A collection of retro computers and other devices from the 8 bit era and possibly beyond. Mainly focusing on the Sinclair range of home computers (from ZX81 to the Spectrum 128+2 or +3 if I can find one for a reasonable price!) but I have access to a few other things as well, so don't be surprised if something else turns up. Will be looking at games, peripherals and some modifications. I may look at the occasional new thing, but primarily I'll try and keep it Retro focused.
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Vdrive?
From what I know they emulate the Microdrive so would probably fail in the same way due to the shadow rom not being available (without all the fiddling).
@@stevesretroloft what a pity the if1 didn't have a coprocessor and an extra 16kb of video ram!
When will next file browser use 512x192?
Not sure to be honest. The Facebook group for the Next might give you some pointers.
@@stevesretroloft they don't seem very helpful I might be barred
When can we use a quad core pi zero as the accelerator what about an art package and what about the pi zero emulating the vdp9990 at least?
It does seem to be a waste of a pi to just load certain file formats. Not sure how accessible it is from the OS.
@@stevesretroloft there's a pi zero in the zx hdmi from byte delight and one for Sam surely it can emulate a video chip?
Hi! - Possibly I have a "semi automated" version to activate ROM and the access to Interface 1. This COULD work, but I'm not sure... 1st step: - Boot the Next into the common mode (NextZXOS) - Write a tiny BASIC program containing the OUT commands - Save it to the SD card - just save, don't run using SAVE "microdrive.bas" don't run it using LINE 10 or so 2nd step: - (Re-) boot the next into the common mode (NextZXOS) - Load the given Program using LOAD or the browser of the system - Enter "Command Line"- or "NextBASIC" mode - Enter command "SPECTRUM" when the program is loaded - Type "RUN" to disable the features 3rd step (most important): - Give me a hint if this does work for you... 😎
Thanks I'll give that a try at some point.
@@stevesretroloft Make it so...
The only Plimsole Mark I got was punishment for hiding in a bush during Cross Country.
I think our PE teachers back in the 80's loved to dish out that punishment. I got it for making fart noises with my arm pit in the changing room. Thanks Mr Morgan!
@@stevesretroloft Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Those who can't teach, teach PE. I always wondered about the sort of person whose preferred vocation in life is hanging about a load of little boys getting muddy and sweaty in gym gear.
Uncle Clive hated videogames, but I bet he was pleased with educational titles like that.
I do wonder if all the educational titles were due to losing the BBC Schools program to Acorn.
I think the educational ones were quicker to code and therefore cheaper to produce.
Do you know how to hack a modem to serve data to these? Usually these have a 1200/75 modem, so for the server side, you need 75/1200, which is very rare.
Not sure to be honest. Although you may be able to setup a serial port on a Linux box to use this async type connection. This unit has a modem built in, but it's the old pulse dial system so won't work on a modern exchange (I also no longer have a landline either - so the linux/unix tty port is probably the only option.
Not the most exciting game ever, but actually some interesting information!
It's been interesting looking at some of these old educational titles.
I don’t remember this from when I had a ZX Spectrum, but I don’t think I missed much!
There's quite a few Sinclair branded things I doubt many of us saw - that said it might been included on the Software 6 pack (along with epic titles like Make-a-chip!)
I was trying to find it the story, but it is long gone. There was some fellow that put a ZX81 into his glider to map out the thermals. Somehow hooked up the instruments in his glider. That must have surely inspired this title! That fellow inspired me on my journey to becoming a programmer!
I think the ZX series of computers inspired a lot of us to work in IT.
I think I remember that being an article in PCW four decades ago. God, I feel old. 👴
@@PartarioAbdullah-Levi I doubt any other generation in history has witnessed the changes we've seen!
Anyone remember 'Combat Lynx' on the Spectrum?
Yes, I attempted to load it on a few of my old videos. (Seems all my copies of it are a little unreliable!)
by DURELL software ?
Gliding and ZX Spectrum both have firm place in my feed but I never expected them to intersect in the same video😮 And the surprise is comparable with that of a board game of cross-country gliding.
Wonder which came first, the spectrum game of the board game? I hope whilst brief I was able to show what the game does.
Great video, but you'd better edit out smacking from the audio stream.
Thanks for the tip - I'm still learning with video and sound.
