Yellow button on N-G0

[kegnkiwi]

Morning,

New to the n-go, the yellow button on the side of the can someone give me a quick heads up what it does. Is it like the snapshots from the 80'90's does it allow you to back up a game you are playing? if so for example how would one do it on football manager 1982? On that game there is a save function but that sends to tape. If this n-go can do the same to sd card what would great.

[Chris23235]

Morning,

New to the n-go, the yellow button on the side of the can someone give me a quick heads up what it does. Is it like the snapshots from the 80'90's does it allow you to back up a game you are playing? if so for example how would one do it on football manager 1982? On that game there is a save function but that sends to tape. If this n-go can do the same to sd card what would great.

If you mean the button in the middle of the three button, then it is the DIVMMC NMI button. It is not used when you are in Next mode, but when you are running a 48/128/Pentagon Spectrum with ESXDOS. On these machines the button activates the DIVMMC module and brings you to the ESXDOS browser. Here you can make snapshots.

On my n-go the colouring of the buttons is different compared to the regular next, there the yellow button is the top button and it is the reset switch, so I think it is the same with your n-go, yellow button not top but in the middle.

The green button on the n-go is the NMI button for the Next mode bringing you to the settings menu of the Next where you can switch the CPU Speed, handle Joystick inputs, make snapshots, etc.

If you want to know more, the manual of the next answers 99.9% of all question about the n-go too:

https://www.specnext.com/zx-spectrum-ne ... t-edition/

[kegnkiwi]

Hi Chris,

The yellow button on mine is the nmi button and this is the one that I was interested in. I believe that I can make a snapshot image to reload when needed. Thanks for the link to the manual I did not have one.


**Update just saved my first game ****

[Chris23235]

Hi Chris,

The yellow button on mine is the nmi button and this is the one that I was interested in. I believe that I can make a snapshot image to reload when needed. Thanks for the link to the manual I did not have one.


**Update just saved my first game ****

Ah, its different then on my n-go, I guess Manuel doesn't code the buttons colorwise. Yes this is the NMI button when running the next personalite.There are more options here that can be of interest besides the snapshot function. You can define the joysticke (Kempston, Sinclair, or even map keys to directions and buttons of the joystick), you can change the CPU speed and enable the internal speaker for authentic speaker sound. Just be sure to be on the latest firmware to get all settings.

[Alcoholics Anonymous]

The (supposed to be) yellow button closest to you is the multiface nmi button.
The (supposed to be) green button in the middle is the divmmc nmi button.
The red button furthest away is the reset button. Hold that for a short time for a soft reset (like power cycle of spectrum) or a long time for a hard reset (fpga reboots).

The yellow multiface button also acts like a function key shift. If you hold it in and tap a number key you generate a hardware signal that has some effect:

-- F1 = hard reset
-- F2 = toggle scandoubler, hdmi reset
-- F3 = toggle 50Hz / 60Hz display
-- F4 = soft reset
-- F5 = (temporary) expansion bus on
-- F6 = (temporary) expansion bus off
-- F7 = change scanline weight
-- F8 = change cpu speed (cycles through 3.5MHz -> 7MHz -> 14MHz -> 28MHz)

If you hold the yellow multiface button in for a short time without tapping a number, a multiface nmi is generated. If you hold the yellow button in for a long time without tapping a number, the button activation is ignored.

Under NextZXOS, the divmmc nmi is not used and it is disabled so that the green button doesn't do anything. NextZXOS only uses the multiface + yellow button for the nmi menu.

Under esxdos, the multiface nmi is not used and is normally disabled so that the yellow button does not generate an nmi. esxdos only uses the divmmc + green button for the nmi menu.

In the Next you can have both the multiface and divmmc active at the same time. This allows you to, for example, run esxdos for sd card access while the expansion bus is off and switch to expansion bus on to use the multiface with something like the microdrives to transfer snapshots between sd card and microdrive cartridge.


Answering the OP's other question: you can save to a tap file on sd card from a running program. Tape saves cannot be mapped to individual files on sd card because the spectrum rom does things like save headerless data without any name associated. Instead tape data is collected in a container tap file on sd card with all tape saves appended to the file. If you don't have an output tap file selected, saves should go to the mic socket for a tape deck. But you can associate an output tap file through the nmi menu in one of the options. There you will be able to browse to a directory to choose an existing tap file or create a new tap file for output. Thereafter saves will go to that tap file. You can also assign a tape input file for loads. The same file can be used for both.


If you are up for it, the upcoming Next distribution (system software and hardware) is open for beta testing. The menus and whatnot are improved and in particular, the nmi interrupt has been made stackless and snapshot saving has changed to Z80 from SNA. Without the nmi modification, you can crash some games by pressing the nmi button (this is a consequence of how the z80 works and occurs on all z80 hardware) and without Z80 format, snapshots are specific to a particular Spectrum model (not good for the Next which can 'become' most of them when running old software).

[kegnkiwi]

Thanks, Alcoholics Anonymous for your detailed reply.

I have been playing with my new toy over the last week and i really like it. The snapshot function is working fine and saving the games to the menu works at treat. The changing game speeds is fun and using robocop at 7mhz is a laugh. Putting the n-go onto the internet was interesting and the old-style-looking bulleting boards was interesting. I left a message on the guest book of the hacker's page. At Christmas my son bought me a programming book along with a 48k keyboards membrane so since Christmas i had been attempting to fix the old 48k 3b board. Since I have put that keyboard away i spent a few hours programming tictactoe in basic. It works well

You say there is a beta testers pages open for recruits can you post a link here of send one via pm.

Cheers

[Alcoholics Anonymous]

For beta testing there is an instructional post here about updating and a link amongst the instructions to the repository:

https://www.specnext.com/forum/viewtopi ... 646#p13644