Sinclair ZX80 / ZX81 / Z88 Forums

I tend to agree with your final statement as the Xpand seems to mimic the Spectrums "SAVE CODE XXXXX,NNNN" function so yes when the tracker saves a "song" file it is indeed saving a block of m/code from a certain memory area to the xpand just like a spectrum data save which is how spectrum based trackers worked with tape years ago, and yes Andy wrote the tracker with Xpand in mind I think I get it now.

So unless the emulator has Xpand functionality whenever you save a song a P file is what you will end up with?
Please excuse my slowness I'm not the brightest here.

Are you making fun of me Charles!!!!

Well it's not a save code sentence, to save code on ZXPand you wrote something like:
Save "name;start;length"
Example
Save "code;32768,1000"

So trying to save it without a ZXPand will generate a p basic program with name
code;32768,1000.P



Take a look at
http://www.rwapsoftware.co.uk/DOC/ZXpand%20Manual.pdf

But probably sir Morris will explain it better than me

Many thanks Cesar much appreciated.

And the example you give is exactly what happens with Olofson's emulator which has no Xpand support.

Moggy wrote:Are you making fun of me Charles!!!!

Moi??

Just to summarise. The ability to save and load arbitrary memory blocks is a feature - at least in this particular case - provided by ZXpand**



** Other storage medium solutions are available.

You're welcome Moggy !

Yes I grasp it now Charlie but all I'm after (quite selfishly I know ) is an emulator that can load the tracker, create samples and songs, save them and have a good AY implementation. Up to press only Olofsons emulator does some of this. The AY emulation is spot on, the tracker loads nicely but when saving instead of getting say "testsong.SNG you end up with "testsong.SNG; 12345.123 as a p file and is therefore useless. I now fathom that it is because of no Xpand support.

Cesar's emulator loads the tracker plays about 20 secs before screen corruption and crash but has Xpand support and a good though speccy based AY implementation.

If only the two could be brought together.

At this point moggy slinks away as Charlie pulls yet another despairing face at him

Some time ago I had added LOAD "FILE;ADDR" to sz81, and now SAVE "FILE;ADDR,LEN" should work too. As a test I tried to convert 06.SNG and it gave an exact copy of the 06.STC file (with indeed RAMTOP lowered to 25000 before loading ZXCOMPV2)

well thats quite odd, i used the windows version of ZEsarUX-4.0 and ran the soundtracker program, it become unresponsive because it gets stuck in a never ending loop which is a little odd, and not what i expected at all, why it does it i don't know, further investigation is required

Andy