Introduction

In a previous post I looked at the M4 board from Spinpoint, please check that out and get your CPC connected to Wi-Fi before trying this part.

A ROM (Read Only Memory) is a dedicated chip that stores programs or functionality together in one place and they take up very little of the CPCs’ memory. Each ROM is usually 16K in size. Below are some famous ROMs that were available back in the late 80s’.

Download ROMS

I will use a few ROMs freely available from here in this blog post. Download a few sample ROM files, and unzip them if necessary.

Adding ROMS

Once your M4 board is connected to Wi-Fi, using a computer that is on the same Wi-Fi network as the CPC, browse to the IP address revealed in the |netstat command. My CPC is using IP address 10.0.0.4 so I’ll use that as the web address.

http://10.0.0.4/ and click on the Roms heading as shown below.

Next, select a free Rom slot, for example Rom slot 4, and choose Upload. Give the Rom a name and then click on Choose File and point to the extracted ROM file.

Finally, click on Upload. After some moments, you’ll see the ROM listed.

Add a few more ROM’s but avoid sticking them in ROM slot 6 (used by the M4) or 0 (reserved for BASIC ROM’s).

Here are the ROM’s I uploaded.

At this point you can power off the CPC and power it on again, you should see your ROM’s listed ! Cool or what !

Convert CPC 464 to Basic 1.1

Next, let’s convert the CPC 464 built in Basic from 1.0 to 1.1. To do this you can use a program created by Duke. You can download it from the CPC if you have setup the WiFi. Make sure to type it exactly as I have it here (case sensitive web server), the file downloaded should be 33k.

a$="spinpoint.org/cpc/ROMUP464.BIN"
|httpget,@a$

or download via your web browser from http://www.spinpoint.org/cpc/ROMUP464.BIN and copy it to the microSD card.

To use it run the program via…

RUN "ROMUP464.bin

This program will also set the M4 ROM to 7, which is best for compatibility with games. After running the program I was informed to press M4 reset on the board itself and when I did that the CPC revealed the new Basic 1.1 ROM

which is again confirmed in the Web browser UI.

Cool !

and if for whatever reason you want to again use Basic 1.0 simply unplug the M4 board.