ZXM

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A Mac emulating a CPC emulating a Spectrum
ZXM is a Sinclair ZX Spectrum emulator that runs on the Amstrad CPC.

Reviewed by Amstrad Action, it was long suspected not to exist - but a copy was subsequently found by Brian Watson and published on the Internet.

It is believed to have been written by Dr Andy Wright of Betasoft, a well-respected Spectrum software author. No contact details were provided in the AA review so this is difficult to confirm.

Technical information

The program uses a patched ZX Spectrum ROM, located at &0000-&3fff in CPC's RAM which calls into functions at &a000-&a700 in RAM to redirect functions to the CPC hardware.

The screen character display functions are redirected, so that as each char is printed, this results in a character being drawn direct to the CPC's screen.

Flash is not supported, because to do this, characters or the whole screen would need to be redraw each frame.

Load uses CPC's firmware CAS IN OPEN, CAS IN DIRECT and CAS CLOSE to load files from disc.

Limitations

  • No flash attribute
  • Does not run ZX Spectrum games which go direct to the hardware. It will only run pure BASIC games.

Downloads