
ZX Spectrum Next Issue 2 blasts through Kickstarter goal - AlexeyBrin
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53765852
======
the_af
I'm totally on board for this kind of stuff. Well, not this one in particular
(I never had a Speccy back in the day), but I did buy RetroGames' TheC64 maxi
and I love it -- that's the one with the full size keyboard. There's room for
improvement [1], and yes, it does nothing you couldn't do with an emulator,
but still... it looks like the real thing I remember from my childhood, with
none of the downsides of plugging an old home computer to modern LCDs and USB
pendrives.

[1] the consensus seems to be the major thing it's lacking is a soft reset,
necessary for some tricks and dev environments on the C64. It's weird it
doesn't have it, because VICE has it. I figure they just have to enable some
key combination or add it to the menu in a firmware update.

~~~
codezero
Been waiting for this to hit the US. During lock down I was playing with VICE
/ C64 emu, and I know I could do some work with keymaps, but gosh, the
keyboard was the single largest pain I ran into!

Speaking of soft reset, I saw someone who did a C64 restoration, it was
probably a Youtuber, and they made their power switch have a tap to reset
mode, pretty neat feature.

Having real interaction with these retro devices is an interesting point of
desire - I feel it very much myself, and it makes such a huge difference. I
assume it has something to do with the latency that emulators add to the
experience, and especially if you used it in the past, these are real
frustrations.

Just imagining a similar hypothetical, if I played a game that made a "fake"
modem protocol negotiation noise, it would drive me crazy :)

~~~
the_af
> _I know I could do some work with keymaps, but gosh, the keyboard was the
> single largest pain I ran into!_

That's pretty much why I got the maxi. I really wanted a keyboard that felt
like the real one.

Re: the latency of emulators. You're totally right. But look at the downsides
of a real C64: there are lots of pain points you likely don't remember when
looking through rose tinted glasses. I don't miss the long load times, or
fidgeting with the datasette -- and googling, I find that the disk drive was
bugged and was too slow even for yesterday's standards -- and I certainly
don't want to deal with video output converters. Plus the whole
faulty/unreliable PSUs. The maxi is way more convenient.

The maxi does some things right (low latency, though not zero; looks like the
real thing) and some wrong (weird and unwanted games carrousel; I cannot flash
it with my favorite emu -- that'd be BMC64; lack of soft reset). I can live
with it as it is!

But agreed, the real hardware and peripherals have a powerful emotional
attraction. I've certainly had to fight with the urge to buy old crap for
nostalgia's sake, like for example an old PC XT with a monochrome CRT ("where
are you going to put it? what are you going to do with it?").

~~~
tomcam
I began my first year of my career in technical writing using the Commodore 64
and its slow disk Drive. Never caused me a problem, although the word
processor program itself, called SpeedScript, was only about 3K in size.

~~~
the_af
It didn't cause me problems as a kid either. I didn't know better.

I find with vintage hardware there are two kinds of constraints: low memory
and screen res are exciting, they make you think of how to achieve things with
few resources. But slow, unreliable disk drives are the unexciting stuff; I
don't want to deal with those ever again now that I know better. I don't want
to fuss about datasette calibration and find I got it wrong after a game fails
to load, either.

------
fastball
£300?

That is some serious cash for a bit of nostalgia.

~~~
codezero
This is a super modern machine underneath, well, maybe not super. But it has
WiFi, an SD card reader, and you can do quite a bit more than just run it as a
number of different spectrum models in hardware.

I see it as a souped up "all-in-one" like a Raspberry Pi w/ a case and
accessories.

It's still quite a bit more, but I think that's to be expected given it's less
than massively widespread appeal.

~~~
fastball
Well, I mean, it has 1Mb of RAM.

~~~
codezero
Hold on a second there, they hit their stretch goals so it has two MEGAbytes
of ram, that's MEGA! whoa :)

------
sgt
The retro winds are blowing hard these days. Lockdown is helping too.

~~~
jug
Yes, I’ve noticed this too! I think the generation growing up with these
systems have grown up into the forties and long for seeing them come alive
again. A generational thing. MiSTer, FPGAArcade, Vampire accelerators and even
AmigaOS 3.1.4, the whole retro RPi movements with RetroPie etc, and now this
too! It’s happening on so many fronts. FPGA’s (like used in this project too)
have surely affected this movement as well.

~~~
foobarian
I don't know if it's generational, maybe it is. But try as I could I can't buy
a modern computer today that matches what Spectrums could do: 1) switch on
machine 2) wait half a second 3) start typing BASIC code. Maybe if the PICO-8
guy would turn that into a hardware product. :-)

Further it's possible to completely know the machine and its software layers,
and reaching down to assembler is accessible from a pretty young age.

~~~
klelatti
I know exactly what you mean. The Colour Maximite 2 [1] is the closest I've
found to the concept in modern hardware. An ARM Cortex M7 at 400 MHz so two
orders of magnitude faster than 8 bit. I don't own one yet but very tempted!

