Certainly vintage - Early ZX Speccy basic games...

[kevman3d]

A little inspiration from the NZFA and Playitagainproject have inspired me to attempt to archive all kinds of stuff from my childhood. I've scanned a few faded old print outs, and now I've been ripping tapes (just my personal ones, not all the commercial ones I have (since worldofspectrum has most of them already anyway)). In case anybody wants to relive the early "Type in those basic listings from magazines" days, I have ripped a few tapes of games I typed in and saved (including the first ones I typed in!). Here's a couple for anybody who wants a flashback to Basic games from the 80's...

All in tzx format... Pretty surprising that a lot of these games were actually not bad, and even run nicely in basic (and one or two machine code ones)...

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9174107/Fun_basic_games_1.zip
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9174107/Fun_basic_games_2.zip
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9174107/fun_basic_games_3.zip
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9174107/Tape4_spraymania.tzx

[RonTurner]

The rubber keyboard 48K spectrum was my second computer I was stoked with the whopping 48K RAM

It didnt take me long to figure out that I could hit the break key just after the boot loader loaded from tape,
you could take out the SYS command, after loading, enter a short FOR... ...NEXT PEEK search loop looking for LD A,3
usually only yelding one or two results this was the number of lives, one extra line could easily be added to the boot loader
as these where written in BASIC such as: 99 POKE 29834,255 then RUN, there you go, 255 lives on Hungry Horace hehe

I used to have a page of these cheat pokes, oh the things we throw away not realising how important they would become

[kevman3d]

...oh the things we throw away not realising how important they would become

I seem to have not thrown away much. Collecting is one word for it, but it was never originally a "collector" mentality over the last 30 years until just the last few years once I got involved with the great people on this forum. I was more a hoarding away stuff I wanted to keep hold of kinda person. Has paid off it seems in keeping a little history intact...

Now it seems I've managed to find loads of long-lost personal code treasures. And even more chuffed just how reliable the tapes still are. Paranoia over mould had come to mind, but close look reveals years of damp garages and cardboard boxes hasn't affected them much at all (most of the tapes were completely rewound - dunno if that's helped). Apart from 2 tapes so far with the old stretchy wobble, all other tapes seem to have successfully converted to TZX files...

The only thing that is probably an issue now is that my wife is getting sick of me leaving the monitor on so I can hear the audio as I record. The cat doesn't look that happy either.

[RonTurner]

The difference between a hoarder and a collector: A collector has shelves and organises there hoardings

The tapes are wound up so no exposed surfaces, I would not expect any mould on cassette tapes, its not something I have ever seen

Tape load screach is music to my ears

[kevman3d]

The tapes are wound up so no exposed surfaces, I would not expect any mould on cassette tapes, its not something I have ever seen

Actually - Just found 3 x C30 tapes. They had random small white specs along the edges of the tape spools, and a "dirty" looking plastic window - so I opened one tape up, and viole, white looking patchy mold inside (not immense amounts, but obviously not something I wanted to see). I decided that I've likely got most the data off these a few years back, so I've tossed them rather then risk the cassette heads or spreading it about the rest of the tapes I use.

Only 3 found out of around 25-30. Not bad.

Now the paranoia of "I really hope I didn't just breath in mold spores" begins.

[kevman3d]

The difference between a hoarder and a collector: A collector has shelves and organises there hoardings

lol! That is SO true... I just found more crappola under the house... In boxes, not shelves...