Sabre Wulf…… fantastic to see that start screen again. One of my favourite games along with Attic Attack and Knights Lore.
It was certainly one of the classics for the Spectrum.
SURELY A NEW AGE OR SCIENTOLOGY "THANG"!!!
There's a probably a hidden Thetan level or Audit mode!
@@stevesretroloft mayB, i dunno!!!
Nothing to do with the Scientology UFO cult was ever that cheap!
My dad was never into computers but for some reason he actually typed in a biorythrms program from a magazine he brought in 84 onto my spectrum. 🤔
It does seem Biorhythms was a very 80's thing.
There was a printed listing for a biorhythms thing in ZX Computing magazine, April '84. It was better than this - more graphical.
Who knew Biorhythms would be so popular!
On pc you could always run Retro Virtual Machine and try and find a windows retro keyboard that replicates sinclair or in the very least, amstrad. There might be one out there.. maybe
There are a few options out there from what I've seen.
Good old ZX Spectrum stuff, I've got a 16k (with the 48k upgrade kit) Rubber Beermat that still works; it lives in the cupboard of old stuff along with a ZX81, a BBC B (with a 5.25 floppy drive and an original Elite floppy), a C64, an Atari STFM and an Amiga 500; with the exception of the Atari they all work fine, the Atari needs a few bits to bring it back to life.
Nice collection, I’d love to pick up both an Atari ST and Amiga - although the latter are silly prices now.
@@stevesretroloft Got my eyes on an Amstrad CPC that's been gathering dust in my mate's garage for years.
@@paulj5080 464 or 6128?
had something similar on the Acorn Electron……yes that is a real, genuine old computer 🤣 Even had Elite on it…..lmao
I do remember them, never got round to trying one. I do have a BBC so the experience is similar.
@@stevesretroloftI thought the BBC's were put in schools as far as i remember as we had them in ours. The electron i think was the home branded version of it. at least thats what I remember being they are almost identical
@@TechnoAssassin-vx6zf Yes, Acorn won the contract to put a computer in every school and the BBC ran an accompanying programme on TV at the time. The Electron was simplified device (a lot less chips internally) compared to the original BBC - but a mostly compatible device. Sadly it came in to existence just as the boom for the home micro market was over and led to the demise of Acorn as home computer supplier.
@@stevesretroloft damn, you know your stuff 🙈😂👍🏻 top banana
Fans of the 2000AD comic might remember a Zenith story where the pop star / superhero's enemies miscalculated his biorhythms because his manager had told him to use Elvis's date of birth rather than his own for publicity purposes. The whole thing was very 80s haven't heard anyone even mention biorhythms for decades.
Hopefully I'm not going to start a come back for it!
That old WHSmith tape recorder!
Mine was the Currys own brand (Triumph) - that said it was a standard shell for many others to badge.
@@stevesretroloft ah! Thank you for the insight!
I'm glad this worked out better than the Vega or its sequel.
It has been a much better project overall compared to previous attempts.
Well my memory is obviously failing me 😂 I would have put money on it that this was on the Horizons tape. This must have been on the dodgey C90s full of stuff my mum used to bring home from work haha
It might have had something similar on it now you mention it
Yeah thought it was on horizons too. Probably getting mixed up with foxes and rabbits
@@MarkGodfrey73 There was also a program called "waves" on horizons, which combined two sine waves to make a regular interference pattern.
@@ann_onn think I remember that from my youth but don't remember it on a YT video I watched recently heh
It was a waste of time then, it's a waste of time now! Didn't expect it to bore me some 40 years later.
Sorry about that 😆
Biorhythms, that was such an 80s thing. This was also one of the games that came on the BBC Micro "Welcome" cassette.
I didn’t know there was a BBC welcome cassette, I might try to find it for when I get round to doing my BBC master video!
It was the only bit of software that we had for the one at school. I remember there was a brickbat game on it and a poem generator.
And before that on the demo cassette that came with the Video Genie (a TRS-80 clone).
The "horizons" tape! It contained one playable game and a load of dross
Only doing the white notes? That is sooo racist!
To be honest I didn't want the print from my inkjet on my fingers!
@@stevesretroloft 😆
Cool! Bought a Pi Zero 2W for a bit of emulation... My friend had a ZX48 but I could not remember the games we played on it except for H.E.R.O. but Sabrewulf was absolut one of them! I'm going to visit him and then we are going to play all games we did 30-35 years ago! ZX48, C64, Amiga (and a really small bit of DOS games)...
Nice one, its always good to introduce retro to others!
i wonder if its possible to connect a microdrive to the misterfpga and run it on a spectrum core
If you have the same expansion bus for the Interface one, then possibly?
Sabre Wulf was my thing. I even drew out a map.
That must have took a bit of time - it was quite a big play area!
@@stevesretroloft yes, it did. I remember the crappy joystick too. Does the old game actually play OK with emulators?
@@choboutube I've tried it on an emulator and it does work o.k for me - although I can't get a joystick to work with it.
The only reason I can think for doing this is to save the Microdrive programs to SD. But you can't because it's one or the other.
I suppose you could load from the Microdrive and save to tape as a workaround. Then go from tape to saving it as a .bas file when running in the Next mode.
Most impressive music I heard on the Speccy was Wham! The Music Box. Kind of polyphonic. It's on YT, so have a listen.
I'll have a have a look at that, thanks. I do remember how impressed we were we the music at the start of Fairlight.
Ah, those memories.... ▼
Thanks Robert.
"ive got a sinclair zx spectrum music maker... and im gonna test it on a real zx spectrum. nothing fancy" indeed
Maybe my expectations were a bit too high?
0:29 Where did you buy the case from? Where can we buy a case like that?
You can get it from ZX-Renew - (a UK based website). There's a few others such as Retroleum & Sintech who do parts and other things.
I started my music career on an MSX. Not quite the same, but the same processor at least.
Nice one, I wish I’d started to learn in the 80’s
All the IT nerds buying up these overpriced machines is hilarious to me. That said, this has a better design than the X16. I hope all investors in all of these projects make tons of money. Poor 8-Bit Guy seems to have lost his shirt getting the X16 off the ground.
Not too sure if the aim was make money or just make the device they felt was the natural successor to the Spectrum. Either way it looks to have been priced to cover costs, probably with a bit of money left after the event (Companies house will show the accounts for SpecNext Ltd to see where the money has gone). I think the 8-bit guys problems have been around trying to manufacture as much of it himself rather than outsourcing to a few suppliers - that said I haven't watched his stuff for a while (think the last thing I saw of his was him spending a fortune on a flow soldering station and all the issues around getting that to work). With regards to the design, it probably helps the next was modelled by an actual industrial designer/company. Is it overpriced though? - If you bought through the kickstarter then probably not (or in my case picked one up from someone who didn't want to make money on it) - There's some that paid a high price on Ebay, they have to justify the price they paid I guess. £325 for the full version isn't a bad price for a limited run, well designed device.
These aren't about making money, they are passion projects to reconnect with the past. there are generally no "investors" just people getting together to make it happen. They aren't overpriced, they are priced what they took to make happen.
I'm afraid you're way off m8. I work in electronics manufacture and assembly, with some knowledge of this sector in particular and I can tell you with authority that these things are not overpriced, due to low demand, small economies of scale and relatively high development costs. I'd imagine that the margins on these are not great at that price and the return on initial investment is likely to take a long time.
@@andrewgoodall2183i would like to mention that it depends on what one means with overpriced. I am certain that most projects of this kind doesn't make much money out of it in the end, and that in order to cover every cost they have to start there and make a few bucks out of each machine. But I question, is it really worth that kind of money. It becomes a lot of money just to get a feeling back from childhood. In the end it really isn't fun enough for the money spent. Emulators can be quite enough if one put down some time to perfect the setup.
@@larswadefalk6423 Of course, only the buyer can decide what they're willing to pay for something. I happen to know a bit about this project, and I think the guy probably put his price where it is because he went through manufacturing hell because of inexperience, and that deeply affected his margins I suspect. But even if that had not been the case, it would not be a cheap unit because of the reasons I state above. Ultimately, this is the price, and if you want it enough, you'll pay rather than just use an emulator <shrug>.
A strange combination of cute and absolutely awful. Thank goodness for Apple and all that came after. Of course, we have to thank these precursors for showing us the way and for tackling certain foundational issues with packing functionality into such small devices. I did have a Palm Pilot as a teen. I cannot for the life of me remember how I acquired it. It was quite fun actually and had some basic handwriting recognition, but a teen doesn't really need to add people to a handheld address book so it quickly got put away into a drawer.
