There was a new release 1.8 of ZXmaster published in the ZXmore infos and updates thread.
New features are:
* store data on USB (SAVE)
* configuration of individual io addresses
* configuration of instance parameters (can be stored in the flash rom)
* support of NTSC mode again - a bug in the last release 1.7
So this was quite hard work even if it doesn't sound much as several routines have been changed or partly rewritten - all in all the code increased with about 3kB from 7kB to now 10kB. And I found some further problems. First I thought some strange side effects have been caused through increased code and different memory addresses but now I am quite sure that these are timing problems in the instance switching. So I will solve this in the next release and need more time to solve and probably rewrite a complete new switching routine and integrate the multi tasking feature with executions of more than one instance in a time-slice manner as well.
So next release 1.9 will support the ZX Spectrum monochrome display mode and support of subdirectories on the USB flash medium as well and probably a comfortable file manager as well. The RTC chip will be activated to give correct time stamps for files created or written to and give a time/date feature in the software in general.
I will experiment now a bit with CP/M to show something beta in Mahlerts in a week but not sure if there is much to see or more or less information about concept und usage of CP/M. CP/M release will be 2.5 and planned to be published in April 2016 while the release 1.9 is expected around end of march. Unfortunately this timing problems cause some unexpected and strange behaviors which are quite hard to understand or solve and need more development time for normal applications. So this has now the highest priority and will hopefully shorten development time in future.
The manual will be complete rewritten with release 1.9 - till now only changes are documented which may cause some confusions as some tools or screen masks have been changed in the meantime. Some known bug in this version: instance 6 runs only with CtrlOff mode, so without ZXmaster control. I could not find this bug and guess it has to do with the timing problems described above and will disappear in the next release. Maybe you change ZX80 to instance 6 and have anyway 6 other instances for ZX81 (1-5 and 7). By the way you have to explicitly program ZX80 or ZX81 in the flash rom as desired. The instance configuration tool does only set startup parameters and some addresses used.
If you are in Mahlerts I can do the update. If you don't want to carry the complete ZXmore you may bring your CPLD and flash rom (SST39SF040) for programming. I will do that for you.
I want to type in a short program showing these characters with "box" and "X" so I can take a photo of the screen and upload it here.
Thank again.
