So eventually, I found the original power supply that came with the spectrum. I plugged it in, turned on my TV and Bingo! I was surprised it was still working after all this time!

I also found a couple of old tapes, Hunchback 2 and Football Manager! I didn't try loading these, however. I'm sure they've already been archived by the wonderful boys at World of Spectrum.

So the machine was working, I now needed some software to convert the images I have on my PC. I downloaded Taper but it was DOS only and didn't recognise my new-fangled sound card. So I carried on looking and stumbled across Play TZX which works in Windows.

I loaded a file and was amazed to hear the familiar spectrum loading sound eminating from my speakers! So I quickly coupled up my connector - ah - another problem.

You see, the speaker output from the PC is stereo and the Spectrum connector is two Mono leads, joined together. I could have rewired this, but if you pull the connector half-out of the PC sound card socket, the signal gets through. I pressed 'J', 'Symbol-Shift' and 'P' and it worked! WOW!

So I played Manic Miner for a bit (still can't get past Eugine's Cavern!) then tried a few other games. Most seem to work OK but a few don't (usually the Multiload ones). It seems you may have to hunt for a perfect image to load, I tried a few different versions of the same game, some worked and some didn't. I think it's to do with the PC format (SNA, Z80 or TAP). If it's a snapshot of the Spectrum's internal memory, it must store registers and other stuff that you simply can't replicate into the original.

There you have it. It would be interesting to see if any one else has tried this, or have you done it with a different computer, eg, Amstrad, C64 etc? Drop me a line and let me know how you get on.

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