From the Reenigne Blog: More 8088 MPH how it's done

Another write up from the Reenigne blog regarding all the other bits of the 8088 MPH demo.. Excellent reading, :)

More 8088 MPH How It's Done

Call me Bob, "I can fix it!!!"

Ok, so I finally got around to attempting the replacement of the front screen digitizer on my Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 (SM-210).

First, I removed the case that I have on my Tab3

Then I had a look over the tools.. Nothing too scary, let's hope they work...

Now for the actual screen.. I took it out of the bubble-wrap and saw this !!!

DAMMIT !!!

Multiple cracks coming from a single point....  I am assuming it was done in transit, it will teach me to always check as soon as an item arrives, :/  Anyway, I've sent the picture to the seller on ebay and will await their reply.

Then I will attempt to document my trials and tribulations fixing the Tab3, :D

Until then, enjoy the weather, :)

I miss living near the sea, :/

A friend on facebook posted me these pics of where he is today, :/  GIT !!!!! lol

Almost forgot !!!

Damn, my memory is terrible sometimes..  Here are some links to my pages....

Youtube

Facebook

ZX-Speccy.co.uk

Twitter

ZX Prism: Easter Update

Ahaaaaaa.

Another update for the excellent ZX Prism, I'm off to read it, come join me, :D

ZX Prism: Easter Update

The Story of the ZX Spectrum in Pixels (volumes 1 & 2)

Listen closely now...

Can you hear it?  That little voice saying you *must* purchase these books, :D

Go do it now,

Steve Wetherill on the books :)

From the Reenigne blog: 8088 PC Speaker MOD player: How it's done

Another excellent write-up from the 8088 MPH demo, :)

http://www.reenigne.org/blog/8088-pc-speaker-mod-player-how-its-done/

From Reenigne blog: 1K colours on CGA: How it's done

Excellent write-up of how 1K colours are produced on and old CGA card for the 8088 MPH old-skool demo, :)

www.reenigne.org/blog/1k-colours-on-cga-how-its-done/

ZX Spectrum 128K Blues Brothers

Work is progressing well so far.

I've been messing about getting Vortex Tracker II AY tunes to work, found a problem with the assembler I was using that caused the tracker player code not to work, grr...  So, I bit the bullet and switched over to using SjAsmPlus as my main assembler.  It has some nice features that I may go into at a later date...

Here are some random pictures, :D

I think my pussy is tired

Poor Jazz is tired. Out in the sun all day and running around. That'll teach her lol

Well, I am back.... (finally)

Welcome back!!!

I finally remembered that I had started a Wordpress blog, and decided to maybe update it.. However, it seems that I was using 2-step authentication, which is good, until you forget that you no longer have the phone that the authorisation code is being sent to, :(
I am to blame a little, seeing as at the time of setting that up I decided that I wouldn't need the backup codes it insisted I print out... Whoooooopsies!!!

Anyhow, I decided to try out Google Blogger (seems ok so far) and literally just copied and pasted the posts from the Wordpress blog into here. So, any posts here from before this post are over a year old.

I will be attempting to keep a regular schedule of posting to here, mainly about my adventures in coding, although I expect that there may end up being a lot of other crap posted here too.

Enjoy, and feel free to post any comments (good/bad/mad/silly) and I will always try to reply, :D

Cyaaaaaaaaaa.

John (polomint)

ZXinfoseek for Windows Phone 8

Anyone here interested in the old ZX Spectrum games?

I wrote a little app to search the Infoseek Games Database at World Of Spectrum.

Basic features are in, and more to come, such as skydrive integration, favourites, proper viewing of screenshots, sharing the game details via social networks etc. I’m also hoping to be able to pass the game to any ZX Spectrum emulator that is installed on the phone, :)

Any comments would be appreciated, along with any new ideas, :)

If you would like to beta test then please pm me your microsoft id, and phone details.

Thank you.

John.

