Are you this old? #ZXSpectrum #8bit #TRDOS #retrogaming

So, after a well deserved break I'm now back doing nerd and retro stuff.

Yesterday I took the time to take a closer look at my new "DivMMC" interface for the #zxspectrum - so far I've only used it as a convenient way to load .TAP file instantly into the machine's RAM, enjoying some of the praised classic games of the era.

Until yesterday, when I discovered the TASM assembler on a .SCL disk image. TASM is a very comfortable yet powerful assmbler for the #zxspctrum and it supports the "Betadisk" disk controller, which in turn is also being emulated by the "DivMMC" firmware. That said, I started to familiarize myself with TASM and the "TR-DOS" command shell which is provided by the controller ROM.

So here you see my first, modest results. It's not the code and what it does, that is important. What really impresses me me is how once you have a floppy disk controller and drive attached to the #speccy (even if it's only virtual) it becomes a totally different user experience. #trdos

I'm curently cheking out the capabilites of the DivMMC expansion and getting familiar with #ESXDOS

So right now I'm looking into how to create #zxspctrum .TRD #trdos disk image files on #Linux and in the process I've done a few, very little changes to the C code of "TRDtool" by Shiru so that it will compile on Linux using gcc instead of Windows (here's the original code for the Windows version:
https://github.com/alfishe/trdtool)

The adapted version is working quite well and along with "taput" which lets you read/write data to and from .TAP files (https://github.com/Sivvus/taput) I've now created a .TRD image file that contains the HiSoft DevPac Assembler and Disassembler.

This is all new to me, so I wonder:
did any of you use Betdisk controller and TR-DOS back in the day on the #Speccy?