Tiny British Game Carts | ZX Interface 2 - TechNibble

[@RMCRetro]

Thank you for watching. A special thank you to Derek Findas for voicing Nigel's Letter, you should check out Derek's channel here for a very fun take on retro gaming kzbin.info/door/UNc-5F-VAzj7bL9XOlVSFA - Did anyone own these carts in the 80's, or did you just own the ZX Interface for the joystick ports? Neil - RMC

[@RMCRetro]

This is a cool device, it's included in the recent ZX Spectrum Heaven and Hell video on my channel along with the Omni and some other devices

[@mrc1190]

Unlike cartridges on other systems, I'm not sure if Spectrum games could run from the cart itself. I recently did a disassembly of the Jetpac cartridge and on boot the whole game is just loaded direct into memory before running. So once it's loaded, the cartridge is never accessed again.

[@genstarmkg5321]

@@mrc1190 I think it's more of a lazy port if anything. I've looked at the documentation and what does the ZX Interface 2 is basically replace the ZX Spectrum's BIOS with the cartdridge's ROM when a cartridge is inserted hence the 16K limitation. I just think that Ultimate Play The Game never bothered to change the addresses in the program because copying the program to the ZX Spectrum's RAM is easier and fast enough. Also, the ZX Interface 2 doesn't even have writing abilities, so mappers should be done by reading certain addresses of the cartridge.

[@LGR]

Always enjoyed messing with these little things. Wish more cartridges came with integrated rubber sleeves.

[@RMCRetro]

Everything is better with a rubber sheath

[@RetroMarkyRM]

..always wear a rubber..it's better for everyone!! :-)

[@ChristopherSobieniak]

As long as it's "...for her pleasure!"

[@BertGrink]

Yes, always practice safe hex!

[@RetroMarkyRM]

hahahaha :)

[@johnm0jfe]

The RamTurbo interface had a cartridge port fitted it was also kempston , sinclair interface 2, agf & could be programmed easily.Yes I have one and the currah micro speech & the DKTronics light pen. Love what you are doing with the retro community.Keep up the good work

[@RMCRetro]

Thanks John I appreciate you watching. Light pens seemed so cool, there was one available for my Amstrad CPC back in the day and even though I expect them to be absolutely terrible I still want one!

[@bazza5699]

Great video Neil.. I never get bored looking at or watching videos about the Spectrum. Such is the soft spot in my heart for the little rubber keyed design classic. I used to have an Interface One plus a Microdrive and also that heat sensitive printer as shown. I actually remember typing up a school essay and printing it on thermal paper. Heaven only knows what the teacher must have thought as the precocious 12 year old me proudly presented a till receipt sized document for his homework. I never did get hold of these cartridges thou i did have all of those games, Psst, Jetpac & Trans-am where among my favourites.

[@SuperJet_Spade]

I really like learning about the ZX Spectrum and its addons. I always find something unique about these 8-bit computers from the 1980s that were all on the market.

[@curiousottman]

I just love watching retro videos from RMC especially about hardware and devices I had never heard of back in the day. Having a Commodore 64 in 1983 in Canada I had no idea about the Spectrum let alone its peripherals.

[@TheDefpom]

Ahhh the good old zx spectrum, I remember mine fondly, that cartridge photo brought back some memories.

[@what-uc]

4:08 Mastertronic games didn't arrive until spring 1984, although the typical price of a Spectrum game was only £6

[@jjgriffin100]

£6 in 1984 is the equivalent of nearly £20 today.

[@neilomac]

I had one of those Interface 2s back in my Speccy owning days...never had any of the carts though.

[@Insertdiskgames]

Great episode, I've literally been playing Horace and the Spiders on cartridge this month for next weeks episode. Glad I'm not the only one with weird Spectrum interfaces still hanging around.

[@wannabuyabridge]

Just brilliant. I had one of these plus Jet Pac - it's the only cartridge I had, but what a game! The double joystick ports came in very handy. Incidentally, I removed the rubber bit when inserting the cartridge until a mate said I didn't have to. It's funny what you remember.

