UDG 4 ZXpand by Andy Rea.
A review.
Part one.
Last week I was asked by Andy if I would review his latest creation the UDG 4 ZXpand, I of course said yes.
Where to start?
Well physically it is the width of a zeddy edge connector and a few inches in length.
The board contains a smattering of parts, a chip here a regulator there and the odd capacitor and resistor for good measure and has the "factory made" look and feel we've come to expect from home developers these days and most certainly does not posses the amateur "home made" look of yesteryears peripherals!
The male edge connector onto which the ZXpand slots has a gold plated look though whether it is or not is incidental as it's certainly superior to the tinned edge connector of the ZX81.
The boards female connector fits nice and firmly onto the 81 in much the same firm manner as the newer ZXpands and forms a small bridge between 'spand and zeddy,which was my first worry(RAM pack wobble anyone?)
My fears were unfounded as when connected up the whole she-bang sat nice and solidly on my desktop with nary a wobble, nice one Andy.
"WHATSIT DO MOGGY?"
At this point I should explain I'm not reviewing this in any technical way in the manner of the forum bods as I don't have the Latin for that, no, I'm doing it from the point of view of the end user with zilch knowledge of what goes on under the bonnet, or hood for our Colonial cousins.
I'm the someone who wanders into "Gadgets Are Us " buys something then spends the rest of the night working out how to use it.
Quite simply it's a device to make the ZXpand UDG capable.
The ZXpand which started life nearly eleven years ago as a piece of Vero board stuffed into a Sinclair RAM pack has grown over time to become AY,Turbosound,MIDI,serial and joystick capable and I have to say that Mr Rea's little board is worthy of joining that august band of brothers.
The nuts and bolts of it are controlled quite simply by the placing of a jumper block in one of three positions.
1) jumper off: This causes the board to have no effect on the 'spand and allows it to behave as if the board were not there which is very useful as it saves the wear and tear of unplugging and does not impede the 'spands normal HI-RES features in any way as far as I can tell.
2) Pins one and two connected or position 64 as marked on the board allows the 'spand to store/use 64 UDG's for ones own programs or allows software kitted out in such a manner to function correctly.
More of which later.
3) Pins two and three connected, as above but now for 128 UDG's not 64.
As some of you may be aware I have a fondness for finding ROM images from other peripherals that I can run in the 'spand so I just had to download the DK'tronics UDG ROM image from Simon Holdsworth's excellent repository of all things 81 and see if it would fly.
I also needed to seek out any existing software that used UDG's and thanks to Kelly Abrantes,better known as forum member Kmurta,I was gratefully rewarded insomuch as not only did his software offerings use both 64 and 128 UDG modes he also had a few offerings in the Forth dialect Toddy Forth.
"BUT DID IT WORK MOGGY?"
More of that in part two of this review.
UDG 4 ZXpand.The Xpand companion board a review.
Re: UDG 4 ZXpand.The Xpand companion board a review.
UDG 4 ZXpand by Andy Rea
A review.
Part two.
In the previous part of this review i described the physical aspects of Andy Rea's latest offering, in this part I shall tell how I got on with it from a software point of view then give a final opinion of this latest addition to the little black wedges fleet of add-ons.
As I said in the last part of this review I have a penchant for running other peripherals ROM images on the 'spand so with a copy of the DK'tronics 4K UDG EPROM to hand I set to work
With everything connected up the first thing to do is put the 'spand into low ram mode
using the CONFIG "M=L" command, then loading the UDG ROM image to address 8192 like so..
LOAD "4kROM.ROM;8192" (NEWLINE)
The 'spand in tandem with the new USG board should in theory now behave like the original DK 'tronics UDG board and one should be able able to at least try the example programs in the accompanying manual.
The answer, happily,is yes and yes to both questions which leads me onto something that has always been a bone of contention with me where these old peripheral manuals are concerned. Why do their authors,who in the first instance produce something quite splendid hardware-wise, but when it comes to what is basically the "shop window" to said hardware manage tp produce what can only be described as dross, namely the instruction book/sheet!
The DK'tronics one is no exception what with the odd error (two line 30's in one of the examples so much for proof reading) and program snippets that in my opinion are quite frankly, dreadful. If way back then I'd have read the booklet first I would have given the product a wide berth.
