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Show HN: ZX Spectrum SCR to PNG Converter

by iamflimflam1 on 1/17/25, 11:20 AM with 6 comments

Scratching my own itch. I had to do this for showing information on ZX Spectrum games. So thought I'd turn it into a useful tool for other people to use.

  • by vitaliyf on 1/18/25, 7:43 PM

    Ahh, the Spectrum screen pixel math, oh the memories.

    Once upon a time a much younger myself obtained a dot-matrix printer that I managed to wire up to my computer. Sadly, it was meant to only print text, and having a fancy typewriter definitely wasn't very much fun to me. Somehow, I figured out that the printer actually supported defining custom fonts! After some reverse-engineering of the format I ended up with a program to slice the screen into rectangles matching printer's letter sizes (which were not 8x8 pixels, to make it extra fun) and sending them as custom font definition for each symbol of the alphabet, then printing "ABCD..."

    Getting a paper printout of loading screens or in-game screenshot art was mind-blowing.

  • by kstrauser on 1/18/25, 7:39 PM

    Why’s the Spectrum’s screen layout different from, say, a C64? The explanation on the page sounds a lot like the 64’s.

    (Not trying to sound snarky, but curious. Hope I can learn something cool this morning!)

  • by hulitu on 1/21/25, 10:17 PM

    I was expecting a program, not a web app.