"The Rubber Keyed Wonder" (Documentary Film)

[ortek_service]

Originally Posted by SiriusHardware

That seems like an optimistic price at first glance but 'The Spectrum' only seems to be available from its chosen high street distributors in short batches once every 1-2 months, and I suspect many of the ones which periodically arrive there are already sold on pre-order so I was probably quite lucky to just walk in (To 'Smyths Toys', in my case) and buy mine.

Given the intermittent nature of the supply of new units, I suppose that particular Cex branch must be gambling that anyone who wants one right now will be prepared to pay almost full price for it. Goodness only knows what they would try to sell a Spectrum Next for.

I'd presumed that 'The Spectrum' was a normally-stocked product in the High St. shops they sell it in (With Argos & Currys probably having many more branches than Smthys Toys) - as well as currently stocked by Amazon etc. all at the same price.
Rather than the 'Next' that is only made in limited numbers / batches, so can be a long waiting time and people could be buying them to them resell at a higher-price.
- That happened with RPi's, when there were production-capacity issues (especially RPi Zeros, that production had been put on hold for a while to concentrate on RPi 4 's etc). And I remember seeing RPi 4's (albeit in a case) for £80! in some CeX branches - When I'd bought one new in the box for rather-less than £40 online a while before.
Whereas CeX sell older RPi's for much more sensible prices and generally consistent like £10 for early ones and the RPi-3 for £21 (B) / £25 (B+) (Generally cheaper than eBay etc)

I have previously found that CeX prices can vary quite a bit from branch to branch, and whilst some older memory DIMM's at most branches are only 10p or 25p - that it seems would be uneconomic to sell for in the shops, especially as they give you a long-warranty (but if you want to buy online and have delivered cost nearly £3 per item, even when from the same shop - So can work out rather-cheaper to go into shop if a nearby does still have some).
But the same item at some branches still have them priced at several pounds, when you'd expect them to have a national pricing for these (or might actually put the price for older, getting-rarer, memory prices to match what people are try to get on eBay etc). Although it seems they probably just want to get rid of them, as haven't got the space to put them on display, so I wasn't aware many branches still had any of these.


With 'The Spectrum', it seems the CeX price is consistent, with CeX website showing all (1 in stock at each of 16 different stores) are are £85 (boxed) - With them buying these off you for £55 (in-vouchers) or £39 (in-cash).
Although they do also sell them slightly-cheaper unboxed-ones, for £80.

Not sure if their warranty on these is, like most of their items, 2years
- So probably longer than the normal 1yr in most shops.
But I still think I'd rather buy one brand-new, if only a few pounds more, assuming there aren't yet cheap used-ones from other places.

[SiriusHardware]

What you get for your £90 is not bad at all, it's been pretty well designed and looks and feels exactly right - bar the Sinclair name and ZX Spectrum logo of course. They've even put some weights inside the enclosure to give it exactly the right 'heft' - they didn't need to, but it makes all the difference, the machine would be featherlight without them.

You could arguably still buy a real working 48K Spectrum for less (...is that still true?) and add various bits and bobs to it to get the same desirable extras, such as fast loading from flash media, and HDMI out for modern screens, but 'The Spectrum' is just so 'pick up and use' in the way that the original one also was back when we all had shoebox tape recorders and analogue UHF colour TVs lying immediately to hand. The bold, bright quality of the on-screen display is something we would have killed for back in the day with no trace of the dreaded 'dot crawl' - although there is still attribute clash, as that is an unavoidable quirk of the original Spectrum hardware and the decision to have only two colours per character square.

I regard my ownership of 'The Spectrum' - in spite of having two genuine working machines - as roughly analogous to the situation with my original MK14 vs. my 'Slothie' and 'Oddy' MK14 replicas - it's great to own an original machine (which I have owned for all of its life and a considerable portion of mine) but it's nice to be able to put that safely aside, use one of the replicas as my daily driver and not worry too much about accidentally damaging it.

[SiriusHardware]

Speaking of supply and demand I've just noticed that Argos are stocking it - a quick check shows that my nearest one has them available to collect so maybe they've ramped up the production rate a bit.

[ortek_service]

Yes, I had previously mentioned that Argos (and also Curry's) sold it in their shops.

