ZX Spectrum: Detecting in assembly 48k or 128k model

Detecting machine capabilities is just a matter of course in the MSX world. However, in Spectrum land, there wasn't much crossover with 48 and 128k games. Many just came on seperate tapes (or seperate sides of the tapes) and did not share code.

Some cleverly programmed ones, like Avenger, could detect and run the proper loader.

I tried to disassemble Avenger, but either the dump was bad (it wouldn't load the 128k version) or it uses some trickery I couldn't read. Either way I gave up and searched for my own way.

I couldn't find any discussion on this topic on the net, so I was left to my own devices. I came to realize one clear benchmark for 128 machines is the AY chip. As far as I can tell, no 48k machines had one, and every 128k machine did. Perfect!

Well, I tried a routine that polled the AY I/O port, but it doesn't seem to work. What I did not know is that unbound I/O ports will return floating values - about half the time it returns the value you're checking it against. This makes for very unreliable testing.

The other option is memory paging. I THINK this is what Avenger does - it definitely changes the ROM page to the 48k ROM. I did the following instead:


1. Switch the ROM to page 0 - this is never the 48K ROM on any system, and this code will do nothing on a 48K.

2. Read a byte from the ROM I know is only in 48K - The letter "1" from the string "(C) 1982 ..." should work. There is only one version of the 48K ROM, so unless there's something wrong with the system or emulator, this location in RAM (0x153b) should ONLY return '1' on a 48K system.

3. Compare against 0x31 ("1"), and if it differs, we must be on a NON-48K system. In other words, a 128K system (or a 16K, but hopefully nobody will try to run a 48/128 game on a 16K system).

The code looks like this:

As a side note, a secondary check if you REALLY want to make sure you're not on a 16K should be fairly trivial - just find a string byte that is only in that ROM.

Since I can't find any info on this subject, anyone more knowledgeable is welcome to provide alternate solutions - but for now I like this one.

Side note, the gorgeous color scheme is Cobalt in gedit plus the z80 highlight scheme I found on ticalc.org. (install it to a -3.0 folder, not 2.0 like the Readme says).