All it takes usually is someone to show everyone the way - Apple got it right with the iPhone design after everyone else was trying to reinvent the PDA/Phone combo.
be careful with that PSU, theyre notorious for destroying the c64 at a certain point
Thanks for the info :) I'll keep an eye on it the next time I take a look at it.
I had one of those in the days. I used it when I was consulting with a manufacturing company and it was the thing I developed some .net software for their scanners which ran windows CE. They used the scanners to do inventory in their warehouse which was fully covered with wifi. So I built a quick app, testing on that Casio device that would hook to their SQL Database and capture their counts, validate their bin locations, and push data into their Inventory system as pending inventory count adjustments that they could manage in the inventory systems UI. Back then MAS 500, then Sage 500, now deprecated as it was built on VB6, and SQL Server using "dna" technologies....
Nice, I thought I was being hi-tech with mine! Good to see the actual power of such a device :)
I swear every retro tinkerer youtuber has the same samsung TV
We've got to keep hold of them as they don't make anything this small anymore!
£300? Still, sold out! Not for me, I've bought emulator h/w before for various but get bored of them in 5 minutes. Nice trip down nostalgia lane but best left in the past for me, good luck everyone else.
Yes it is a bit pricy, however it's more than just an emulator.
10 bonus internet points for Windows CE!!!
Thought you'd like that. It's still quite usable apart from the screen - maybe I'll check out eBay for the colour LCD version!
water bucket
I've not considered its water carrying capabilities to be honest.
It's like a long lost friend.. 48k speccy at 14..then at 17 a +2 (amstrad) great memories 😊
Sounds a very similar story to me - I might have been 16 when I got my +2 though!
Hello Steve - Did you use the low noise adaptor that came with the fan?
No just the screws that held the original fan in. It might have been a little quieter had I done that (assuming they fit). But I wanted a quick and easy job for now.
The fan kit should have included a 4 pin low-noise adaptor cable in the kit that takes the voltage down to 7-8V@@stevesretroloft
@@jjr5500 I see, I though you meant the attachment of the fan! - I might take a look at that cable - but as I need it to be 2 pin connector I might need to be a bit creative with it. Obviously I didn't read any documentation that came with it!
I'm surprised: So when you run the Spectrum Next in 48K-mode, the Interface 1 is activated? Otherwise the Microdrice commands wouldn't be recognized. Is there a setting to boot without it? I remember the Interface 1 making changes to the plain 48K Spectrum, that were not always wanted. For example in "fuse" you can choose, if you want to emulate a plain 48K Spectrum or one with added Interface 1. Is that different on the Next?
The Microdrive commands (well the Key words) are in the existing Rom but aren't recognised as commands until the Shadow Rom is attached (Interface one). I know there were a few titles that mentioned wouldn't work with the Interface One attached, the Microdrive expansion pack had a note to that effect. With reference to booting without it, a power down of the device clears the settings that the 2 out commands run so that should do it. With regards to Fuse, emulating the spectrum + interface one is probably easier as there's not much to complicate things, whereas the next as a hardware recreation (via the FPGA) also includes other interfaces (Not sure if the interfaces are emulation or h/w recreation) which in this maybe be causing a few clashes along the way. I suppose if you have the original hardware and plugged a number of physical interfaces in it might have a similar effect. Whether it can be addressed in a firmware update I'm not sure. There's probably a very small number of us trying to use the next with old interfaces as most of the functionality of these devices is more than replicated with the Next anyway. I'm tempted to see if my Ram Turbo and Jet Pac works on it though - that's for another day.
The worst thing about the Microdrives was the dodgy cable. You only needed to jog it slightly and it would whir into action, corrupting your cartridge as it did so!
The cable being so short didn't exactly help things!
Looks great, also glad about the new addition of chickens :)
It's nice to have more additions to the original game, rather than just a straight up conversion.
Does it work with external physical floppy drives ?
It should work with Floppy devices made for the original spectrum as the FPGA chip is a hardware recreation of the original Spectrum devices (not sure yet if you need to fiddle around with any menus). That brings me neatly on to my next video where I see if it works with my Microdrives!