Long Filename Browser for ZX-UNO / esxDOS

[Seven.FFF]

Velesoft did some research and found that most SD cards have a similar read speed, but can have a write speed that varies wildly from card to card. He quotes an example of a fast card doing a 128K "S" snapshot from esxDOS NMI menu in 7 seconds, and a slow card taking 50 seconds.

Talk to him if you want further info.

[keithshaw3]

Do you have a link for that formatter and I’ll give it a try later on.

it's the same one recommended earlier I think

https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter/

[andydansby]

Do you have a link for that formatter and I’ll give it a try later on.

it's the same one recommended earlier I think

https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter/

That’s the same formatter that I’m using. First time built in Windows formatter. Second time with SD Association formatter. Same reaction time with NMI browser

[PeterJ]

Because of this discussion I was looking through my purchase history on Amazon. In 2005 I purchased a 512MB SD card, and it cost £25.99! I can now get close on 5 32GB cards for that! Amazing.

[andydansby]

Because of this discussion I was looking through my purchase history on Amazon. In 2005 I purchased a 512MB SD card, and it cost £25.99! I can now get close on 5 32GB cards for that! Amazing.

I still have a 5 meg jump drive that I paid a mint for years ago(guessing around 2002-2002). Still have it around somewhere, can’t toss it, it was way too expensive .
Pretty soon it’ll be a “new retro” drive.

[akeley]

OMG!! I SEE LONG FILENAMES!!!1!!1

Man, this is really amazing. I have finally managed to upgrade my DIV SD's esx to 0.8.8 and I can run this browser now. It really changed my whole DIV experience, I can now see what games I'm playing/looking for...beforehand it was just jumbles of letters and bit of a potluck starting games. Thanks A LOT [mention]bob_fossil[/mention] !

Any chance you could update the first post with all the new instructions, features, keybinds, etc? This thread page count is now in double digits and the info is quite scattered. Is it possible to make snapshots, for example?

[bob_fossil]

OMG!! I SEE LONG FILENAMES!!!1!!1

Man, this is really amazing. I have finally managed to upgrade my DIV SD's esx to 0.8.8 and I can run this browser now. It really changed my whole DIV experience, I can now see what games I'm playing/looking for...beforehand it was just jumbles of letters and bit of a potluck starting games. Thanks A LOT @bob_fossil !

Any chance you could update the first post with all the new instructions, features, keybinds, etc? This thread page count is now in double digits and the info is quite scattered. Is it possible to make snapshots, for example?

Thanks! Press Shift + H in the browser to show the help - which should hopefully answer your snapshot question. I can't update the first post. I should probably include a text version of the help screen alongside the changelog in the .zip file.

[keithshaw3]

OMG!! I SEE LONG FILENAMES!!!1!!1

I know it's a revelation and soooo much easier to navigate

[mention]bob_fossil[/mention] do you have anywhere to donate to this great project or for a coffee or two

[akeley]

I can't update the first post. I should probably include a text version of the help screen alongside the changelog in the .zip file.

I'm sure [mention]PeterJ[/mention] could help with that. It'd really be great to have all the crucial info in one place (for example I was first trying to install using the old method described there).

But yeah, adding a readme/help to the changelog or into the zip itself would be cool too. There's too many great features which could be missed otherwise.
In fact I was thinking about requesting "jump to the end of dir" and saw you've already implemented it. Then I thought, okay, if I request some way of naming snapshots it'll be too impossible. Cue my jaw literally dropping when I tried to save and saw it working

So, I don't know what to ask for, this really is just too perfect. Maybe remembering the last-game-played position within the directory? (I like to check games one by one). It's a very, very minor request thou.

Also, how do you deal with the old NMI again? I just renamed mine to something like "NMI old" but I see it's possible to re-animate it from within the UI?

[PeterJ]

Hi [mention]bob_fossil[/mention]

Just PM me the changes you want.

[Luzie]

Also, how do you deal with the old NMI again? I just renamed mine to something like "NMI old" but I see it's possible to re-animate it from within the UI?

Read on about it from here: viewtopic.php?p=37251#p37251

[bukem]

Hi, I'm using version 0.7 on ZX Spectrum Next with FlashAIR 64GB SXDC (FAT32) and it looks like browser is corrupting file system. This is the content of TMP folder where browser is dumping memory snapshot:



When I tried to use brwscfg to change the config it corrupted also the bin folder content.

[bob_fossil]

Hi, I'm using version 0.7 on ZX Spectrum Next with FlashAIR 64GB SXDC (FAT32) and it looks like browser is corrupting file system. This is the content of TMP folder where browser is dumping memory snapshot:



When I tried to use brwscfg to change the config it corrupted also the bin folder content.

I'm using the esxdos API functions to write files (/TMP/BROWSE.NMI and /BIN/BROWSE.CFG) to the SD card - so if there is an issue it's likely to be in there. Judging from the filenames and sizes it looks like something has gone horribly wrong when esxdos saved the data to the disk. I don't have a 64gb card or a ZX Spectrum Next to test with. Can you try another SD card - maybe a smaller size?

[bukem]

I'll try to find smaller SD card and do some test.

