Search found 735 matches

by Seven.FFF
Tue Mar 26, 2024 7:00 pm
Forum: ZX Spectrum Next
Topic: Can Currah Microspeech be used with the Next?
Replies: 3
Views: 159

Re: Can Currah Microspeech be used with the Next?

Once modified (or not), here's a Next tutorial video from Tim Gilberts (of The Quill and PAW fame) including the Next OUT commands you need to type to enable the expansion bus and disable the internal hardware that clashes with the uSpeech:

by Seven.FFF
Tue Mar 26, 2024 6:51 pm
Forum: ZX Spectrum Next
Topic: Can Currah Microspeech be used with the Next?
Replies: 3
Views: 159

Re: Can Currah Microspeech be used with the Next?

It is often repeated that Currah uSpeech isn't compatible with any Spectrums that don't have RF output. Usually people mod them to output audio directly. Here's one such mod: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdAvMTof0jo It is, apparently, possible to get it working without a mod. The audio is availab...
by Seven.FFF
Sun Mar 24, 2024 11:18 am
Forum: Games/Software
Topic: Chuckie Egg Kempston support
Replies: 12
Views: 1966

Re: Chuckie Egg Kempston support

I hope it is per game It’s per game, as are all the game load options. That’s why the options exist in the first case,?to allow you to tweak the hardware for the way each game needs - which is often at odds with other games. One game only works on 128K, another game only works on 48K or with USR0 m...
by Seven.FFF
Sat Mar 23, 2024 7:50 pm
Forum: Games/Software
Topic: Chuckie Egg Kempston support
Replies: 12
Views: 1966

Re: Chuckie Egg Kempston support

As a proud owner of a ks2 zx next Sounds like you may not be aware you can map keys to your joysticks in all TAP/TZX/Z80/SNA games on the Next. This works similarly to the rewirable ComCon joystick interface you may remember from back in the day. After you’ve pressed enter in the NedtZXOS browser, ...
by Seven.FFF
Sat Mar 23, 2024 2:24 pm
Forum: Other Retro Stuff
Topic: Realms of Antiquity TI-99/4a
Replies: 7
Views: 252

Re: Realms of Antiquity TI-99/4a

If it’s licensed under an alternate licence that would indeed be tickety boo. But are there any licence details included in the distribution at all? I’m asking you because I don’t really want to spend $10 to find out.
by Seven.FFF
Sat Mar 23, 2024 12:06 pm
Forum: Other Retro Stuff
Topic: Realms of Antiquity TI-99/4a
Replies: 7
Views: 252

Re: Realms of Antiquity TI-99/4a

Is he including the BSD-3 licence for that emulator he’s redistributing as part of what he’s selling?
by Seven.FFF
Mon Mar 18, 2024 8:47 pm
Forum: ZX Spectrum Next
Topic: Atari Driving Controller Games
Replies: 7
Views: 318

Re: Atari Driving Controller Games

Surely you need to be reading that at a hell of a rate to detect the switching, to the detriment of the game? It presents constant bit values to, say, IN 31 with a kempston interface, so you only need to read once per frame, just like you would with a joystick. The values only change when the user ...
by Seven.FFF
Mon Mar 18, 2024 12:36 pm
Forum: ZX Spectrum Next
Topic: Atari Driving Controller Games
Replies: 7
Views: 318

Re: Atari Driving Controller Games

Now if some boffin could remake Deathchase for the Next & make it compatible with the Driving Controller, that'd be incredible! Atari driving controller will generally work anywhere Spectrum joysticks work, and with any kempston/sinclair/cursor/protek protocol. They only use left/right/gnd pins...
by Seven.FFF
Sun Mar 17, 2024 7:08 pm
Forum: Programming
Topic: what would this be equivilent to in assembler?
Replies: 33
Views: 596

Re: what would this be equivilent to in assembler?

