Current events
The Spectranet world tour continues!
First Oxford, then Bilbao, now Huddersfield!
The Spectranet was on show (with all the latest code enhancements) at Retro Reunited, on the 12th/13th September. The Speccy was paired up with a MicroVAX as a fileserver. (The VAX was also the DNS and DHCP server, unfortunately the hotel had no "wider LAN" with these things, nor an internet connection other than WiFi. I could have set up my old PowerBook to be a router on WiFi, but owing to a shortage of TVs, I only had one Speccy on the network so decided to show off the network filesystem rather than the IRC client!)
Which brings me on to more recent developments.
Since the last update, I've added more code to the BASIC streams support, so you can now write a server program in ZX BASIC. Also, I've made the mount command for mounting filesystems MUCH better - instead of passing half a dozen parameters, which was rather clumsy, you now supply just two - the mount point, and an URL for the filesystem you want to mount, in the usual format - proto://user:passwd@host/some/path . The default protocol at the moment is TNFS, so if you just specify an IP address or hostname, it does an anonymous TNFS mount of the root on that host.
Also, I've now added the ability to mount more than one filesystem at a time - up to four filesystems can be mounted simultaneously. If the filesystems are TNFS, then only one network socket is used for the lot, since TNFS is a very low resource UDP protocol.
What was clear from Retro Reunited is that one of the priority developments for the BASIC module is to add a "default" file to load (this will of course work with the Loader on 128K machines). Of course, people just casually playing stuff - for example, at a show like this, may just want to start the Speccy and have it load a menu of games. The other big feature I think people would like is the ability to save snapshots to a filesystem - a bit like the Multiface - hit the NMI button, then save a snapshot to any of the mounted filesystems.
Winston 22:11, 14 September 2009 (BST)
RetroEuskal, and BASIC streams
No updates for about a month, but I've been a bit busy!
First, I had the grand challenge of demonstrating the Spectranet at RetroEuskal - held inside Euskal Encounter (the second largest LAN party in Spain, with 4096 network ports - most in use). Fortunately, the DHCP client worked fine with the Euskal Encounter DHCP servers, and braved a very busy network segment with vast quantities of broadcast traffic (mostly DHCP requests and ARP who-has requests). The demonstration went well, and people even seemed to understand my undoubtedly heavily accented Spanish...
Secondly, one of the things I'd been working hard on so that I could demonstrate it at RetroEuskal was BASIC streams. I got the prototype code done just in time, and tested it with things like an SMTP client written in ZX BASIC (yes! It worked!). So far, you can write TCP client programs in BASIC. Writing servers is going to take a bit more effort (it'll need a separate control channel so that you can peek at the state of things without reading).
It's now possible to write a program like this in BASIC:
10 %connect #4, "some.computer.com", 2000 20 INPUT #4;"Tell me> ";a$ 30 PRINT "Remote computer said: ";a$ 40 PRINT #4; "You said: ";a$ 50 IF a$="q" THEN GO TO 100 60 GO TO 20 100 PRINT #4; "Bye!" 110 %close #4
Once accessability from BASIC and the network filesystem is done, basically, the base software is actually finished. The end is in sight!
On the hardware side, I'm thinking of getting some PCBs made, with the aim of making sure my modifications for "production" are good. There's one bug that had to be fixed (which won't affect normal users), plus I want to try and make a small mod to the routing of the ethernet traces from the magjack to try and get rid of a couple of vias, sometimes the W5100 has trouble getting a stable connection on reset, and I want to eliminate that from my enquiries. Also I want to put another jumper in so the user can select the voltage source for the 3.3v regulator - either the 5V from the Spectrum (works on all models), or the 9V (48K only) - the reasoning, to lessen the load on a rubber key Speccy's 7805 regulator.
Winston 21:33, 6 August 2009 (BST)
A whole lot of new excitement
Just over a week ago, you may have seen the news that the Speccy made its first tweet on Twitter. The client was hacked together in the Gloucester Arms in Oxford, over a pint of Black Beauty (you do get some odd looks with a Speccy on the pub table, but it was the CSS meet!)
But other than that, more exciting times: I've put together a basic automounter (it needs much more work to do what I eventually want it to do), so that filesystems may be mounted at boot/reset time. So the Spectrum can now be powered on, and you can immedately start using the network filesystem. Also, a comprehensive "%info" command has been added to the Spectranet BASIC ROM module which gives information on files. For generic non-Spectrum files (and directories) it just shows the basics, such as filesize (and I intend to show file mode too). But for Spectrum files (the native format being used is TAP), it lists the contents - so, if you have a complete TAP file for a game for instance, it'll show all the blocks that are contained in the TAP file. Also, for testing, I wrote a program in BASIC to give a game loader menu, and then load the game from a TAP file. I wrote it on a real Spectrum, and trusted the TNFS code enough to save it over the network!
There are some games that don't seem to load properly - I need to investigate whether this is just a +3 incompatibility, or whether there are bugs in the tape traps.
Other than that, I've fixed a couple more bugs that I discovered in the base ROM.
Next I want to add support for BASIC streams. (Andrew Owen will like that of course!) For the time being, I intend to add a few commands using the RST 8 trap for opening a socket - it has been suggested that a control channel can be used for sending commands, but that involves a lot of extra work and I'd like to have at least TCP client streams working to demo at RetroEuskal (now wouldn't it be nice to do a Twitter client in ZX BASIC!)
Winston 21:58, 7 July 2009 (BST)