Spectrum Computing

The Next has been made available in the shop for a time (possibly until the end of December) for anyone who missed it. This is the short period before parts are ordered after which it won't be possible to add new units without forgoing volume discounts. Purchased units will be added to the KS2 produ...

The N-GO board went on sale today. Coupon code FREESNGO gets you free shipping (Europe I presume) for the time being. https://manuferhi.com/c/n-go There is a left or right version you can select. This determines if the two joystick connectors are soldered to the left or right side of the pcb. You ne...

Thanks @Alcoholics Anonymous, it's excellent that quality resources are available. There will be more coming too. A brief technical document will come out that describes the machine completely -- this won't be a technical manual as that's for someone else to write (I am not really interested in wri...

Bad snapshots happen when either (1) there is so little stack space available that an nmi interrupt is going to push enough stuff to overwrite some part of the program or (2) the stack pointer is being used as a memory pointer rather than a stack pointer at the time the button is pressed so that an ...

Jim's tutorial series has started and it begins with basic.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

These are live every Sunday.

If it was a tad cheaper (under 100E) perhaps I'd bite. It's not really 115E though, with VAT more like ~145E. And that's getting in the MiSTer zone, where you can get the Next core if you have that special 32MB SDRAM. You can also get that core out-the-box on one of the other FPGA boards (ZX DOS+?)...

Sometimes a snapshot save can be corrupted if taken at an inopportune time. But for The Untouchables specifically, there seems to be dsk versions of the game available: https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.php?cat=96&id=5520 Hacking a program to load data from disk or other things takes some sk...

Unfortunately the if1 and divmmc are incompatible with each other.

I just hope the 'upgradability' doesn't dilute the interest in people doing things for a vanilla Next, especially since the latest KS should help to grow the user base. It is a clone zx next pcb identical in features. It was the reason a bare pcb option was not in KS2, ie in order to give room for ...

Has anybody played the Magnetic Scrolls adventures that have been ported to the NEXT? I have :) The implementation is quite good. I can't say I have completed them or even come close though. Strand has also updated them somewhat (the classic version can also be played) but I can't compare to the or...

The KS is entering the final week and will close on September 10 at 20:59 BST.

zx7 is a great compromise hitting a very neat sweet spot in terms of size, speed and compression compared to other compressors. We've been using it for compressing data+bss segments for code stored in roms (variables get decompressed into ram to initialize ram) for things like sbcs and game rom cart...

Pretty sure that's just based off this week's settings for the 'hardware emulator'. :) And of course, all this must be wildly relevant for the kind of guys that ordinarily clear the screen using a FOR..NEXT loop, have easy DMA and god knows what else. Are you ok? All you do is insult, make personal...

The next brought some, but not all of this, as far as I know: .. - be able to scroll/clip the memory buffer by hardware (saves CPU and would keep the color blocks/clash aligned within scroll offset). - have a second video layer (by default transparent), capable of each pixel having it's own color, ...

a new spectrum would have had to attack colour clash and limited colours. Those limitations were a function of 1982 costs and technology and would not reflect anything new or competitive made in 1990+. Cost - yes, technology - no. Dozens of colors in home computer is late 70s, hw sprites is late 70...

This is exactly why, as a staunch Spectrum programmer, i can't like Next's approach to gfx extensions. Basically you need to rewrite half of the game for a very different paradigm. For me it's to much hassle, to bothersome and not really interesting considering there is enough real retro platforms ...

But then of course they had to increasingly start 'overflowing the banks', with all sorts of unrealistic and unnecessary bs, and just overall catering to fb randoms that clearly have, at best, only seen a Spectrum in a picture book before. .... Anyway, if you're going as far as to drum up a pretens...

This is rather controversial, but I'm rather disappointed. The games that I've seen don't look like Spectrum games. They have more of an Amiga or Atari ST look to my eyes. exactly my feelings about Next games too. Next hardware specs are amazing, but i simply don't feel that it is a Spectrum anymor...

'next' is unnecessary, I'd want that on an actual Spectrum, first and foremost :) The graphics in the main game seem intentionally made with Spectrum limitations in mind inc.color clash, and that type of scrolling and FPS are also reasonable, so there should be no problems in that department. -Actu...

I don't know yet but the aim is the same pricing. Most things cost more at this time unfortunately. I'm not sure what the offerings will be yet either, with the goal to reduce to one or two choices to simplify everything.

KS2 is a possibility next month or soon thereafter. If you wanted one and missed your chance, a second chance is around the corner. FYI in case some pennies need to be tucked away.

Announcing Bubble Bobble Next adapted by dave18. The game is an arcade adaptation that requires the original arcade roms to work. All your favourite cheats should be there and the game should run just like the arcade. This adaptation represents a lot of work and it's encouraging to see more people f...

Tried with Spectaculator and SpecEmu in Pentagon mode, but it wont work. It loads the sid file and then returns to the menu... On the Next it works in Pentagon 1024 mode. So Spectacular and SpecEmu are likely only doing the normal Pentagon 128. The Pentagon 1024 uses additional bits in port 0x7ffd ...

I do plan on writing a socket library for the Next so there will at least be compatibility at the api level. Underneath it all things are very different as the Next is using an ESP module connected to the machine via uart (up to 2Mbps) and the spectranet is using a wiz offload engine. Both devices e...

It's being worked on now. A number of new challenges present themselves because of covid unfortunately.