+3 disk conversions - Spectrum Computing (2024)

Since getting a gotek, my +3 has been getting a lot of use.
I'd like to get hold of some .dsk files for it - particularly games that were multiload and tape only. Also where any incompatibilities have been fixed, so they run on a +3
Does anyone know of a good resources?

I found one spanish site
http://spectrum3.esy.es/

Anyone know of any others?

Spectrumpedia, the most comprehensive book ever written about the Spectrum - Zankle Soft - Corrections for games incompatible with the +2A/+3 - TAP files for DivIDE/DivMMC - SetoLOAD fast tape loading scheme

Wow that is a good start, thankyou

I heard a guy called nuggeteggae did some conversions recently. Anyone know where they might be?

For multi-load that don't already have a disk release you will need to find a version that somebody has hacked to put in a disk loader or converted to an all-in-ones. I've not seen many of the former, if any, but the single loads are more common and Loader-8 released a load on Facebook recently. Issue then is most of these are tape loads which you then need to transfer to disk.

The good news is I've been working on a couple of utilities to do exactly this. The first is Z80onDSK which converts a Z80 snapshot to disk. You basically load the game in on an emulator, take a snapshot when it's loaded and then convert that to a disk. The other is TAPonDSK which tries to do the same but from the tape itself removing the need to create a snapshot. Z80onDSK works for nearly 100% of games whereas TAPonDSK is experimental & WiP so not as compatible.

TomD

Nuggetreggae is a member of the WoS forum, although he hasn't been active there for some years by now. He made several corrections for software incompatibilities with the +2A/+3. He also made several installers to create custom made disk images of existing files. You can download them from [url=
http://www.alessandrogrussu.it/zx/Nugget.zip]here[/url]. Don't ask me how to use them, though; he sent me them some time ago with other stuff but having no need for them I just left them aside.

By the way, I own a +3 myself but I seldom use it; most of the times I run software and test my own works with a 48K, a +2A and a DivMMC EnJoy.

Spectrumpedia, the most comprehensive book ever written about the Spectrum - Zankle Soft - Corrections for games incompatible with the +2A/+3 - TAP files for DivIDE/DivMMC - SetoLOAD fast tape loading scheme

Alessandro wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 3:15 pmNuggetreggae is a member of the WoS forum, although he hasn't been active there for some years by now. He made several corrections for software incompatibilities with the +2A/+3. He also made several installers to create custom made disk images of existing files. You can download them from [url=
http://www.alessandrogrussu.it/zx/Nugget.zip]here[/url]. Don't ask me how to use them, though; he sent me them some time ago with other stuff but having no need for them I just left them aside.

By the way, I own a +3 myself but I seldom use it; most of the times I run software and test my own works with a 48K, a +2A and a DivMMC EnJoy.

I've just tried the .tzx files, they work great.
Just load up a the insrtaller in an emulator, let the installer do it's thing and save to a .dsk.
Then put .dsk on a usb and play on a real spectrum. Wow that's ace thankyou for this

TomD wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 3:07 pmFor multi-load that don't already have a disk release you will need to find a version that somebody has hacked to put in a disk loader or converted to an all-in-ones. I've not seen many of the former, if any, but the single loads are more common and Loader-8 released a load on Facebook recently. Issue then is most of these are tape loads which you then need to transfer to disk.

The good news is I've been working on a couple of utilities to do exactly this. The first is Z80onDSK which converts a Z80 snapshot to disk. You basically load the game in on an emulator, take a snapshot when it's loaded and then convert that to a disk. The other is TAPonDSK which tries to do the same but from the tape itself removing the need to create a snapshot. Z80onDSK works for nearly 100% of games whereas TAPonDSK is experimental & WiP so not as compatible.

TomD

Hi Tom. Yes I get what you are saying on the multiloads. If they haven't been hacked to load off disk, they'll automatically try and load the next stage off tape. I tried z80ondsk, it's a great utility. There was one file it didn't like - which was a .z80 that was intended for a grey +2. But all the others worked great. I ran it on my ubuntu laptop in wine.

I'll definitely give the tapondsk a try as well. It sounds really good - One of those thing I wish I had back in the day! I remember trying to hand convert games from tape to disc if they had BASIC loaders, and finding it really tricky!
Thank you for your hard work

Lastly where are these loader-8 files?

Just looked and it seems they are just the Nugget ones that Alessandro mentioned.

Anyway just in case they are different here is the link https://www.facebook.com/groups/spectru ... 8055971997

Also what version of Z80onDSK did you try. I did update it recently to fix some bugs.

TomD

There is a lot of games converted to +3 in this site:

http://spectrum3.esy.es/index.html

https://rincondelspectrum.blogspot.com/

TomD wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 8:19 pmJust looked and it seems they are just the Nugget ones that Alessandro mentioned.

Anyway just in case they are different here is the link https://www.facebook.com/groups/spectru ... 8055971997

Also what version of Z80onDSK did you try. I did update it recently to fix some bugs.

TomD

Ah yes I've just seen the updated version. I was using 2.0 before.
The file that gave me hassle was the barbarian remix from http://retrospec.sgn.net/users/tomcat/T ... racks.html
On 3.2 it now DSKs, but then crashes when I attempt to load it on an emulated +3.
However I'm not too fussed about this file in particular as I've found a +3 converted barbarian remix.

schneil wrote: ↑Sun Sep 13, 2020 9:41 am

TomD wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 8:19 pmJust looked and it seems they are just the Nugget ones that Alessandro mentioned.

Anyway just in case they are different here is the link https://www.facebook.com/groups/spectru ... 8055971997

Also what version of Z80onDSK did you try. I did update it recently to fix some bugs.

TomD

Ah yes I've just seen the updated version. I was using 2.0 before.
The file that gave me hassle was the barbarian remix from http://retrospec.sgn.net/users/tomcat/T ... racks.html
On 3.2 it now DSKs, but then crashes when I attempt to load it on an emulated +3.
However I'm not too fussed about this file in particular as I've found a +3 converted barbarian remix.

Interesting one this. I did a memory dump of both the Z80 snapshot and the disk created with Z80onDSK and they match 100%. I then changed the Z80 snapshot to be +3/2A hardware instead of 128k and it crashes, switched back to 128k and it works again. So this seems to be a +3/2A compatibility issue which my utility can't fix unfortunately.

TomD