New release of EightyOne available

[mrtinb]

And JSZeddy http://rullf2.xs4all.nl/jszeddy/jszeddy.html

[GCHarder]

The program "ShowSCR" no longer works in 1.21, it does work in 1.18. The upper third of the image is distorted, maybe something to do with the Spectrum display format. Running on WIN7 64Bit.

Regards;

Greg

Here's a screen cap

[Fruitcake]

The program "ShowSCR" no longer works in 1.21, it does work in 1.18. The upper third of the image is distorted, maybe something to do with the Spectrum display format. Running on WIN7 64Bit.

I've tried in v1.22 and it is working ok for me. Can you include a screenshot of what you are seeing.

[Rainbirdrich]

Just grabbed latest release V1.22, but noticed that each time I click on the keyboard (press F1 to invoke it) the image (and window) for it gets smaller, and then there's no obvious way to get it back to the normal size? if you keep clicking it ends up as a tiny square just big enough for the close window gadget to still be visible. It does this in V1.20 as well, but I never really noticed this before now.

Quitting and restarting the emulator didn't resolve the problem, but later on when I tried this, the keyboard image and window was back to its normal size.

Weird.

[Fruitcake]

Just grabbed latest release V1.22, but noticed that each time I click on the keyboard (press F1 to invoke it) the image (and window) for it gets smaller, and then there's no obvious way to get it back to the normal size? if you keep clicking it ends up as a tiny square just big enough for the close window gadget to still be visible. It does this in V1.20 as well, but I never really noticed this before now.

Quitting and restarting the emulator didn't resolve the problem, but later on when I tried this, the keyboard image and window was back to its normal size.

Weird.

On a hunch I tried changing font size to 125% from 100% and I got the behaviour you saw. Do you have a font size larger than 100% set on your computer?

[Fruitcake]

The program "ShowSCR" no longer works in 1.21, it does work in 1.18. The upper third of the image is distorted, maybe something to do with the Spectrum display format. Running on WIN7 64Bit.

I've still not been able to reproduce this. What hardware settings do you have?

You could try deleting the eightyone.ini file (although can't see why any settings there could affect things like this).

[GCHarder]

I'll download 1.22 and try again. This occurs in 1.21, so it would be best to both be using the same version.

I'll let you know what happens.

Regards;

Greg

I installed 1.22 and it seems to be working OK. I then tried 1.21 again and now that's working as well. Maybe I had a corrupt file somewhere. Sorry to have bothered you.

[Rainbirdrich]

Not quite. On my Windows 10 laptop I have to change the 'Compatibility' on the shortcut I use to the emulator, 'Change high DPI settings' > 'Override high DPI scaling behaviour. Scaling performed by: Application' else all the fonts in the emulator are blurry. I do that with most applications on the laptop. Without using that setting, the keyboard image behaves itself and nothing happens when I click on it.

Just grabbed latest release V1.22, but noticed that each time I click on the keyboard (press F1 to invoke it) the image (and window) for it gets smaller, and then there's no obvious way to get it back to the normal size? if you keep clicking it ends up as a tiny square just big enough for the close window gadget to still be visible. It does this in V1.20 as well, but I never really noticed this before now.

Quitting and restarting the emulator didn't resolve the problem, but later on when I tried this, the keyboard image and window was back to its normal size.

Weird.

On a hunch I tried changing font size to 125% from 100% and I got the behaviour you saw. Do you have a font size larger than 100% set on your computer?

[Fruitcake]

Without using that setting, the keyboard image behaves itself and nothing happens when I click on it.

Could you try v1.23 and see if that helps.

[MunichSpec]

Hi!

I just encountered a very weird behaviour with EightyOne 1.23 in conjunction with the Interface 1/Microdrives when I tried to transfer a couple screens from tape to a Microdrive cartridge. Here are the steps to reproduce:

1. Create an empty cartridge with

Code: Select all

fsutil file createnew cartridge.mdr 137923

and insert it. See https://worldofspectrum.org/faq/reference/formats.htm for an explanation of the MDR file format.

2. Prepare and save a tape with fake screens by clicking the "New Tape" option and running this Sinclair Basic program:

Code: Select all

10 CLS
20 FOR i=1000 TO 1035
30 READ f$,start,length
40 IF f$="#" THEN GO TO 200
50 PRINT AT 20,0;"Saving: '";f$;"'...",
60 SAVE f$ CODE start,length
70 NEXT i
80 PRINT AT 20,0;"Done.",