[@BazzaHSpeccymad]

Wonderful things. I've a turbo ram interface that can take zx cartridges but haven't got to collecting any yet

[@philrob1978]

Although I and a lot of friends had a Speccy back in the day, none of them had this Interface or the carts. If they did they would have been the envy of everyone! A lovely nibble. Nice to see Trevor out of his cage for a bit too. BTW, new Patreon secured from me, because you deserve it for your fantastic content.

[@RMCRetro]

Thank you Phil and welcome aboard I appreciate the support. More Trevor and live streams coming up as requested. 29th Sep is the next one

[@Larry]

You totally need to get Paul Jenkinson (TheSpectrumShow) on your channel soon dude! His collection of weird speccy stuff would be right up your alley!

[@RMCRetro]

Thanks for the tip, I'll have a word

[@GazzJ82]

It should, it is the best Spectrum only channel out there, every episode is brimming with information and is well put together.

[@10p6]

You should do a Speccy video on the memory map, as the address space of the cart is direct 16 bits with no paging, so it gets confusing when claims are made that the carts can only hold 16K, especially as the system ROM area is outside the normal 48K if I remember correctly.

[@firsteerr]

typical Sinclair elegance and clean lines

[@TheJustinLloyd]

When I worked for a few different publishers back in the 80's we had a few of these interfaces kicking around with custom ROMs in them that provided the ability to boot into a development environment. Some version of Hisoft IIRC. Source was stored on an external RAM expansion that could be bank switched in and copied straight to the Spectrum. My older Speccy development system was originally a custom-built add-on that offered 64K of RAM in two 32KB banks, and on a later version, could plug into the Tube on a BBC Micro or an expansion card on a RML380Z, so you'd write your code on the Beeb or RML, then send it to the Speccy, if the speccy crashed, you didn't care, you could just hit the reset switch but all of your code was safe on the Beeb. We had a similar setup for the C64 too. Our BBC development systems were plugged in to another Beeb, or the Perkin Elmer mini computer that ran UNIX and had a whopping 1MB of RAM and some absurdly large storage of around 20MB on a HDD that sounded like an aircraft taking off.

[@david-spliso1928]

Could Nigel be the one who originated the term plug and play?

[@mattjackson9859]

I thought the same thing regarding the wasted chance of alternative programming languages on cartidges... an assembler and debugger on a cart would have rocked!

[@Zadster]

HiSoft Devpac would have been the dog's danglies!

[@gnuemacs1166]

They had a forth no ?

[@DubiousEngineering]

Yay! No squealing tape!!! Double bonus!! Trevor makes an appearance!!! Love it cave dude!!

[@RMCRetro]

Hehe thanks Howard. Purton soapbox race team next year?

[@DubiousEngineering]

RetroManCave hahaha!! ... I think I’m invited as their resident videographer... that said, it would be cool to make a soap box racer... but mine may have hidden 🚀 rockets!

[@DubiousEngineering]

Just subbed Derrick

[@howardjones543]

I still have my RAM Turbo joystick interface, with its virgin cartridge slot. Devpac for it would have been really handy! (since the cartridge replaces the bottom 16K, doesn't that mean that your 16K game also has 16K of RAM not taken up with the game anymore? So something with compression or generated data could be a "32K" game at least...)

[@alastairward2774]

We had an interface for our 48k+ to allow joysticks too. Dad didn't allow us to use it with the little legs on the Spectrum popped out, he thought the weight of the add on would bend the innards unless the whole thing was flush with the table.

[@gregster29]

I've never ever seen one of those cartridges before.....Maybe they were just slightly ahead of their time!

[@jpjokela1]

Not very "Spectrum-literate", but regarding the 48k games argument, isn't part of Zx Spectrum RAM used for screen? Tape games can't use that for code or data, so there's definitely space for more data with these cartridges. In addition, same goes for any RW data created during gameplay. Also, I think 48k spectrum can execute code faster inside the "extra memory" area (compared to the 16k model), this might be the same for cartridges too. So considering both things, it should be possible to do a game, that always works from cartridge, but from tape, only on the 48k model. Obviously that doesn't mean that just any 48k game could work from cartridge, at least without considerable modifications.

