Papa Dance is a Polish band from the 1980s, and the record Poniżej Krytyki (1986) contains a program for the ZX Spectrum.
Instead of repeating all the previous articles each time, I’ll refer you to the dedicated page, which explains what I do with vinyl records and lists all the pages containing programs, explanations, etc.
Album cover
It clearly lists the two data tracks
Apparently discussing the program, in Polish
Recovering this vinyl was a bit complicated. It wasn’t really due to the condition of the record (it’s a bit old, but manageable), but rather the way it worked. The program is actually on both sides of the record, and it’s necessary to create a single file to simplify things with the emulator. Additionally, while one side was easily read and converted, the second side posed more problems. However, since the program is divided into several blocks, it’s possible to handle this with TZXTools.
The first step, therefore, is to digitize both sides and convert everything to TZX. I use tzxwav with the following command:
tzxwav -tlow -Thigh -lshort -o output.tzx input.wav
After a few attempts, I ended up with three files, each containing one usable block (without errors) for one side, and a final file for the second side. The next step was to isolate the blocks. The following command lists the blocks, with associated numbers:
tzxls -v file.tzx
Once the complete blocks were identified, I simply created TZX files with the relevant blocks. The command expects an input, output, and the blocks. Note that the first block is indeed 0. In the example, we take blocks from 0 to 3 (specifying a single number takes only that block).
tzxcut -i input.tzx -o output.tzx 0:3
I did this for all the files and put everything in the correct order (from the list of previous attempts, I had the correct order of blocks). The final step is therefore to merge everything together.
tzxmerge -o output.tzx input01.tzx input02.tzx input03.tzx
Thus, I obtained a valid file with the correct size. By the way, in this specific case, the ROM can be found online, but not in TZX format, and the block sizes match.
The Program
The program is a quiz about the band, and frankly, I couldn’t find the answers. It’s in Polish, and even attempting a live translation with Google’s tools is challenging. It seems quite specialized, and the only answer I got was simply because there was a 50/50 chance (question 6). So, I recorded the questions (with sound) but answered « n » to each question. One helpful tip, though, is that you need to type an answer and validate with « n » or invalidate (in case of an error) with « t ». The beginning of the video instructs to wait for 3 minutes (20 seconds in reality).
