Fred Publishing

Paul Horridge

Debugger published on Fred 47.

The only reason I’ve added this node separately is to be able to view the instructions online.

And now that I’ve finished typing it up, realized there is a debugger in Sim Coupe…

Well, I’ve just finished another proggy and now its time for my favourite bit, the instructions. Oh goody. Ah well, here goes…

GI_Mon is a monitor program designed to help you track down bugs in machine code programs (so if you’re one of the lucky people who don’t know about the insomnia and 3am bedtimes that is MC programming, you might as well exit to the FRED menu now and play a game or something). It allows you to disassemble and single-step through an MC program to find out what it does to the registers, flags, memory, etc.

The program will run at the start of any memory page above address 32767. To use the program simply load it in at the desired address (the program is on the disk under the filename “GI_Mon .O”) and CALL it. When the program is run, it reserves 2 pages in the Page Allocation Table and another 2 pages immediately above it (skipping a page if the program is loaded at an odd-numbered page) for the monitor screen. This means that the program won’t be corrupted by DOS commands or a RAMdisk. The program should run on a SAM with only 256K of RAM, but there’s no check to find out how much memory you have, and I’m not sure what will happen if you try to view/singlestep memory that you don’t have!

The program features a simple WIMP system which most people should be reasonably familiar with by now, so I’m not going to go into any great detail here. To move the pointer around the screen, use the joystick keys 6789, and to click something press 0. If you have a mouse it can be selected instead (see later). You can move a window around the desktop by clicking the title bar and dragging the outline to the required position before releasing the button. To close down a window or menu , just click anywhere outside it. Note that you can only have one open window/menu at a time.

Quazar

Warren Lee

Warren Lee

Warren Lee

Published on cover disk of issue 10 of Sam Revival.

“Although originally written in 1996, Invasion II was never released until now. Invasion II is a platform adventure game where you have to battle against the invading aliens. Warren has paid particular attention to detail with all the animation and scenery, as well as a fully animated introduction.” (From the description for issue 10 of Sam Revival)

More like mini-reviews/mentions.
The ‘Your Sinclair’ insert of issue 9 of Retro Gamer:
“Issue 10’s cover disk contains the full game Invasion II, originally written in 1996 but never released. The game itself is a platform-action-adventure-sci-fi-(snip! Ed) romp in which you have to blast the hell outta the oncoming foe.”
Screenshot caption: “With quality games like this, makes you wonder why the Sam never took off”

Number 10 in the “Top Ten Games” article on the SAM Coupe, in issue 74 of Retro Gamer:
“The original Invasion was a simple shoot-‘em-up written in GamesMaster that appeared on FRED (issue 58). Several years later, author Warren Lee fired up GamesMaster again and produced this top-quality sequel, which is a platformer rather than a shooter. Clearly inspired by games like Impossible Mission and Flashback, you have to infiltrate an enemy base while trying to keep your head (which seems to get removed from your shoulders all too often). The graphics are small but detailed, and the quality of animation is generally excellent. If you fancy your chances against the alien threat, the game was featured exclusively on the coverdisk of SAM Revival issue 10.”

From Dan Dooré

Cookies Hot Butter demo used 128K music - source is here: http://home.earthlink.net/~simoncooke/samcoupe/infobase/source/htbtter.txt and there’s a section called “Convert 128k Spectrum (AY-3-8912) music to SAM (SAA1099)” but given the only thing I know about Z80 is how to spell it I couldn’t say much more

From Stefan Drissen

The Cookie AY player is one routine that usually resides in the lower 16k bank. The largest chuck is a lookup table for converting AY frequencies to SAA frequencies (attached).

This routine or modifications (I disassembled it) has been used in all Speccy 128k demo conversions on the SAM.

ORG 0
DUMP 3,$

LD C,255 ;soundchip on
LD B,1
LD A,onoff
OUT (C),A
DEC B
LD A,1
OUT (C),A

DEFS $/256+1*256-$

;the outputs to the AY-3-8912’s registers are intercepted and
;are used as memory mapped i/o

memoryio:

ayfine1: DEFB 0
aycoarse1: DEFB 0
ayfine2: DEFB 0
aycoarse2: DEFB 0
ayfine3: DEFB 0
aycoarse3: DEFB 0
aynoisepitch: DEFB 0
aymixer: DEFB 0
ayvol1: DEFB 0
ayvol2: DEFB 0
ayvol3: DEFB 0
ayenvlength:
ayenvlen: DEFB 0
ayenvlen2: DEFB 0
ayenvshape: DEFB 0

saaouts:
DEFB tone2
saatone2: DEFB 0
DEFB amp2
saaamp2: DEFB 0
DEFB tone3
saatone3: DEFB 0
DEFB amp3
saaamp3: DEFB 0
DEFB oct32
saaoct32: DEFB 0
DEFB tone5
saatone5: DEFB 0
DEFB amp5
saaamp5: DEFB 0
DEFB oct54
saaoct54: DEFB 0
DEFB noisefreq
saanoisefreq: DEFB 0
DEFB freqen
saafreqen: DEFB 0
DEFB noiseen
saanoiseen: DEFB 0
DEFB onoff
DEFB 1

Facebook

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Quazar and Colin Piggot - Quazar

Yet is possible easy convert ZX128 software for SAM COUPE with 1MB external memory.

http://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/showthread.php?t=29437

Thomas Harte

A short demo of vector 3d graphics originally distributed with Sam Revival 22. This demo shows a spinning Cobra Mk3 from Braben & Bell’s Elite, an Adder from the same game or a simple cube and allows the viewer to walk around the model using a joystick, with the fire button used for strafing.

A more advanced follow-up demo showing a scene of several objects with multiple colours and allowing the user to tilt their view and move upwards and downwards with improved numerical precision is available on Sam Revival 23.

Finally, it’s out! Issue 23 of SAM Revival is out now from Quazar

This issue of SAM Revival costs £3.99 for the UK, or £4.79 for EU including Airmail postage. You can also subscribe for six issues at a discounted price of £21.98 (UK) or £26.98 (EU). More information and ordering information can be found on the Quazar website at www.samcoupe.com

SAM Revival is a printed magazine with an accompanying cover disk of software and aims to be packed full of SAM Coupé news, interesting features, articles and interviews, catering for everything SAM related. The first issue launched in August 2002, and the magazine is now read by SAM users in 20 countries.

On the coverdisk you’ll find the fantastic VIC-20 emulator from Simon Owen, a new wireframe 3D demo from Thomas Harte, and a full adventure game from Hydrasoft / Pete King.

Inside the magazine you’ll find seven pages of news from around the SAM world covering all the latest developments and what is on the horizon. The Developer Diary looks at the progress by Adrian Brown of porting a TCP/IP stack to the SAM, Thomas Harte covers the work on his 3D engine and Colin Piggot goes over the improvements to the newest version of B-DOS for the Trinity Ethernet Interface. There’s also source code for the new patched SAM ROM to auto boot from the Trinity.

From Neil Holmes by email 1 March 2010
I’m more than happy for it to be made avaialbe, along with anything else you have me credited for - especially if it means i can finally get a copy to play :)