Computer Log

Sinclair made other computers but the ZX Spectrum was their most successful in the UK, selling over 5 million machines. Timex sold a version in the US.

I tried to use the Sinclair ZX Spectrum computer as a computer in an emulator, and not just a Colecovision.

I want to do more than play games, perhaps a simple Basic program, but I have to start somewhere.

This seems to be the place to be for anything Sinclair ZX Spectrum. It’s where I found the ZX Spectrum game below!

So, I installed another Sinclair ZX Spectrum emulator called Fuse.

I watched a video that played Manic Miner. So I downloaded that in both tap and tzx format. Like the video I do File>Open>ManicMiner.tzx.zip. In the video it immediately begins to play. All I get is a return to the same initial screen.

No errors…no messages…no nothing. I also tried Media>Tape>Open>ManicMiner.tap.zip then Play. I was told unzipping was unnecessary. But I also tried pointing to the unzipped files. I thought I’d start it from the command line to see if any messages pop up… but again nothing.

So I returned to the zesarux emulator, that I’ve just been using to play Colecovision games. This time I switched machines (F5) Machine>Sinclair Research>ZX Spectrum 48K. Then I pointed to the same ManicMiner.tzx.zip. And…

As exciting as it looks… I have no interest in playing it.

Some Basic

10 Print “Hello”
RUN
You have to press Ctrl-P for the double quotes! Definitely not MicroSoft Basic.

This explains some of the keyboard weirdness. Except they call Ctrl… SYMBOL SHIFT.
Then again I guess it makes some sense when you see how the keyboard is laid out.

I really like vintage retro (is that redundant?) computing. It’s fun, to a point, to relive past experiences. However IMHO, only MVS 3.8J on IBM S/370, on up is still actually useful today apart from nostalgia. And that would be TK4- or TK5 running on the Hercules emulator. TK5 is probably the road forward. Because of IBM’s vision of the IBM 360, way back in 1964, and new models that built upon it. Much of what the old MVS does is very similar to z/OS. Based on the same but enhanced instruction set. Many of the utilities even back to MVT are the same as MVS 3.8J and z/OS. Thanks to the work of many improving upon it.

Is running retro Apple or TRS-80 fun? Yes. Is it useful in the real world? No! Same can be said about RSTS/E, RSX-11M or RT11. But I believe you can learn a lot and improve your IBM mainframe knowledge using Hercules emulation and TK5. Because the IBM mainframe experience is very different from what most people know about computers. They don’t even speak ASCII, natively.

I loved my time with DEC PDP-11 computers. I wish DEC was still around and relevant. I never worked with VAX, but I wanted to. But unfortunately… DEC is no more!

I wrote some about this here. But I didn’t give any details. So here I am again ridiculously trying to review what I did before because my notes, if you can call them that, are slim to none. Anywho I saw something about the Sinclair ZX Spectrum computer, and I thought I did something with that, which brings me here.

Actually I pretty much didn’t do anything regarding the ZX Spectrum, and I probably should. Althought not used much in the US, it seems to play an important part in early vintage computers. I mostly played with the Colecovision emulation.

First of all I went to the github page and downloaded the newest Ubuntu version. But I couldn’t build it because the configure file was missing. So I saw my previous download existed and I could run it, from the src directory.

cd /home/bill/MyStuff/Computer_Simulator_Emulator/Emulators/Micro/Sinclair/zesarux-ZEsarUX-10.2/src/
./zesarux

I added a folder for Colecovision here... 0-Software
F5 - Settings
F9 - Load

When I started it it was in Colecovision mode. Probably remembered the last thing I did. I loaded (F9) a few games. Some things didn’t work.

A short video is better than a pic. Except its not letting me upload a 13MB video, today. So I put it on YouTube.

Perhaps I could use the old configure file with the new version?

I want to open a ticket about my BigNum problem, but getting an error trying to login. So I sent them an email.

Silly me. I just needed to do a password reset.

