ZX Spectrum Next Discussion

[1024MAK]

@Pegaz - all these schemes are a gamble. You either give an unknown small company your money and hope for the best, or you keep your money in your possession, but take the risk that you may never get your hands on the item that may or may not get made. Of course, if you are not bothered about getting said item, then the choice is clear - keep you money. If you cannot afford to throw the money away, again, keep your money and don’t take the gamble.

There are lots of other ways of gambling, including buying a company or shares in one or more companies (anyone want to buy Maplin? Or Carillion shares? [I had some shares in Carillion as part of a share save plan, because at one time they owned a company that was my employer.]

Or you can place a bet on some event...

Sometimes you don’t even know that your life will be subject to a large gamble. Such as your employer going bust. I feel sorry for all the workers in the above two companies, where they had no say in events. They just got told that sorry, the company has no money and therefore has/will stop trading. Your employment has ended.

Some of these bets have a date (or date and time) when you will know if you have won or lost. But others don’t.

I have no more idea than anyone else if the ZX Spectrum Next cased computers will actually make it into the hands of backers. But the board only backers have received their boards. The updates from this project look to be far more informative and believable than those from the Vega+.

Of course, the delay is very frustrating and annoying. And as time goes on, backers will start to worry that it’s all going wrong. The longer the delay, the worse this worry will get.

Am I hopelessly optimistic? Probably. But I would rather have a positive outlook on life. But that’s just me

You and other people are perfectly entitled to have different opinions. I don’t have a problem with that.

Mark

[Hernan]

I have the board since earlier this year and so far, it's a solid machine. I fully upgraded it (2 MB RAM, RTC, Wi-Fi) and everything is working OK. It lives inside a clear case from Retro Radionics (looks great!).

The only thing that disappointed me is the lack of ULAplus, and only from "political" issues. Also, it's supposedly fully open source, but when the sources were released a couple of months ago... the VHDL code of the FPGA core is mysteriously missing. And the lack of additional cores, that big FPGA it's completly under-utilized.

[Bizzley]

I think crowd-funding started out with noble intentions but as soon as people realised the lack of accountability involved they saw how they could take advantage of it. I don't mean they planned to take the money and run right from the start (but apparently some did!) but that the whole "you're buying into an idea rather than a product" was seen as an easy get-out when it was coming apparent that they couldn't deliver on what they had promised.

Since there's really nothing new under the sun you only have to look at some of the classic economic Bubbles to see the same signs: people pledging money for something non-tangible, exhortations to "get in quick at the start", profits to be made at a later date (I'm going to buy two and put one on eBay) and of course the slow dawning realization that you've made a fool of yourself. So just as people later on wondered why on earth they had sold their house to buy a single tulip bulb you begin to realize that your plan of inviting your mates around for an all night session of Horace Goes Skiing instead of Call Of Duty on the PS4 might not have been the best of reasons to have clicked on that Button

Crowd funding is often compared to betting or investing but at least with those - provided you're not dealing with a Boiler Room scam or a bloke on a street corner who'll do a runner with your cash - then at least you stand some chance of getting a result, good or bad. And some accountability. Crowd funding is like betting on a horse race where the organizer can decide not to supply any horses or even a track for them to race on and then keep your money. Legally.

[Bizzley]

The only thing that disappointed me is the lack of ULAplus, and only from "political" issues. Also, it's supposedly fully open source, but when the sources were released a couple of months ago... the VHDL code of the FPGA core is mysteriously missing. And the lack of additional cores, that big FPGA it's completly under-utilized.

Do you think it should have been aimed more at the generic retro market rather than as a successor to the Spectrum, a machine that with the appropriate core "can become any of the old machines you used to love as a kid?" How does having a Spectrum-specific keyboard pan out if you want to use another core for a different machine?

[Hernan]

Do you think it should have been aimed more at the generic retro market rather than as a successor to the Spectrum, a machine that with the appropriate core "can become any of the old machines you used to love as a kid?" How does having a Spectrum-specific keyboard pan out if you want to use another core for a different machine?

It can be both... and the keyboard thing is irrelevant since it has a PS/2 port.

[richl]

Obviously you know I am not someone who ever defended the Vega+ campaign (quite the contrary) but there are some fundamental differences between the two campaigns and they really can't be compared as like for like.

As far as I'm concerned, to even say that they're both behind schedule would be incorrect as this would imply both intended to deliver. One has constantly lied and delivered virtually b*gger all (and will never produce the actual product as promised). The other has delivered hardware that met the announced specs to one set of people and is behind with its obligations to produce a boxed version to another set of people (myself included) due to them seemingly wanting to do the right thing by backers and get the case spot on and not looking like some amateur 3D printed blob.