ZXodus Engine by Andrew Owen

Have a look at this for some cool multicolour on the ZX Spectrum, :)

Jetpack error when trying to access WordPress from a mobile app

If you get that strange Jetpack error when logging in to a WordPress hosted blog then try this

Turn on 2-step authentication and then try to login. In my case it got rid of the error, but said the password was incorrect. Go back into your security settings and create an app password. Use that as your password for logging in from your mobile device.

I hope that helps. I had the Jetpack error on both my Nokia Lumia’s and this worked for both of then.

Good luck….

Opening the store to your app page (a follow on from the previous post)

Back again, with a quick post on opening your app store page. Very handy if you have followed the previous post regarding the Trial Experience.

1. In the MainPage.xaml.cs (or any page where you wish to open the app store page) enter this code

   using Microsoft.Phone.Tasks;

2. Then to open the app store page use this code

   MarketplaceDetailTask _marketPlaceDetailTask = new MarketplaceDetailTask();
   _marketPlaceDetailTask.Show();

3. Simples…

Note: If you have not published your app to the Store then an error (code 805a0941) will be shown.  When the app is published to the Store, this code will work correct and detect your app unique ID and show the correct details page in the Store client app.

Coding the Trial Experience with Windows Phone 8

A couple of days ago I decided to make an app to access the Sinclair Infoseek service at World of Spectrum.  It’s going well so far, I have the basic search up and running, along with a display of the results.

I intend to add other features as and when I think of them. Current planned features include:

• Favourites: Save your favourite searches
• SkyDrive: Save the searches to SkyDrive
• SkyDrive 2: When you have found an interesting game, you can pick the .tap/.tzx etc to upload to your SkyDrive account so that you can load it up in a ZX Spectrum emulator.  On Windows Phone I use MetroSpec. I might even attempt to open the game in MetroSpec directly from my app.
• Save/Load Screens: Save and Load loading screens and in-game screens. Allow zooming etc.
• A page that gets a random infoseek entry (maybe 30-50 at a time), so that you can browse through games that you may have never seen before, :)
• More stuff that I cannot remember (why is it that I wake up at 3am with great ideas, then forget them by the time I get up in the morning…)

Now, back on-topic…

I would like to disable some features until the user has purchased the app (at the cheapest price that the Windows Phone App Store allows), so I had to be able to allow users to trial the app. I was worried that it might be a complicated process, but found that it was very, very easy.

Here are the steps I used:

1. Add this line to your App.xaml.cs file

   using Microsoft.Phone.Marketplace;

2. In the App class, declare the a local static variable which used the LicenseInformation class to determine if the app is running under a trial license or not

        private static LicenseInformation _licenseInfo = new LicenseInformation();

3. Now you need a variable to cache whether the app is in Trial mode or not, so place this in yourApp.xaml.cs

           private static bool _isTrial = true;
           public bool IsTrial
           {
               get
               {
                   return _isTrial;
               }
           }

4. Now for a method for checking the license. Again, this should go in App.xaml.cs

           private void CheckLicense()
           {
               // this displays a dialog so that we can simulate trial mode being on or off. 
   #if DEBUG
               string message = "Press 'OK' to simulate trial mode. Press 'Cancel' to run the application in normal mode.";
               if (MessageBox.Show(message, "Debug Trial",
                    MessageBoxButton.OKCancel) == MessageBoxResult.OK)
               {
                   _isTrial = true;
               }
               else
               {
                   _isTrial = false;
               }
   #else
               _isTrial = _licenseInfo.IsTrial();
   #endif
           }

5. We must check the trial status whenever the app is started or whenever it resumes from a sleeping state.  Once again, this code goes in App.xaml.cs

   private void Application_Launching(object sender, LaunchingEventArgs e)
           {
               CheckLicense();
           }
           private void Application_Activated(object sender, ActivatedEventArgs e)
           {
               CheckLicense();
           }

6. To use this in your app, whenever you have code that should not be run when the user is in trial mode, you just use

   if ((Application.Current as App).IsTrial)
   {
       // Do this if app is in trial mode, the usual thing would be to inform the user
       // that the feature is no available in the trial and ask them to purchase the 
       // full app from the store.
   }
   else
   {
       // Do this if the app is *not* in trial mode
   }

7. That’s all there is to it, easy huh. :)