[@WahidKhan-rx9jo]

Brilliant as always , cheers neil

[@RMCRetro]

Cheers Wahid

[@Tomsonic41]

I've always wondered - did the interface copy the ROM into RAM and run it from there (as a tape game would have), or did it run the code directly from the ROM like games consoles?

[@GigAHerZ64]

@RetroManCave 1:35 - theres one missing: N-gage MMC cards. Those were in the size of standard sized SD cards. ;) I saw Nintendo DS cartridge so those n-gage cards should also fit in.

[@gdclemo]

No PC Engine Hu-Cards either, unless I missed them, they were from the 80s and really thin and small (Yes, I'm replying to a two year old post...)

[@Robin-ie3ns]

Really interesting video! I just bought one of these for £2 from a car boot sale :) Question: does anyone know what those beautiful white joysticks in the Interface 2 advert are? 1:52

[@michaelturner4457]

I had one of those Triumph "computer compatible" cassette recorders.

[@evo5dave]

Myself and most of my mates had Spectrums. Don't think I knew anybody who had a Sinclair interface of any kind.

[@Nukle0n]

6:54 interesting how you get a single frame or so of Jet Pac even after unplugging things. Also, great ep as usual but there's a bit of audio popping, not sure why.

[@richardhalford4438]

That Triumph cassette recorder brings back memories :)

[@TelexToTexel]

Question about tape deck: Is it possible to use a Sony Walkman to load software into the Sepctrum, or must it be a 'bulky' tape deck as seen in this video?

[@webchimp]

Never had one myself but a friend did and I was amazed at the instant load.

[@Bavvo69]

I had an interface 2, and dreamed of getting games on cartridge, but never did. Price always too high when pocket money was tight. Did have a joystick though. I loved the look of the interface too.

[@einherrjar]

Derek Findas! awesome channel, is there a British micro computer revival at hand? either way, i love every minute of video about that stuff!

[@RMCRetro]

We're fixing all our 8bit computers in preparation to run the country after Brexit 😁

[@einherrjar]

@@RMCRetro and fill out your tax-forms on Zeddies and Speccies, print them out on that lovely silver paper, and wait for the letter in the mail telling you what errors you made and that you will be audited?

[@namakudamono]

Lovely, thank you very much. I particularly enjoyed you ur description of the packaging. By the way, was there ever a ZX Interface 1?

[@BertGrink]

Yes, there was indeed an Interface 1; it combined several functions into one unit: 1: it served as a controller for the so-called Microdrives, which were tiny "stringy-floppy" drives, i.e. they used really tiny tapes that looped around so as to become continuous, and which could hold between 85 and about a hundred kilobytes each. These tapes were VERY fragile though, and many have not survived the test of time. 2: The IF1, as it's also called, also provided one RS232 port for connection to a modem, a serial perinter, or indeed any device with a serial connection. 3: It also supported the so-called ZX Net, which allowed up to 64 Spectrums to be connected together and communicate with each other; one suggested use for this network was schools where each pupil would have a ZX Spectrum with an IF1, and the teacher would have one as well which was configured as a "Master" station. 4: Finally, it also contained an extended BASIC interpreter to control these aforementioned facilities, which could be further extended by the user via some clever machine code programming. All in all, the Interface 1 was quite a versatile device, and as such, was moderately successful at the time. The only downside was that programs on microdrive cartridge were relatively expensive (and fragile as mentioned above), which stifled users' enthusiasm for them.

[@MD_Slaine]

What was all the fuss about the Sam Coupe? Have you covered that at all?

[@RMCRetro]

Not yet, I know a man with one and am hoping to get him on for a show and tell soon

[@MD_Slaine]

@@RMCRetro Superb

[@sargieboi9315]

I loved my +3. I remember one day mashing the keyboard in frustration and 'Hello, i'm a +3' appeared on the screen. Scared the living bejesus out of me. Found out since that it's a little easter egg in the ROM, accessed by typing COPY RANDOMIZE, pressing Enter and then immediately holding C, J and L down.

[@BertGrink]

Those letters are the initials of Cliff J. Lawson, who had a big role in the creation of the +3.

