The Spectranet is an
ethernet network interface for the ZX Spectrum. The interface
can be activated via the Spectranet option on the Peripherals
preferences dialog, and the state of its automatic page-in (disable) jumper controlled via the Spectranet disable option. If you're going to
be using the Spectranet, you'll probably want one of the
firmwares available from the Spectranet homepage
which is also where you can find more information on using the
interface.
Installing the
Spectranet firmware on Fuse is slightly more complicated than on
a real machine, mostly because Fuse's emulation doesn't support
DHCP. These instructions are correct as of 2012-01-26 - if
you're using a later firmware than this, things may have changed
slightly.
The first thing you will need to do is to obtain a copy of the
Spectranet installer as a .tap file (or similar). The installer
is available at the Spectranet site.
Once you have a copy of the installer, start Fuse and tick the Spectranet and Spectranet disable
options on the Peripherals
preferences dialog. Once that's done, open the installer
file (use the Media > Tape > Open… command rather than
File / Open… to prevent autoloading) and enter the following
commands from BASIC:
CLEAR 26999
LOAD ""CODE
RANDOMIZE USR 27000
The screen should turn blue and you'll see around 20 lines of
message appearing as the firmware is installed, starting with
"Erasing sector 0" and finishing with "Restoring page B", and
you'll get the familiar 0 OK, 0: 1 at the bottom of the screen.
Now untick the Spectranet
disable
option on the Peripherals
preferences dialog and reset the Spectrum. You should see
a very brief blue status screen, before the regular copyright
screen appears with some Spectranet information at the top -
there should be four status lines, starting with "Alioth
Spectranet" and ending with the Spectranet's IP address (which
will be 255.255.255.255 at this stage).
Now, trigger an NMI (the Machine > NMI menu option) and you
should get a white on blue Spectranet NMI menu with five
options.
Select [A] Configure network settings - this should lead you to
another menu, which will scroll of the top of the screen; don't
worry about this for now.
You'll now need to set various options:
There is no need to
change options [F] or [G], but do select:
Your screen should now
look something like this:
Current
configuration
=====================
Use
DHCP : No
IP
address : 192.168.000.002
Netmask
: 255.255.255.000
Default gateway :
192.168.000.001
Primary
DNS : 192.168.000.001
Secondary
DNS : 255.255.255.255
Hardware address :
FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF
Hostname
: fuse
<menu options>
If every looks correct, select [I] Save changes and exit (you'll
see a brief "Saving configuration..." message) followed by [E]
Exit, at which point you'll be returned to BASIC. Reset the
Spectrum again and you'll see the same four line status display,
but this time with your IP address on the last line.
Now type the following commands:
%cfgnew
%cfgcommit
Which will show the standard 0 OK, 0:1 at the bottom of the screen.
Congratulations! You have now installed the Spectranet firmware. To save having to go through all that every time you start Fuse, save a .szx snapshot at this point, and load that in every time you want to use the Spectranet.