Compatibility with ZX Wespi - charlierobson/ZXpand-Vitamins GitHub Wiki

ZX-WESPI is an amazing project that adds fast loading of programs selected from a menu. The menu is updatable via wi-fi.

It was invented by the brilliant ZX-Team member Holmatic. Here is an English translation of the original German language forum topic announcing it.

It works by intercepting and analysing the ZX81's video output and cassette signals. When it detects the 'loading bars' it will send a fastloader to the ZX81 as if it was from cassette. It then fastloads the menu program, and from there you select a program to load.

You can build a very basic WESPI with just a few parts but if you're feeling a little more adventurous you can expand it with a 16K RAM pack VGA video output.

Because of how WESPI works compatibility with ZXpand is 'partial'. If you want to load things from wespi rather than just use its video output, then you need to disable ZXpand with the CONFIG "X" command. Games can still use the memory, sound and joystick provided by ZXpand but the BASIC ROM integration will be disabled.

This is required because ZXpand passes no-filename LOAD commands (LOAD "") to the ROM so that you can still LOAD from tape. Any LOAD "filename" commands are executed by ZXpand and so do not show loading bars, and so WESPI is not triggered. Similarly SAVE commands are all handled by ZXpand.

If you LOAD "" with ZXpand attached, the menu will probably fail to load as ZXpand tries to give the user the menu program. I say probably because it's possible to have a program on the SD card with the same name as the WESPI menu which will then load instead.

Here is a ZX81 with ZXpand and WESPI connected to a VGA monitor, showing the menu: