Spectrum SCREEN$ Loader

If you have upgraded from a Sinclair Spectrum and have had to leave behind a cassettee full of pictures, fear not, this is the program for you. Most Speccy picture transfer programs rely on you having to transfer the data over the serial port, which can take ages. This program overcomes this by leting you load the SCREEN$ file directly off the tape.

To do this, a lead has to be made up, which will plug into the tape's earphone socket and the ST's printer port.

What you need is :-

1 x 25-way D type plug (male)
1 x 3.5 mm Jack Plug
a suitable length of wire

Connect the centre pin of the jack plug to pin 8 of the 25 way plug. Connect the outer pin of the jack plug to pin 21 of the 25 way plug.

Plug in the 25 way plug into the printer port of your ST and the other end into the earphone socket of your tape player.

Run SPECPIC.PRG and play the tape containing the SCREEN$ file. The border will flash in the familiar way while loading. No image appears on the screen until the screen has loaded, and then it is saved to disk in Neochrome format.

You can now load it into your favourite art package and touch it up :

Note - SPECPIC.PRG and some sample pictures can be downloaded on the form of a .ZIP file by clicking here.