had much difference to their power supplies. Not just voltage, current, and polarity, but unregulated/regulated. Some were also AC as opposed to DC. Although the PSU would state like the Sinclair supply's "offical Sinclair use only" or something of that wording, folk would still try an use them on something else and damage it, not aware it has to be the correct type. So there's something that might be in favour of modern PCs. If it's powered by USB, only thing you have to consider is can the USB supply deliver enough current to what it's supplying.
I dunno it's easy to use BASIC (the horror) to do something quick graphically that would be a pain in C/C++/C# really.
I'm writing a program which generates all period 432 linear congruential generator sequences (i.e. x(n+1) = (a * x(n) + c) mod 432) which permute the numbers 0 to 431 so I can test a screen dissolve effect. In fact here it is lol
Uses the Hull-Dobell theorem. The big data statement is a list of all positive numbers < 432 which are coprime to 432 (and terminated with a 0). Use that theorem to work out the step value is 12 so the numbers you can use are of the form 1 + 12n
EDIT: And I've just spotted a bug I renumbered line 22 to line 20 so line 40 is wrong :p
Some of the patterns it makes are really good :) I'll be writing down a few numbers later lol ;)
Comments
It still doesn't boot up a quick as a Spectrum though!
Never had that with a Speccy....Although one time I tried to connect my +3 to a monitor back in the day, and it didn't work....So who knows :))
2) But the Speccy can provide a quick 10 minute game . People have time for this type of game.
3) The Speccy games have less content which is good ( the games are quicker to play)
4) The Speccy represents British culture well , eg Gilbert Escape from Drill (Again Again) 1989 The PC has more American style content
5) PC games tend to be oversold , so all the fun is sometimes sucked out of the title
You haven't been able to run actual 16-bit DOS programs in any version of Windows for a long time though, need DOSBOX or another DOS emulator.
Last week I found a DVD-R that I burned about 15 years ago with the then current MAME and about a hundred ROMS from 80s arcade games. Actually runs about 20 of them
My Spectrum still runs all Spectrum games old and new. It never asks for new drivers, OS updates or throws a wobbly at software actually written for the system. It just keeps on doing it's thing....while occasionally learning new tricks such as SD card adaptors and ethernet adaptors - though I am still unable to get the latter to work with the Virgin hub 3.
Mark
Repair Guides. Spanish Hardware site.
WoS - can't download? Info here...
former Meulie Spectrum Archive but no longer available :-(
Spectranet: the TNFS directory thread
! Standby alert !
“There are four lights!”
Step up to red alert. Sir, are you absolutely sure? It does mean changing the bulb!
Looking forward to summer in Somerset later in the year :)
And there are nice surprises . This is especially true for someone like me who , back in the day , spent far too much time loading tapes and not enough time actually playing the games .My latest surprise ( at just how good it is) is the Zynaps 128K mod by Goodboy . This Russian modder has kept the basic Hewson structure of the game and made it 128k . My emulator can cope with the Russian Speccy version so I gave it a whirl . It was nice to revisit a game I played so long ago I had forgotten about how good it was and is ! When you have forgotten stuff and it appears again for free and it is still very playable , it seems like a win win.
With the PC ,the big studios with big budgets now tend to concentrate on just a few game genres , like open world , first person shooter and role playing games .So the output in the other genres can be a bit limited . And with the Speccy back in the day , it was less defined as to which games genres would be profitable in the future .This simply was not known at the time . And so I would argue that the Speccy therefore benefitted from a better "game genre distribution" !
This is not to say that some PC games can be "genre busting" highly creative efforts:-
https://microprose.com/games/highfleet
I have not played it myself yet but it appears to be a mind blowing concept . I have been told that it has been modded to help prevent Epilepsy risk ( from all the explosions etc )
I'd like to see a Speccy run a software development system, surf the internet, play video in HD and run a PS3 emulator all at the same time.
Mark
Repair Guides. Spanish Hardware site.
WoS - can't download? Info here...
former Meulie Spectrum Archive but no longer available :-(
Spectranet: the TNFS directory thread
! Standby alert !
“There are four lights!”
Step up to red alert. Sir, are you absolutely sure? It does mean changing the bulb!
Looking forward to summer in Somerset later in the year :)
That processor:- AMD A6-9225 RADEON R4, 5 COMPUTE CORES 2C+3G 2.60 GHz.
yet it still performs better than a Speccy streaming YT vids...
Yes but when Rick designed the +128, he made sure the voltage regulation was done in the computer and not the PSU like previous models. Hence it having a nice heatsink to keep your hands warm on while your game loaded. Don't get designers putting those personal touches in PC's these days.
Repair Guides. Spanish Hardware site.
WoS - can't download? Info here...
former Meulie Spectrum Archive but no longer available :-(
Spectranet: the TNFS directory thread
! Standby alert !
“There are four lights!”
Step up to red alert. Sir, are you absolutely sure? It does mean changing the bulb!
Looking forward to summer in Somerset later in the year :)
Yep sorry maybe not too clear as I mention "like previous models" in my quote, probably should of added like/same/as etc, but that was what I meant. I say previous models anyway. When you think back to those days it amazes me how devices had much difference to their power supplies. Not just voltage, current, and polarity, but unregulated/regulated. Some were also AC as opposed to DC. Although the PSU would state like the Sinclair supply's "offical Sinclair use only" or something of that wording, folk would still try an use them on something else and damage it, not aware it has to be the correct type. So there's something that might be in favour of modern PCs. If it's powered by USB, only thing you have to consider is can the USB supply deliver enough current to what it's supplying.
Erm... It has absolutely none whatsoever.
I'm writing a program which generates all period 432 linear congruential generator sequences (i.e. x(n+1) = (a * x(n) + c) mod 432) which permute the numbers 0 to 431 so I can test a screen dissolve effect. In fact here it is lol
Uses the Hull-Dobell theorem. The big data statement is a list of all positive numbers < 432 which are coprime to 432 (and terminated with a 0). Use that theorem to work out the step value is 12 so the numbers you can use are of the form 1 + 12n
EDIT: And I've just spotted a bug I renumbered line 22 to line 20 so line 40 is wrong :p
Some of the patterns it makes are really good :) I'll be writing down a few numbers later lol ;)