Collaborate!

- "Hey! How can I collaborate with you?"

- Mmmm, that's easy. Do you have original 'Spanish' Spectrum tapes or disks? (*) Then just follow the rules for each kind of required resources (see tapes, disks, inlays, instructions) and send us your file(s), with the appropiate info, via e-mail (see address above).

(*) see What is SPA2? to find out what do we exactly call 'Spanish' Spectrum titles.

- "What info do you want me to send you along with the new files?"

- This info is absolutely necessary:

• Title.
• Publisher.
• Origin: Original release / re-release / covertape / ...

Also the following info would be much appreciated (in order of relevance):

• Depósito Legal (D.L.) identificator (e.g., M-26807-1991).
• Box size: Standard (jewel) / medium (clam case) / doble / large (cardboard case) / non-standard size (please provide size in centimeters, if possible).
• Year of release in Spain.
• Original publisher (only if it is a re-release).
• Message language (Spanish / English / etc.).
• Sender name (to include you in our collaborators' list).

Man, I don't understand a word!

- "I have an original Spanish re-release from a Codemasters/Capcom/Ultimate/... game. I see that currently the distribution of this game is denied, so I don't know whether to send it to you. What should I do? "

- Please send us what you have. Although downloading banned titles is not allowed at SPA2 (**), we store those titles in order to preserve them before it is too late (remember that tapes and disks are bound to demagnetize). Besides, once their authors / copyright holders lift the distribution ban, we will be able to make them available for you.

(**) see our policy at What is SPA2?.

- "Do you accept importation titles?"

- No, they are out of the scope of the SPA2 project.

- "I see. But what do you exactly understand by 'importation titles'?"

- When we say 'importation titles', we are speaking about those titles that, although they have been published in Spain, they have not been edited with respect to the original version (that is, they were sold exactly as outside Spain). That implies that both the sleeve and the tape/disk themselves are exactly the same.

- "Erm, I have a program that seems an 'importation title' but the instructions inside the box are written in Spanish! "

- Yes, that happened ocassionally. Scan those instructions and send them to us. We also store them, but we do not need the inlay or the TZX/DSK - other more generalistic ZX archives will definitely be interested in archiving them. .

- "How do I transfer a tape to .TZX format?"

- There are many good how-to documents on the Internet. Particularly, I would point out the following ones :

[from e.c.s.s.] - Guía ultra-rápida para cocinar TZXs (para DOS, Windows, Linux o Amiga), by Juan Pablo López.

[from Magazine ZX, issue 10] - Creación de ficheros de cinta TZX en GNU/Linux, by Josetxu Malanda.

[from El trastero del Spectrum] - De la cinta al PC, by José Manuel Claros.

[from The .TZX Vault] - How to create .tzx files, by Steve Brown.

Please be aware of the following usual mistakes:

• Never beautify your TZXs! (that is, if you use MakeTZX do not ever check the "beautify" option)
• Take care with Pause/Stop blocks in Taper. If you have the "TZXStripPauseLengths" option enabled in your TAPER.INI file, you are bound to corrupt your TZX inserting this kind of blocks. Then it would not be perfect and, therefore, we would not accept it at SPA2.
• Do not miss your time transferring your .TAP files to TZX format. The .TZX would not be perfect then, and so it would be rejected.
• Do not discard any TZX utility. Taper, MakeTZX, Voc2TZX: all of them are particularly useful for certain kind of tasks.
• Remember: one (and only one) TZX for each side of the tape - except when both sides are equal (in that case, just one TZX will be enough).

- "Do you accept TZXs obtained from tape 2 tape copies?"

- Yes, we accept them as long as they are exact to the original tape. Even though we prefer an original copy, of course!

- "Spare time?. I'll never grab a little of my own! How can the President of the USA transfer his own Speccy tapes, uhm? "

- Oh, if you are so busy, why don't you loan us your tapes? We'll do the hard work for you.

- "Hi! I'm a +3 addict. How can I transfer my disks?"

- Let me recommend you some helpful documentation about how to obtain perfect Extended disk image files (EDSK) from +3 disks. You may want to have a look-through to :

[from Magazine ZX, issue 16] - Instalación y uso de una unidad de disco de 3" en un PC, by José Leandro Novellón and Juan Pablo López.

[from Spectrumaniacos] - Cómo conectar una disquetera de 3" al PC, by Moxonite.

[from The .TZX Vault] - How to dump +3 disks, by David Batty.

- "Do you accept DSKs obtained from disk 2 disk copies?"

- Yes, we accept them as long as they are exact to the original disk (that is, they respect the data and loading scheme). Even though we prefer an original copy, of course!

- "I've got tons of inlays ready to be scanned. Where should I start from? "

- Although you are allowed to use a different format, we strongly encourage you to send us non-cropped, raw scans at 300dpi (minimum) resolution (optimal: 600dpi) stored in a lossless format (e.g., PNG).

Inlay scans following these rules will always be preferred to those that don't respect them (which therefore will be bound to be replaced).

Please, don't forget to send us the box/inlay size along with your scan (see required info for SPA2 submissions).

- "I want to send you the original instructions (in Spanish) of a Spectrum program. Which one is the desired format? "

- The ideal is to have the scans in a format similar to the one requested for inlays. Regardless of the above, we also like to have them in a more readable format, obtained for example through OCR software. For those processed instructions, the optimal format is Adobe PDF. In any case, we also accept plain text files (TXT) or other text formats (DOC, RTF, DJVU) that we will convert to PDF format.