Spectrum Computing

RMartins wrote: ↑Sat Jul 13, 2019 10:00 pm I see a dark grey ribbon on each side of the screen.
The thing is, you ALWAYS have to have some conductive way to pass electricity to the glass substrate, to excite/align the crystals.
So you always have some rubberized conductor to pass signals from the board to the screen.

You do? I don't see that. Could you highlight the areas you mean?

(I'll try your other suggestions, btw - thanks)

5MinuteRetro wrote: ↑Sat Jul 13, 2019 11:31 pm

RMartins wrote: ↑Sat Jul 13, 2019 10:00 pm I see a dark grey ribbon on each side of the screen.
The thing is, you ALWAYS have to have some conductive way to pass electricity to the glass substrate, to excite/align the crystals.
So you always have some rubberized conductor to pass signals from the board to the screen.

You do? I don't see that. Could you highlight the areas you mean?

I'm not on my usual machine, so no way to share an image.


On this image (near the top and bottom of the screen glass), there are 2 horizontal stripes that are Dark Gray and have a darker Black center line, which is the conducting part.

Zoom the image and you will see.

Notice that these contacts are always near the edge of the screen.
When the screen is removed, it usually has an indentation where the ribbon fits, since the screen is in fact a kind of a sandwhich of ( glass + Liquid crystal + glass ), where one of the glasses (usually the back of the screen) is shorter/smaller, so that contact can be established with the conductive substrate (Liquid Crystal contact lines).

My new acquisition:



Sealed, for only 20 euros. Comparing to the current prices on ebay, etc I think I've been lucky.

Those mini Game & Watch are lovely little devices, but they chew through the button cell batteries at a hell of a rate.
I think I've got Mario's Cement Factory, Donkey Kong Jr and Super Mario Bros somewhere. That last one has an impressive variety of levels for an LCD game.

It looks absolutely tiny.

Someone needs to post a pic of it with a banana or pen for scale.

Morkin wrote: ↑Thu Mar 03, 2022 11:55 am Someone needs to post a pic of it with a banana or pen for scale.

I'd rather use the usual Antonio-Martin-Basket-Master-Dinamic's-regular-tape standard scale:



Here's also me playing DK Junior:



All these Mini-Classics are at a very reasonable prices (well, except for models like Fire or Octopus at aprox. 90 euros!!!), because the original G&W machines are at a very prohibitive prices...

I got the Zelda Anniversary Game & Watch for Christmas. It's really cool.



Did an unboxing for my YouTube channel here:

https://youtu.be/DL5Mjf323AY

Juan F. Ramirez wrote: ↑Thu Mar 03, 2022 1:10 pm

Morkin wrote: ↑Thu Mar 03, 2022 11:55 am Someone needs to post a pic of it with a banana or pen for scale.

I'd rather use the usual Antonio-Martin-Basket-Master-Dinamic's-regular-tape standard scale:

Thank you. I always find there's confusion about whether to pick cm or inches, so it's good to have a gold standard unit of measurement that is universally accepted...

merman wrote: ↑Thu Mar 03, 2022 2:30 pm I got the Zelda Anniversary Game & Watch for Christmas. It's really cool.

It's a neat gadget and a great tribute, but the first few NES Zelda games are barely playable even with the nostalgia goggles turned up to full. And while Link's Awakening carries one of the best plotlines in that whole series, it's a blatant insult to the player that they didn't use the colourised version. All-in-all, it's quite the price gouge for a retro system with so few games on it.

They'd be better off simply re-issuing the GameBoy Micro with legit NES and GBC emulation bundles, though heaven forbid Nintendo should ever be accused of giving customers what they want.

Joefish wrote: ↑Thu Mar 03, 2022 5:16 pmIt's a neat gadget and a great tribute, but the first few NES Zelda games are barely playable even with the nostalgia goggles turned up to full.

I'm sure you could express the same sentiment to a lot of Speccy games ...

For example, when Rare Replay was released in 2015, the Speccy games on that collection were widely derided in the German-speaking corner of the internet, a major factor certainly being the lack of nostalgia for the Speccy and its games (I think I've told you guys enough times already how the Speccy was an almost obscure machine over here). So granted, in this case the nostalgia goggles were not even put on ... but they also didn't get the best reception in other countries:

Among the least favorites were Perfect Dark Zero, Grabbed by the Ghoulies, and the early Spectrum games, which reviewers felt had aged the worst.

Underwurlde was never playable!

Joefish wrote: ↑Sun Mar 06, 2022 9:31 pm Underwurlde was never playable!

Agreed!

The Zelda G&W though, it's just a nice little piece of nostalgia. I know I'm the sort of nerd Nintendo aimed it at.

merman wrote: ↑Wed Mar 09, 2022 10:22 amThe Zelda G&W though, it's just a nice little piece of nostalgia. I know I'm the sort of nerd Nintendo aimed it at.

At least the damn things are rechargeable!

I sometimes wonder about pushing myself to play through the original Zelda, as I really loved the later games (Awakening, Ocarina, Twilight), but then again I tried playing through even one of the Oracle games and got quite bored with it. And replaying Minish recently, as soon as I picked up the gust jar and remembered you have to go round hoovering up the dust in room after room looking for hidden trapdoors, I realised I wasn't going to pick it up again. I think I can name more games in that series with annoyances that I wouldn't want to play again, than ones I've revisited. Even Skyward Sword, for all its amazing visual moments, was frustrating in the motion-plus controls simply didn't work as promised (the sword slash actions were faked, and the bow aiming always drifted way off, compared to the pin-point camera/cursor accuracy of the previous game).

Still looking for a cheap Wii U or some way to play Breath of the Wild. Not sure I want to buy a Switch for one game.