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IIRC $30 RaspberryPi can emulate it well enough to run even the gnarliest games. I see no need for the FPGA there at all. I'd pay for the case / keyboard like t
by m0zg 6y ago
IIRC $30 RaspberryPi can emulate it well enough to run even the gnarliest games. I see no need for the FPGA there at all. I'd pay for the case / keyboard like that to put a RasbperryPi into, as well as for firmware to make it boot directly into emulation, though.
- rasz 6y agoAlmost nobody buys this to actually use as a game computer. Same as Amiga accelerator boards - the most expensive ones have only one purpose, longest red SysInfo bar. Its all nostalgia.
- m0zg 6y agoSure, but would you rather spend $300 on nostalgia or, say $150, if it can run the same software, and looks similar? If I were to buy one, $150 is doable, $300 is GTFO. I do have "nostalgia" - I learned Assembly on a Soviet ZX Spectrum clone.
- jug 6y agoI think these users just want a physical product that looks and feels like an actual next generation ZX Spectrum. Part of a fulfilling a feeling of “what if”.
- regularfry 6y agoIt's "same software, looks similar, plus some really interesting extra features". I'm sat here wondering whether that FPGA is going to be programmable from the Pi daughter-board, cos that would be a lot of fun.
- rbanffy 6y agoI low volume keyboard alone costs in the range of $100. Custom keycaps cost another $100. Not saying it can't be made cheaper, but it'll need more volume for that.
- lerno 6y agoI’ll buy it so that my kids can grow up learning basic in the old school way. The Spectrum basic was one of the best back in the day. I’ve been teaching them using a C64 emulator but that Basic is pretty lacking.
- II2II 6y agoThere is a group of enthusiasts who are interested in something other than playing old games. Some are interested in exploring the unusual hardware, while others are interested in hardware or software development. Unfortunately, functional original hardware is becoming more difficult to find and some modern peripherals are desirable (e.g. storage) so something like this ends up being the next best thing.
- rleigh 6y agoWhile we now have the Arduino and RPi with convenient GPIO and other inputs and outputs readily available, you can do an awful lot with the edge connector on the speccy. You used to get books full of projects you could make. At the time, I couldn't afford all the components and tools to do this, so I missed out on that side of things. Today, I'm not sure what benefits it would have--no SPI, I2C, ADC or PWM. But you do have effectively direct access to the bus, so maybe there are interesting expansion projects you could work on, though the new hardware itself does a lot of the traditional expansion options like more memory, networking, storage and the like. The storage factor is huge. Absolutely no one is going to miss the cassette tape. Or (worse) the microdrive. I wonder if any of those remain, or if they all got "eaten"! Likewise the 3" floppy on the +3. While a big step up from tapes, the media is simply obsolete and impractical. And the CP/M-inspired +3DOS is also quite primitive and obsolete.
- II2II 6y agoEven if something like this popped up in my preferred 80's platform, I doubt that I would jump at it precisely because of the Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and other platforms that provide convenient I/O. I ditched my vintage hardware a long time ago simple because I decided that these microcontrollers provided most of the benefits and were more forward looking. Something like the ESP8266 running MicroPython even offers a similar feel to an 80's PC running BASIC. That being said, I can understand the appeal of vintage machines. I can understand why the developers wanted to create such a machine. (How many technically inclined youth from the 80's didn't want to create their own computer?) I am also saddened when I see people who think the only reason to be interested in this hardware are classic games! As for storage, reliability is a huge even if someone was interested in the archaic media. Dealing with impractical and obsolete is only possible if you can obtain functional media in the first place.
- rbanffy 6y agoAs we progress (and have 4K capable $30 computers) some of the things an FPGA does will become less important. It's now much easier to replicate the appearance of the PDP-1's P7 screen on a modern HDR monitor than it was just a few years ago. Another thing you won't get from a software emulator is (usually) support for real physical hardware (let's say you want to read a Spectrum cassette tape or an IBM DisplayWriter 8" floppy). I think that no emulator of the time could run the 8088MPH demo, for instance, because of the way it relied on NTSC artifacts. Emulation is fine (and even better, arguably) if what you want to do is to write software for an ancient platform (because you'll have debugging capabilities well beyond our wildest dreams of the day) and much powerful tools. You'll also have fully decked systems with then prohibitively large amounts of memory, and ridiculously fast storage and processors that you can slow down to original metal speeds, but don't limit you to those.
- lerno 6y agoHaving a full size C64 that’s based on emulation I would respectfully like to disagree. First of all the emulations all end up with minor glitches. Second, a machine like the Spectrum Next outclasses most emulator based machines by running all sorts of peripherals from the old days. So this is a huge upgrade from simpler boxes.