Enterprise Forever
:UK => Other topics => Topic started by: kokkiklhs on 2022.August.16. 15:09:24
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I was thinking about the brilliant OTLA project 2.2:
https://code.google.com/archive/p/otla/downloads
This is up and going with wonderful turbo loading results from WAV or MP3, since 2008 for the ZX81, Spectrum, Amstrad and MSX computers ( haven't tested on MSX yet :mrgreen: ), so why not also for the EP computers? A normal Spectrum 48k proggy can be loaded flawlessly in less than 30 seconds!!!
Of course I have already tried the "max speed" option on EPTE, which is good, but is this REALLY the max speed that EP computers can handle?
As stated by the OTLA developer(s), this super-proggy is based on one ("slow but reliable") of the multiple turbo-routines as can be found on the K7ZX turbo loading utility for the ZX Spectrum. Unfortunately the K7ZX link seems not to be working anymore:
http://personal.auna.com/casariche/k7zx4/k7zx4.htm
..., but it originally contained MUCH faster turbo loading routines for the Speccy, than the one used in OTLA and it can still be downloaded (without source code) here:
http://zxspectrum48.i-demo.pl/k7zx.zip
Anyway, the source code of the last OTLA version (2.2) is freely available, could one or some of you, experienced EP programmers have a look, please?
I believe that most EP enthusiasts who own/use a real EP machine rather than an emulator, cannot easily find/afford disk controllers etc, nor have real -original or not- cassettes, so the main solution is loading .tap files through EPTE or the special version of Tapir.
Wouldn't it be nice to develop a separate OTLA-like seriously fast and effective tape turbo-loading utility for use with the EP .tap files, or even integrate an EP option in the already existing OTLA? Or is it too much what my idea suggests?
Cheers!!!
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Two questions. One: Why no try at all? Those experienced EP programmers were at a time exactly the same as you are now. But they tried and learned. Two: Why such a cumbersome thing? Emulation and SD-card readers solve fast loading in a much more convenient way. Not mentioning saving.
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Two questions. One: Why no try at all? Those experienced EP programmers were at a time exactly the same as you are now. But they tried and learned. Two: Why such a cumbersome thing? Emulation and SD-card readers solve fast loading in a much more convenient way. Not mentioning saving.
One: Too old to start learning such things, at my 50s... Yes, I could surely try, but it would take me years... for an experienced programmer, this would take 2-3 afternoons, since the source code is ready...
Two: I wasn't talking about emulators, it's about those who own the real thing! And SD cards, where are they?
Thanks for your reply!!
:cool:
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Don't worry kokkiklhs, I am sure that sooner or later a skilled coder will read the source out of curiosity.
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Don't worry kokkiklhs, I am sure that sooner or later a skilled coder will read the source out of curiosity.
I hope so, my friend gflorez!
The developer of v2.2 is Francisco Villa Rodriguez, apparently he is Spanish, I was wondering if there is a way to contact him directly... Does he appear in the retrowiki.es forum, do you know if he is still active? I could write to him, to ask him about it!
He does give an email address, but after all these years, since 2008, I am not sure it will be still valid...
:roll:
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There were experiments with fast tape loading, see this Hungarian thread for some details. It has a tapeserver executable as well.
https://enterpriseforever.com/egyeb-temak/tapeserver/
However, this needs a loader on EP side. I could not find so many details on OTLA / K7ZX. Does it add its own turbo loader routine, or is it handled by original, unmodified hardware and ROM routines?
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+ some other tape discussion here: https://enterpriseforever.com/hardver/korszeru-magno/
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I could not find so many details on OTLA / K7ZX. Does it add its own turbo loader routine, or is it handled by original, unmodified hardware and ROM routines?
Hi Zoldalma, thanks for your replies!
I am not a specialist in such things, but I understand that both k7zx and OTLA (which relies on one specific turboloading routine of k7zx) load as first part a tiny "normal" routine on the speccy, which prepares the computer to "listen" to much higher baud rates than these supported by the ROM, and as a second part they load a dump of the whole 48k RAM (when using .SNA or .Z80 files as source), or the main machine code part of a program converted in custom turbo format, which bypasses the ROM standard loading routine.
Of course this method is only targeting to one-time loading programs (not the multi-part games etc.) and unlocked, normal-loading, without any special protection, custom loaders or other modifications already existing into the original source program.
The perfect deal is to use .SNA or .Z80 files as source, as dumped (the whole 48k RAM map) by the various emulators, as these are considered as pure, standard-loading dumps, without any tricky custom loading methods or locking techniques.
You can look at an example here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNIEl0fdhag
These work perfectly on any unmodified machine, no hardware modifications needed at all...
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Try the tapeserver (https://enterpriseforever.com/egyeb-temak/tapeserver/).
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Try the tapeserver (https://enterpriseforever.com/egyeb-temak/tapeserver/).
Hi Zozo, I will definitely do, as soon as I set my real EP128 up! :)
I was just thinking that it would be easier and far more user-friendly for the average EP noob (like me) to be able to directly convert the readily available TAP files to some kind of turbo loading sound, just like EPTE is already supposed to do with "max speed" option, but in even higher loading rates...
:roll: