hcj@lzaz.ATT.COM (HC Johnson) (01/26/89)
Some observations on Spectre 128, Magic Sac, and Happy Products. I have been informed that the Happy cartridge does allow Mac roms to be plugged in, and thus allow Spectre 128 to run. (And that Dave Small is not happy (pun?) about this). Using this product is about the same as hacking up the Magic Sac to accept 128K roms. (Yes Virginia, it very easy). Both allow one to use copies of the Spectre software to be run. And previously (in Magic Sac days at least) Dave Small has posted upgrades to the software on GENIE, etc. The potential for piracy is obvious. I think my earlier observations that the Happy product would not allow direct access of MAC disks to take place is correct. I suspect that Dave Small will try to prevent it from happening. More intriguing is that a cartridge product such as Happy's must allow for some funny reading to do writing. Now Spectre like Magic sac, is always sneaking reads from the roms just to prevent loading the program without them using a disk (ala Magic Bongo). Once he finds the right sequence to make Happy unhappy, .... Anyway, I bought my Spectre, Bought my legal roms, and hate cartridges. So I prefer to load from the disk, until the next upgrade. Dave Small said it best in his first mailing: If he's badly pirated he's out of business, and that will hurt all of us. I might add that in this game, endless upgrades are essential. Without them a Spectre 128 is just a plastic box. Howard Johnson ATT-BL lzaz!hcj
Xorg@cup.portal.com (Peter Ted Szymonik) (01/28/89)
You'd be interested in the debate raging over on GEnie! :-] You can possibly use Mac Roms in the Happy Cart except that its not a smart idea, first off to use the Spectre software you have get it legally - i.e. buy the entire package, otherwise you are pirating. Second, to use the 128K ROMs you have to do a great deal of hacking and soldering which quickly voids Happy's already poor warranty, the Happy Cart only works on 92% of the Megas out there by Richard Adams own admission (and no refund if it doesn't work on your otherwise perfect system), and finally, the Happy Cart has a nasty habit of 'glitching' disks on power up and down that can destroy data and even make the disks unformattable! And finally as you mentioned, it is highly likely that Dave Small will make any future revisions of Spectre incompatable with the Discovery Cart, and the revision current on the way has such nice things as enabled sound! Pete