At least one person in the Vega+ campaign has a history of taking money off people and then not delivering on what they promised. It's basically their M.O. I already knew about them before the campaign was started as they cropped up in the press before. Others involved also don't have good form at delivering on their promises either. I don't know all the people on the Next campaign but the ones I do know have got a good track record of delivering quality products. The detail in the updates (even if they're late) shows a real genuine passion for the project, something that was completely lacking in the Vega+ one once Paul Andrews and Chris Smith left.

I've also backed a lot of Kickstarter campaigns, several of which have fallen behind schedule. One was about 18 months late due to problems with rights issues and the guy involved was pretty rubbish at keeping everyone in the loop so people were understandably getting worried/angry. However, his track record at delivering on other projects was exceptional so I didn't panic and the project was eventually delivered to everyone, albeit a lot later than planned. I'm not a gambler and wouldn't throw money at anything I thought was unlikely to ever see the light of day.

I can understand the "once bitten, twice shy" logic but without wishing to keep on repeating the same thing over and over: the two campaigns are totally different. TOTALLY. One was very amateur and maybe in time will even be proven to have been fraudulent, the other is neither of these things. I wasn't a troll for dismissing the Vega+ as nothing but a crock and I'm not a mug for still having faith in the Next team. I don't blindly believe in ANYTHING but I am pretty good at knowing when I should start to get worried about something and I'm not losing any sleep over the Next campaign at the moment. If we're still having the same conversation 6 months down the line then yeah, maybe I'll change my tune but why panic for the sake of it?

[beanz]

You right of course, but as you can see, history is repeated.
The very same people, who bitterly defended the Vega+ project until his failure, now do the same thing with Next here, with the same "arguments".

Not even close to being the same...that's laughable.

I have had my next for a year...updates are plentiful, the 3000+ boards are already made, the next is the board, not the fancy case...the case is the hold up....worst case (no pun intended)...you'd get a board..re: the spectrum next.

[cha05e90]

I didnt point to you in my previous post... how could you possibly conclude something like this after ten days on sc?
Unless, if you dont reveal to us, what is your original wos nickname...
About the rest... Ralf has made some good points, I dont have anything to add to that...

Sorry, I did not take anything personal at all. And of course there's nothing really wrong with Ralfs post - nevertheless: It doesn't have to be that way. And I'm still convinced that the projects aren't really comparable in many regards. So I'm more with Mark or richl here...

Maybe I had the naive hope that coming from a more or less blood stained community (AMIGA!) into a more calm and reasonable environment in the ZX Spectrum scene... This was before I read deeper and deeper into the past WoS or the Vega+ debacles...

[PeterJ]

The Spectrum community has had it's fair share of disappointments with crowd funding. I'm a backer of the Vega+ and the Next.

As others have said crowdfunding is a risk and you do have to accept that you are not guaranteed anything. It's just the way it works. 99% of the time it works fine. Just sad that the 1% happened to us.

At least the Next team are still doing believable updates which is good. I'm happy to wait, because there is nothing we can do to speed it along. I figure we just have to leave them to get on with it.

I don't understand these people who seem to spend significant periods of their limited time on this earth thinking up new Twitter handles so the can moan about the Vega and add to the thousands of posts on the campaign page. I have an interest in both projects and follow them in a general sense, but there is a time when you need to move on. We all get done over at some point in our lives.

PS. I had Woolworths shares and also lost shed loads during the house price crash.

[Bizzley]

As others have said crowdfunding is a risk and you do have to accept that you are not guaranteed anything. It's just the way it works. 99% of the time it works fine. Just sad that the 1% happened to us.

According to Kickstarter themselves 9% of projects that are funded and have succesfully created a product (my emphasis) fail to supply that product to their backers. "Project backers should expect a failure rate of around 1-in-10 projects, and to receive a refund 13% of the time." - Professor Ethan Mollick (2015). It's not clear what the Kickstarter figures are for projects that fail to produce a product at all in the first place.

Indiegogo don't supply completion figures. You can either assume that it's pretty close to the Kickstarter figures for them as well or, if you're cynical, because they don't insist on a working prototype before starting a project that it's higher.

[1024MAK]

@Bizzley so are you a backer of either the ZX Spectrum Next or of the Vega+?

Mark

[Ralf]

As others have said crowdfunding is a risk and you do have to accept that you are not guaranteed anything. It's just the way it works. 99% of the time it works fine. Just sad that the 1% happened to us.

