Codemasters CD Games Pack (ZX Spectrum) - How It Worked

[wrestletube1]

I think you can use this same method for loading Tap to Wav conversions from a burnt CD as well.

[leonadarr]

A CD loader on the spectrum? Never knew that even existed. Still wracking my brains on how this works through the joystick interface, especially if it is meant to work through the sinclair joystick port as well.

[sp33dy99]

You need a new TV. Seriously.

[djlobb]

@sp33dy99

One Word.

Nostalgia

[punkotek]

i have had no idea this technology existed, thanx dude

[SPeacock]

Why is there no torrent available for this? (Surely the CD-to-joystick cable can be emulated).

[interghost]

What an amazing CD mate, Ive heard of this before but never seen one working before. Thanks for sharing that one with us all.. Why not check out my Speccy Reviews mate cheers ;o)

[FuZionDCA]

The games are on the CD twice so you don't have to wait to rewind the CD to load a game that's at the start XD

On a serious, wish I'd found this CD when it came out.

[mick818522]

GO AWAY

[zipp1972]

Does not seem much of an improvement over loading from tape. Thank god we have Spectrum empulators now!

[webbhead92]

Can everybody remember when magazines gave away free games on a record, the idea being you had to record them onto a blank tape.

[pikuorguk]

Those flexi-records that never worked properly :)

[TobyTheTissue]

When did this CD come out? I don't remember it!

[potty127]

1989

[Etiainen]

Excellent demonstration :)

[Isaneguxa]

BWT Potty127, thank you a lot for the great demonstration!

[hellonpluto]

i remember that coming out but did not own a cd player so did not buy it

[esspytood]

hmm... this is really fascinating.

[SPeacock]

It's not wise to plug in or unplug something on the expansion port when the Spectrum is switched on :) I'm not pointing the finger, I'm just giving a friendly warning.

[ogicabp4u]

nice explaination. I was gonna buy this but I didnt have a CD player all those years ago. Basically its just a high quality 'audio cable' of sorts...the tape loaded program allows it to load the games from the CD by executing code which will allow the 'audio feed' to come through the special cable at ultra high speed. It works just like a tape deck on steriods. No-one make the mistake of it being a CD-ROM. Its just a Audio CD with game tracks on it. u have the ISO? put it on emule or bittorrent!

[Labruskie]

I remember Codemasters announcing they were thinking of doing this but I didn't realize they actually got around to doing it. I think it also relies on the tracks being stereo to double up the transfer rate, not just the extra bandwidth of the CD sound. If you had an ISO of it you'd still need someone to reverse engineer the proprietary cable. Could be fun! I don't get why the driver was on a tape. Could it not be on the disc too, perhaps recorded with "noise" so the speccy could handle it?

[ogicabp4u]

Not necessarily. If the emulator can handle the .TAP/.TZ file and the Joystick port by using the COM port as a joystick port if you have the cable then you can use it this way, maybe??

[christo930]

The serial port (com) is not in any way shape or form like a joystick port. The only similarity is the shape. I am quite sure that the format that they are on in the cd is not the same as if they were on a tape since they are going through a custom cable and seems to be much faster than the tape.

[ogicabp4u]

ALternatively you can throughput an audio CD file as a WAV file (winamp does this so you can play from an audio CD without the internal audio cable connected to the soundcard and CDROM). If the Tape 'driver' file/prog loads correctly if the feed can be directed from the a virtual CD-ROM drive with the ISO file 'inserted' and the Virtual CD-ROM software can output WAV files direct to the emulator or soundcard 'IN' port then it 'should' work. Anyone any idea?

[Labruskie]

Sorry, ogicabp4u. I asumed you wanted to make a copy of the cd to use on a real Spectrum!

Considering what you want to do I think you're going to need an emulated Codemasters cable to plug into an emulated Kempston joystick interface!

[uggla03]

i never even knew this thing existed

[netwalker72]

WHATA...when the cdrom was introduce how a future device for the pc´s, the speccy was loading your own games from a CD...that´s innovate or what?

[LukeFrench01]

Well done dude, good to see a working demo of this (and to prove it really was real!) I heard there was one on the C64 too, but did'nt believe it until now! Nice to see something going back to support the retro-computer community :D

[sizzy1969]

half the fun of owning a speccy was loading up games epecially copied ones i had a c60 audio tape with 20 games a side i still remember outrun was a bitch to load itd get right to the end and fail chuckie egg was my fav n aticatac

thanxs for the memories

[Sabreman64]

That seems like a load of hassle to me. By the time you've loaded the CD loader software and faffed about with the CD player to load a game from the CD, you could have loaded the game from a standard tape.

[sackus]

plus you could just connect the CD player the exact same way you connect the tape player and just use a more agressive turbo loader because CD is more reliable than tape

[ogicabp4u]

would not work. The audio impedence of the spectrum audio jack was too low. Thats why this used a special cable and software.

What your refering to is using MP3 files from a PC soundcard output direct to a ZX spectrum. Very Clear signal. Audio CD players have moving parts and lower impendence and more 'noise' than am MP3 from a PC.

