All aboard the good ship NEXT

[stupidget]

They’re finished and bobbing across the sea:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sp ... ts/3945218

[Nitrowing]

Christmas is going to be a happy one for a few people

[TMD2003]

Say a permanent goodbye to never knowing if I'm having problems with NextBASIC or if it's one of CSpect's idiosyncrasies.

[dfzx]

What are people planning to do with their new machines?

Just wait for new games to come out and play them?

Develop software for the machine?

Learn stuff with it? If so, what?

What else do people have planned?

[dfzx]

What are people planning to do with their new machines?

Answering my own question, I'll be looking to write C code for it. I know a fair bit about z88dk for the original Spectrum, and I like learning new stuff, so that'll be my focus. I did write a couple of Spectrum games a few years ago, but it turns out I'm not that good at it. But it'll be interesting to play with some of the new toys the Next offers and see what it might be able to do apart from games.

I've learned quite a bit about electronics in the last couple of years, but I won't be plugging anything I've made into the back of the Next. I've waited 3 years for it, so I'm not inclined to risk blowing it up.

[clebin]

Answering my own question, I'll be looking to write C code for it. I know a fair bit about z88dk for the original Spectrum, and I like learning new stuff, so that'll be my focus. I did write a couple of Spectrum games a few years ago, but it turns out I'm not that good at it. But it'll be interesting to play with some of the new toys the Next offers and see what it might be able to do apart from games.

It's nice to hear you jumping on board! The Next could definitely do with more online utilities. I've been playing around with the Fujinet on the Atari 8-bits and there's some neat stuff available, like a Wikipedia reader, Chat GPT client, weather forecasts and so on. It would be good to see more of that appear on the Next, and theoretically it should be quicker to develop than most games.

I've taken a bit of a hiatus from Speccy coding this year due to personal stuff, but I'm considering moving the Advance Wars-style game I was working on to Next. I found myself making a lot of sacrifices to get it to work on a standard Speccy - the AI would need to be simplified quite a bit as it's making the game seem slow and a bit of a trudge, and I already had to cut a lot of animation that spoils the cartoony-ness somewhat. I'd try to keep a Speccy look & feel to the game though.

[redballoon]

I'd quite like to do some Next specific graphics, if the opportunity should arise. I suppose I'll wait and see.

[stupidget]

What are people planning to do with their new machines?

Initially play games. I'm really looking forward to playing the Magnetic Scrolls adventures and some of the excellent Sunteam games.

I'll probably get one of these at some point:

https://www.tindie.com/products/remysha ... nd-others/

Plug in my AKAI MPK Mini keyboard and make truly terrible music

[Seven.FFF]

I've been playing around with the Fujinet on the Atari 8-bits and there's some neat stuff available

Fujinet is a little more ambitious, and gives you a full TCP stack like you had a PC network card. More like the Spectranet. Thom C is a talented bloke.

The Next was saddled with a cheap ESP-01 module running standard Espressif AT NONOS firmware from the start. That's really meant for hobby IoT projects not a computer network card. So internet programming on the Next is an exercise in working with a fast serial connection and sending proprietary AT modem commands. It's very much limited by what is in the AT firmware, which is... frustratingly limited. It cannot use SSL properly and is very limited running as a server. It's best used as a client connecting to other more capable servers. I would have started off very differently but I didn't get involved until it was already too late to change.

I've done a lot of network coding on the Next in asm, and it's not hard, you just have to get into the mindset. Hit me up if you want any help or advice. All my code is open source.

The ESP module in kickstarter 2 Nexts is an ESP-12f, but given that it needs to maintain backward compatibility with six years of existing Next software, it's effectively just an emissions-shielded CE and FDC rated version of the same thing.

I have written an in-circuit firmware updater that allows you to switch to different ESP firmwares without opening up your Next. But it's not an instantaneous process (4MB of FLASH memory takes 7 mins to upload and write!), so it's not one of those things where each program that wants to use the Next could realistically reflash it with alternate firmware that suits the program. So almost all users will remain on the factory firmware. But it is at least possible, and if you wanted to take your own programs in that direction, you can.