Only a few small changes in today's release of ElectrEm beta 6a (see below) - but check out that speech in the Exile loader!

• large speedups to most of multiplexed display code, but not an immense improvement to 'Dare Devil Denis' mode, mode 2
• great improvements in sound emulation, since a number of significant bugs were uncovered while implementing a new feature : tape save (to sound card, not UEF yet) support. Not only does the tape save appear to work, but now the bugs are fixed, so does the loading 'speech' on Exile ("welcome to the land of the Exile"). Of course, that game still doesn't work, but at least I know which model of 6502 I'm dealing with now
• small bug fixes to GFX driver code (should no longer crash if run twice consecutively - every time under DOS and from time to time under all other OS's), and disc drive mechanism which sometimes (very rarely) was happy to give out a NULL pointer for reading or writing purposes.

Replaced the Electron UEF dumps of Jet Set Willy (Tynesoft) and Tennis (BugByte) with working versions.

Modified versions of Blast, Fruit Machine, Mineshaft and Twin Kingdom Valley have been added to the Electron - Games 2 page, all of which speed-load under emulation in ElectrEm.

The "Xmas update", if you will ...  

• 69 ELECTRON UEF FILES - 9 Classic Card and Board Games vol 1 (Database), Boffin 2 (Addictive), City Defence (Bug Byte), Combat Lynx (Durrell), Eye of Zolton (Softek), Five A Side Socca (IJK), Footballer of the Year (Gremlin), Golf (Yes), Grid Iron (Top Ten), Imogen (Micropower), Impossible Mission (US Gold), Locomotion (BBC Soft), Missile Control (Gemini), Mystery of the Java Star (Shards), Pengwyn (Postern), Poker (Duckworth), Savage Island Part One (Adventure International), Tennis (Bug Byte), Twin Kingdom Valley (Bug Byte), Voodoo Castle (Adventure International), Whoopsy (Shards), A Vous La France (BBC Soft), Best Four Language (ASK), Biology (Acornsoft/Ivan Berg), Business Games (Acornsoft), Castles and Clowns (Macmillian), Electron Starter Pack (Collins), Forth (Acornsoft), Graphito (Addison-Wesley), Fun School 2 - under 6, 6-8, over 8 (Database), Here and There with the Mr Men (Mirrorsoft), Juggle Puzzle (Acornsoft/ASK), Maths (Cheshire Cat), Number Gulper (Acornsoft/ASK), Twelfth Night (Penguin)
  
  From Dave Edwards of Electron User Group - Abyss (Cases), Battle 1917 (Cases), Mined Out (Quicksilva), Orbital (Impact)
  
  From Adventure Kings: Don Hay & Walter Pooley - Axe of Kolt (Elk Adventure Club), Five Stones of Anadon (Softek), Flint Super Spy Trilogy - Super Spy Flint, Return of Flint & Flint Strikes Back (Potter), Magnetic Moon (Elk Adventure Club), Mission XP2 (Holl-Soft), Oxbridge (Tynesoft), Philosopher's Quest (Acornsoft), Philosopher's Stone (Potter Programs), Pony Express (Holl-Soft), Puppet Man (Larsoft), Quest for the Holy Grail (Epic), Reluctant Hero (Elk Adventure Club), Rick Hanson Trilogy - Rick Hanson, Project Thesius, Myorem (Robico), Rohak the Swordsman (Elk Adventure Club), Runestaff (Squaresoft), Sadim Castle (MP Soft), Seek, Starship Quest (Elk Adventure Club), Stranded on Iloofrax (Potter Programs), Tomb of Death (Holl-Soft), Twin Orbs of Aalinor (Potter Programs), Valley of the Kings (MP Soft), Village of Lost Souls (Robico), Woodland Terror (MP Soft)
  
  
• GUIDES to Elite and Aviator
  
  
• SOLUTIONS for Myorem & Eye of Zolton - both written by Barbara Gibb of Adventure Probe
  