200 STOP

1000 DATA "abyss",16384,2048
1001 DATA "altar",16384,2048
1002 DATA "bank",16384,2048
1003 DATA "beach",16384,2048
1004 DATA "bridge",16384,2048
1005 DATA "camp",16384,2048
1006 DATA "cata",16384,2048
1007 DATA "cavern",16384,2048
1008 DATA "church",16384,2048
1009 DATA "empty",16384,2048
1010 DATA "entr",16384,2048
1011 DATA "fall",16384,2048
1012 DATA "forrest",16384,2048
1013 DATA "gate",16384,2048
1014 DATA "gplain",16384,2048
1015 DATA "hills",16384,2048
1016 DATA "hole",16384,2048
1017 DATA "inchur",16384,2048
1018 DATA "jungle",16384,2048
1019 DATA "landing",16384,2048
1020 DATA "lava",16384,2048
1021 DATA "map",16384,2048
1022 DATA "path",16384,2048
1023 DATA "plain",16384,2048
1024 DATA "pyramid",16384,2048
1025 DATA "riv",16384,2048
1026 DATA "rocks",16384,2048
1027 DATA "ruin",16384,2048
1028 DATA "sea",16384,2048
1029 DATA "tent",16384,2048
1030 DATA "tunnel",16384,2048
1031 DATA "view",16384,2048
1032 DATA "village",16384,2048
1033 DATA "way",16384,2048
1034 DATA "ring$",16384,4096
1035 DATA "#",0,0

3. Load (but don't run) this program (just the first few lines are slightly different as they now load from tape and save to Microdrive):

Code: Select all

10  CLS
20  PRINT AT 20,0;"Formatting...",
30  FORMAT "m";1;"TEST"
40  RESTORE 1000
50  FOR i=1000 TO 1035
60  READ f$,start,length
70  IF f$="#" THEN GO TO 200
80  PRINT AT 20,0;"Loading: '";f$;"'...",
90  LOAD "" CODE start
100 PRINT AT 20,0;"Saving:  '"
110 SAVE *"m";1;f$CODE start,length
120 NEXT i
130 PRINT AT 20,0;"Done.",

200 STOP

1000 DATA "abyss",16384,2048
1001 DATA "altar",16384,2048
1002 DATA "bank",16384,2048
1003 DATA "beach",16384,2048
1004 DATA "bridge",16384,2048
1005 DATA "camp",16384,2048
1006 DATA "cata",16384,2048
1007 DATA "cavern",16384,2048
1008 DATA "church",16384,2048
1009 DATA "empty",16384,2048
1010 DATA "entr",16384,2048
1011 DATA "fall",16384,2048
1012 DATA "forrest",16384,2048
1013 DATA "gate",16384,2048
1014 DATA "gplain",16384,2048
1015 DATA "hills",16384,2048
1016 DATA "hole",16384,2048
1017 DATA "inchur",16384,2048
1018 DATA "jungle",16384,2048
1019 DATA "landing",16384,2048
1020 DATA "lava",16384,2048
1021 DATA "map",16384,2048
1022 DATA "path",16384,2048
1023 DATA "plain",16384,2048
1024 DATA "pyramid",16384,2048
1025 DATA "riv",16384,2048
1026 DATA "rocks",16384,2048
1027 DATA "ruin",16384,2048
1028 DATA "sea",16384,2048
1029 DATA "tent",16384,2048
1030 DATA "tunnel",16384,2048
1031 DATA "view",16384,2048
1032 DATA "village",16384,2048
1033 DATA "way",16384,2048
1034 DATA "ring$",16384,4096
1035 DATA "#",0,0

4. Now insert the tape with fake screenshots that was created in step 2, also make sure that you have inserted the blank Microdrive cartridge cartridge.mdr that was created in step 1.

5. Run the program mentioned in step 3. This should first format the cartrridge, then load file after file from tape and iteratively save them to the cartridge.

However, the program already seems to fail with the formatting step. It nulls the sectors but does not verify them and then scrolls through the code segments that were saved to tape.

After a hard reset and removing the TAP file(!), I inserted a blank cartridge in Microdrive 1 again and formatted it manually with

Code: Select all

FORMAT "m";1;"TEST"

This seems to work. However, as soon as I inserted a TAP file, the aforementioned behaviour reappeared.

Just for completeness and as it might matter: I kept open the "Drives" window, the "Tape Manager" window, the "TV Emulation" window and the "Keyboard Map". The tape manager was configured to play loading sounds, use flash load, activate auto start/stop but NOT auto load on insert (for obvious reasons).

On a sidenote: The contents of the Microdrive cartridge were not written/serialized to the file cartridge.mdr until I ejected the cartridge and afterwards its size changed from 137923 bytes to 139008, which should not happen, since the MDR format is fixed size. Reinserting that cartridge and running

Code: Select all

CAT 1

revealed nothing special, 126kBytes free. After having a look at the file with my Hex editor, a weird data block seems to have been inserted, saying something like "18fps FS", "14fps", "Pause..PNX.PNX" which could indicate some sort of memory corruption inside EightyOne.

I'm using Bas2Tap from ThunderWare Research Center, written by Martijn van der Heide, Windows 7 x64 SP1 (all patches) and have attached the relevant files for you to play with. Hopefully, we can sort out what went wrong here.

Thanks for having a look!
Volker