Return of the ZX Spectrum!

bitslice said:
Quite a lot of hardware went into an Amiga, a clone would be pricey I reckon.
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Amiga has already been cloned to an extent with the MiniMig, with all main hardware recreated in a single FPGA, with separate 68K family CPU and RAM, although with another processor to emulate the disk drive via SD card etc.

(This is a far better approach than the ZX Spectrum Vega - which goes the easy route of an emulator running on an ARM.)


bitslice said:
I've heard of people cloning the C64 sound chip though
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That'll be the SwinSID - a microcontroller emulated SID that's built up on a pin compatible board to plug into the C64 motherboard.

I tried a SwinSID out on a SID Interface I designed for another old 8bit home computer, very clean, emulated sound and seems like some effects are missing, pretty poor - like all emulations of the SID! Can't beat the dirtiness of the original MOS6581.
 
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Only ever had an Amstrad CPC64 and the pokes cartridge, loved it.

Annoying as hell when you would wait 25 mins for a game to load with all the flashing colours and then... CRASH.
 
Fond as the memories may be, this should remain in the past.

Has anyone actually ran a really old game?

I have and it is dire - made my eyes hurt!
 
Had a few bbc games on my pc ,

Planetoid , Snapper, Monsters and Arcadians

Spents what seems like years playing them at school ten minutes on a pc convinced me they died a long time ago.
 
Why didn't they just make a proper ZX with keyboard and have a flash drive/USB port? Massive disappointment.

As for old games - some of them are still great fun. I still love playing some old CPC games and I'd definitely buy a newer version of an Amiga 1200.
 
Made in Britain...

Excellent stuff....Its a shame most electronics are still not made in the UK...The majority of people would pay extra for quality electronics...I would....

BK Subs
REGA Turntables...
Spectrum Vegas :p
 
easyrider said:
Made in Britain...

Excellent stuff....Its a shame most electronics are still not made in the UK...The majority of people would pay extra for quality electronics...I would....

BK Subs
REGA Turntables...
Spectrum Vegas :p
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Seem to remember the Raspberry Pi makers finding that the import tax system clobbered them harder for importing the materials and manufacturing in the UK, than to just manufacture the whole thing in China and then import.

I don't know the ins and outs of that, but such things are probably a factor. As well as eye-wateringly cheap labour in China.
 
cheesyboy said:
Seem to remember the Raspberry Pi makers finding that the import tax system clobbered them harder for importing the materials and manufacturing in the UK, than to just manufacture the whole thing in China and then import.

I don't know the ins and outs of that, but such things are probably a factor. As well as eye-wateringly cheap labour in China.
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That's the tories for you...:mad:
 
There seems to be a bit of contraversy on this product at the moment regarding the actual licensing of the games that doesn't seem to have been addressed yet. Remember the ZX Spectrum bluetooth keyboard? Not licensing games and simply inlcuding them without expecting any blow back pretty much killed funding for that although it did get there eventually I believe but I dont think anyone has a product in their hands yet.

I don't really have any interest in this product and I have owned pretty much all spectrums. In my opinion they need to release a new rubber keyed spectrum that looks identical to the old one, it can be emulated, whatever, thats fine, as long as it's accurate. The problem with buying a spectrum these days, particularly the older models is that most of the capacitors have leaked and the soldering processes used on the motherboards back then were pretty basic and a lot of the tracks have lifted. A system on a chip with original keyboard and possibly 128K emulation on it too would be awesome.
 
The-Plethora said:
Not licensing games and simply inlcuding them without expecting any blow back pretty much killed funding for that although it did get there eventually I believe but I dont think anyone has a product in their hands yet.
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The kickstarter still reached the goal, despite a lot of people withdrawing their pledges in the last days of the campaign. It's still in development, way behind schedule.

Some programmers did group together to take legal action against Elite for the royalties due for licensing their games for Elite's iOS and Android apps and won. Of course, they also withdrew their permission so that drastically reduces the number of games Elite would use in their apps to support the keyboard.

Some programmers who weren't part of that legal action are still due royalties from what I've read.
 
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