RISC World updates
Matt Thompson updates his articles from earlier issues of RISCWorld
Since some of my reviews were published in RISCWorld there have been a number of changes to the applications concerned, these are detailed below.
Flight Simulator Compilation CD
There was a problem with the game Spitfire Fury on some of the original CDs that were produced, if your version of Spitfire Fury does not work, then go to www.apdl.co.uk/update.htm and download the patch which will then make the game run. There is also an upgrade to deal with the problem of the Interdictor II copy protection system.
!6502em
Since the release of Version 4.00 of !6502em the author has released a number of updates, the current version is V4.03 and a number of fixes have been implemented, and also the number of games which run has increased since V4.00. Unfortunately Firetrack doesn't work yet, but here's hoping it will eventually, for the latest version see Michael Borcherds website at www.borcherds.co.uk/murklesoft.
!Z80em
No updates on this one as there really is no need, this emulator seems to run almost every Spectrum game I've tried on it, although there is one exception, there are a number of Jet Set Willy remakes which require 128K mode for some reason these won't work, this problem only occurs on the Iyonix, RISC OS 4 seems to be fine.
Anyway the point of this was to mention a ZX Spectrum games compilation I bought, it costs only �4.99 and is available from www.zxspectrum.co.uk and there are literally thousands of games on the CD, most include instructions, the games are in either TAP, TZX or Z80 format, these all work with !Z80em. Also on the CD are directories of other Spectrum related stuff - pictures of old Sinclair adverts and Spectrum books in PDF format, most of the stuff on the CD can easily be found on the internet but to have it all on a CD-ROM for only a fiver is well worth having.
VICE
In my VICE article I omitted to mention how to get T64(tape) and D64(disc) images to run using !Vice64, it can be a bit tricky but once you know what you are doing it's easy, to run a D64image you do the following:
Hold down Shift whilst dragging the gamefile into Vice, you need to drag the file onto the panel on the left hand side of the emulator window, where the number 8 is, now release your finger off the mouse button, but keep shift held down, and a window should now appear, looking something like this :
What you need to do now is double click on the program file which in the case is "Bone-Main" you can tell a program file because it has PRG next to it, there are other PRG files but they are intros and they didn't seem to work, but the Bone-Main file goes straight to the game. The other files are just headers and sometimes if they don't work the game won't run, but, by bypassing the headers you can get to the game which then should run ok. There maybe other ways of getting the D64 images to run but this seems to be an effective way of doing so.
And all being well you should end up with something like this :
It is worth creating a Vice snapshot of the game when it has loaded, so you don't have to load the game again, in future you can just drag the snapshot into the main emulator screen. This is done by clicking the mouse menu button over the main emulator screen and selecting snapshot then drag the file to the required destination.
As for the T64 tape images, the process is almost the same, but with tape images you will need to first open the tape player window. Do this by clicking the menu button on the mouse and then select configure>tape, you will then see the following window :
Now you can drag the tape file to the tape player window with the Shift key held down in exactly the same way that you would load a disc image. A window will appear and then you can select the 'PRG' file, double click on it and the game will now automatically load. As with the disc images when you have got the game loaded it is best to create a snapshot so next time you can just drag and drop the snapshot into the emulator and it will run first time. Snapshots do not need PRG or any file extension on the end of the filename it should run as is.
One other thing in my VICE article I said that the game filename needs to have a 'PRG' extension to run, this doesn't seem to apply to Commodore 64 games as the T64/D64 images don't have the PRG file extension and don't seem to need it, the PRG extension mainly seems to apply to VIC 20 and Commodore 16 and Commodore Plus 4 games. These games are usually in a datafile format and have a filename eg GAME/PRG so if you download a game for one these machines and it doesn't work try it with /PRG on the end of the filename. PRG files should automatically run by dragging and dropping them into the emulator main screen.
Hopefully this all makes sense, if anyone has problems running games on any of the Vice emulators, or Z80em or 6502em them feel free to email me at mt@red-squirrel.com and I will see if I can help.
Matt Thompson