[@sargieboi9315]

Ooo, nice bit of trivia. Thanks :)

[@sargieboi9315]

The first 30 seconds of that video gave me an instant nostalgasm

[@Monkey_SK]

I never knew anything like this had even been attempted. The instant load times do have some appeal but I suppose those price models were never going to stack up. I love a good box collection, however the cover art always got me far to excited, the games could rarely live up to my expectations, but that's why good box art was so important to sales.

[@BertGrink]

Yeah that's true; one has to remember that this was way before the internet, so it wasn't really possible to release demos, thus the box art had to really "suck the customer in".

[@evobatman]

Nice EF2000 box! I spent so many hours on that game, I still love it!

[@wolvenar]

Lots of videos lately :-) Thank You

[@Lorfarius]

Hooray, Trevor's back!

[@Skaera75b]

Thanks, Neil- I had entirely forgotten about these things, I remember seeing them at car boot sales years later and thinking 'cool, but why?'

[@fabiosemino2214]

One funny thing is that now instead of using reliable carts I want to retrieve my old CPC on which I never used the tape drive due to ignorance on how to obtain titles (at least in Italy county) and give it a spin!

[@infinitecanadian]

Star Wars arcade conversion? On the ZX Spectrum? I don't think so...

[@RMCRetro]

Everything you need to know about it.... kzbin.info/www/bejne/jafIp2evrZp7a7s

[@BobMonkeypimp]

You could run an old computer themed art competition (perhaps with your Patreons) and showcase them in an episode (or a regular series) called "Cave Drawings".

[@RMCRetro]

One step ahead of you my man :D kzbin.info/www/bejne/Y2K4mnmnZ96ojs0

[@GerardKean]

?!?! did nigel coin plug and play?

[@obsoletepowercorrupts]

Simply for uniformity sake, game (and software) cartridges for the amiga need to be made for the parallel port. Even though carts could be made for other amiga interfaces, there is a reason the parallel would be cool. And yes it would desire a boot floppy not unlike CDBoot did for the CD. Firstly, all amigas can have a parallel port (even a CD32 with the breakout expansions), and having a lallafa-plipbox ethernet with a passthrough would also help uniformity while the parallel game cartridge is switched too alternately. Secondly, the ieee on the CPU used means that increased CPU speed on say a 68040 (like the a4000, or an a1200 with a MC68040FE25V in it) or 68030 with FPU (for FFT) would make it fast enough. Really it is about access time. A CDROM can still be used for other game data to load too, and that could relieve bandwidth. Having a cartridge port breakout cable would mean that such cartridges could also plug simultaneously into an external floppy drive (thereby using two ports both parallel and floppy) so as to save game data to an SDcard or battery backup RAM on the cartridge, and thereby allowing game save backup to real floppy disk too. Any such cartridge could have a standard by which it would always search for CDROM and provide universal drivers (and interface drivers such as USB clockport and a590 scsi and pcmcia) to "find" the game CD upon boot even if the game had already booted from CD before (on CD32). A standard copied-and-pasted folder in such a CD would means all games can work using a default as a minimum, and as a first-port-of-call the floppy in FD0 would have it's bootstrap which then search for the parallel "cartridge" (which contains CDROM drivers and interface drivers in case they are not located in say FD1 or FD2). The folder should also contain all ethernet drivers for amiga (including clockport USB rj45 ethernet adaptors on a1200) and even floppy-drive ethernet BNC, or zorro ethernet. This all means that even if you've used the zorro sidecar in an a500 for something else (such as an a590 or a570 or action replay or ethernet), the game cartridge would still work. A stock a1200 with an FPU installed directly on the motherboard (ignoring the trapdoor slot) should take advantage of (fourier) FFT for better parallel throughput, even if it is just a little bit of improvement and also maybe with compression. In that folder one might as well always have CD32 game pad "drivers" (and CDTV gamepad drivers) enhanced with the analogue joystick drivers of the day such as the suncom analogue plus or the gravis (and also a trackball next to an analogue thumbstick, for mouse emulation). A bluetooth driver with setup options upon boot (which you must select in say the first 30 seconds or it will boot and ignore you) for the pad allowing parallel bluetooth dongles to work and allowing clockport usb bluetooth to work would allow the joypad to work via that or via the usual joystick port (although you'd desire some sort of joystick or mouse plugged in the usual joyports so you need not go to a keyboard to set up up, and so that solve sthe CD32 issue). The MJNurney channel has a video showing the new Chucky a1200 mainboards which can have an FPU put on them. Every little bit of amiga horsepower helps. Awesome boards btw. Would love to see a PCI port on it converted into PCI-e (almost like thunderbolt) so that two amigas can be linked that way (with also serial port and ethernet clockport linked) to give shared double monitor operating system and games and thereby overcome not only screen resolution in AGA but also a "cheat" way of overcoming the 2meg Chip RAM limit since you'd have two CPUs. kzbin.info/www/bejne/gYKvdZxthdJsepo I've left a comment there about how this can be done using plans for world domination. But seriously, it can be done. Amiga game developers (when not using a PC) would sometimes use an amiga's parallel to boot off an atari's parallel. It seems like such a waste to not use the nifty _"new for the time"_ ieee for the parallel oin the amiga (on the 68030 and 68040 and 68060) especially considering it is not a reduced instruction set. If you've got it, flaunt it.

