Are you a serious programmer of the Spectrum?
A statement at the back of "The complete Spectrum ROM disassembly".
So are you serious programmer, do you own a version of this book?
I do, so I am!
The "Complete Spectrum ROM disassembly" is a must for all serious programmers of the Spectrum.
So are you serious programmer, do you own a version of this book?
I do, so I am!
Post edited by Dr BEEP on
Comments
I picked up a newish looking one on eBay a couple of years ago, so I've retired the original somewhere safe. Nowadays I just search the PDF version as it's much quicker :-)
Er, I guess that makes me serious?
Si
So no
I mod, I fiddle, I hack, I twiddle, but nothing truly righteous have I contributed to the Speccy community. Apart from a few Jet Set Willy conversions (the earlier ones on here are all the buggy versions, the newer ones are OK though), my newer ones are heavily modded though. Stuff the editors don't provide you with options for.
Bytes:Chuntey - Spectrum tech blog.
I guess I am a serious programmer of the spectrum.
But not a serious as some.
Write games in C using Z88DK and SP1
Geoff Eddy?
Just a guess LOL
Nope. Our very own Geoff Wearmouth.
I'll put my hand up and say that I never owned a copy of the book, although I do have the Amstrad CPC equivalent of it.
As for the target readership, "Serious" programmers would probably find the vast majority of the routines too slow and specialised to be much use though. Still, it's essential for gurus of Spectrum BASIC as it offers much insight into the hows and whys of the language, and it's pretty useful for beginners in assembler too as it offers a limited toolkit to work with.
I've had my copy for well over 20 years and have found it invaluable.
@MattB
The Amstrad version, is that the "Amstrad Whole Memory Guide"? If so then that is excellent book and made my coding a lot easier for the CPC. Or do you mean SOFT158, I never did find that but always wanted a copy.
:-) I have four copies of the book. My original bought in 1984 with pencil marks and a mint copy of each of the three different covers although the contents are the same.
When I opened the first copy in the bookshop I gasped and put it back on the shelf. It was probably the DRAW command. I then thought the answer to my questions must be in there so I bought it and started at an easier place. The program itself is beautifully crafted and a work of genius.
This bookie allowed me to make my own ROM, where I placed all the mods suggested by the authors, and I added my own NMI handler where if you held SYMBOL SHIFT while triggering a NMI the Speccy would wait for a keypress, then it saved the current screen to tape and then would return to whatever it was doing. This worked perfectly (made when I had access to a ROM burner in 1989), but the lack of a monostable in the NMI line made the Speccy save tens of screens every time!
I also changed another coupla things, like white-on-black startup colors (bliss!) and the (C) message; childish crap.
Cheers,
Marcelo.
Nice happening in 2002 at the HCC in Utrecht.
We were there with the Sinclair user group, showing off our Spectrums.
Someone came by and said "Old crap"
I showed him this (C) message
(c) 2002 Sinclair Research Ltd
He said : "Just a program"
I said : "If so then it is deleted after this" and pulled out the power.
I reinstated the power and there was again
(c) 2002 Sinclair Research Ltd
He walked away mocking further!
Yes, that's the one.
Is this book any good?
lol, dont ya just love blowing their minds... i've got 5 original copies of the book. I needed them all coz they wear out easily, :D
Especially when im writing turbo loaders, lol
https://twitter.com/bobsstuffgames
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I also own a copy of Toni Baker's Mastering Machine Code on your ZX Spectrum and Advanced Spectrum Machine Language by David Webb.
But does it make me a serious programmer ?
Programming for the fun of it... YES
I have had immense enjoyment from both the book and the program itself and could criticize neither. It is a detailed analysis made in a short period of time without the tools we have today.
Three of the mods suggested in the book should not be made
1) The cure for the INT -65536 problem is almost correct but does not set the lower three bytes of the floating point form of -65536 to zero.
2) The 5 bytes at $30E5 must not be removed as they deal with 00 FF 00 00 00 which can arise from integer multiplication e.g. 0 * -1.
3) The division error is not an error. The ROM author has probably tried collecting the 34th bit, found results rounded up too much and settled for just the 33rd bit while leaving the mechanism intact in case he revisited it.
You can fix the problems with .5 being stored incorrectly by swapping the
the mult and div instructions in NXT-DIGIT-1 ($2CDA)
see
http://www.wearmouth.demon.co.uk/Features.htm