You can detect multiple keys, but you can’t detect that other keys weren’t pressed, because of the way this kind of matrix shorts out a row to a column. And the more extra keys are pressed, the more phantom keypresses register. With carefully crafted fixed defined keys you can get away with a certai...
by Seven.FFF
Sun Mar 17, 2024 6:54 pm
Forum: Programming
Topic: what would this be equivilent to in assembler?
Replies: 33
Views: 596

Re: what would this be equivilent to in assembler?

I'm definitely able to detect at least 4 keys at once (it also depends on the PC keyboard when emulating though I guess, some keyboards have limits to which keys can be pressed simultaneously). Using emulators to derive the hardware characteristics of real spectrums is a bit... counterproductive. I...
by Seven.FFF
Sun Mar 17, 2024 6:42 pm
Forum: Programming
Topic: what would this be equivilent to in assembler?
Replies: 33
Views: 596

Re: what would this be equivilent to in assembler?

The ROM routines (that set LASTK) are great for quick routines when you're typing words and sentences on one key at a time. In most games you're moving up/down and left/right at the same time, or left/right and jump and the same time, or moving and firing at the same time, or rotating and thrusting ...
by Seven.FFF
Sun Mar 17, 2024 5:45 pm
Forum: Programming
Topic: what would this be equivilent to in assembler?
Replies: 33
Views: 596

Re: what would this be equivilent to in assembler?

cool, got that working. so how do i tell the program not to not let 'a' register go passed say 31? If you wanted to wrap X around so it goes 0,1,..,30,31,0,1 you can use a neat trick with and 31 , because 32 is a power of two: Key.SpSsMNB equ $7ffe ; Half row for Space, Sybmbol Shift, M, N, and B X...
by Seven.FFF
Sun Mar 17, 2024 3:20 pm
Forum: Programming
Topic: what would this be equivilent to in assembler?
Replies: 33
Views: 596

Re: what would this be equivilent to in assembler?

There's lots of ways depending on whether X is in a register or memory location, whether it can go larger than 255, whether you want it to wrap or stop at a certain max value, whether you want to do something with X after increasing it, etc. But something like this is a good start: Key.SpSsMNB equ $...
by Seven.FFF
Sun Feb 25, 2024 3:28 pm
Forum: ZX Spectrum Next
Topic: NEXT FAQ’s
Replies: 65
Views: 3430

Re: NEXT FAQ’s

sludge : 1) Mouse : The Next only uses ps/2 mice that plug into the ps/2 socket. These are converted to Kempston protocol in the FPGA core. It's purely a hardware thing, there's no software drivers or USB stack. You're thinking of some mice that were made 20-25 years ago that could speak both USB a...
by Seven.FFF
Sat Feb 24, 2024 6:31 pm
Forum: ZX Spectrum Next
Topic: NEXT FAQ’s
Replies: 65
Views: 3430

Re: NEXT FAQ’s

If you wanted to play with the ps/2 keymap, it's not especially well documented, but this should start you off. The keymap lives in c:/machines/next/keymap.bin, and is loaded at power on and cold reset. It's a 1024 byte file containing 512 pairs of bytes, even one being a 16 bit big-endian keycode m...
by Seven.FFF
Sat Feb 24, 2024 6:12 pm
Forum: ZX Spectrum Next
Topic: NEXT FAQ’s
Replies: 65
Views: 3430

Re: NEXT FAQ’s

It's a known bug/limitation in the ps/2 hardware state machine, unfortunately: https://gitlab.com/thesmog358/tbblue/-/issues/86 It's on Allen's fix list to do a rewrite of the ps/2 keyboard module, but a few other things have to happen first, so it may not happen immediately. There isn't much of a s...
by Seven.FFF
Fri Feb 02, 2024 11:03 pm
Forum: ZX Spectrum Next
Topic: Loading ZX Spectrum 48k BASIC program into NEXT BASIC
Replies: 8
Views: 346

Re: Loading ZX Spectrum 48k BASIC program into NEXT BASIC

I assume so but maybe someone else can confirm that? Yes, you can use RUN AT 0 to 3 as many times as you like, at any points in your program. This goes for asm too, where you can do nextreg 7,0 to 3. The nextreg is also readable, and it is common for programs to read and save the current value, cha...
by Seven.FFF
Fri Feb 02, 2024 10:51 pm
Forum: ZX Spectrum Next
Topic: NEXT FAQ’s
Replies: 65
Views: 3430

Re: NEXT FAQ’s

cmal wrote: Fri Feb 02, 2024 6:26 pm Issue: TZX files do not load when keyboard Issue 2 is selected:
Thanks for reporting this, and everyone else who confirmed it! I can also reproduce. We are discussing the possible causes.
by Seven.FFF
Fri Feb 02, 2024 2:31 pm
Forum: ZX Spectrum Next
Topic: NEXT FAQ’s
Replies: 65
Views: 3430

Re: NEXT FAQ’s

What is the best way to report a bug/issue related to the KS2 Next? NextBASIC/NextZXOS/dot command/distro issues: https://gitlab.com/thesmog358/tbblue/-/issues FPGA core issues: https://gitlab.com/SpectrumNext/ZX_Spectrum_Next_FPGA/-/issues Physical hardware issues (loose keys, broken feet, etc): e...
by Seven.FFF
Tue Jan 30, 2024 2:06 pm
Forum: Hardware
Topic: External FDD connector on +2A/B
Replies: 6
Views: 313

Re: External FDD connector on +2A/B

cj7hawk wrote: Tue Jan 30, 2024 1:36 pm Or, since the important signals are available at the expansion port, you could just make an external PCB with the missing components, and make the entire thing external with 1 or 2 drives, and a Spectrum bus interface.
Like SD-1 and PLUS-2A-FDD.
by Seven.FFF
Wed Jan 24, 2024 6:53 pm
Forum: ZX Spectrum Next
Topic: Changing paper/border colours in LAYER 1,2.
Replies: 5
Views: 363

Re: Changing paper/border colours in LAYER 1,2.

The Next palette system has a pair of 256 entry palettes for every layer. Each entry in a palette can be defined as a RGB333 9bit colour or RGB332 8bit colour (which are actually expanded out to 9bit colours internally after you set them, with the 9th bit coming from oRing two other blue bits togeth...
by Seven.FFF
Wed Jan 24, 2024 6:30 pm
Forum: ZX Spectrum Next
Topic: SymbOS multitasking operating system for the Next
Replies: 19
Views: 1347

Re: SymbOS multitasking operating system for the Next

Next has a native hardware tilemap, with four variants: 40x32, 16 colours per tile, individual tiles can specify one of 16 subpalettes 80x32, 16 colours per tile, individual tiles can specify one of 16 subpalettes 40x32, 2 colours per tile, individual tiles can specify one of 128 subpalettes of pape...
by Seven.FFF
Mon Jan 22, 2024 8:37 pm
Forum: ZX Spectrum Next
Topic: NEXT FAQ’s
Replies: 65
Views: 3430

Re: NEXT FAQ’s

There's an .http dot command written by Remy Sharp that will let you do an HTTP GET or POST on any http address (not https, as the ESP can't do SSL/TLS), and dump the returned results into any consecutive set of 8K RAM banks. It's a bit crude, and only supports a tiny subset of the HTTP protocol, bu...
by Seven.FFF
Mon Jan 22, 2024 7:00 pm
Forum: ZX Spectrum Next
Topic: NEXT FAQ’s
Replies: 65
Views: 3430

Re: NEXT FAQ’s

There is no current SMB client, and scant possibility of somebody writing one in the future. The ESP wifi module doesn't expose any useful low level tcp/ip stuff, it's essentially a very flaky modem, running random versions of bad Chinese firmware, running over a slowish serial connection. And the N...
by Seven.FFF
Sat Jan 20, 2024 12:17 am
Forum: ZX Spectrum Next
Topic: NEXT FAQ’s
Replies: 65
Views: 3430

Re: NEXT FAQ’s

I'm pretty sure USB keyboards and mice have to support the PS/2 protocol in order to work with those adapters and I doubt a wireless dongle would bother implementing that (not even sure it'd supply sufficient power if one wanted to) Yep, there was a while back in the early 2000s where manufacturers...