Spectrum Computing

Posted: **Sat Oct 05, 2019 6:32 pm**

Thanks Moroz for the info update on the Dizzy from the first hand!
I only know what I read on zx.pk.ru.

Posted: **Sat Oct 05, 2019 11:33 pm**

Thanks! I'm not really participating in zx-pk.ru for various reasons, similar to a lot of active folks on Russian scene. So if you want to ask anything about new Dizzy - I'll be glad to answer

Posted: **Tue Jan 21, 2020 1:54 pm**

No discussion here on update 56 from a couple of days ago? It's about to ship..

Posted: **Tue Jan 21, 2020 2:42 pm**

Nevermind

Posted: **Tue Jan 21, 2020 2:51 pm**

Backer Addresses - IMPORTANT!

tl;dr: Go to Kickstarter, click on the Next campaign, Pledge and Survey. That's where you edit your address. Arnie says 'Do it now!'

It's now or never: the Next is (at last!) about to ship, thus it is important that you check your address details on Kickstarter to ensure that they are up to date. We will lock the ability to edit the address shortly, and after we do this no more changes can be made. You have one week from today to update your address!

Head on over to Kickstarter and sign into your account. Find the Spectrum Next in your list of backed projects and view your pledge. This option may not appear on mobile devices so use your favourite desktop or laptop.

In there you'll find the survey option where you can edit your address.

*If you live in Brazil: Remember to add your CPF to the address. This is important and a customs requirement for the country.

Assembly and Testing - NEXTEST

After SMS had built the first 500 units, Kev Brady travelled to SMS in order to bring their engineers up to speed with his new NEXTEST application, and to supervise the initial testing in order to ensure that each Next performs to its specification and that the application itself was consistent.

NEXTEST is a mouse-driven application to test the ZX Spectrum Next. It stress tests the hardware by running several tasks in parallel to check RAM and DMA. CRC verified audio data is continually streamed to the DAC via the 'copper' co-processor to test the SD card. All test results, including the input status from the keyboard, joysticks, mouse, and case buttons are presented on one single 640x256 screen. NEXTEST can be configured on the fly to change the CPU turbo speed, refresh rate and machine timing between 48K/128K/Pentagon.

It goes above and beyond manual testing and also streamlines the process, making it quicker and more efficient. Huge thanks to Kev for dedicating his time creating this software, for taking time out to visit SMS to bring them up to speed, and to guide the creation of their new testing documentation.

https://youtu.be/EJNCoCoV-Ew

Next Central! The assembly area
The boards are brought to life with a quick flash to burn the firmware in
This is where board and case meet for the first time
A box of cases. Symmetrical keyboard stacking. You're right. No human being would stack keyboards like this.
Testing in progress! Both VGA and HDMI outputs here.
Hundreds of Next's, all snug and getting ready for their travels!
In addition to the base tests above, Wifi is tested with an adapted version of the WIFI.BAS program which launches straight into Access Point detection and allows an operator to validate the ESP module in a few seconds.

https://youtu.be/ezyyJGK3un4
With these tests in place, SMS is able to make sure the Next is being packed fully functioning, hopefully arriving in the same state to every single backer.

Next Steps

The last batch of cases is on its way to SMS as you read this, meaning we're now full steam ahead on assembly and preparation for shipping.

We now have over 500 Next's built and waiting to be boxed at SMS with another 300+ still to go through the assembly process in order to fulfil the first tier (base models). We intend to start shipping out towards the end of this month, so it's time to start thinking about where to put your Next in your home.

Once we've shipped the Nexts, we'll head to Kickstarter 2 for those who didn't manage to join the original campaign. Let's grow the ZX Spectrum Next community, keep on making great things with the Next and having a ton of fun!

The next Update will be entited... 'It's shipping!'

For the bits that I couldn’t be bothered to copy/paste and the photos, go here

Meanwhile, back to watching paint dry

Mark

Posted: **Tue Jan 21, 2020 4:05 pm**

Mark its a bit confusing, the Next site but in your message you have that theres going to be a 2nd kickstarter presumably for people like me who missed the original - by a lousy few days! Will that mean that I can still get a Next myself? If so please do us a favour and let me know when this 2nd signup opens for business as I dont want to miss it - thanks Mike

Posted: **Tue Jan 21, 2020 5:21 pm**

Yes there will be a second kickstarter not long after everyone has got their Next from the first kickstarter. No guarantees it will get fully funded, but there will at least be the opportunity to pledge. I think the news will be spread a lot louder and wider this time, as many more people are now aware of the project.

Posted: **Tue Jan 21, 2020 8:58 pm**

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.

Posted: **Thu Jan 23, 2020 4:32 pm**

There is an official poll to get feedback on the pledge options people want to see in a second kickstarter. Vote on it here:

https://www.specnext.com/kickstarter-2-poll/

Posted: **Fri Jan 31, 2020 10:53 pm**

I hope - if I can get one - that ingenious inventions will follow. I'd like to see a built in battery like on my laptop that gives at least 4 hours on a charge (nearly 6 if the machine isnt being over stretched). Another possible plus would be a clip on screen, something that could be easily detached if not required. A permanent attachment would spoil the looks of the computer but it would be nice to be able to take it to the park for a relaxing writing session.

Posted: **Mon Feb 03, 2020 8:58 pm**

stupidget wrote: ↑Tue Jan 21, 2020 8:58 pm 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.

Posted: **Mon Feb 03, 2020 9:35 pm**

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.

Posted: **Tue Feb 04, 2020 9:56 am**

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

Posted: **Tue Feb 04, 2020 11:34 am**

akeley wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2020 9:56 am 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!

Posted: **Tue Feb 04, 2020 1:22 pm**

DouglasReynholm wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2020 11:34 am
akeley wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2020 9:56 am 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

Posted: **Tue Feb 04, 2020 1:26 pm**

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

Posted: **Tue Feb 04, 2020 1:27 pm**

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

Posted: **Tue Feb 04, 2020 2:13 pm**

DouglasReynholm wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2020 11:34 am 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?

Posted: **Tue Feb 04, 2020 2:49 pm**

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

Posted: **Tue Feb 04, 2020 4:05 pm**

stupidget wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2020 1:22 pm 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'.

Posted: **Tue Feb 04, 2020 5:40 pm**

Seven.FFF wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2020 2:49 pm 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.

Posted: **Tue Feb 04, 2020 5:46 pm**

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.

Posted: **Wed Feb 05, 2020 9:18 am**

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...

Posted: **Wed Feb 05, 2020 11:18 am**

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.....

Posted: **Wed Feb 05, 2020 11:44 am**

PeterJ wrote: ↑Wed Feb 05, 2020 11:18 am 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.

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