Nick: introspec
Full title: Splash
Compo: 1K Intro
Duration: the time it takes to load from the tape + 0:30
Requirements: ZX Spectrum 128K/+2/+2A/+2B/+3/Pentagon 128K
Contacts: zxintrospec@gmail.com
This program was found in a shoebox of ZX Spectrum tapes purchased
at a car boot sale in Windsor. The seller claimed to have found the
box in the loft of his house, left there, amongst other things, by one
of previous owners. In addition to several old games by Artic Computing
and Ultimate, most of the tapes in the box were boring educational
programs published by the Sinclair Research in the early 1980s. However,
one of the tapes attracted my attention. It was a regular Type 1 BASF
cassette, with a word "Splash" handwritten on one side and "do not
distribute / Sinclair Research Ltd" on the other. Neither the date of
the recording, nor the author (authors?) of the program were indicated.
Recorded on the tape was just one short program, enclosed here.
When I loaded this program into my old trusty +2, I just could not
believe my eyes. In my opinion this decidedly proves that the famous
photograph with the orange overscan image used to advertise the
original 48K ZX Spectrum was definitely untrue, just as we suspected
all along (see the included "booklet.jpg"). The photograph in the
advert was not obtained with a stock 48K ZX Spectrum. One needs to have
a 128K computer to run this program, which seems to indicate a shocking
fact: Sinclair Research Ltd must have already had working prototypes of
a 128K Spectrum as early as in late 1982.
With the aim to preserve the authenticity of this important historical
evidence, I decided to present this program in its original, completely
unaltered form, as a *.tzx file. Its *.tap equivalent is also included.
For my friends in Russia, I also made an *.scl version of the program,
which works on Pentagon 128K (or 100% compatible) computers with the
Beta Disc Interface.
--specke