I would guess it's closer to about 30%, not 1%

Personally I backed once on some local Polish crowdfunding platform a retro-inspired computer game. They hoped to do it in one year, it's 4 years already and there is still nothing with little hope for a change. I bit the bullet,accepted my loss and don't whine in internet about it But also learnt to be cautious.

My opinion is that people behind crowdunding projects are often enthusiasts good at their passion (programming, soldering, designing) but just as often are lame at "making business". It they were good with business, they would be able to secure money for their project in traditional way (like taking a credit at bank) and not beg for money through crowdfunding. And somehow I feel that with a bank credit which you have to pay or you're kicked out of your flat people become more efficient and less careless

In case of my game it was outsource programmers giving up. The creators hired some young guys for some tasks (hiring experienced programmers was probably out of reach) and after some time it turned out that the task was too difficult for them so they quit. It repeated 3 times so we may say the creators lacked recruiting skills, they couldn't tell a guy who will finish the job from a guy who will fail. Unfortunately they learnt nothing from the failures.

[Bizzley]

@Bizzley so are you a backer of either the ZX Spectrum Next or of the Vega+?
Mark

I'm a Spectrum Next backer, backer No. 3034, standard £175+£10 boxed version. I wasn't originally going to back it since I have no real need for a Spectrum with all the versions I have in the attic but got involved in trying to create a dirt-cheap method to link a Next development board to a PC\Mac with one of the software developers and thought it might be fun to develop a game for it. I wrote some software tools for it back in June 2017 and then they started adding all sorts of things (I'm not even sure if the SID chip is in there or not now!) and due to that and the delay in delivering the boxed version I slowly lost interest and moved on to something else.

As to the Vega+, no I didn't back that, it was obvious to me right from the start that there was something fundamentally wrong with the whole thing.

[PeterJ]

My percentages were maybe rather out! I suppose I was basing on my success with other projects. The sentiments of my post still stand though.

[beanz]

As to the Vega+, no I didn't back that, it was obvious to me right from the start that there was something fundamentally wrong with the whole thing.

Same, though the fundamental thing I couldn't get my head around was the point of a mobile speccy device when there are already so many choices around and have been for years...105 quid just to have the Sinclair logo on it seemed a bit silly.

[4thRock]

I think the problem with these projects is undefined scope and lack of realism.
It would be much easier to create a 200% accurate emulator and bundle it with a spectrum styled computer keyboard and joypad.
And perhaps much cheaper and with less risk for all.

[PeterJ]

I backed the ZX-Uno and that turned out to be spot on and got delivered to schedule. I still use it regularly for ULAplus games.

[Hernan]

I backed the ZX-Uno and that turned out to be spot on and got delivered to schedule. I still use it regularly for ULAplus games.

The ZX-Uno is AWESOME. The team spent almost 4 years developing it and then crowdfunded it to make a production run. Also, it's really open source, so anyone can use the designs and code and make its own. And has some unique features like the PZX player or the "Radastanian" video mode (a very low res but multicolor and color-clash free mode).

[DarkTrancer]

I backed the next and received my "just the board" on time, its excellent piece of hardware and have spent many an hour playing old games and even learning the new nextos and all the new additions.

[Alcoholics Anonymous]

The only thing that disappointed me is the lack of ULAplus, and only from "political" issues. Also, it's supposedly fully open source, but when the sources were released a couple of months ago... the VHDL code of the FPGA core is mysteriously missing. And the lack of additional cores, that big FPGA it's completly under-utilized.

The VHDL will be made public and is fully intended to be made open source. It's being held back until the cased Nexts are delivered so that Next-alikes don't start appearing on other fpga boards before the backers get their machines. It would be possible to run a reduced version of the next on the uno, for example, and such a thing might appear within a few days of the source being made public, although being a reduced implementation means maybe not much sw will run on it. The uno was in fact used by some developers early on for next sw development. The dos, which I think has the same size fpga, maybe could run the full next machine with unsupported features subtracted (hdmi, esp wifi, maybe memory size, etc - I'm not too familiar with the dos spec).

In the meantime, the tbblue repository is reasonably up to date and public. It contains most other things. The fpga configuration, stored in "TBBLUE.TBU" is version 2.00.11 there, but from what I understand the version being put into the cased nexts is 2.00.18 so it's a bit behind there. If you have a board, copying the repo to your sd card is more up-to-date than the last update at specnext.com which had 2.00.00 in it.

The big fpga is not being under-utilized as the zx next core fills most of it. But there is room for 30 more cores in the flash. So you will see a situation as on the uno where you can store another 30 different machines and boot into those. I would expect that some or all of the uno cores will be made available for the next at some point, and since the next fpga is bigger, I'd expect enhanced cores to appear that make use of the extra gates.

