ZXZVM for esxDOS

[bob_fossil]

I have ported John Elliott's ZXZVM to esxDOS. ZXZVM lets you play Z-Machine adventure games (typically the old Infocom text adventures and newer text adventures) on your ZX Spectrum.

This port to esxDOS means you can now use ZXZVM on a 128k / +2 or +2A machine with a divIDE or divMMC, rather than just a +3.

Binaries and source code for my modifications are available here. To load a game you can do:

Code: Select all

.zxzvm <path to story file>

I've also made a video explaining what it is and showing how to use it.
[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jju8ftUyBm4[/media]

[Alessandro]

Great! Although I personally prefer to play text adventures under emulation, this is a welcome feature indeed.

Edit: I tried to test the new command with SpecEmu. Unfortunately it always ends up with an "Invalid PATH" message, regardless if the .Z5 file is in the root of the SD card or into a directory. What am I doing wrong?

[Luzie]

[mention]Alessandro[/mention] Starting fine with Heroes from: http://nothings.org/games/if/heroes/ for me in SpecEmu,
(with:

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.zxzvm -c1 heroes.z5

(HEROES.Z5 is stored in Root of SD-Card)
but after showing this screen:



SOLVED - See next posting!
Original Question: it seems to hang - or have I to wait longer?

[Luzie]

[mention]bob_fossil[/mention] Directory BIN\BPLUGINS in zxzvm_latest.zip is empty? Is that right? Where can we find/enable PlugIn for e.g. .Z5-Files? PlugIns only running with divMMC-Interface/Expanded Memory?

[bob_fossil]

@bob_fossil Directory BIN\BPLUGINS in zxzvm_latest.zip is empty? Is that right? Where can we find/enable PlugIn for e.g. .Z5-Files? PlugIns only running with divMMC-Interface/Expanded Memory?

Apologies - I've updated the zip file. My script to package up the files for a release wasn't including the plugins. ZXZVM will work without divMMC extended memory but the browser plugins won't.

[Luzie]

@Alessandro Starting fine with Heroes from: http://nothings.org/games/if/heroes/ for me in SpecEmu,
but after showing screen it seems to hang - or have I to wait longer?

SOLVED: Runs OK under Fuse. Seems I just have to wait some time longer for the thing to get started:

[bob_fossil]

@Alessandro Starting fine with Heroes from: http://nothings.org/games/if/heroes/ for me in SpecEmu,
but after showing screen it seems to hang - or have I to wait longer?

SOLVED: Runs OK under Fuse. Seems I just have to wait some time longer for the thing to get started:

Yes, it takes rather a long time to start up. I put Fuse at 400% speed and it still took a while to get going. I need to investigate. The +3 version of ZXZVM has some disk caching code which I didn't implement for esxDOS as I was hoping accessing data off the SD Card would be faster than a physical floppy disk.

[Alessandro]

I tried to make it work under Fuse. Nothing changed

[Luzie]

I tried to make it work under Fuse. Nothing changed

Have you copied in the given filestructure/File-Tree?!:

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│   manual.txt
│   
├───BIN
│   │   ZXZVM
│   │   
│   ├───BPLUGINS
│   │       Z3
│   │       Z5
│   │       
│   └───_ZXZVM
│           zxgrph32.fnt
│           zxio.bin
│           zxzvm.bas
│           zxzvm.bin
│           zxzvm32.fnt
│           
└───src
    └───zxzvm
            annecall.inc
            annedbg.zsm
            annedisc.zsm
            anneio.zsm
            annelint
            annemem.zsm
            annemenu.zsm
            anneos.inc
            annescr.zsm
            annescrl.zsm
            annevt.zsm
            copying
            disc16_0.ufi
            disk.txt
            esxdep.zsm
            file_id.diz
            in_ver.inc
            in_wrhex.inc
            in_zxzvm.inc
            joybdos.zsm
            joyceinp.zsm
            joyceio.zsm
            joycemem.zsm
            joycescr.zsm
            joycrtp.zsm
            joyfont3.xbm
            joyfonta.xbm
            joyuserf.zsm
            Makefile
            p3bas.tap
            p3dep.zsm
            pcw16.doc
            README
            resibas.tap
            residep.zsm
            source.doc
            vm.zsm
            vm0ops.zsm
            vm1ops.zsm
            vm2ops.zsm
            vmarith.zsm
            vmdebug.zsm
            vmdict.zsm
            vmeops.zsm
            vmobj.zsm
            vmprop.zsm
            vmvar.zsm
            vmvops.zsm
            vmzchar.zsm
            xbm2zsm.c
            zx64.zsm
            zxesxdos.zsm
            zxfnt32.zsm
            zxfnt323.zsm
            zxfnt643.xbm
            zxfont32.bin
            zxfont64.xbm
            zxio.zsm
            zxp3dos.zsm
            zxvers.zsm
            zxzvm.doc            

[Alessandro]

Thanks [mention]Luzie[/mention], but are source files needed as well? I did not copy them.

However, I copied them in the root of the SD card as you did. Again, it returns "Invalid PATH"