There is a currently in a bug in ZEsarUX that affects memory banks. This causes problems in vForth string handling.

ZEsarUX also runs quite an old distribution.

We'd therefore NOT advise you to use ZEsarUX until this is fixed.

It's not clear if this has been fixed in the ZENext fork made by Garry Lancaster. See https://wiki.specnext.dev/Emulators

This bug does not affect CSpect or MAME.

You need to add the vForth to the SD card image used by ZEsarUX to run the Spectrum Next. ZEsarUX has an mmc file included in the application called “tbblue.mmc”. But we will create a new file for the Spectrum Next.

https://github.com/chernandezba/zesarux

https://github.com/mattsteeldue/vforth-next

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/chernandezba/zesarux/master/src/FAQ (especially the ZX Spectrum Next section).

The "tbblue.mmc" file is a disk image. On the Mac you can change the extension of the file name from .mmc to .iso and the Mac can mount this disk image. However this image does not have enough space to include the vForth folder without either expanding the image or using a new image.

Latest download for vForth is here: https://github.com/mattsteeldue/vforth-next/tree/master/download - Download the zip, and extract it to a local folder.

Because ZEsarUX only currently supports an old distro, you are better off creating a new image file from the one that comes with ZEsarUX and copying it across to a bigger image. 128M or bigger should be fine.

Read how to download or create the SD card image here: https://wiki.specnext.dev/MAME:Installing#Creating_and_manipulating_NextZXOS_SD_card_image

You want to copy everything from the old image to the new image file.

You should end up with a directory and inside that should be a file called <somemname>.mmc or <somename>.img. On a Mac I’m going rename this to <somename>.img so that it will mount when double clicked. On Windows you can also mount it by right clicking with Open with Windows Explorer. On Linux you can use the mount - or even convince the GUI to mount it in a similar way to Windows and Mac.

We then copy the from zip file contents to SD image:

1. the whole "vForth" directory to C:/tools/vForth, and
2. the dot command in C:/dot

After doing this you need to eject/unmount the image from the host operating system.

To get to the SD card / MMC settings and select a new MMC file. In my case this is tbblue-128M.img. The MMC menu is inside the menu system under -> Storage -> MMC and is the top menu item in that menu.

NOTE: In ZEsarUX if you don’t name the img file extension .mmc then it won't appear in the File Browser (unless you change the filter to show all files). Use all file# ## # to select a file with the .img extension.

Forth System is loaded and activated by the Basic program C:/tools/vForth/forth18_loader.bas or via dot command .vforth.

• Using the browser: Navigate to C:/TOOLS/VFORTH and select “Forth18_loader.bas”.

• Using dot comment: After this and restarting ZEsarUX then you should be able to launch vforth by typing .vforth in the “Command Line” of Spectrum Next. NOTICE: This feature is still under development, and at the time of writing causes a reset of the Next under ZEsarUX.

There are some tips about editing code when using an emulator on the page Editing Forth code