[bukem]

OK, I've found the cause - I had enabled DMA support for esxDOS in config. I've just disabled it and corruption is gone.

[andydansby]

Another casual observation of my trouble with slow browser I just had is the delay only happens if I activate the browser via NMI. If I use .browse the browser comes up immediately with no delay at all. I had before today just used the NMI to activate the browser.

[bob_fossil]

OK, I've found the cause - I had enabled DMA support for esxDOS in config. I've just disabled it and corruption is gone.

Glad you found the problem!

[bob_fossil]

Another casual observation of my trouble with slow browser I just had is the delay only happens if I activate the browser via NMI. If I use .browse the browser comes up immediately with no delay at all. I had before today just used the NMI to activate the browser.

The .dot command doesn't write the file /TMP/BROWSE.NMI as the assumption is that as you've launched it from BASIC, we can just return back to that when you exit. Writing that file is the overhead on some SD cards. I have written another NMI.SYS for slower SD cards which doesn't write that file when you press the NMI button so it will start instantly. As you're not saving memory any more, snapshot saving and POKEs won't work. It will also trash the memory. However, if you just want to use the NMI as a hotkey to launch the browser to autostart your snapshots, tapes and disks it'll do. The user can then choose which NMI.SYS to use.

[andydansby]

Another casual observation of my trouble with slow browser I just had is the delay only happens if I activate the browser via NMI. If I use .browse the browser comes up immediately with no delay at all. I had before today just used the NMI to activate the browser.

The .dot command doesn't write the file /TMP/BROWSE.NMI as the assumption is that as you've launched it from BASIC, we can just return back to that when you exit. Writing that file is the overhead on some SD cards. I have written another NMI.SYS for slower SD cards which doesn't write that file when you press the NMI button so it will start instantly. As you're not saving memory any more, snapshot saving and POKEs won't work. It will also trash the memory. However, if you just want to use the NMI as a hotkey to launch the browser to autostart your snapshots, tapes and disks it'll do. The user can then choose which NMI.SYS to use.

Nice. I had not even really thought about the overhead of some SD cards as it wasn't even on my radar. The next time before I buy my next one, I'm going to try to make sure it's a faster SD card. I had always thought PNY was a decent SD card, but now I'm going to have to stick with Sandisk.
Any recommended cards other than Sandisk?

[bob_fossil]

v0.08

• Added setting 'No NMI write (Slow SD Cards)' to BRWSCFG which disables the saving of RAM when entering the NMI to stop delays on slow SD cards. Be aware that with this option enabled, saving snapshots and POKEs are disabled. It's also highly likely to cause a reset rather than returning you to your previous state if you decide to exit the NMI browser with this setting enabled.
• Shift + F file information now shows the size of the file in bytes.
• Shift + E will erase the selected file. Press Shift + Y to confirm.
• NMI.SYS now creates a /TMP/ folder if not present to stop a reported issue with saving snapshots when the folder isn't there.
• NMIINIT .dot command now takes an optional filename path parameter to load another NMI.SYS .

Download.

[bob_fossil]

Nice. I had not even really thought about the overhead of some SD cards as it wasn't even on my radar. The next time before I buy my next one, I'm going to try to make sure it's a faster SD card. I had always thought PNY was a decent SD card, but now I'm going to have to stick with Sandisk.
Any recommended cards other than Sandisk?

It's not company policy to give out endorsements. I have a 1 gig Micro SD card from Samsung inside an SD card adaptor and that exhibits the same slowness problems as a no name 4 gig Micro SD card.

I've no idea why it takes ~17 seconds to write 49152 bytes to a file - especially when I can copy a larger file onto the same Samsung card on my PC instantaneously. My Plus D disk drive I had many moons ago managed to write an entire 48K RAM snapshot in about 3 seconds to a 3.5" floppy disk.

[andydansby]

Wow, that’s was amazing fast. I’m going to give it a go later on.

[akeley]

It's got to be about these write speeds Seven.FFF was talking about earlier. It's similar in the SSD market, and it is how the other brands can stay in the game and offer cheaper alternatives. It's because we mostly read data, not write it. Fast write speeds only matter in specific situations, such as video/photo recording, or indeed using a homebrew browser to load ancient games...as you do

I just installed this browser on another card (*GB Platinet) I had been using before for esx 0.8.6, and it's also slow, about 5-7 seconds to evoke NMI menu. It was fine with esx though, so these cards are still pretty decent - do their jobs - but now that we have a cutting edge browser, we need similar cards too I've moved my ZX library to a spare Sandisk Ultra and it's near-instant.

[mention]bob_fossil[/mention] any chance for SCR support?

[keithshaw3]

Another quality of life improvement if possible, can we have a sort option for directories, alphabetical or last added?

K

[Seven.FFF]

I've no idea why it takes ~17 seconds to write 49152 bytes to a file - especially when I can copy a larger file onto the same Samsung card on my PC instantaneously. My Plus D disk drive I had many moons ago managed to write an entire 48K RAM snapshot in about 3 seconds to a 3.5" floppy disk.

Could it be related to the F_OPEN mode? Is it faster on the second usage if you open with esx_mode_open_creat instead of esx_mode_creat_trunc?