tion to change how many columns are displayed by either again calling up the NextZXOS menu with EDIT and selecting the 32/64/85 entry or by directly giving the SPECTRUM CHR$ command that can change the columns displayed immediately. See the SPECTRUM CHR$ entry previously in this chapter for details of usage.

Notes

⚠

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!
Disabled Expansion Bus refers to disabled SIGNALS on the Expansion Bus. The
Expansion Bus is CONSTANTLY UNDER POWER and you must ALWAYS PLUG
Interfaces and ROM cartridges with ALL CABLES DISCONNECTED otherwise
IRREPARABLE DAMAGE MAY OCCUR!!!!
WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!

ROM Cartridge Loaders

For users of ZX Interface 2, Ram Turbo, Dandanator and compatibles, NextZXOS introduces the ability to load ROM cartridge based software directly from the More… submenu and selecting the Interface 2 option. Since the ZX Spectrum Next starts with the expansion bus disabled, it provides a quick way to type the appropriate commands to load either 48K or 128K ROM based software as well as apply all necessary settings to ensure maximum compatibility of cartridge based software. All you have to do is select the appropriate option. NextZXOS, will make the necessary adjustments, enable the bus and load the software.

48K BASIC

The 48K BASIC menu, located in the More… submenu, turns your ZX Spectrum Next to into a standard 1982 ZX Spectrum… with a twist! First of all, according to the Next personality you have selected during boot, you may have full key entry (Looking Glass) instead of token (i.e. the keywords you see printed on your ZX Spectrum Next's keyboard) single-key entry (ZX Standard). Additionally, you have access to all the ZX Spectrum Next's additional features although not from BASIC. Finally you have access to your SD card via the dot commands we've already discussed. You can also reach 48K BASIC using the SPECTRUM command as discussed in a previous section.

128K BASIC

The 128K BASIC menu, located in the More… submenu, turns your ZX Spectrum Next to into a 1985 ZX Spectrum 128K with the extra hardware of the Next available but unlike the 48K option discussed above, the dot commands do not work as esxDOS requires a 48K BASIC (the so called USR 0 mode).

ZX80 and ZX81 BASIC

This is a convenient way to access the ZX80 and ZX81 emulators by Paul Farrow without having to launch a separate personality on boot. There's no way other than reset to come back from the ZX80/81 emulators.

NMI Menu

While in Next mode, pressing the NMI button will launch the NMI menu which provides a lot of useful functionality to your ZX Spectrum Next. The NMI menu traces its lineage back to an expansion interface called Multiface. Multiface, allowed users to pause a program and break into it, create snapshots of the system's memory which upon reload, placed the machine in the same place they were (and running the specific program they were) at the point in time they were, when they saved each snapshot.

The NextZXOS NMI menu offers, however, many more features over those of the original Multiface. We'll examine the most important ones of these below.