  
• 38 BBC CHEATS - Barbarian 2, Baron, Bonecruncher, Camelot, Combat Lynx, Dune Rider, E-Type, Elite, Firetrack (x2), Galaforce, Genesis Project, Grand Prix Construction Set, Green Beret, Impact, Krakout, Last Ninja, Microball, Orcrest, Palace of Magic, Perplexity, Pharaoh's Curse, Planetoid, Psycastria, Ravenskull, Repton, Return of R2, Rubble Trouble, Secret Garden, Space Ranger, Starquake, Star Warp, Spellbinder, Subway Vigilante, Super Invaders, White Magic, Xor, Ziggy
  
  
• 17 ELECTRON CHEATS - Clogger, Codename: DROID, Crazee Rider, Impact, Killer Gorilla, Magic Mushrooms, Paperboy, Pipeline, Plan B2, Planetoid, Palace of Magic, Repton Infinity, Saigon, Spellbinder, Spycat, Zenon, Password Generator for Repton 3 series.
  

So string up the lights and light up the tree
We're damned for all eternity
But for just one day all is well
It's Christmas time in Hell!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Made the following additions to the BBC UEF ARCHIVE - Cheers Anon! ;)

• Cylon Attack (A&F)
• Frak! (Aardvark)
• Mr Wimpy (Ocean)
• Firehawks (Postern)  scan added to cover scans
• Beach Head (US Gold).

Added pre-configured versions of pcBBC, BeebEm and ElectrEm to the Emulators page, all of which have been bundled with the relevant system roms for extra convenience ;-).

Thomas Harte has released Beta 6 of ElectrEm and with it comes the long-awaited support for 'bit multiplexing'. What this means essentially, is that Electron games can now be modified to display up to 256 COLOURS at once, instead of the usual maximum of just 8.

Dare Devil Denis is the first game to make use of these new features - a new and improved version is now available on the Electron Games Pages. We have Anthony Ogden and Darren Izzard to thank for designing the 256c sprites, and of course Thomas Harte for piecing everything together :-).

Intriguingly, the ElectrEm documentation states that a possible future application of the multiplexing process could be the insertion of digital sound effects into games ........ WOW!  :-o

The new release also adds support for the PRES E00 ADFS - the rom images of which have been added to the Roms page. I'd recommend these over the original Acorn ADFS as they free extra memory (thus allowing many more games to run) and contain a few bugfixes too.

The full list of changes in the new ElectrEm beta is as follows:

• brand new UEF code and reconstruction of all bits to do with filesystem access mean that the same UEF can be used simultaneously by several different devices, and several different chunks from a single UEF can be read at once in parallel. In truth, I've probably over-engineered this part of the code a little, but that shouldn't be a problem. Also, effectively a bug in looping of non-compressed UEFs has been fixed
• saving onto UEF discs is now supported, with tapes to come. SSD/DSD write support is not included, but thats a small thing I can add either when I get round to it, or if anyone requests it. Its perfectly useless while you can't save to DFS discs anyway
• now that various issues have been cleared up, bit multiplexing is an official feature, but only snapshot support is offered for loading of things at this time. Which is very remiss of me
• ROM slots can now be occupied with RAM also. To fit with this capability, the 'Restore Defaults' button in the ROM setup now tries to put the PRES E00 ADFS ROMs into the first two ROM slots rather than use the Acorn ADFS if they are found (as these leave more RAM free for programs)
• small bug fixes : ROM screen no longer crashes if 'add rom' is clicked with no ROM selected, adding a non-tape file to the load= config file setting, switching fast tape on and trying to load no longer causes a hang, vDFS *CAT's shouldn't break anymore (specifically when the drive head is moved out of the first track)
• optimised the display code with respect to normal graphics a little, and with respect to multiplexed graphics quite a lot.

Dare Devil Denis ....... multiplexed

The search is over for volunteers to re-design the Dare Devil Denis sprites for use with the new version of ElectrEm (out soon!).