[Alcoholics Anonymous]

My opinion is that people behind crowdunding projects are often enthusiasts good at their passion (programming, soldering, designing) but just as often are lame at "making business". It they were good with business, they would be able to secure money for their project in traditional way (like taking a credit at bank) and not beg for money through crowdfunding. And somehow I feel that with a bank credit which you have to pay or you're kicked out of your flat people become more efficient and less careless

3000 machines is not a business; it's a hobby. If you're making 100,000 - 1 million you can start thinking it's a business. Without a crowdfunding something like the zx next would not be possible unless driven by a benevolent millionaire.

[PeterJ]

I think the problem with these projects is undefined scope and lack of realism.
It would be much easier to create a 200% accurate emulator and bundle it with a spectrum styled computer keyboard and joypad.
And perhaps much cheaper and with less risk for all.

I agree. ARM based boards like the Raspberry Pi Zero which retail for $5 could be put into something equivalent to the recreated Spectrum. You could the run Fuse or ZesarUX. You could also build a portable version like the Nintendo DSi

I'm not underestimating the amount of planning and other work needed, but at least you wouldn't.need to create the electronics from scratch As long as backers knew from the start that it was based on a Pi they could make an informed decision.

[1024MAK]

Part of the reason I backed the ZX Spectrum Next, is the new case and keyboard. Having obtained various third party keyboards over the years for use with ZX81s and ZX Spectrums, and having various other microcomputers from the 1980s and 1990s, I just cannot scratch the itch of wanting to have a good looking ZX Spectrum with a good keyboard. Ironically, by the time Amstrad introduced the +2, I was looking at buying an Atari STFM (and then did go down that route).

I’m sorry, but I have never been a fan of Sinclair’s existing ZX Spectrum+ / ZX Spectrum 128k / QL keyboard’s (although the QL keyboard is very slightly better than the one on the Spectrum). At least with the rubber key, you knew that the keyboard would be, err, rubbery!

Mind, it’s still a gamble (for me) if the keyboard on the ZX Spectrum Next will meet with my expectations....

Mark

[Pegaz]

I think the problem with these projects is undefined scope and lack of realism.
It would be much easier to create a 200% accurate emulator and bundle it with a spectrum styled computer keyboard and joypad.
And perhaps much cheaper and with less risk for all.

I agree. ARM based boards like the Raspberry Pi Zero which retail for $5 could be put into something equivalent to the recreated Spectrum. You could the run Fuse or ZesarUX. You could also build a portable version like the Nintendo DSi

I'm not underestimating the amount of planning and other work needed, but at least you wouldn't.need to create the electronics from scratch As long as backers knew from the start that it was based on a Pi they could make an informed decision.

True.
Even better, with the new Pi3 A+, you can get full speed Next emulation for just $25.

Part of the reason I backed the ZX Spectrum Next, is the new case and keyboard. Having obtained various third party keyboards over the years for use with ZX81s and ZX Spectrums, and having various other microcomputers from the 1980s and 1990s, I just cannot scratch the itch of wanting to have a good looking ZX Spectrum with a good keyboard. Ironically, by the time Amstrad introduced the +2, I was looking at buying an Atari STFM (and then did go down that route).

I’m sorry, but I have never been a fan of Sinclair’s existing ZX Spectrum+ / ZX Spectrum 128k / QL keyboard’s (although the QL keyboard is very slightly better than the one on the Spectrum). At least with the rubber key, you knew that the keyboard would be, err, rubbery!

Mind, it’s still a gamble (for me) if the keyboard on the ZX Spectrum Next will meet with my expectations....

Mark

You right, of course.
Still, some forum experts believe that "Next" is just a board.
It's a shame they havent informed Henrique and team, that they have no need to bother with the fancy case and keyboard...

[Bizzley]

Mind, it’s still a gamble (for me) if the keyboard on the ZX Spectrum Next will meet with my expectations....

Like you I made use of a fair amount of third-party Spectrum keyboards, some good, some bad, and companies like DK'Tronics didn't seem to have a problem designing and knocking them out to us on a fairly regular basis. While I have to say that they wouldn't have won any awards for innovative industrial design they usually did work and were pretty reliable on the whole. I would break more joysticks than keyboards and if I did have to get a new one it was probably because of the print on the keys rubbing off rather than mechanical failure.

I'll believe in the keyboard after I've seen someone playing one of the sports button-basher games like Daley Thompson's Decathlon for an hour on it.