For the sake of this review though suffice to say the UDG 4 ZXpand performed just as it should insofar as all the examples worked and all the UDG's were easily listed and should be just as easy to edit which is something I wanted to try then report on but sadly the DK' tronics UDG editor that I downloaded with the ROM image, came not only without instruction but when finally I worked the nuts and bolts of it out, repeatedly kept throwing up VARIABLE NOT FOUND ERRORS. Quelle surprise!
No doubt in more capable hands though this ROM image when used in concert with the 'spand and UDG companion board should be able to poduce some remarkable results and on that basis alone I heartily recommend this three way marriage.
Other software.
As mentioned previously Kelly Abrantes has produced some quite remarkable software for suitably equipped UDG 81's and unless used via that venerable old emulating stalwart "EIGHTY ONE" it could be said that this software was pretty much out of end users like myselfs' reach.
Not any more because thanks to this new board the humble zeddy is now longer constrained in the UDG department.
Kelly has produced programs that take advantage of both 64 and 128 UDG's and whilst the 64 examples will run when the board is set to 128 there is some occasional corruption, the moral being any program demanding the 64 setting means the board should be set as such and the same methodology for 128 programs then all is as it should be.
The first of Kelly's labours I tried was oddly titled hi res poker (UDG poker surely?)
Consisting of a BASIC+M/L hybrid that not only looks good but plays pretty well too, the only downside being everything was in Portuguese!!! I spent the afternoon re-editing this into English and will post on the forum for any interested parties.
Suffice to say it plays and looks wonderful as did all the other software I tried including some Forth examples, Sudoku and Sokoban are just two, which gives some scope for those interested in this particular language.
Rather than go into long winded detail of all the software I tried I will conclude this chapter by saying that everything worked and I, the eternal techno-thicky, managed after a while to get to grips with it which bodes well for the rest of our community.
Any cons?
Well, the board is very well made fits snugly and isn't so obtrusive when in tandem with the 'spand, no wobbles or white-outs etc, so any niggles?
One thing I haven't yet mentioned is that when I first tried the various programs and examples on offer the display from the set-up was to be frank quite dreadful.
No nice white background as per the emulator just a horrible messy pattern with terrible UDG's led me to think that either Mr Rea had had an off day or I was doing something wrong.
It turned out to be the latter insomuch as I now know that not only should the 'spand be set memory low but THE OVERLAY EPROM HAS TO BE SWITCHED OUT ALSO or no UDG loveliness!
That was a happy hour and a half spent I can tell you oh for a decent manual!
In short every program has to be launched using the X command IE LOAD "HRPOKER;X" which means a reset for the 'spand if one doesn't want to revert back to good old cassette LOAD/SAVE although not a deal breaker I did for some strange reason find this quite irksome.
CONCLUSION.
I would say that not only is this new board something someone like myself can have fun with (new symbols for my encryption programs),it is , I feel, a device the more proficient users out there can do something very useful with especially the game creators.
It is a very worthy addition to the list of past ZX81 peripherals and most certainly an excellent companion to the Zxpand which in its current AY-Turbosound,MIDI,serial and joystick guise has just become a very desirable piece of zeddy-abilia.
Well done Andy for creating a nice little board which I recommend to all,
Moggy.
A review.
Part two.
In the previous part of this review i described the physical aspects of Andy Rea's latest offering, in this part I shall tell how I got on with it from a software point of view then give a final opinion of this latest addition to the little black wedges fleet of add-ons.
As I said in the last part of this review I have a penchant for running other peripherals ROM images on the 'spand so with a copy of the DK'tronics 4K UDG EPROM to hand I set to work
With everything connected up the first thing to do is put the 'spand into low ram mode
using the CONFIG "M=L" command, then loading the UDG ROM image to address 8192 like so..
LOAD "4kROM.ROM;8192" (NEWLINE)
The 'spand in tandem with the new USG board should in theory now behave like the original DK 'tronics UDG board and one should be able able to at least try the example programs in the accompanying manual.
The answer, happily,is yes and yes to both questions which leads me onto something that has always been a bone of contention with me where these old peripheral manuals are concerned. Why do their authors,who in the first instance produce something quite splendid hardware-wise, but when it comes to what is basically the "shop window" to said hardware manage tp produce what can only be described as dross, namely the instruction book/sheet!
The DK'tronics one is no exception what with the odd error (two line 30's in one of the examples so much for proof reading) and program snippets that in my opinion are quite frankly, dreadful. If way back then I'd have read the booklet first I would have given the product a wide berth.