[@michaelelsy2209]

I've still got my waferdrive don't know if it still works though.

[@MontieMongoose]

I need more Trevor in my life.

[@SkyCharger001]

48K on 16K: perhaps the plan was to include the bank switching on the 48K carts themselves, but was the plan scrapped due to the abbismal sales figures.

[@tornghost]

The cartridges werent really competing with 1.99 games like you said, because the whole budget market only took off later around 84-85

[@Slider2732]

I had one of these back in the day...and the Jetpac cartridge ! Am I allowed to say that without shame, or is it like owning a Prius ? lol I own a Prius :|

[@matwtf]

It's a shame they didn't include bank switching or include a cartridge port in later models, this would of made for some more advanced games in future.

[@xnonsuchx]

Atari 8-bit cartridges are the only computer cartridges I ever dealt with. My first computer was an Atari 800 and it had a nice feeling pushing a hard plastic and metal cartridge into the heavy duty aluminum caged cartridge slots. Suddenly I want one again just thinking about it...eBay, here I come! ;-)

[@Doobie3010]

Fascinating,never knew these ever existed,sort of like an early Sega megadrive x32 mushroom addon.

[@user-yv2cz8oj1k]

Trying to find links to these 48k capable cartridges?

[@Fifury161]

This is the reason I added a SCSI interface to my PC - I never wanted to go through slow load times again!

[@arfanmedni7294]

Wonder if the rom cartridge slot can be used to expand the system Rom? Anyone can confirm this? Would be great to experiment on without compromising the default OS.

[@xeroniris]

With regard to the claim about "some 48k games will run on a 16k spectrum", it does make sense. On a 16k spectrum all you have is 16k of space. With a cartridge in a 16k speccy, you have 16k of rom and 16k of ram, so you could have squeezed some bigger games into that configuration that would not fit on just a 16k speccy. Hence why the claim was "some 48k games", not all.

[@alastairward2774]

With all the black colouring, I'm imagining them being stored in a box of chocolates for some reason.

[@CommodoreFan64]

I've seen videos on these before, and I personally feel it's a shame they did not take off as the longevity of carts is much better these days, but yeah at the same time I can see why they did not take off due to the UK market being so use to paying so little for a game.

[@nednedtom]

Would of loved them. Had 16/48k specs.

[@matthewday7565]

OMG! Didn't it suffer from the notorious rampack wobble of the ZX81?

[@BertGrink]

I believe the dreaded ZX81 RAM Pack Wobble was mainly an issue with the first batch of RAM Packs; you see, they lacked the so-called "key" on the connector that would prevent sideways motion. After that, Sinclair Research learned their lesson, and all subsequent add-ons (plus most of those from third-party vendors) did indeed have this key.

[@poppasteve2976]

I came so close to buying the Timex/Sinclair (as it was called on the US side of the pond), until I saw the Commodore VIC 20. And I've been spending entirely too much money on such things ever since.

