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Eightyone and Hires Pacman issue.

Posted: Wed Nov 24, 2021 5:43 pm
by Mclaneinc
Hi folks, need a bit of help re Eightyone, a friend passed me on a link to a Hires Pacman game that uses a software exploit to produce hires characters.

Link here https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event= ... acman.html

Now I had, back in the day an 80 & 81 with only a 16K ram pack, by the time the fancy Chr$ generators and other add-ons came out I'd moved on from the machine. A few years back I found Eightyone, and it got me back in to looking at the ZX81 stuff again. My question is, I tried the Pacman on Eightyone with the 18K rampack enabled, and it loaded to the title page, but in game it's a mess. I tried enabling a few bits but it was the same. Does anyone know how to run it properly, or does Eightyone not support the ULA hack?

I appreciate any help.

Paul..

Re: Eightyone and Hires Pacman issue.

Posted: Wed Nov 24, 2021 7:30 pm
by dr beep
Mclaneinc wrote: Wed Nov 24, 2021 5:43 pm Hi folks, need a bit of help re Eightyone, a friend passed me on a link to a Hires Pacman game that uses a software exploit to produce hires characters.

Link here https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event= ... acman.html

Now I had, back in the day an 80 & 81 with only a 16K ram pack, by the time the fancy Chr$ generators and other add-ons came out I'd moved on from the machine. A few years back I found Eightyone, and it got me back in to looking at the ZX81 stuff again. My question is, I tried the Pacman on Eightyone with the 18K rampack enabled, and it loaded to the title page, but in game it's a mess. I tried enabling a few bits but it was the same. Does anyone know how to run it properly, or does Eightyone not support the ULA hack?

I appreciate any help.

Paul..
In the menu under HARDWARE select WRX graphics for hires games.

Re: Eightyone and Hires Pacman issue.

Posted: Wed Nov 24, 2021 8:22 pm
by Mclaneinc
Hi dr Beep,

Sure I tried that but will make sure..

Thanks

Just tried, same as before, OK title page, as soon as you press 1 to start it just looks like a badly tuned in RF signal..

Thanks for trying..

The Hires Invaders from the same site does exactly the same..

Re: Eightyone and Hires Pacman issue.

Posted: Wed Nov 24, 2021 8:29 pm
by GCHarder
Not really, this is a Pseudo Hires program, by Brian Lewis, so it should run on a stock ZX81 with 16K Rampac. This also applies to his "Space Invaders" game if you have that as well.

You may have ZXPand enabled in Eightyone which will mess up the Pseudo HIres display as it overwrite the ROMs normal character bit patterns. Deselect ZXPand or LOAD the program with the ZXPand /x switch.

See this thread...

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3476

Regards;

Greg

Re: Eightyone and Hires Pacman issue.

Posted: Wed Nov 24, 2021 8:40 pm
by Mclaneinc
Hi Greg, checked under the hardware section and ZXexpand is unticked, in fact the only thing with anything either ticked or enabled is Chrs generator which is set to Sinclair, and of cource the 16K is enabled..

Using Eightyone ver 1.23

Tried going back to version 1.22 and deleting the config in roaming..

No joy

Re: Eightyone and Hires Pacman issue.

Posted: Wed Nov 24, 2021 8:52 pm
by BarryN
dr beep wrote: Wed Nov 24, 2021 7:30 pm
Mclaneinc wrote: Wed Nov 24, 2021 5:43 pm Hi folks, need a bit of help re Eightyone, a friend passed me on a link to a Hires Pacman game that uses a software exploit to produce hires characters.

Link here https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event= ... acman.html

Now I had, back in the day an 80 & 81 with only a 16K ram pack, by the time the fancy Chr$ generators and other add-ons came out I'd moved on from the machine. A few years back I found Eightyone, and it got me back in to looking at the ZX81 stuff again. My question is, I tried the Pacman on Eightyone with the 18K rampack enabled, and it loaded to the title page, but in game it's a mess. I tried enabling a few bits but it was the same. Does anyone know how to run it properly, or does Eightyone not support the ULA hack?

I appreciate any help.

Paul..
In the menu under HARDWARE select WRX graphics for hires games.
Nope. I just reproduced the issue with my copy of EightyOne. I also verified the PACMAN.P file is good, I ran it under SZ81 and on my real TS1000 with the WRX capable ZXPand pack and it works, and I do not have to disable the ZXPand, but not under EightyOne. It also works on MAME TS1000 emulation.

Re: Eightyone and Hires Pacman issue.

Posted: Wed Nov 24, 2021 9:09 pm
by Mclaneinc
While not good that it does not work for you Barry, at least it vindicates me posting as I was soo worried I'd made a newbie type error which would surprise as I've been a beta tester for various emulators and software for far too many years to mention.

Shame about it not working, both the Pac man and the Invaders look excellent..

Re: Eightyone and Hires Pacman issue.

Posted: Wed Nov 24, 2021 9:32 pm
by BarryN
Mclaneinc wrote: Wed Nov 24, 2021 9:09 pm While not good that it does not work for you Barry, at least it vindicates me posting as I was soo worried I'd made a newbie type error which would surprise as I've been a beta tester for various emulators and software for far too many years to mention.

Shame about it not working, both the Pac man and the Invaders look excellent..
But it does work on the real hardware or using the SZ81 or MAME emulators.

Here is a link to SZ81. I run this on Mac OS X. I have not tried the Windows version.

http://rullf2.xs4all.nl/sz81/sz81-win32.zip

Re: Eightyone and Hires Pacman issue.

Posted: Wed Nov 24, 2021 9:42 pm
by Moggy
It only runs on older versions of SZ-81 for windows XP not the later or Zxpand versions however the noCash emulator runs it just fine.

Edit.

just noticed a bit of screen"debris" in the horizontal plane as pac man moves.

Re: Eightyone and Hires Pacman issue.

Posted: Thu Nov 25, 2021 3:37 pm
by Mclaneinc
As I've only been on the forum for about a day now, I haven't read all the news. Is anyone taking over from poor Mike on Eightyone?

If so then maybe if they read this or someone can pass on the issue we could get a resolved Eightone, I'd forgotten about the NoCA$H series of emulators and never heard of the other one mention in this thread. They are nice but Eightyone has been my goto bit of ZX81 software, would be a shame for it not to be corrected. Oh and the Noca$h emulator does play the Pacman but the Invaders clone by the same guy just does nothing if you press 1 to start a game.

Anyway, many thanks for all the help, very appreciated..

Paul..