The 4th version of the HxC Floppy Emulator Manager is available.

It features :

• User can now edit up to 20 slots (previous version: 15 slots was the max.)
• New UI, removed the old "demomaker style" presentation, now displaying more files on screen (with longer filenames)
• DEL key added to move back to parent folder while navigating
• The manager now skips DSK files when using a HxC SD/Slim device
• The Help page now reports the firmware version + build date of the Manager
• Switched compilation to SDCC 4.2.0 (resulting better Z80 implementation)
• Now compiled using RASM from roudoudou (previous version: Pasmo)
• Now compressed using ZX0 packer (previous version: the good old Bitbuster)
• Smaller binary (11KB) resulting a faster load from BASIC prompt (previous version: 16KB)

It remains compatible with the 64KB RAM-based machines, and the ROM version is sdirectly available into the AUTOBOOT.HFE file.

Disk Image Manager v2.5.1b by Damien Guard is an application for examining and manipulating disk images in the Standard and Extended DSK format used by many Spectrum, Amstrad PCW and CPC emulators.

These last years several expansions allows you to use mass storage (USB or sd...) on Amstrad CPC, each needing a ROM to use it correctly.

And if you use two of these expansions, you will need to load two ROMs, so less RAM for your Amstrad CPC.

So Offset did write UniDOS and drivers to be able to use another expansion, needing only one ROM with features being the same whatever the expansion. Unidos can manage actually :

• Albireo by PulkoTronics
• M4 Board by Duke
• X-Mass by Tot0
• Symbiface II by Dr.Zed
• Nova by PulkoTronics

Offset also wrote UniDOS Cartridge Creator (v1.4) which is an utility to create Amstrad Plus cartridges equipped with a patched firmware which allows to add UniDOS and its DOS nodes. You can furthermore configure up to 30 additional tool ROMs (such as Utopia, Maxam, Protext..) in the cartridges (compatible with ParaDOS and Burnin' Rubber) without requiring a real ROM board. The tool also let you automatically download the latest UniDOS ROMs from the official web site.

Unidos v1.50 is a major release with a lot of visible and invisible modifications. All DOS nodes were also updated. For the end user, the most notable update is the full time and date support as well as new RSX. For the developers, new BIOS and node API came up.

Also, since the release of the ACE Amstrad CPC emulator in v1.25, several plugins were upgraded : DK'Tronics speech synthesizer, Techni-Musique and SSA-1 speech, Willy, Nova, Amdrum, Mirage Image, MultiPlay and the PlayCity, Albireo.

There is already an ISA interface for Amstrad PPC done by Retro Theory. Retro Erik let us discover in a video another ISA interface for Amstrad PPC by Enide. You can buy this card in his Tindie shop (assembled or not), the stock is 0 at the moment so join the waitlist to let Enide you want one. More informations on Enide's web site.

As explained in the video, Enide's interface doesn't have a power input like the one by Retro Theory, but the PPC has enough power for a possible hard disk (on a few PPC sold only) and two 3,5 disks drives, so it should be able to provide power to up to 3 ISA boards without a problem. Retro Erik recommends to check the video by Gouldfish on Games where the card has been installed inside the Amstrad PPC. But if one day you replace the internal screen by a new LCD screen, you should check if there is enough power with the ISA interface used.

I was lucky to be able to buy the card by Retro Theory on System.CFG's forum.

VEZZA by Shawn Sijnstra (and Stefan Vogt) is a new Infocom/Inform/Z-machine interpreter for Amstrad CPC and PCW (and other computers) to play adventure games without needing a memory expansion (Inform format v1 to v8), under CP/M and not Amsdos.

The program you need to dowload is different if you are using an Amstrad CPC (vezza-nb.com) or a PCW (vezza-90.com).

After having released a new version of his Amstrad Notepad NC100, NC150 and NC200 emulator, Russell Marks has just released a new version of his version of CP/M for these same machines : ZCN 1.4, the new features are :

• NC150 support, with a custom zcn150.bin kernel. As with the NC200, this is not as complete as the NC100 support. Also, it has only been tested under emulation
• Internal ramdisk support on NC200 and NC150, so you can use ZCN on them without a memory card (to some limited degree). This is really only intended to be used if you lack a memory card - you switch between memory card mode and ramdisk mode using the "ramd" command
• Improved keyboard layout support via keyb, supporting Danish, French, German, Italian, Swedish, and US keyboard layouts, in addition to the old UK and Dvorak. All supported keyboard layouts can be used on any NC model
• Preinstalled memory card images for NC100/NC150/NC200. These are intended for use with emulators like nc100em/MAME/RC2014, but they should also work on the real thing if you have the means to write them correctly. (Serial link installs are still supported, of course.)
• Support for booting from floppy disk on the NC200 - this uses David Given's floppy-boot code from FUZIX, almost unchanged. ZCN itself does not support the floppy disk, so this just loads ZCN and a small ramdisk image then boots it
• Support for displaying some non-ASCII characters, specifically some from the old DOS code pages 437 and 850 like in the ROM software, as well as the euro sign character from 858. Only a few dozen characters are supported (!) and you need to run keyb beforehand (i.e. since boot) for this to work
• NC200 time-reading and time-setting support, meaning that e.g. time and timeset work
• The man command now uses ZX0 compression - the data file is smaller, man.com is smaller, and man pages load faster
• Certain .com files in the support directory, like QTERM, are now also provided in versions using ZX0 compression. So for example, the ZX0-using version of QTERM is 5k smaller. ZCN comes with a "zx0com.bin" file you can prepend to a .zx0 file to run it in this way (limited to .zx0 files of 16k or less)

These last years several expansions allows you to use mass storage (USB or sd...) on Amstrad CPC, each needing a ROM to use it correctly.

