The Emulator Spot - By Dave Whitmore You will find on this Disk (if you have not already), David Stewart's emulator EMUTILITY. The program offers what no other emulator offers, that is, the opportunity to RAMSAVE all Spectrum memory. You will find this very handy, if you are playing one of the early adventures (like BCD1) that did not have a RAMSAVE option. So if you are playing an adventure and you are a little bit dubious about ATTACKing someone (or something), but you would like to try anyway, then you can exit the game with the NMI, SAVE to memory or disk, before you inevitably die and have to restart. Emutility was first published in OUTLET magazine some time ago, The keyscan is rubber key Spectrum 48, but otherwise you should find it very useful. Full instructions by Dave Stewart, can be obtained from the main menu of the mag section. Please note that you should copy the files to another disk and you will need a copy of the 48K Spectrum's ROM. Now in answer to Tim Kemp's question on the letters page. YES, the Adventure writing utility THE QUILL, CAN be loaded in to a Spectrum emulator. The emulator is called SPECMAKER and you can write a Quill adventure on Sam with it. With a little experience using SPECMAKER, you can save your database to a RAMDISK* and later you can transfer the file to Sam disk. You can enjoy all the benefits of disk saving and loading, thus making the QUILL better than it ever was on the Spectrum. * The RAMDISK that Specmaker uses, is quite similar to the Spectrum 128K Ramdisk, only much larger in capacity, giving a 128K RAMDISK on a 256K Sam and a massive 360K on a 512K Sam. For those who don't have a copy of SPECMAKER, I'll briefly explain some of its features. The set-up program that comes with SPECMAKER converts a 48K Spectrum's ROM into five different versions of SPECROM. The first version SPECROM1 is much like an ordinary Spectrum ROM, but provides printer routines for printing through Sam's parallel printer interface. SPECROM2 will let you load from tape, then save the program to RAMDISK, and you can then save from the RAMDISK, to Sam Disk. With SPECROM3 you can load your files from Sam Disk into the RAMDISK, then save them back to tape (for use with Spectrum etc). SPECROM 4 is the most useful mode, where you can load and save from Sam disk and the RAMDISK. Tape loading or saving can't be done from this mode, but you can exit Spectrum BASIC and from a Sam menu, load in one of the other ROMs (2 or 3) for tape loads and saves. Then when you return to Spectrum mode you find your RAMDISK intact, and you can go on from there either loading from tape, saving from tape etc. The ROM's can be switched without loosing anything in a Ramdisk. SPECROM 5 is very much like the "convrom" Spectrum emulation method that I rambled on about in issue 1. There are too many other features to this program, or should I say suite of programs, to try to cover now, but many Spectrum utilities work with SPECMAKER with little or no alteration necessary. You may also be interested to learn that the Graphic Adventure Creator, (GAC), by INCENTIVE SOFTWARE, and recently given away free on the cover tape of YOUR SINCLAIR ((Jan 92-No 73 ) - Ring a bell, Tim? ) is also fully compatable with SPECMAKER. Using both GAC and QUILL in the form of SNAPshots that can be loaded into Specmaker, an adventure can be written with one or the other, and when you've done the business and it is finished, your masterpiece can be saved to tape, and later loaded into EMUTILITY, SPECLONE , Convrom(NMI), or SPECMAKER and saved to disk in one or all of the formats. Howz about that then?! PAW, however(as far as I know), is totally incompatible with any emulator at present, as the system relies on frequent use of overlays. If anyone knows otherwise, please write and tell me. You can still play a PAWed adventure on most emulators though, and if you SNAP a PAW adventure that saves data as standard code files with headers (ones that ask for filenames), and load the SNAP into SPECKMAKER, you will find that you can save and load positions to and from disk with no alterations to the game necessary. SPECMAKER 3.0 comes with a good manual, and users of earlier versions can upgrade. The price for the utility, and also for the upgrade may seem a bit steep compared to the PD alternatives but in my judgment it is the best and most carefully thought out route to Spectrum compatability available. Programmed by Ian Spencer, SPECMAKER is available from: S D Software Current price - as December '91 70 Rainhall Road, Barnoldswick, SPECMAKER(3.0) `12.95 + 50p p+p = `13.45 Lancashire. UPGRADE ` 8.00 + 50P p+p = ` 8.50 BB8 6AB INDUG members (FORMAT subscribers) can claim a discount, as featured in the SPECMAKER advert in FORMAT. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%