As they say - watch this space for more information!

Thomas Harte is still on the lookout for a volunteer to create 256 colour versions of the graphics to Dare Devil Denis, which will be the first game to take advantage of the 'bit multiplexing' features in the upcoming ElectrEm beta.

Extract from BBC Mailing List post:

Added the missing Hacman scan (Sept 1992) and accompanying Listings (Airlift, BMX On The Moon, Syncron) to the Cheats section.

Added four EXILE zaps to the Cheats page:

• Micro User cheat v2.2
• Cheat It Again Joe cheat
• Mapper
• Save Game Editor.

Added a Hardware page featuring a complete set of Electron User reviews, a load of ad scans, plus a few reviews of BBC hardware.

Electron PRES ADFS 1.15 rom image added to Roms and funky Frak animation added to Miscellaneous.

Barbara Gibb, who runs the Adventure Probe fanzine, has kindly offered help to anyone stuck on a BBC/Electron text (or graphic) adventure. More info on the Messageboard.

Thomas Harte posted the following request on the ElectrEm Mailing List:

                      
Added a few crappy animations I made to the Miscellaneous page.

Kathryn Cooke contributed Tynesoft's Megaforce to the Electron UEF Archive.

Uploaded v1.04 of BeebEm to the Emulators page.

Updated the BBC UEF Archive with Snapper V1, Smash and Grab and a few Superior re-releases.

Jeremy Stanton sent in some superb game cheats including another great Thrust mod, disabled sentries in Sentinel and a fantastic Citadel hack that allows you to FLY!!!

Added a Messageboard and Guestbook.

I really don't think there's ever been much demand for a messageboard in the Acorn 8-bit world, so I'm not exactly expecting it to be bursting with activity over the coming months, but at least it's there for anybody who wants to use it. :-)

Not surprisingly, it includes forums on BBC & Electron Games, Hardware and Emulators, plus there's an area for you to advertise goods for sale and post wants lists. Registration is not required so feel free to post away to your heart's content!

As the messageboard features a voting facility, I thought I might as well make use of it. So here's a Repton poll. Mail me if you have any ideas for future polls!

Added a list of games missing from the Electron UEF Archive, plus a few more UEFs including Commando, Electron Invaders, Master Break and Saigon.

Updated the BBC UEF Archive with Master Break.

Another treat for Electron peeps thanks to a very kind (and also very anonymous!) donator ...

    

.. and almost entirely different from the BBC version too! :-)  Download it from the Electron UEF Archive.

ElectrEm has been updated yet again! Changes to the new release (beta 5b) include:

• contributed by Paul Boddie : 'rompath' setting in config file is actually used, new 'datapath' setting implemented such that 'data.uef' and the keyboard maps can be kept seperately to the binary, source code fixes for non case sensitive operating systems (I've been compiling UNIX versions via a symbolic link to a VFAT volume), and a makefile system for the UNIX/GGI target (and eventually more)
• fixes (by me) : ROM setup screen (particularly in wake of 'properly implemented' ROM mirroring), buffered sound under Windows initialises properly without having to use real time sound first, square brackets added to keyboard maps, ctrl/alt/shift properly modify cursor keys in physical map, and config file no longer erases all settings occasionally.

Added the Superior re-release of Elite to the Electron UEF Archive.

Unlike the Acornsoft release, this version loads INSTANTLY in ElectrEm - so flick that speed-up switch without further ado!

