.wload

A tiny esxDOS dot command for the WiFi-equipped ZX-Uno that turns the machine into a network listener: run it, and it prints the IP address to connect to; a PC then streams a binary straight into Spectrum RAM over TCP using plain netcat, and wload runs it. No SD card shuffling, no cables beyond the network.

Usage

On the ZX-Uno:

.wload

On the PC (once wload has advertised its IP address):

nc <ip-address-of-zxuno> 6912 < binary_file

Binary file format

The file streamed to wload is not a plain memory dump - it needs a 4-byte header:

Bytes	Meaning
2 (LE)	Load address of the program
2 (LE)	Entry point (where execution starts)
...	Program data

With the PASMO assembler:

            org ORIGIN_OF_CODE-4
            dw  ORIGIN_OF_CODE
            dw  EntryPoint
            ; code...
EntryPoint: ; execution starts here
            ; code...

pasmo --bin program.asm program.bin

Requirements

• ZX-Uno with a configured WiFi connection.
• esxDOS.
• netcat (nc) on the sending PC - ships with most Linux distros, available for macOS and Windows too.

Notes / behaviour

• Listens on TCP port 6912.
• Designed purely for the build-test-repeat loop during development, not as a general file transfer tool - it loads and jumps to code, it does not save anything to disk.

Provenance

Binary fetched directly from the repository root (WLOAD, 1315 bytes, latest master, matching the final 2021-11-05 commit).

Credits

mcleod-ideafix. Source: https://github.com/mcleod-ideafix/wload (GPL-3.0)