You need the https:

bill@bill-MS-7B79:~/Documents$ git clone git@github.com:billb2050/bignums.py.git
Cloning into 'bignums.py'...
git@github.com: Permission denied (publickey).
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.
bill@bill-MS-7B79:~/Documents$
bill@bill-MS-7B79:~/Documents$ git clone https://github.com/billb2050/bignums.py.git
Cloning into 'bignums.py'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 11, done.
remote: Total 11 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 11
Receiving objects: 100% (11/11), done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (3/3), done.
bill@bill-MS-7B79:~/Documents$ 

My Python program uploaded 3/26/2009, use to work.

It produced numerical output of very large numbers… like this

952976583213159511560285536351556930590673943446666449132596280969464863863225773757590117823675375102926658163587326013745331203785511643981407619201067110103592819597539248458758385353952769810214919990039030950311258942897169655934761402829460310108279952464599403923795496051281894569987921943753
or…
952 octononagintillion
976 septnonagintillion
583 sexnonagintillion
213 quinnonagintillion
159 quattuornonagintillion
511 trenonagintillion
560 duononagintillion
285 unnonagintillion
536 nonagintillion
351 novemoctogintillion
556 octooctogintillion
930 septoctogintillion
590 sexoctogintillion
673 quinoctogintillion
943 quattuoroctogintillion
446 treoctogintillion
666 duooctogintillion
449 unoctogintillion
132 octogintillion
596 novemseptuagintillion
280 octoseptuagintillion
969 septseptuagintillion
464 sexseptuagintillion
863 quinseptuagintillion
863 quattuorseptuagintillion
225 treseptuagintillion
773 duoseptuagintillion
757 unseptuagintillion
590 septuagintillion
117 novemsexagintillion
823 octosexagintillion
675 septsexagintillion
375 sexsexagintillion
102 quinsexagintillion
926 quattuorsexagintillion
658 tresexagintillion
163 duosexagintillion
587 unsexagintillion
326 sexagintillion
13 novemquinquagintillion
745 octoquinquagintillion
331 septquinquagintillion
203 sexquinquagintillion
785 quinquinquagintillion
511 quattuorquinquagintillion
643 trequinquagintillion
981 duoquinquagintillion
407 unquinquagintillion
619 quinquagintillion
201 novemquardragintillion
67 octoquardragintillion
110 septquardragintillion
103 sexquardragintillion
592 quinquardragintillion
819 quattuorquardragintillion
597 trequardragintillion
539 duoquardragintillion
248 unquardragintillion
458 quardragintillion
758 novemtrigintillion
385 octotrigintillion
353 septtrigintillion
952 sextrigintillion
769 quintrigintillion
810 quattuortrigintillion
214 tretrigintillion
919 duotrigintillion
990 untrigintillion
39 trigintillion
30 novemvigintillion
950 octovigintillion
311 septenvigintillion
258 sexvigintillion
942 quinvigintillion
897 quattuorvigintillion
169 trevigintillion
655 duovigintillion
934 unvigintillion
761 vigintillion
402 novemdecillion
829 octodecillion
460 septendecillion
310 sexdecillion
108 quindecillion
279 quattuordecillion
952 tredecillion
464 duodecillion
599 undecillion
403 decillion
923 nonillion
795 octillion
496 septillion
51 sextillion
281 quintillion
894 quadrillion
569 trillion
987 billion
921 million
943 thousand
753

Using simh. Found here. The previous one here.

bill@bill-MS-7B79:~/Downloads/Computers/Emulation/Altair/altairz80l64$ ./altairz80 cpm2

Altair 8800 (Z80) simulator Open SIMH V4.1-0 Current        git commit id: 10003083

64K CP/M Version 2.2 (SIMH ALTAIR 8800, BIOS V1.27, 2 HD, 02-May-2009)