For the sake of this review though suffice to say the UDG 4 ZXpand performed just as it should insofar as all the examples worked and all the UDG's were easily listed and should be just as easy to edit which is something I wanted to try then report on but sadly the DK' tronics UDG editor that I downloaded with the ROM image, came not only without instruction but when finally I worked the nuts and bolts of it out, repeatedly kept throwing up VARIABLE NOT FOUND ERRORS. Quelle surprise!
No doubt in more capable hands though this ROM image when used in concert with the 'spand and UDG companion board should be able to poduce some remarkable results and on that basis alone I heartily recommend this three way marriage.
Other software.
As mentioned previously Kelly Abrantes has produced some quite remarkable software for suitably equipped UDG 81's and unless used via that venerable old emulating stalwart "EIGHTY ONE" it could be said that this software was pretty much out of end users like myselfs' reach.
Not any more because thanks to this new board the humble zeddy is now longer constrained in the UDG department.
Kelly has produced programs that take advantage of both 64 and 128 UDG's and whilst the 64 examples will run when the board is set to 128 there is some occasional corruption, the moral being any program demanding the 64 setting means the board should be set as such and the same methodology for 128 programs then all is as it should be.
The first of Kelly's labours I tried was oddly titled hi res poker (UDG poker surely?)
Consisting of a BASIC+M/L hybrid that not only looks good but plays pretty well too, the only downside being everything was in Portuguese!!! I spent the afternoon re-editing this into English and will post on the forum for any interested parties.
Suffice to say it plays and looks wonderful as did all the other software I tried including some Forth examples, Sudoku and Sokoban are just two, which gives some scope for those interested in this particular language.
Rather than go into long winded detail of all the software I tried I will conclude this chapter by saying that everything worked and I, the eternal techno-thicky, managed after a while to get to grips with it which bodes well for the rest of our community.
Any cons?
Well, the board is very well made fits snugly and isn't so obtrusive when in tandem with the 'spand, no wobbles or white-outs etc, so any niggles?
One thing I haven't yet mentioned is that when I first tried the various programs and examples on offer the display from the set-up was to be frank quite dreadful.
No nice white background as per the emulator just a horrible messy pattern with terrible UDG's led me to think that either Mr Rea had had an off day or I was doing something wrong.
It turned out to be the latter insomuch as I now know that not only should the 'spand be set memory low but THE OVERLAY EPROM HAS TO BE SWITCHED OUT ALSO or no UDG loveliness!
That was a happy hour and a half spent I can tell you oh for a decent manual!
In short every program has to be launched using the X command IE LOAD "HRPOKER;X" which means a reset for the 'spand if one doesn't want to revert back to good old cassette LOAD/SAVE although not a deal breaker I did for some strange reason find this quite irksome.
CONCLUSION.
I would say that not only is this new board something someone like myself can have fun with (new symbols for my encryption programs),it is , I feel, a device the more proficient users out there can do something very useful with especially the game creators.
It is a very worthy addition to the list of past ZX81 peripherals and most certainly an excellent companion to the Zxpand which in its current AY-Turbosound,MIDI,serial and joystick guise has just become a very desirable piece of zeddy-abilia.
Well done Andy for creating a nice little board which I recommend to all,
Moggy.
Re: UDG 4 ZXpand.The Xpand companion board a review.
the very poor DK'Tronics UDG editor is well very poor but fear not, the Z80 Mojo is kicking back in and a new UDG editor is well under way
one tiny other thing i would like to add is that *some programs that make use of UDG's first seem to copy the rom character set and then modify the characters it wants to use hence the need to disable the overlay with some programs.
other than that what can i say, thank you Moggy
Regards Andy
one tiny other thing i would like to add is that *some programs that make use of UDG's first seem to copy the rom character set and then modify the characters it wants to use hence the need to disable the overlay with some programs.
other than that what can i say, thank you Moggy
Regards Andy
what's that Smell.... smells like fresh flux and solder fumes...
Re: UDG 4 ZXpand.The Xpand companion board a review.
You wouldn't happen to have a ZxBlast to test with?
When will it be on sale?
When will it be on sale?
Re: UDG 4 ZXpand.The Xpand companion board a review.
I haven't got a zxblast, I strongly suspect it will work but wouldn't want to garantee it without trying it.
I am waiting for the pcb's to turn up. However I also have a holiday booked in a weeks time, so I would say round about week 3 or 4 of august
Regards Andy
I am waiting for the pcb's to turn up. However I also have a holiday booked in a weeks time, so I would say round about week 3 or 4 of august
Regards Andy
what's that Smell.... smells like fresh flux and solder fumes...