The ZX Spectrum Next Arrives

Sinclair Research was best known in the United States for the tiny ZX80, and the ZX81, under its Timex branding. However, they also made the ZX Spectrum which had many features that were — at the time — unusual. A few years ago there was a Kickstarter to recreate a modern version of the Spectrum, and [Nostalgia Nerd’s] new ZX Spectrum Next has finally arrived. As you can see in the first part of the hour-long video he was very excited about it. Almost too excited for YouTube.

The new incarnation of the Spectrum claims to be fully compatible with the original but also offers improved graphics modes, SD cards instead of tape, and an optional 7 MHz clock speed. The 512K of RAM would have been sinfully luxurious back in the day when the original model came with 16K, although the most iconic Spectrums would be the 48K models. The new version even has the option of taking a Raspberry Pi Zero to act as an accelerator.

Unlike its older siblings, the ZX Spectrum could output graphics at a whopping 256×192 pixels with two shades of 7 colors or black for a total of 15 colors. Before you get too excited though, be aware that the colors were mapped to the 8×8 character blocks, not to the pixels, so that reduced what you could practically do with the display. That is, in one 8×8 block you could only use two colors.

The keyboard on the Next looks like a ZX Spectrum+, which traded the famous rubber keys of the earlier machines for a more conventional design. A variant of that model had a whopping 128K of RAM, apparently to avoid paying a tax in Spain on computers with 64K of RAM or less (that’s according to Wikipedia, anyway).

If you didn’t love this machine before, you will by the end of the video. Maybe not as much as [Nostaliga Nerd] does, but still. If you want to get to the bootup, that’s around the 12:30 mark.

Of course, these popular computers exist in FPGA form. An engineering prototype for the original recently surfaced, and is now in a UK museum.

from Hackaday https://ift.tt/32x7oIY