Lots of additions to the site today, including:

• ARTICLES - The Barbarian advertising campaign, Writing computer games by Gary Partis, Diary of a Game: Omega Orb, Game conversions by Peter Scott, Ricochet, Steve Hanson on Superior Software
  
  
• MAPS - Airwolf, Bug Eyes 2, Jet Set Willy 2, Last of the Free, Omega Orb, Overdrive, Palace of Magic, Quest, Ravenskull, Repton 2, Terrormolinos, Thunderstruck, Thunderstruck 2 (x2), Twin Kingdom Valley
  
  
• GUIDES - Cholo, Elite, Sim City
  
  
• SOLUTIONS - Atic Atac, Banjax, Barbarian 2, Castle Quest, Cholo (x2), The Count, Codename: DROID, Elixir, Imogen, Palace of Magic, Ravenskull (x2), Robin of Sherwood, Sphinx Adventure, Thunderstruck, Wheel of Fortune, Wizadore
  
  
• ADVENTURES - OCRs of the entire Merlin series from Electron User
  
  
• AUTHOR PROFILES - Kevin Blake, Dave Croft, Martin Edmondson & Nicholas Chamberlain, Kevin Edwards, Peter Johnson, Peter Jones & Trevor Lever, Gary Partis, Orlando, Chris Robson, Peter Scott
  
  
• CHEATS - extensive compilation of BBC + Electron cheats, complete with exactly 100Mb worth of 'Hac-man' scans
  
  
• LOST AND FOUND - new section featuring descriptions and downloads of various unreleased or shelved BBC projects
  
  
• MISCELLANEOUS - page updated with a list of Alternative titles.

Finally, Paul Shave (author of Xanadu Adventure, Escape From Orion and Castle Of Gems) sent me loads of bits and pieces relating to his BBC days when he wrote under the Hopesoft name. Find it on the AUTHORS page.

Thomas Harte has updated ElectrEm to Beta 5a. Primarily a bugfix release, it includes the following changes:

• stupid mistake related to merging some new code with some old code meant that my CPU bug fix became more like a bug create (specifically RTI was [potentially] invalidating the break flag). But that is now fixed
• replaced 'quick hack' approach to ROM mirroring with 'properly implemented' approach to ROM mirroring
• tiny tiny possibility of 2 byte memory read error in Windows & DOS version when viewing the '/' path (the list of available drives) fixed
• fixes/changes to PCX saving : each image now saved at a sensible 'minimum' resolution (no more 640x512 screenshots of a 160x256 image), and small memory access error cleared up (the exact nature of which would vary from platform to platform) .

Thomas also sent me a working copy of Micropower's Jet Power Jack, which has been added to the Electron UEF Archive.

Thomas Harte has released Beta 5 of ElectrEm. Changes include on-the-fly ROM insertion/removal, greater compatability and a LibGGI release.

Updated the Electron UEF Archive compatability information to comply with the new ElectrEm beta. The following games now load successfully with tape speed-up enabled: Anarchy Zone, Camelot, Clogger, Cyborg Warriors, Flight Path 737, Football Manager, Goal, Golden Figurine, Last Ninja, Last Ninja 2, Lunar Rescue, Space Ranger.

Beta 8 of MESS has just been released and the following changes have been made to the BBC driver (quoting MESSNEW.TXT):

• Added a new BBC clone (BBCB1770) to use the WD1770 disc controller
• Much improved SAA5050 teletext support (mode 7)
• Added two new BBC clones
  • BBCBP - the BBC B Plus with 64K
  • BBCBP128 - the BBC B plus with 128K
• Joystick support has now been added.

More information at the BBC in MESS W.I.P. Page.

David Boddie has updated his suite of conversion software with two new utilities: an INF2UEF converter and an ADF2INF converter.

Don Hay sent in another fifteen (very rare!) Electron adventures:

• Gremlins - Adventure Soft
• The Four Wands - D W Gore
• Inca Treasure - D W Gore
• Kingdom of Klein - Epic
• Greedy Drawf - Goldstar
• Druids Circle - HollSoft
• Fire Island - HollSoft
• The Ferryman Awaits - Kansas
• Locks of Luck - Magus
• Denis Through the Drinking Glass - Melbourne House
• Firienwood - MP
• Galadriel In Distress - Potter Programs
• Hexagram of Trutania Valley - Potter Programs
• Inner Space - Potter Programs
• The Five Doctors - WGames

Updated the Electron T2P3 page with a compilation of games (including Elite!) submitted by Philip Mulrane.

