iratahack/cargandoleches

ZX Spectrum ROM with Turbo Tape Loader

CargandoLeches

Turbo loader for the ZX Spectrum. This repository was forked from Antonio Villena, all credit goes to him.

The turbo loader is in two parts, native command line tools used to create the turbo tape images and updated ZX Spectrum ROM images containing the turbo loader. The ROM images include the turbo loader in addition to the standard loader allowing both regular and turbo images to be loaded.

Compatibility

Interrupts

Older games which use a block of 256 $FF's in the Spectrum ROM for their interrupt vector table may not work with this ROM image as this area of the ROM is used by the turbo loader and pokemon code.

ROM Entry Points

Due to the implementation of the turbo loader, some of the ROM entry points have moved to different addresses. Commonly used ROM entry points such as LD-Bytes at $0556 remain at the same location mem ROM.

Building

To build the command line tools for converting .tap files to turbo loading .wav or .tzx files and to build the ROM images which include the turbo loader and pokemon type make.

Z88DK must be installed and included in the path to build the ROM images. To install Z88DK, follow the instructions here. GCC is used to build the native tools and must also be included in the path.

Platforms

The native tools have been built and tested on the following platforms:

• Ubuntu 20.04
• MinGW x64 from MSYS2

ROM Images

Pre-built ROM images can be found in the binaries folder. For 48K systems use the leches.rom image. For 128K systems use either Spectrum128_ROM0.rom or Spectrum128_ROM0_BugFixed.rom for ROM-0 and leches.rom for ROM-1.

Usage

When using emulators like FUSE the fastest loading speeds can be used. But, when using real hardware a lower speed may be required. I have found the following command line options work well when loading via iPhone to a Harlequin 128. Valid speed values are 0-7, the lower the number the faster the load.

./CgLeches <infile.tap> <outfile.wav> 6

Type ./CgLeches to see the built-in help.

Wave files can also be MP3 encoded using LAME. Below is an example of the settings which seem to work well.

lame <infile.wav> -m m -f -b 256

If a tape loading error occurs, try hiring and lowering the playback volume.

pokemon

pokemon is a ROM based memory peek/poke utility. This version of pokemon has been refactored to remove dependencies on system variables and enabling of interrupts within the pokemon code.

pokemon is activated by pressing the NMI button. Once activated, pokemon will display 5 dashes (-) in the upper-right corner of the screen (screen 0 on 128K systems). To read (peek) memory, enter a decimal address followed by <enter>. The contents of the memory location will be displayed. To change (poke) the memory contents, overwrite the value shown and press <enter>. Another address may now be entered. If <enter> is pressed without entering an address, pokemon will exit.