alchnews:

AlchNews is the organisation's electronic magazine. We started it back in 1990, primarily as a small information file for local Sinclair QL users and supporters, and was just a plain 'Quill' word processor file! We never created anything on paper because we simply had no printer!

We then moved to the Spectrum and tried a variety of different display formats, beginning with teletext style graphics on the FIREVIEW2 program (an excellent Viewdata communications editor - a precursor to the web browser), before painstakingly hand typing the next dozen issues into BASIC statements, filling every byte of memory! Load some of our early issues in and take a look at the program listings - it's no wonder the magazine was quarterly!

Then, the famous DOMINIC MORRIS, wrote a display program for another electronic magazine, SINCLAIR NEWS. When that ceased operating, we purchased the rights and Dominic modified the program to display the text in our desired 42 column mode. Since then, the format of the magazine has altered slightly, but the display program is still the same. All we need do is reformat any articles to 42 columns and put them into Dominic's specially written compilers, greatly reducing the hours needed to put the magazine together.

This continued for a number of years, incorporating other magazines and their writers along the way, right until issue 33 when, in June 2000, we were offered the opportunity to take over the leading Z88 magazine, Z88 USER.  This was a very difficult moment in our history; with the running of two separate magazines unfeasible, should we merge the two and how?  In the end we decided to continue with the format of a bi-monthly A5 paper magazine.   It wasn't the best of decisions.  Although the production was much easier than before and we could incorporate true pictures, we lost hundreds of readers who got the magazine from the Internet for free.

In August 2001 we invested in a copy of Adobe Acrobat, the utility which allows PDF files to be created - the most popular format for viewing paper documents on screen.  All issues of the paper magazine, both past and future, will be converted to PDF and uploaded to this site to allow users to continue reading for free.   This also reduces our copying and distribution costs.

With electronic issues averaging approximately one megabyte, and hundreds of pages of text, and the paper issues comprising of over 30 pages, AlchNews covers everything Spectrum; including unrivalled sections on:

hardware, software, utilities, games, fiction, tutorials, machine code, sci-fi, programming, emulators, languages, disk systems, music, and the cult 'RANTS' sections...

...all written by leading names in the Spectrum community.

AlchNews is now THE last Sinclair magazine, as it supports the ZX81, Spectrum, QL, Z88 and emulators in every issue, and not just with the odd article every few months like some magazines do.   It's been called the best Sinclair electronic magazine around. Other Spectrum groups give the magazine nothing but praise. It's been free ever since issue one and will continue to be for as long as the magazine is produced. Thanks to YOUR support, and a large archive of material, we do not plan to stop producing the magazine for many years to come!

To read AlchNews, simply download an issue from below and then load into Z80, ZX32, X128 or your favourite emulator which supports multi-TAP files. We also have a version for the Cambridge Z88. You can download these files from Z88 FOREVER.  To read AlchNews, follow your emulator's instructions on loading TAP files. When you see the editorial screen, use the cursor keys to move up and down the page, or left and right to the next. When you can go no further, press the SPACE bar and then 'N' to load in the next section.

The newer issues - 33 onwards - are ZIPped PDF files, which can be viewed and even printed with the common freeware ADOBE ACROBAT READER program.

 

To search for a particular article, take a look at THE ALCHNEWS INDEX.



AlchNews 01 (9Kb)

AlchNews 02 (17Kb)

AlchNews 03 (16Kb)

AlchNews 04 (11Kb)

AlchNews 05 (16Kb)

AlchNews 06 (16Kb)

AlchNews 07 (14Kb)

AlchNews 08 (16Kb)

AlchNews 09 (26Kb)

AlchNews 10 (45Kb)

AlchNews 11 (42Kb)

AlchNews 12 (50Kb)

AlchNews 13 (97Kb)

AlchNews 14 (136Kb)

AlchNews 15 (148Kb)

AlchNews 16 (190Kb)

AlchNews 17 (97Kb)

AlchNews 18 (146Kb)

AlchNews 19 (157Kb)

AlchNews 20 (154Kb)

AlchNews 21 (120Kb)

AlchNews 22 (133Kb)

AlchNews 23 (120Kb)

AlchNews 24 (120Kb)

AlchNews 25 (88Kb)

AlchNews 26 (92Kb)

AlchNews 27 (83Kb)

AlchNews 28 (130Kb)

AlchNews 29 (86Kb)

AlchNews 30 (73Kb)

AlchNews 31 (90Kb)

AlchNews 32 (94Kb)

AlchNews 33 / Z88 User 7 (2.10Mb)

AlchNews 34 / Z88 User 8 (2.15Mb)

AlchNews 35 / Z88 User 9 (685Kb)

AlchNews 36 / Z88 User 10 (1.90Mb)

AlchNews 37 / Z88 User 11 (1.68Mb)

AlchNews 38 / Z88 User 12 (1.09Mb)