ZX Spectrum Next Discussion

[beanz]

This would be fantastic. The NEXT really is a thing of beauty and I’d love to add one to my Speccy collection. Plus, having a 48, 128, ULA+ capability, NEXT games, SID sound, Turbo CPU and who knows what amazing games in the coming months in one shiny box would be amazing. I know I could get a TBBlue board but that case...,.proper Speccy stuff that.

No SID. It does have the specdrum built in though.

[Seven.FFF]

SID playback (and other PSG and mod formats) is now done by the Pi accelerator.

The Next talks to the Pi over a 2 meg UART, uploads .sid files, .tzx files, etc over the UART, issues commands to start playback, then the Pi plays over the I2S digital soundcard, and the Next sees this as either a stereo DAC input which it mixes along with the other DAC/AY/beeper inputs, or as a digital EAR input, which it mixes along with the physical EAR input.

It is selectable, so the TZX loader automatically switches to tape input, ad programs configuring audio playback switch to DAC input.

[akeley]

Hmm...the next Next kickstarter. Tempting, though my retro budget is severely stretched now (in fact it was supposed to be closed for foreseeable future, after my Amiga accelerator splurge). What do you think an approximate price of the basic unit will be?

Also, I hope they have all the logistics more or less sorted by now and it won't take years to fulfil the next batch

[DouglasReynholm]

Hmm...the next Next kickstarter. Tempting, though my retro budget is severely stretched now (in fact it was supposed to be closed for foreseeable future, after my Amiga accelerator splurge). What do you think an approximate price of the basic unit will be?

Also, I hope they have all the logistics more or less sorted by now and it won't take years to fulfil the next batch

As a guide, I paid £230 for my fully expanded, cased, ZX Next (WiFi, RTC and Pi Zero accelerator.

Now they've finalised the design and ironed out the manufacturing issues then unless there's a major PCB respin required (unlikely, the power supply cap problem on the original shipped boards from 2017 has been fixed already I believe) or a sudden massive lead time change in any of the major components then I would expect a pretty quick turnaround. When I worked for Altera (now Intel FPGA), some of our FPGA devices could get lead times of up to 30-40 weeks+ (sounds like a long time, but not necessarily in electronics procurement) for the more exotic parts. However, this project is using one of Xilinx's mainstream products, the Spartan FPGA series, so I would not expect that to be an issue here.

TL;DR - should be pretty fast, 3000 of us have already been Guinea pigs!

[stupidget]

Hmm...the next Next kickstarter. Tempting, though my retro budget is severely stretched now (in fact it was supposed to be closed for foreseeable future, after my Amiga accelerator splurge). What do you think an approximate price of the basic unit will be?

Also, I hope they have all the logistics more or less sorted by now and it won't take years to fulfil the next batch

As a guide, I paid £230 for my fully expanded, cased, ZX Next (WiFi, RTC and Pi Zero accelerator.....

So do you have your grubby mits on a real life Spectrum NEXT!!!? If so, I demand a picture of it in the wild

[Seven.FFF]

The board-only Nexts have been in the wild for over 2 years.

[Seven.FFF]

As promised by the original Kickstarter,The Next's FPGA sources are now public and licensed under GPL v.3.0. Core authors: Read the embedded documentation and fashion your cores per the repo suggestions as this will make maintaining everything much easier. Have fun porting cores!

https://gitlab.com/SpectrumNext/ZX_Spectrum_Next_FPGA

[akeley]

TL;DR - should be pretty fast, 3000 of us have already been Guinea pigs!

Thank you for your Service

I suppose the bare bones (but with keyboard) unit will be probably around 230-250 this time round. It's a lot (for me)...but then this is Spectrum. If I had to own one dedicated FPGA implementation of a microcomputer it'd be this one.

On the other hands this, and Seven.FFF's comment remind me that NEXT is indeed an FPGA board and so capable of running other cores. How powerful is it compared to MiSTer? Is there any chance of lots of various cores appearing on it?

[Seven.FFF]

It will depend on the MISTer core. The MISTer FPGA is roughly the same size as the Next, but the MISTer also has other hardware on the board the Next doesn't have, and it has a different kind of RAM. So if a MISTer core uses any of those hardware features, it may not be portable without some compromises.

