THE JOY OF TZX
They forsake their social lives and also incur the wrath of their other halves as they work towards one common goal; to obtain perfect TZXs of each and every release of each and every Spectrum game ever released.
If you're asking what the hell a TZX is when it's at home, at the supermarket or enjoying a pleasant Bank Holiday in the park, read on.
The Spectrum Tape Preservation (STP) team has been going for several years now. Its works links in very closely with the world famous World of Spectrum (WoS) website.
Although WoS boasts 12,000 emulator-friendly games and other programs for download, it doesn't contain anything like ALL the commercial Spectrum titles released EVER, in the whole wide world.
Hence the existence of a Missing In Action (MIA) project and a long list of wanted titles. Other Internet users are invited to shorten this and swell the archive by turning wanted cassettes into special emulator-friendly PC files and submitting them.
There are several formats of emulator file, including SNA, Z80, TAP and TZX. While the MIA project prefers TAP or TZX format and is quite frankly just glad to have a missing title in any format, the STP project accepts only TZX files, preferably accompanied by a high-quality scan of the inlay and instructions.
Why? Well, creating a TZX file means you have a perfect reproduction of the original software, including the noisy loading system and loading screen. Given this, it's even possible to record a TZX'd file back onto cassette from a PC and then load it into a proper Speccy. Now how mad (or sad) is that!
Using TZX also means that if you want, you can set your emulator to load software at normal speed, type in the trusty LOAD "" command and get the authentic 'wait seven minutes for the bloody thing to load only to find it's actually totally crap' experience. The part where your machine randomly resets itself and you smack it one, is totally optional.
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