Added RH Soft's Snail Trail to the BBC Micro UEF Archive - I actually uploaded it the other week, just forgot to link to it.

Uploaded a replacement BBC disk image for Hopper as the sound was broken on the previous one.

Right. Are you sitting comfortably? Good, because the BBC UEF Archive has been updated with OVER 100 Superior & Acornsoft classics!

Opened a BBC Micro UEF Tape Archive.

There's 50 games in the archive at the moment and as far as I can tell, none of them were previously available on the web. I guess all we need now is a BBC Emulator that ACTUALLY SUPPORTS the UEF file format! :-p

RISC OS users rejoice! 58 new games added to the 6502Em pages. As usual, you've got The Doctor to thank for doing all the converting/archiving etc.

Added the following Electron adventures:

• Castle of Riddles - Acornsoft
• Castle Frankenstein - Epic
• The Nine Dancers - Larsoft
• In Search Of Atahaulpa - Lee
• Blue Dragon - MP
• The Banished Prince - Orbit
• Blood of the Mutineers - Robico

Once again, thanks are due to Donald Hay for encoding the UEFs and Walter Pooley for owning the games in the first place!

Added: RAPE OF THE ALECTRO MODULE by The Horny Elk [MISC]

This has got to be the most bizarre addition to the site yet. It's a BBC/Electron slideshow featuring scenes cut by the BBFC from the UK release of UROTSUKIDOJI III - one of those 'adult' animated MANGA flicks from Japan.  Likewise, it features explicit imagery and strong language, so, as they say, VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED!

Updates:

• over 100 new cover scans, bringing the total number of online inlay scans to 1070
• most emulator binaries are now stored locally
• interview with Simon Birrell added to Authors
• mp3 of the 'bonus track' to Simon Birrell's BUG BOMB added to Music
• at last there's some Electron Music for you to listen to ... pity it's not very good
• added several mp3s of various Music demos
• 'reversals' of the Psycastria intro added to Music
• added some Electron ROM images including all the Acornsoft ROM Cartridge games, plus View & Viewsheet
• added an Electron T2P3 page
• new page: Essentials
• minor updates to Wants, Other Systems, PC Clones & Links
• and finally, the obligatory additions to the Electron UEF archive  :-)

Thanks to Donald Hay & Walter Pooley for sending UEFs of Wychwood, The Rising of Salandra Parts 1+2, Annabel Gray, Suds & American Suds.  Incidentally, ElectrEm is now at Beta 4a.

Though still to be considered WIP, Beta 7 of MESS features the best BBC sound emulation yet (well, the best I've heard anyway) - check out this mp3 of the Arcadians intro, as emulated by MESS. Be sure to visit Gordon Jeffery's "BBC in MESS" W.I.P. page at http://mamerominfo.retrogames.com/messbbc/

Darren Izzard sent me some more Electron stuff including 'Superman: The Game' - a bit of a rarity, not to be confused with the entirely different Tynesoft version.

Thomas Harte has released Beta 4 of ElectrEm.

Added another 11 Electron UEFs courtesy of Darren Izzard.

Added 3 Amiga games (Bonecruncher, Impact & Loopz) and some Archimedes games to Other Systems. The Amiga stuff was swiped from AmigaEmulation.com

Added 11 new Electron games including:

• The Sea Queen  - unpublished text adventure contributed by its author, Jonathan Oates
• White Knight Chess Mk II  -  contributed by Dave Norman
• Re-release of Zalaga  -  quicker loading on ElectrEm.

The Other Systems page has been updated for the first time ever with some cpc464 games that I've been meaning to upload for ages.

Added an mp3 of Strykers Run (Enhanced version) to the Music page. The mp3s for Citadel 2, all Firetracks, Mikie, Psycastria, Spy Hunter & Spy Vs Spy have been replaced with better quality versions.

