nc100em 1.3 released

[zgedneil]

nc100em is an Amstrad NC100/NC150/NC200 emulator for Unix/Linux. The main changes in 1.3 are a new SDL2-based version, NC150 support, NC200 floppy disk support (using John Elliott's lib765), and everyone being 21 years older than the last time I did a release.

The web page is here:

https://zgedneil.nfshost.com/nc100em.html

[jimmyd]

Thank you so much for this update.
Now I just need to figure out how I press the Hidden Menu key...

[zgedneil]

The traditional key for Menu is backquote (as that's what it does in ZCN) but I did also make it available on the context-menu key, at least in the SDL2 version. Or if you mean how to get the "secret" thing in the ROM software, I think that's Function and Menu, so you'd want Insert and backquote or something like that. The man page covers the keys from the emulator side at least, I've just put up a basic web conversion of that linked from the nc100em page.

[genesis8]

OMW to download it.

Would it be possible for a future release to add support for serial port to be able to send/receive files from a real NC ? Last time I tried I had to use one software to send to the NC, another software to receive. And of course I dont remember their name...

Or do you know a software wich works both ways ?

[jimmyd]

Or do you know a software wich works both ways ?

On linux you could use minicom if you are on Windows I believe that https://extraputty.com would work.

[zgedneil]

OMW to download it.

Would it be possible for a future release to add support for serial port to be able to send/receive files from a real NC ? Last time I tried I had to use one software to send to the NC, another software to receive. And of course I dont remember their name...

Or do you know a software wich works both ways ?

I'd second minicom if you just want a serial comms program. Or do you want the emulator to link to a real NC directly? That's an interesting idea, but to be honest it's probably better to use a dedicated serial-handling program on the host.

[genesis8]

I'd second minicom if you just want a serial comms program. Or do you want the emulator to link to a real NC directly? That's an interesting idea, but to be honest it's probably better to use a dedicated serial-handling program on the host.

Yes, that way it's sure that it's the same xmodem variant used on both ends.

Or it could be interesting to develop a 2 player game using serial port.

[genesis8]

I just checked the ZCN page, when do you think you will release v1.4 ?

As this new version supports the NC200 floppy drive, could CP/Mish by david Given (http://cowlark.com/cpmish/index.html) be used ? And adding the support of PCMCIA II mass storage cards as a hard disk as he did ?

[zgedneil]

ZCN 1.4 should probably be ready within a month or so - even just reading through zcn.txt and the man pages to check they still make sense is going to take a while. Basically I have a to-do list with about a dozen things left, half is bug-related and half is checking/testing stuff.

The main changes will be actual NC150 support, ramdisk support on NC200 and NC150 (so you no longer need a memory card if you can make do with a tiny 45k or 61k drive), support for all the NC keyboard layouts I know of plus a US layout, and the inclusion of preinstalled memory card images intended for emulators.

I did try cpmish in nc100em - well, an old release at least - but no luck. I don't think I did the floppy support well enough for it to work, frankly. I had some trouble with IRQs and ended up just fiddling with it enough to get the ROM working, but hopefully I can figure things out properly at some point.

The Flash stuff I think you're referring to sounds a bit dodgy to me on the real NC200 (I get the impression that it draws more power than the NC200 is really happy with). I suppose it could be added to nc100em, but I don't have any plans to do that currently.