Name/Title
TEC Invaders & MazeEntry/Object ID
2025.7.1Description
Software cassette and instruction sheet
TEC Invaders and TEC Maze are games developed for the TEC-1 Z80 Computer. They were written by Cameron Sheppard sometime around 1988. Cameron presented these games to Colin Mitchell at Talking Electronics, who was very impressed. However, the code was too long to be published in Talking Electronics Magazine. It was decided to package the games in Tape format and sell them.
Jim Robertson recently developed a Monitor (OS) for the TEC called JMON which had tape reading and writing capabilities. To utilise these features an Add-On board was required. This was the Data And Tape board or DAT. Jim provided Cameron with a tape system which he used to publish the games to Tape. Issue 15 of the Talking Electronics magazine advertised the tape which could be bought for $6.50.
For Cameron, the tapes didn't sell well as to play the games users needed a TEC Computer, the DAT add-on, a Tape Player and an 8x8 LED Matrix. The games and copies of the tape faded into obscurity. Outside of Cameron's original tape collection, only one other copy has been known to exist.
The Tape games were recently revived when Brian Chiha (Ready? Z80), working with Anders Ernest who built a working DAT board, was able to extract data from one of the original tapes. Brian then disassembled the binary data and adapted the games to work on the modern TEC-1G Computer. The audio was extracted into WAV files and along with the source code, were uploaded to the TEC-1 Software repository.Category
3.8.5 Gaming Software
3.8.0 Software, 3.0 Data Processing Media & Software
Acquisition
Accession
2025.7Source or Donor
Brian ChihaAcquisition Method
Gift