RETRO The Spectrum User Manual page 32

Chapter 7
Playlists
A playlist makes choosing multi-cassette games a quick single click and avoids
issues with mis-selecting files. They are required for games having more than three
cassettes, but can be used for games having fewer.
A playlist is a text file with an .m3u extension, and it merely lists all the
.tap/.tzx/.pzx files for the game, such as:
Game A tape 1 of 2.tap
Game A tape 2 of 2.tap
The filenames within the playlist can also contain file paths relative to the playlist file
location, which give the flexibility of placing the .tap (or .tzx and .pzx) files in a
different folder to keep the playlist folder uncluttered.
For example, you could place your .tap files in an TAP Files sub-folder, with the
playlists created at the parent level:
/USB stick/TAP Files/Game A tape 1 of 2.tap
/USB stick/TAP Files/Game A tape 2 of 2.tap
/USB stick/TAP Files/Game B tape 1 of 2.tap
/USB stick/TAP Files/Game B tape 2 of 2.tap
/USB stick/Game A.m3u
/USB stick/Game B.m3u
The playlist file Game A.m3u contains two lines as follows (note that the file paths are
relative, so there is no leading path separator '/'), as follows:
TAP Files/Game A tape 1 of 2.tap
TAP Files/Game A tape 2 of 2.tap
Being relative paths, you can move this around easily so long as the example TAP
Files folder stays at the same level as the playlist file.
Note: The playlist file paths use forward-slash (/) as the path separator, not the
Windows backslash (\).
To launch a game through its playlist, navigate to it in the usual way, select it with
M and then launch the game with ENTER.
Once launched, whenever you want to switch to another cassette file listed in the
playlist, press and hold the HOME button and then press S.
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