A>dir
A: ASM      COM : BDOS     MAC : SYSCPM2  SUB : BOOT     MAC
A: SYSCPM2Z SUB : CBIOSX   MAC : CCP      MAC : CCPZ     MAC
A: CCPZ     TXT : CFGCCP   LIB : CFGCCPZ  LIB : COPY     COM
A: CPU      COM : CPU      MAC : CREF80   COM : DDT      COM
A: DDTZ     COM : MOVER    MAC : DO       COM : DSKBOOT  MAC
A: DUMP     COM : ED       COM : ELIZA    BAS : EX       MAC
A: EX       SUB : EX8080   COM : EXZ80ALL COM : EXZ80DOC COM
A: FORMAT   COM : GO       COM : HALT     COM : PRELIM   MAC
A: HDSKBOOT MAC : L80      COM : LADDER   COM : LADDER   DAT
A: LIB80    COM : LOAD     COM : LS       COM : LU       COM
A: M80      COM : MBASIC   COM : MC       SUB : MCC      SUB
A: MCCL     SUB : OTHELLO  COM : PIP      COM : EC8080   LIB
A: PRELIM   COM : ECZ80ALL LIB : RSETSIMH COM : RSETSIMH MAC
A: ECZ80DOC LIB : SID      COM : SPEED    COM : STAT     COM
A: SUBMIT   COM : SURVEY   COM : SURVEY   MAC : BOOT     COM
A: BOOTGEN  COM : DIF      COM : TIMER    COM : TIMER    MAC
A: UNCR     COM : UNERA    COM : UNERA    MAC : USQ      COM
A: HDIR     COM : WM       COM : WM       HLP : WORM     COM
A: SHOWSEC  COM : XSUB     COM : ZAP      COM : ZSID     COM
A: ZTRAN4   COM : SYSCOPY  COM : URL      COM : W        COM
A: XFORMAT  COM : R        COM
A>bir b*
BIR?

A>dir b*
No file
A>dir b*.*
A: BDOS     MAC : BOOT     MAC : BOOT     COM : BOOTGEN  COM
A>mbasic
BASIC-80 Rev. 5.21
[CP/M Version]
Copyright 1977-1981 (C) by Microsoft
Created: 28-Jul-81
32824 Bytes free
Ok

Using simh. Although these steps (make) needed to be done before simh. Created gendate, but 3 others

prsf2.o: prsf2.c prsf2.h
txt2bcda.o: txt2bcda.c prsf2.h cvtpar.h sysdef.h
bcd2txta.o: bcd2txta.c prsf2.h cvtpar.h sysdef.h

failed as seen below.

bill@bill-MS-7B79:~/Downloads/Computers/Emulation/simh/IBM/7090/ibsys_kit$ make
Making Linux on a x86_64
make[1]: Entering directory '/home/bill/Downloads/Computers/Emulation/simh/IBM/7090/ibsys_kit'
gcc -DLINUX    -c -o gendate.o gendate.c
gcc -o gendate gendate.o
gcc -DLINUX    -c -o txt2bcda.o txt2bcda.c
txt2bcda.c:141:1: warning: return type defaults to ‘int’ [-Wimplicit-int]
  141 | main (int argc, char **argv)
      | ^~~~
gcc -DLINUX    -c -o prsf2.o prsf2.c
gcc -o txt2bcda txt2bcda.o prsf2.o
/usr/bin/ld: prsf2.o:(.bss+0x0): multiple definition of `fin'; txt2bcda.o:(.bss+0x0): first defined here
/usr/bin/ld: prsf2.o:(.bss+0x140): multiple definition of `fon'; txt2bcda.o:(.bss+0x140): first defined here
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
make[1]: *** [Makefile:59: txt2bcda] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/bill/Downloads/Computers/Emulation/simh/IBM/7090/ibsys_kit'
make: *** [Makefile:11: all] Error 2
bill@bill-MS-7B79:~/Downloads/Computers/Emulation/simh/IBM/7090/ibsys_kit$ 

Just to note that the computer in the 2016 movie, is a IBM 7090. I read here that computer sounds, (and other interesting facts) from the movie were recorded in the 1401 Demo Lab at the Computer History Museum.

For the below, small 3MB video. Max upload size… in MultiPHP INI Editor…in cPanel. Changed from 2MB to 500MB.