Thomas Harte has released Beta 3 of ElectrEm, which now features a virtual DFS for the loading of UEF disk images. To download the emulator, visit the ElectrEm homepage at its new location: http://electrem.emuunlim.com.

Site updates:

• the 6502 games page has returned, thanks to a little magic from The Doctor
• added the BBC version of Sphere of Destiny 2
• added over 100 game cover scans
• added well over 100 new Electron games including a few UEF disk images.

Thanks to Neil Bowker for contributing the Electron versions of Swag, Moon Buggy & Killa - The Upgrade.

Added links to two of Pete Everett's beeb-related projects, namely a Shockwave critique of Elite and three BBC-styled True Type fonts for use on PC + MAC.

Added another 85 Electron games in UEF format ... some *REAL* classics amongst this lot!

Thanks are due to:

• Mike Gordon for sending Acornsoft Chess, Boxer, Maze, Planetoid & Monsters;
• Andy Welburn for Star Wars, Time Machine & Woodbury End;
• A kind but anonymous donator for Podd, Meteors and New Zealand rental releases of Repton, Combat Lynx & Micropower Roulette.

The Citadel 2 page has been updated with some information provided by the game's author, Simon Storr.

Added 150 Acorn Electron games in UEF format for use with the ElectrEm emulator!!!

Added a selection of Plus One expansion roms to accompany the Electron System Roms, which were added a couple of days ago. All seem to work OK with Thomas Harte's fantastic new Electron emulator ElectrEm.

New url: www.stairwaytohell.com
Please update bookmarks!

Werps. Fell behind with email again mainly due to a house-move and no phonelines/net access for the past couple of weeks. Bear with me, yeah!

Dewi Williams is in the process of writing a Java version of Repton 3 [see Clones page]. Anyone who has designed screens for use with the original game is invited to contact the author, as he is interested in converting anything submitted across for use with his updated version.

The link to the 6502Em games has been temporarily removed, as there was a problem with some of the disk images. They'll be back!

The Doctor sent me a load of games in 6502Em format.
Added cover scans for the entire Electron User series.
Added a link to Jeroen Groenendaal's planned remakes of Monsters & Skirmish.
Quite a bit of chopping & changing to various sections, mainly chopping.

What little game documentation that was here has been picked up by Mark Usher of the (new look) BBC Doc Proj.

Removed Exile from the PC Clones page (the version linked was a private alpha and wasn't supposed to be publicly distributed)

Dharminder Birdi sent a cover-scan of Star Trek Adventure, a game he wrote for Superior Software.
Updated some of the details on the Superior pages with information provided by David Jeffery.

The site has moved from the Freewire servers and is now hosted by Emulators Unlimited. Any bookmarks or links to a bbc.freewire.co.uk address should be changed to the re-direction url: http://www.bbcmicro.cjb.net, which now points to the site's new location on Emuunlim.com.  

Massive thanks are due to The Fox of Emuunlim for offering me unlimited webspace in which to host the site - the page has practically been at its 50Mb limit for a while now and without the extra space today's rather large update wouldn't have been possible!

Oh, and before I forget the site is exactly 1 year old today, so I think a bit of birthday cake is in order ;-)   

 

Added:
100s of scans to the Docs/Games pages
More Acorn Electron games (39 to be precise)
A vastly improved Downloads section
More tunes to the Music page
A feature on Superior Software to the Articles page
A Contributions page
A Clones page, containing modern PC versions of games that appeared on the Beeb
An Other Systems page (useful for seeing how games differed amongst formats, maybe?)
An unreleased Superior game called Uggies Garden to the New Transfers page
The BBC System roms to the Emulators page.

75 Acorn Electron games (compatability information to follow)

There aren't any Electron emulators available at present, though Bryan McPhail is currently working on one. You should however find that a lot of these games will actually run on the current crop of BBC Micro emulators out there (use of an E00 DFS ROM is advised). Whilst on the subject of the Electron, don't forget to check out The Electron User Group which is still going strong!

Click here to see what was new in 1999.