And if you use two of these expansions, you will need to load two ROMs, so less RAM for your Amstrad CPC.

So Offset did write UniDOS and drivers to be able to use another expansion, needing only one ROM with features being the same whatever the expansion. Unidos can manage actually :

• Albireo by PulkoTronics
• M4 Board by Duke
• X-Mass by Tot0
• Symbiface II by Dr.Zed
• Nova by PulkoTronics

Offset also wrote UniDOS Cartridge Creator (v1.4) which is an utility to create Amstrad Plus cartridges equipped with a patched firmware which allows to add UniDOS and its DOS nodes. You can furthermore configure up to 30 additional tool ROMs (such as Utopia, Maxam, Protext..) in the cartridges (compatible with ParaDOS and Burnin' Rubber) without requiring a real ROM board. The tool also let you automatically download the latest UniDOS ROMs from the official web site.

Unidos v1.40 brings the following modifications :

• new |CAT RSX which is sorting directories with color
• new generic driver UniTools with : allowing automatic boot on whatever drive (check the driver documentation for more details), upgraded ZERO drive (now supports hexadecimal values)
• upgraded DOS Albireo driver to use two at the same time
• upgraded M4 and FatFs DOS drivers (minor modifications)
• small uupgrade of the DOSNode_Init API
• minor modifications

These last years several expansions allows you to use mass storage (USB or sd...) on Amstrad CPC, each needing a ROM to use it correctly.

And if you use two of these expansions, you will need to load two ROMs, so less RAM for your Amstrad CPC.

So Offset did write UniDOS and drivers to be able to use another expansion, needing only one ROM with features being the same whatever the expansion. Unidos can manage actually :

• Albireo by PulkoTronics
• M4 Board by Duke
• X-Mass by Tot0
• Symbiface II by Dr.Zed
• Nova by PulkoTronics

Offset also wrote UniDOS Cartridge Creator (v1.4) which is an utility to create Amstrad Plus cartridges equipped with a patched firmware which allows to add UniDOS and its DOS nodes. You can furthermore configure up to 30 additional tool ROMs (such as Utopia, Maxam, Protext..) in the cartridges (compatible with ParaDOS and Burnin' Rubber) without requiring a real ROM board. The tool also let you automatically download the latest UniDOS ROMs from the official web site.

mTCP v2022-07-01 by Michael B. Brutman is a set of TCP/IP applications for personal computers running PC-DOS, MS-DOS, FreeDOS, and other flavors of DOS. mTCP needs a 8088 processor (or +),96KB to 256KB of system memory depending on the application, ms-dos v2.1 (or +) and a network card (Ethernet adapter, or a device emulating Ethernet) that has a "packet driver".

FreddyV is still working on the drive of the CH375 which permits to use USB mass storage on any PC XT and AT. The last version of the driver is v22, which was released the 30th June 2022 for PC XT. There is also a version for PC AT (286 and plus).

Retro Erik has done a video on the use of this USB-ISA card (see the Lo-Tech web page).

Retro Tech Chris has made a 3D model of a bracket for this ISA card.

See the thread on Vogons.

Retro Erik has done a vidéo on the use of a USB key for mass storage on any PC XT or AT under ms-dos (see the Lo-tech web page).

FreddyV is working on a modification of the driver for better speed on a PC XT or AT. It will be easier then using a Compact Flash card with a XT-CF.

Retro Tech Chris has made a 3D model of a bracket for this ISA card.

See the thread on Vogons.

Tommorow friday the 22th 2022 at 10pm (frog hour, so 11pm for the beef eaters), Roudoudou will stream about Amstrad CPC programming : ASIC (on CPC+), hard sprites and integrating music.

Martine v0.35.0 is an utility written by the Impact group :

• converting JPG and PNG images to Overscan screen or window for Amstrad CPC (and Plus series)
• new tile map mode, which allow to analyze an image of a level game, and produce .imp and .til readable by tile tool from Impact

This version was released the 20th April 2022. It is available for Windows, MacOS, ARM64 and linux.

The last version of RASM is v1.7 (11th April 2022).

Rasm is now available on Github (documentation included).

This multi platform assembler (linux, windows, but not only like MorphOS on Amiga) let you program for Amstrad CPC.

Tonigh Friday the 8th 2022 at 9:30pm (frog hour, so 10:30pm for the beef eaters), Roudoudou will stream about Amstrad CPC programming : ASIC (on CPC+), hard sprites and integrating music.