For various reasons my spare time is currently devoted to other things which means I don't have a lot of time for the vintage/retro/possessed computers of old. But I stumbled across a youtube video that intrigued me. It was such a simple thing. And it was cheap.
It is a simple bluetooth adapter that can be installed in a ZX Spectrum which completely removes the need for a cassette player to load games. (You can't save anything with it but that's not an issue - keep reading). When the speccy is switched on it powers the bluetooth module up and it becomes available for your phone or other bluetooth device to connect to. Then all you need to do is play a .wav or similar file taken from a speccy game cassette and it loads just like you have a cassette player installed.
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| My speccy with no lid |
"But", I hear you cry, "you have one of those fancy SmartCards from the chaps at Retroleum (now at version 3.1 but mine is a version 2). Why would you need to do such a thing?"
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| My Smartcard v2 in a 3D printed case |
Because I bloody well can. So there.
A quick trip to eBay and I got a ridiculously cheap bluetooth board, specifically advertised to work with the speccy. Installation was dead easy and required just three small wires to be soldered to the motherboard, +5v, GND and Audio.
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| I'm blue ba da...oh I already did that joke |
I located it underneath the heatsink - I hope it'll be OK there as it does get quite hot, I really need to get one of those modern voltage regulators that don't generate any heat. The +5v and GND were soldered to one of the caps and the audio wire on a resistor close to the 'ear' socket (which everyone knows should have the BLACK connector on the original cable - that's a hill I'm prepared to die on).
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| "I have the power!" |
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| 'Ear, what you up to? |
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| Button her up, she's ready to go. |
And that really is it. After putting the case back together I plugged it in and checked that the Sinclair Research message appeared as normal. Nothing is any different unless you search for bluetooth devices with your phone. Then you will find an additional device 'BT_Audio' or similar. There is no password or anything on the bluetooth so just tell your phone to connect to it. Once it's connected, all audio will go out through the speccy's tiny, tinny speaker.
But that's just fine for loading stuff. I downloaded an app (Google it) which contains many spectrum .TAP images and which plays the audio through the phone as if it were on tape. Then I connected to Bluetooth and set one of the games to start loading... And...
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| Chase HQ. An epically good Speccy game |
..it works perfectly. If I have one criticism it's that the volume of the audio isn't that loud through the speaker. I don't know if it's because the Bluetooth units volume is deliberately set low, or whether it's because of where the signal is injected but it is still very quiet even when the phone volume is turned up full. Everything loads without issues though so I assume because it is a very 'clean' signal going into the Speccy the system can handle a bit less volume. Long time speccy owners might notice that the raster bars for the initial signal don't look quite right, where I think they would if the volume was a bit louder.
I can, of course, still use the SmartCard but what it does mean now is that any audio files I get that aren't compatible with the SmartCard I can load into the speccy as if it were from a cassette and then hit the NMI button and save an image to the SD card. To do this took a bit more fiddling than I expected as I couldn't work out how to get the speccy to just boot to it's normal startup but still have access to the SmartCard.
What I ended up doing was loading in VU-3D. Then I broke into the program (it's mostly in basic) and the typed 'RANDOMIZE USR 0" which basically does a reset. Then, once the 'Sinclair' message appeared I clicked the NMI button on the SmartCard and saved the image as a blank image. This means if I load that image back in, I am back to a plain, empty spectrum experience.
The upshot of all this is that if I have a game I want to load via the Bluetooth then all I need to do is load up the blank image, type LOAD"", press play on my phone and wait for whatever it is to load. Once it's loaded I can press the NMI button and save the new image as something else. I can't believe I'm such a genius..... :D So far, I've loaded the original Jet Set Willy (I only had JSW2 previously), Ghostbusters and a couple of others. It's surprisingly nostalgic - if a bit quiet - listening to the loading sounds of the speccy, but still very functional.
Anyway, it works, it was cheap and it means I can post something relatively quickly before I go back to 'other stuff'. :)
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| Gratuitous Spectrum shot |
Don't worry, I'll be back to the Torch Triple X soon, despite me now thinking it's possessed...
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