pouët.net

Thanks for the kind words, folks! Really appreciate the support!!!

I hear you on the price, we did our best to keep it as low as possible (it's pretty much at cost), but injection molds are damn pricey, the thing runs close to $100k to make, plus all the extras details like the butterfly keyboard, power supply, box, manual, testing and you get the picture...

The Next will be fully open source, including hardware schematics and firmware. We're putting the portal together to go live in two weeks, right after the campaign is over.

It will be some interesting few months ahead for us! =D

Any chance of getting programming info earlier? Like how to access the additional memory, additional graphics modes, audio, mmc, rtc, wifi, etc..?

someone wants to make a 0day!

There are folk with actual prototype hardware, so I wouldn't be able to beat them anyway.. =)

Hello guys,

The Spectrum NEXT project reached its main goal with just two days after set up (250k GBP).

Some prizes were also unlocked, such as a larger FPGA, using sockets for some chips.

Race there and enjoy the offer of the model "The ZX Next accelerated", there are 39 units left at the moment.

Https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1835143999/zx-spectrum-next

I'm fairly certain everybody who visits pouet and is interested has already heard of the kickstarter, so you can stop spamming now... =)

sol_hsa: a bit of an over-reaction, no? It's new relevant information that hasn't been posted on this thread before. It might not be news to anyone who's actively following the kickstarter, but that doesn't make it spam.

sol_hsa: Take easy it's only an info ;)

gasman: Thanks buddy and it's the exactly point!!!! :)

It's looking likely that the next will get upgraded to 1 meg memory on the base model. (I hope these stretch goals don't wreck their finances..).

One frequent request on the kickstarter comments is to have "slow loading" simulation of tap files, to have the "authentic experience". I don't really understand why people want to wait 3-4 minutes for a game to load, but, whatever..

That got me thinking that if someone would make a 1 meg game for the next, that would take about 90 minutes to load off tape. Fun!

sol_hsa, meanwhile, you can watch this 1.5Mb demo off the tape:
http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=69345
;)

does it have load-error simulation too?

sol_hsa: Some people like the tape loading because their people want the original experience like lived on their past.

Here where I live, too much people like this.

But for me, some times the load process let me bored, so is an feature "must to have", for a expressive amount people.

BTW, yes 1MB on the road!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

introspect: Bad Apple need an great effort for this 8bit machines, is amazing!

groepaz: Yes, have all features of an traditional Spectrum. I have the TBBlue (the project used to create the NEXT), and TBBlue report R:Tape Loading Error ;)

codeFX2K16, I actually prefer the version for Pentagon 512K with 2xAY chips: http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=66946

Hmmm... more memory, turbo mode and more than one AY you say? So I could probably port Pimp My Specturm to it? :D

Aspect ratio is wrong, but otherwise, I wouldn't be surprised if something like that could be done.

Oh... I messed up the aspect ratio scaling code in Pimp My Spectrum but it's the same res as the Spectrum and supposed to be the same aspect ratio too. There are a few videos of it around with the correct aspect ratio, but most of them are wrong :(

evilpaul: while i was watching their video explaining turbo mode and extra AY i was wondering why it's exactly the same pimped settings as your demo. that maybe it's some spectrum scene/culture thing that i am not aware of. :p

In some presentation they said that they wondered how far they can push the speccy before it stops being a speccy, so I guess it's inevitable that they end up in a similar place..

Also, this was the first time I saw Pimp My Spectrum and reading about the internals I have to say it's rather impressive.

...and I'd love to read more about the intro, but unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any additional information than what's in the nfo file.

I wrote a short piece about it in Zine a while ago ( http://www.bitfellas.org/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.1814 ) but it doesn't have much extra technical info in there

Thanks!

An great machine no doubt!!!!

Talking about sound, I love the Masakrator Turbo Sound by Zaxon, is an monster sound card!!!!

ZX Spectrum compos at Dihalt 2017 https://www.twitch.tv/di_halt

...and I'm out again.

It turns out that if you get a bunch of FPGA devs and game coders from Back In The Day together to design their dream Spectrum, what they actually want is an Amiga. Or rather, a weird-ass Amiga-level thing with a custom Z80 processor and lots of Weird Shit added on.



Which is fine if you want that sort of thing, but it kills my demoscene interest in it stone dead: I'm not going to invest the time in learning a sort-of-but-not-quite-Amiga platform to make sort-of-but-not-quite-Amiga demos. A bunch of people have angrily insisted that I should be happy with it, because its features are a strict superset of the original Spectrum (IF it gets multicolour timings right. We'll see, shall we...) and so I'll still be able to use my existing Speccy knowledge, but I don't want to make Spectrum demos for a sort-of-but-not-quite-Amiga either.

I can't get a refund at this point, so if sort-of-but-not-quite-Amigas sound like your cup of tea and you want to buy my £240 pledge for a ZX Next Accelerated off me, head over to the facebooks or the Spectrum Next forum.

I understand your reasons. Personally I'm going for it just to have an easier-to-use hardware speccy that runs all the old stuff, and apparently also some of the crazy russian super-speccy stuff.

I don't *need* to use the new stuff if I don't want to.

I have to admit that some of the new stuff they've added is a bit crazy, but if the goal is to let people write actually playable games in BASIC, I completely understand them.