[@madba5tard719]

Im sure i have the Space Raiders one in my box of speccy games, time to go digging

[@jamesroviezzo7924]

Are people going to make more games for that

[@user-yv2cz8oj1k]

I do wish someone would work out a catridge that could support SD cards, then I could load all my games on my RAM turbo version of the interface.

[@confusedkemono]

it looks great with that addon tbh

[@8bitdreams217]

have offered some cheap 10 in 1 ZX Cartridges on Amibay recently. You can program 10 of Your favorite 48k games on it

[@MarkFixesStuff]

DEREK????? Is that yoooo????

[@doodemog]

Horace and the spiders used to drive me insane

[@charlesdorval394]

I have to admit, I quite like the look/size of those cartridges, compared to let's say a VIC20's Thanks for sharing it with us Neil :)

[@montarion]

I always thought the orange bit was hard plastic. Seeing it in all its rubberiness I feel somewhat let down yet simultaneously unsurprised.

[@user-yv2cz8oj1k]

Pity there were about ten 16k games and nothing else. So thankful for sd cards.

[@LaatiMafia]

Centimeters FeelsGoodMan

[@GeoffJonesEsprit]

Disappointment dɪsəˈpɔɪntm(ə)nt/ noun: Settling down with a cup of tea and a few biscuits to enjoy the latest RMC episode then realising you have already watched in through Patreon!

[@RMCRetro]

Hehe sorry Geoff, there is another one currently on Patreon early access for you to enjoy until the next release

[@JohnKiniston]

I feel like I missed a video on Trevor the Tortoise?

[@RMCRetro]

Meet.....Trevor! kzbin.info/www/bejne/aZy8eYusjNyehZI

[@JohnKiniston]

Thanks!

[@myview5840]

Loved my 128k

[@OtherWorldExplorers]

Can someone please tell me if Retro man cave has an online store?

[@RMCRetro]

Hello! Yes I do here www.etsy.com/uk/shop/TheRetroManCave

[@mr.vidjagamez9896]

Too bad this didn't do better. I imagine it would have enhanced the collectible aspect and interest for retro-gamers outside of Europe if there were many cartridges available for the platform instead of finicky cassette tapes. Getting the entire Ultimate library on to carts would have been fantastic.

[@user-yv2cz8oj1k]

Can someone make a cart that has an sd card reader on it?

[@RMCRetro]

Yes, see the DivMMC Future for a good example of this, really handy device

[@user-yv2cz8oj1k]

@@RMCRetro already aware of those, be nice to have a programmable card that also supported this, or smaller ones that had usb support for programming.

[@houseoftheted637]

I remember a review of this by Lazy Game Reviews. He had jetpac too 😎

[@RMCRetro]

I'll look that one up. LGR rocks

[@houseoftheted637]

@@RMCRetro I agree. He also made a very good zx spectrum review a few years ago.

[@pdsnpsnldlqnop3330]

Back in the day this would have seemed wasteful to a Spectrum owner. Kids had no money, all games were copied. Genuine games were few and far between, if you didn't like the game at least you could record your own stuff on the tape, covering the record tabs with bits of cellotape. If the game was good then you would want to trade it with others, i.e. copying the tape. These cartridges took you out of the school eco system.

[@matthewburroughs9597]

Still.got jet pack on tape. 😊

[@user-yv2cz8oj1k]

I was offered a basket full of these in the mid 90s for £30. Still weren't worth buying.

[@frankowalker4662]

The price of the ROMs put me off.

[@user-yv2cz8oj1k]

Pity. Star Wars might have raised some interest.

[@Dr.D00p]

I just saw 'Tranz Am' in the video! The very first game I ever played on my ZX Spectrum 48K, which I only had for about 4mths before seeing sense and selling it so I could buy a Commodore 64.

[@user-yv2cz8oj1k]

Or for a lot less than buying this lot you can get 1500 real arcade games from China. 🎮😜🤣

[@MrScotttraynor]

a cartridge condom?

[@thetraveller1246]

Worst. Joystick. Ever.

[@RMCRetro]

Trevor says your name is now on his list

[@speedbird737]

No one bought the carts because you couldn't pirate them

[@LastofAvari]

Intro is a bit too long IMO.