Recent posts

#21

Applications (CPC and CPC-related) / Re: "Excel" for the CPC - SYMC...

Last post by Prodatron - Today at 12:51

So you suggest to generate something like pathes, which define, in which order the cells have to be recalculated as soon as something has been updated. You check, if a cell is included in such a path, and when you find it, you follow the remaining part of the path and update all mentioned cells in the correct order. This would result in a very fast and always correct recalculation. As soon as you change references inside a formula you have to regenerate one of these pathes.

My current approach was to find all affected cells in realtime again and again after each update, but maybe this will become slow when having a lot of cells. Then you could at least cache the recalculation order.

Anyway that is an interesting problem

#22

M

Technical support - Hardware related / Re: CPC 6128 - white screen, b...

Last post by mmldrm - Today at 12:40

244 is like eight pipes.

When Pin1 244 is Lo. pipes are open.

When you grounded RAMs pin2, this ground flow by open 244 to Pin14 RAM.

If You are checking Pin14 by multimeter and grounding Pin2 by second hand then you are seeing this ground on multimeter.

Thanks, now I understand how checking pin2 first could ground pin14.

Although I did only ever test one pin at a time. Black multimeter probe on ground, red probe on pinX. No second hand, unless you mean the red and black multimeter probes.

Silly question... what should I do next?

#23

Applications (CPC and CPC-related) / Re: "Excel" for the CPC - SYMC...

Last post by Gryzor - Today at 11:41

Can you explain the bit about calculation in any direction? I didn't know it was a limitation back in the day, but why was it so?

This is what I saw at least in VisiCalc (Apple 2) and Mastercalc (CPC).

The recalculation usually starts at A1, then A2, A3 etc, then B1, B2, B3 and so on.
You could change the setting, that it does first A1,B1,C1 etc. then A2,B2,C2 and so on.

Usually this is fine, but when you have some chained references, which are hopping forward and backward, it won't update the sheet correctly automatically. In this case you could trigger an additional recalculation process manually. And if you have multiple references which are going in the wrong direction, you have to do this multiple times. Of course this is not the normal way how you create a table, so in most cases this was not an issue.

Interesting. I can see how it can be an issue when you first think of it ("oh, how will we scan the table to update stuff?") but... It's not like you don't already have a matrix of what values are dependent on other values so that you can do it in an arbitrary way?

#24

M

Games / Re: Amstrad Nightmares?

Last post by merman - Today at 11:16

Surely the absolute worst has to be Count Duckula 2. It's already a terrible port of an abysmal Speccy game, one that ranks amongst the all time worst on that machine. But they broke it during the conversion, preventing Duckula from jumping higher than the top of the screen, which makes a whole slew of screens impossible to complete without just using the superhero screen bypass power up thing.

I owned a copy of Count Duckula 2 that didn't have the bug on the second screen. I dumped a CDT file of it and it's available on CPC-POWER, so not all copies of the game are bugged. Unfortunately the bugged version has been around for so long that it's become the accepted story that the game has always been bugged (leaving aside the obvious point that the rest of the game is atrocious in every way).

That's a cool piece of information Nich, thanks!

#25

Applications (CPC and CPC-related) / Re: "Excel" for the CPC - SYMC...

Last post by Prodatron - Today at 11:16

Can you explain the bit about calculation in any direction? I didn't know it was a limitation back in the day, but why was it so?

This is what I saw at least in VisiCalc (Apple 2) and Mastercalc (CPC).

The recalculation usually starts at A1, then A2, A3 etc, then B1, B2, B3 and so on.
You could change the setting, that it does first A1,B1,C1 etc. then A2,B2,C2 and so on.

Usually this is fine, but when you have some chained references, which are hopping forward and backward, it won't update the sheet correctly automatically. In this case you could trigger an additional recalculation process manually. And if you have multiple references which are going in the wrong direction, you have to do this multiple times. Of course this is not the normal way how you create a table, so in most cases this was not an issue.

#26

R

Technical support - Hardware related / Re: Ulifac mounting internally...

Last post by retro space - Today at 07:31

I just gave it a try and it works great. So I found a 50 pin SCSI cable, cut it in half, and soldered it to the empty holes on the main PCB. I put in on the bottom, so it does not hurt the looks too much. I only might need to extend the reset switch on the Ulifac and 3D print a button that fits non destructively through the grill in the back.

#27

Games / Re: Converted GX4000 .cpr - Th...

Last post by GUNHED - Yesterday at 23:56

By the way I see no one spoke about, it's not really a true conversion so I won't post the file, but interesting recent release "The Key" works pretty well on the GX doing a simple format convertion dsk => cpr. I made a cart of it and finished it (it is quite short, it is the 1st part), I never expected such kind of adventure game on the GX.

Now imagine connecting an AMX Mouse and being able to move the cursor. Which of course is impossible.

Just use the joystick port to plug in the AMX mouse (and to make it perfect add one diode for 3rd button inside the GX4000).

#28

Games / Re: Converting games to .CPR c...

Last post by GUNHED - Yesterday at 23:52

Thanks for this thread!!! Especially for bigger games using more RAM the CPR format is desirable.
This also may be a push to release new games / demos / applications on CPR too (which recently works very well). 

I never thought I'd see the day I'd actually agree with TFM...
(fuck, I must be going soft!)

That's because we've never had a beer together. 

#29

D

GFX + Tunes / Re: Amstrad music

Last post by dal - Yesterday at 23:30

#30

D

GFX + Tunes / Re: Amstrad music

Last post by dal - Yesterday at 23:29

Titanic