[sackus]

Mp3 wouldn't work because it is lossy - but you can go to the input jack. If you link your soundcard to the spectrum, load the 'Klive' emulator, turn tape noise on, set the spectrum to load and then load the emulated machine then the real machine will load from the emulated tape noise. I've done this to test cross-compiled code

[ogicabp4u]

your right I forgot MP3 is lossy...but if you did the with a normal Hi/Fi and lead it prob wouldnt work...I tried some years ago with the Amstrad 6128 with 'hyperloading' . I was told that there was simply not enough impedence or ampage on the port itself to do this.

Hnce 'special lead' that 'amps' the signal somehow.

[rogerjowett]

excellent did you see the spanish guy loading manic miner in twenty seconds from mp3 player?

sam coupe anyone

[SPeacock]

Jesus Christ.

[thepryest]

i really miss that sound

if the internet was around back in the day, we could have shared games like sharing mp3's if you know what i mean.

[bu5t3djohn]

wow this looks really hard to just play a game.. i'm glad there are more advanced computers now XD

[Dosbomber]

Geeeeeez... I remember tape drives. I never owned a Sinclair but using a CD redbook track to "playback" the audio encoding of old software is a clever trick. :)

[dreamcastII]

Thanks for this video. This is amazing. I wonder if the c64 ever had this too ?

[siccoyote]

I wish I had that, or that they had releases more collections.

[Foebane72]

Not bad for a first video, but how big is your room? I wouldn't recommend cramming the TV, speakers, Hi-Fi, Sky Box, VCR and DVD player so close to each other like that. What about ventilation? What about damage to the TV from the speakers?

[potty127]

My room is fairly big. Not huge, but offers enough room to walk around in :)

As for my setup, it's been like that for about 2 years and I've had no problems with it. Most of the ventilation comes out from the back of each unit so it's nothing too serious.

[michael0066304]

Remember seeing this years ago in a spectrum mag.

But am sure the price was high like 30 pounds.

Am sure codemaster could fit more games on a cd. Since a cd could hold 650megs.

[Paulmstiffy]

The games are "WAV" tracks same as Recorded sound not raw data like normal CD programs, thats why there are only 30 tracks

[potty127]

Yep. That's true. The CD itself is not a CD-ROM, just a plain audio CD. Like when loading an ordinary cassette program into the Spectrum, the CD Games Pack loader program 'listens' to the sound. The only difference is that the CD Games Pack loader program listens to it via the joystick port, not through the 'tape' socket located at the back of the Spectrum.

[cosine303]

not bad, bit long winded,a lot of developers used to make custom dev tools.. e.g. amiga to c64 graphics convertor via the joystick cable. etc.. lots of speccy programmers used to code on things like the Sharp computer, and send it to spectrum, seen it mentioned in trashman article and thing with durrell. I have a dev system, u code on c128 and sends the code to c64. makes life easier, also saves memory as you only have the receive software in the target machine, instead of a full assembler.

[haroliyk]

So each game had to be recompiled with the Q-U-I-T function on the interrupt subroutine?

Also - you didnt explain how this would work with multiloads??

[potty127]

None of the games are multiloads, so there was no need for me to explain that :)

[wdw75]

Superb explanation! Never even knew about it! Head over Heels on the Spectrum is my favourite retro game.

[Ubiquitous69]

Thanks for the vid. I wish I had one of these back on my old Speccy in the 80's. Kids these days don't know how good they've got it.

[kkbigal]

Wow I'm impressed - never knew this existed and given the nature of these things, I never thought it would work! Great vid!

[whaleyboy0]

I totally forgot about that CD pack until I saw this vid! Thanks...very thoroughly explained! :)

[madderscientist23]

I vaguely remember reading a magazine review about this(the commodore 64 version)and only recently was searching the net to prove it existed and it wasn't my imagination. Nice one for posting this, mate! Using joystick ports tho? Always thought that was a strange one

[paulisthebest3uk]

if i had this in 1992-1993 as a kid i would have been in heaven imagine all those R Tape Loading Errors or crashes when loaders would load! Lucky man to own one of these rare devices

[tirclachan]

damn I can't understand your speaking, lol

[rob1969in]

You have the paticence of a saint mate.

[brancorp2000]

Very interesting!!! I love Speccy!

[kalateur]

As zxSpectrum128, thanks for the video. At its time i've read a spanish article about it but i've had a bare idea of how it was the way of loading(loading games by joystick port?). You have cleared all my doubts. Thanks!!

[andyukmonkey]

they released it way before enough people had cd players for it to catch on unfortunately.

[minijimi]

Thats amazing, how long has that been available and are more speccy accessories coming out for this outstanding computer?

[paulisthebest3uk]

wow i didnt even know such a thing existed, and the games load that fast! that is awesome that also has to be extremely rare lol

[BeckettMan]

Very neat, but a whole lot of work just to play one game. I just got Codemasters Treasure Island Dizzy and the Aladdin Deck Enhancer for my NES. Its also a pain to get that thing started.

[yaKC]

nice one, never thought I`d see a Codies CD in action :) Interesting...

[zxspectrum128]

Thanks for the video. I always wanted to know how it worked.

[chop983]

This videos makes Googles investment in YouTube worthwhile