The ZX-DOS (The UNO's big brother) has an identical FPGA to the Next, and the UNO has one in the same family but a bit smaller. So you should expect to see people port all the UNO and DOS cores fairly soon.

There are also quite a few other independent hobbyists early waiting to work on their own cores, so hopefully there will be lots of cool stuff in due course

[DouglasReynholm]

So do you have your grubby mits on a real life Spectrum NEXT!!!? If so, I demand a picture of it in the wild

No, sadly not yet. I ordered the cased version, which is two years overdue because of problems making the case and debugging some problems with the bespoke keyboard. As @Seven.FFF says, the bare board only Nexts shipped to initial backers November 2017 (hence my high confidence in the PCB itself being mostly debugged by now).

I was backer ~2400, I think the first 500 cased machines should be out to backers soon, no idea when I will get mine yet, just glad to know its now 'imminent'.

[akeley]

It will depend on the MISTer core. The MISTer FPGA is roughly the same size as the Next, but the MISTer also has other hardware on the board the Next doesn't have, and it has a different kind of RAM. So if a MISTer core uses any of those hardware features, it may not be portable without some compromises.

Sure, I wouldn't expect it to be a total match for MiSTer, it'd be too good to be true But even the ZX Uno core list is fairly impressive: C64, CPC, Atari 800 and Apple II - that's some heavy hitters right there. Imagine Atari on Next, what schadenfraude

This really stoked my interest in the Next kickstarter. Thanks for the info.

[Seven.FFF]

Definitely, it's exciting times.

There are also Victor's cores from his earler Multicore project (some overlap with the UNO cores, I think):

https://gitlab.com/victor.trucco/Multicore

I also know of someone working on a different QL core, and someone else working on a Science of Cambridge MK14, both specially for the Next.

[Firefox]

Is there an option to buy just a case?
I would've thought there might be, since there are people out there with just a board...

[PeterJ]

This is very random question....

I'm 99.9% sure I backed the Next, and I get all the backer emails, but when I log in it's not listed as one of my backed projects.

I'm sure it's me going slowly mad, but could someone tell me when the funds were taken from their account and what the description of the transaction was, so I can check through my credit card statements..

No, I've not been drinking.....

[DouglasReynholm]

This is very random question....

I'm 99.9% sure I backed the Next, and I get all the backer emails, but when I log in it's not listed as one of my backed projects.

I'm sure it's me going slowly mad, but could someone tell me when the funds were taken from their account and what the description of the transaction was, so I can check through my credit card statements..

No, I've not been drinking.....

My money was taken the week the kickstarter was funded (May 17?) I'll have a look at my credit card statement later but fairly sure I remember it having kickstarter in its description.

[PeterJ]

Thank you. Appreciated.

[Seven.FFF]

Peter, A few people have inadvertently made two Kickstarter accounts, They logged in with an email address and password originally, then next time they logged in they click the ”Login with Facebook” button. Or vice-versa.

If you login the way you originally did when you pledged, you should see your pledge. If that doesn’t work, Kickstarter support can help you trace your account.

Finally, a few people pre-ordered Nexts from the SpecNext.com webshop after the kickstarter campaign closed. If you’re one of these, email [email protected] and they’ll help you confirm your details.

[1024MAK]

Peter, did you get an email with the first part of your address on? A copy of part of mine is over on WoSf here.

Mark

[PeterJ]

Thanks everyone. I found the email, and it did have my address on it, and I must have two Kickstarter accounts as was suggested.

Thanks for all the help! I'm not going mad!

[Alcoholics Anonymous]

The first cased next is delivered to Paul Howes

[Spud]

WANT WANT WANT

[emook]

https://www.facebook.com/groups/specnex ... 542376665/

First Next out of the blocks!

[emook]

Ahh sorry I see AA beat me to it (to be fair his post was on a previous page). (/slinks back into hole)

[1024MAK]

Ahh sorry I see AA beat me to it (to be fair his post was on a previous page). (/slinks back into hole)

May your hole have a nice new Next in it

Mark

[beanz]

Delicious.