[1] [https://geoffg.net/maximite.html](https://geoffg.net/maximite.html)

~~~
the_af
Have you seen the project championed by the 8BitGuy? I think it's called
Commander X16 or something like that.

Oldschool, C64 compatible, and designed for the days one programmer could
understand everything about his/her computer.

~~~
klelatti
Thanks - looks very interesting.

------
acqq
> has raised nearly £900,000

That's published yesterday, today as I write this it's:

£1,146,085

27 days to go

~~~
codezero
Yeah, there's a pretty decent sized community that's been waiting for this,
they've been rallying in Facebook Groups - they hit their goal in five
minutes, and have continued to have a decent trickle since then. I wonder if
they'll hit 2m before the end of the Kickstarter given all the news.

Edit: wow, it's been an hour and it's crossed 1.3m, news / visibility works
like heck.

------
klelatti
One question about the Next. How flexible is the hardware in being able to
support emulation of other machines? Would it be possible to reprogram the
FPGA to emulate say a C64?

~~~
Koshkin
> _FPGA_

Eww. I wish they stuck to using a real Z80 chip. (Otherwise they might as well
just have emulated everything using an ARM SBC. With a gigabyte of RAM to
boot. For 20 bucks.)

~~~
flohofwoe
The Z80 implementation in the ZX Next has a couple of useful extended
instructions not found in the original Z80, and some of the instructions are
tailored to the ZX Next hardware (e.g. to efficiently compute video memory
addresses). So at least there's a justification for not using real Z80
chips...

------
KingOfCoders
I'd wish for a CPC Next.

~~~
codezero
Looks like you can update the FPGA to have CPC firmware?

[https://gitlab.com/victor.trucco/zx-spectrum-next-
cores/-/tr...](https://gitlab.com/victor.trucco/zx-spectrum-next-
cores/-/tree/master/Cores)

~~~
sedatk
It wouldn't have the same vibe without a complete redesign specifically for
CPC. Especially the keyboard.

~~~
codezero
The plastic exterior seems like the easy part for a hobbyist, but I take your
point.

------
homarp
previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24129182](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24129182)

------
nickt
I got back into the Retro computing scene over the last couple of months, it's
very active. The price isn't bad (especially when you look at the prices of
original ZX Spectrum 128K, some Amigas, etc.), and you can find original 48k
versions on eBay for <$100.

If you don't want to shell out for a Next (and you don't want to wait a year
for one), pickup one from eBay, get a new switch mode PSU like a Triad [1].
While you're getting a new PSU, order the replacement capacitors as the
originals don't age well [2]. Modify the RF output to composite [3], or get a
VGA [4] or HDMI video interface [5] (the VGA and HDMI quality is amazing, but
probably because I had a 13" black and white Ferguson TV back in the day).
Finally, most of the units I picked up have broken keyboard membranes so
you'll need one of those too [6]. Cases, rubber keyboards and keyboard covers
are all available, you can make even the most well-used speccy look like new -
and good to go for another 40 years.

There are loads of great resources out there, one of my favorites is the
Tynemouth Software blog [7] - loads of great mods for old machines. It'll lead
you down a rat-hole, and before you know it you'll be making music demos on a
ZX81 [8] and spending money on SellMyRetro [9]!

[1] -
[https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/553-WSU090-2000-R](https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/553-WSU090-2000-R)
[2] -
[https://www.mouser.com/ProjectManager/ProjectDetail.aspx?Acc...](https://www.mouser.com/ProjectManager/ProjectDetail.aspx?AccessID=399546db16)
[3] - [https://spectrumforeveryone.com/technical/composite-mod-
for-...](https://spectrumforeveryone.com/technical/composite-mod-for-
the-48k-range/) or [https://www.tindie.com/products/projectspeccy/zx-spectrum-
fl...](https://www.tindie.com/products/projectspeccy/zx-spectrum-flat-
composite-kit/) [4] - [https://www.sintech-shop.de/en/zx-vga-joy-interface-
for-zx-s...](https://www.sintech-shop.de/en/zx-vga-joy-interface-for-zx-
spectrum-vga-and-joystick/a-10303) [5] -
[https://www.bytedelight.com/?page_id=1800](https://www.bytedelight.com/?page_id=1800)
[6] - [https://zxrenew.co.uk/ZX-Spectrum-16k-48k-keyboard-
membrane-...](https://zxrenew.co.uk/ZX-Spectrum-16k-48k-keyboard-
membrane-p69999647) [7] -
[http://blog.tynemouthsoftware.co.uk](http://blog.tynemouthsoftware.co.uk) [8]
-
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eabTH9F2RVM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eabTH9F2RVM)
[9] - [https://www.sellmyretro.com](https://www.sellmyretro.com)

