I was just perusing a few of the sites I generally have issues understanding due to the oft-existing language barrier, and I spotted this post over at ci5.speccy.cz - I confess I'd not spotted it, but then I don't keep an eye on such things. But Google Translate now includes both Czech and Polish in their language lists. How handy is that? And there are even bookmarklets (I already have a couple of these for Russian and Spanish). So... the ZX scene just got a whole lot easier.

If you are MDOS3 user, drop email to Sweet Factory's mailbox (sweet128[at]centrum[dot]cz). He is collecting list of MDOS3 users, so let you be known ;-)

Very quick pointer... Retro-X Alpha 4 is available, and you can get it from WOS-ftp (apologies to Martijn for the direct linkage). Changes are, ooh, stuff. Go now. Shoo.

Sami Vehmaa of the ZXMatrix and ZXCF (to name but two) interface fame has posted a video and some pics of his 48k rubber keyed laptop. Here's a direct link to his YouTube video. He says he'll post his "how I did it" at a later stage.

Speccy Live spotted an interesting one - a new ZX emulator. It's interesting for two reasons (I think): 1 - the name is "Higgins", which is an oddly groovy name for an emulator; 2 - the first version is... v8.10 alpha 1. Rather than, say, 0.1 or something. The emulator is available as a Linux binary only, and currently supports only 48k emulation, tho' it seems thorough including recent advancements in understanding MEMPTR and the like. It's developed by "Someone Higgins", and is available from here.

Young Mr. Gasman has just released a new utility as a result of a discussion about playing Tracker music on a real ZX - Tracker2AY v0.1 is a Ruby script that will convert a .SQT, .PT3, or .STC track (SQ-Tracker, Pro-Tracker, Sound-Tracker) into something playable on a ZX (.TAP, .TZX, .AY). I guess it's a handy tool if you have a bunch of SQT songs lying around waiting to be played (the compiled track format is a pain, believe me). And it would also remove the need to compile the players yourself (tho' aside from .SQT songs the players are fairly straightforward). Lovely.

I've just read a post on the WOS forums by Chris Smith, he of Harlequin fame, about a book he's been working on. During his analysis of the ZX Spectrum ULA, and his production of a replacement, he's been putting his findings into document form with an aim to produce a book all about it. His forum post is mostly asking for advice on the intended audience (hardware nuts, or people with a more general interest in the ZX). Sounds like it could be good "bathroom reading" for those of you who get turned on by the smell of solder.

I see that a new version of the DEMFIR ISO image has been released. If you don't already know, this is a pre-made ISO for use with the DEMFIR firmware for DivIDE. Because of the features of the recent DEMFIR versions it requires a kind of "boot system" to exist on the media (HDD, CF, ...) in order to work, and this ISO is pre-made to allow you to have a play. It's mentioned over on Darkbyte, and you can grab the ISO file at the bottom of z00m's page.

It's been over a year since the last release of Spectaculator, the really-rather-nice ZX emulator for Windows. And I now see that Jon Needle is making a new beta version available to registered users. There currently aren't any details as to what has changed in this pre-release of v7, perhaps one of the registered users (or Jon) could enlighten us?
Update: Thanks to Equinox for sending on a major changes list... it's below the break.

Over on Speccy Live they're pointing to a document written by Prof/4D all about how he goes about the making of logos. Thereof. Unto. The document is in Russian, and comes as a .doc file, but I'm sure some kind soul will soon pump it roughly through google-translate. Some nice pics until that time.