Music Box 128k does not run on the Spectrum +3. It fails with "C Nonsense in BASIC, 9500:3". 36 years later, here's the fix.
Someone updated Music Box 128k in 1992 to support TR-DOS but as far as I can see nobody has updated it to run in a disk image with 128k+3 compatibility.
I don't know why Mark Alexander didn't fix this in 1987 when the +3 came out. It would make saving and loading tunes much easier and faster by using +3 Disks. I think the sound distortion problem on the 128k+3 would make it not a suitable machine for music composers. The limited market may have also made it difficult for Melbourne House to justify a +3 only release.
I have aimed to fix this so the demo tunes could be heard. You could also keep my disk image as a Master disk and copy it to a Work disk so you can compose, load, save, play and compile your tunes on a fast disk instead of tape.
1. Change 1:
ramdisk usage has changed from SAVE !"chars" to SAVE "m:chars" etc.
9500 SAVE "m:chars" : LOAD "m:chars"
9501 LOAD "t:" : SAVE "t:"
2. Change 2:
1921 GOSUB 9999
9999 IF D$="CASS TAPE" THEN LOAD "t:" : SAVE "t:" : RETURN
This worked but when I tried to load a tune from tape I get the error "Drive not ready, 2811:2"
Running the program from the start again allows the file name input to succeed.
3. Change 3:
rename 2810 to 2811
2810 GOSUB 9999
2811 DIM F$(10) : INPUT "FILENAME :"; LINE F$
remove LINE so this becomes INPUT "FILENAME :"; F$
I tried many things but the problem was the LINE command was causing the error. Why is this?
I copied the files to a DSK from Tape but when I copied the data block I didn't do a CLEAR 47999 before so it would freeze on the main menu. It is working now.
I have made the following changes:
I have not removed the option for Microdrive even though I think Microdrives don't work with +2A/+3.
DANUBE 5K
DATA 18K
GYRO 5K
LOADER 1K
LOADER3 1K
MAIN 14K
MAIN3DOS 14K
PIC 7K
ROCK 5K
SAINTS 5K
SWEV 5K
TRAIN 5K
88K free
1) Music Box 128k+3 DSK (Disk Image). Download here.
To run:
Insert disk
Select +3 BASIC
Type load "loader3" and press enter.
2) Music Box Tune Demo DSK (Disk Image). Download here.
Tunes compiled using Music Box and saved to disk. The loader contains a menu to play them.
To run:
Insert disk
Select +3 BASIC
Type load "loader" and press enter.
3) Source Code Listings here.
This is for reference only created using snaplist.exe from snapshots for easy comparison.
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