I've just seen there's now only 12hrs left to back the Kickstarter (that reached it target in minutes and now 5x that) to get a Spectrum Next: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/spectrumnext/zx-spectrum-next-issue-3-0

And I hadn't realised that apparently this is a new 'Issue 3' Next that:

"follows the success of our two previous Kickstarter campaigns (delivering over 10,000 units worldwide) and introduces a larger, more powerful FPGA (Artix A7 XC7A35T-2CSG324C), support for additional platforms like the Sinclair QL (With option for 68020 @44MHz) and Commodore 64, and a ton more enhancements under the hood"
"Thanks to its new expanded FPGA, the Next Issue 3 supports more retro cores and ZX personalities than ever:"

"Extra cores are available from third parties (like the BBC by hoglet) and more Sinclair-related cores are in the planning stage!
Personalities: Timex as well as unofficial clones, such as the TS/TC2048, Pentagon, TK90X, TK95 and others.

Multiple Personalities: ZX80, ZX81, and all original Spectrum models."

+ Also SAM Coupe planned.

Although standard pledge-price is now £300, as too late for the early bird £280 price.
However, you can just get the new main board for £160 / also with a new daughter board, to upgrade previous Next Issue 1 & 2 for £180 (So might be some people selling their Issue 1 / 2 boards in future? - Unless they re-house these in something)
Also extra £20 options for an Accelerator and translucent-Magenta case:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/spectrumnext/zx-spectru...3-0/pledge/new?clicked_reward=false

It doesn't seem you can buy just the case (like Sinclair had originally done with Spectrum+ launch, to upgrade your rubber-keyed original)
- And what apparently led to people returning their old empty cases under warranty and getting free replacement computers as they didn't check if the board was in these! So caused quite a bit of financial loss to Sinclair.
Although it seems the case (+PSU, leads, accessories & box etc.) is costing another £120! (Or £140 for translucent-Magenta one), over the price for just the set of internal boards.

[SiriusHardware]

I was hovering, but decided not to buy a Next - not yet, perhaps not ever.

They seem to be trying too hard now to add 'value' to reward people who back each kickstarter - I mean, C64 emulation on a 'Spectrum', really? None of this functionality is needed on a SuperSpectrum and is easier and cheaper to come by on a PC running emulation software.

I'm probably going to sit this one out.

[Timbucus]

Oh dear no FOMO? I have been playing with mine all afternoon... (on some text adventures and the excellent Urb X warriors demo) obviously I have a Magenta one backed as I have a black KS1 and a White KS2...

[ortek_service]

Well I later noticed that you can actually see the current number of backers for each product, on their pledge page I'd linked to:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/spectrumnext/zx-spectru...3-0/pledge/new?clicked_reward=false

The Magenta (only available as 'Accelerated' version so £340) is the most popular, currently with 2,326 backers
Not far behind the ZX Spectrum Next + Accelerator that is currently the most popular with 4,007 backers
With only 300 backers for the standard The ZX Spectrum Next - Maybe not surprising, as only £20 cheaper
(and not sure if you can add the 'Accelerator' afterwards?)

Currently 336 backers for the Next Upgrade (To Issue 3) Board set - So maybe there could be around that many looking for new homes?
And only 45 backers for 'Just the Board', which I later discovered seems to include the (flexy-cable attached) daughterboard integrated onto it, so is the complete system, but means it won't fit into the Next case (if you could get an empty / maybe 3D-print a clone?)

I was also tempted (especially at price for just the board, that's not too-much more than 'The Spectrum', and a lot-more versatile / powerful?).
- And probably not much more than just a higher-end FPGA Dev. board, that people have often-used to emulate 80's computers on.
Also making a useful platform to develop both FPGA systems as well as all the supplied tools to develop Next-BASIC or C etc on.

I don't think it's a bad idea to allow the Next to become many other computers (Although if a Beeb, it would lack most of the interfaces).
And does mean you need a lot-less space to be able to use all of those emulated computers / It's a bit more-retro & nicer to have hardware (even emulation) running these, than running software-emulators on a PC.

But I worry that if there's going to be at least three different hardware-capabilities versions of the Next, then software will have to be aimed at the original KS1 version if it's not too easy to upgrades these without swapping-out the main board.
- Probably why originally there were very few games etc. exclusively for the Spectrum 128 (or the Plus 2/3, with most just for the much-larger 48K (or even the 16K) Spectrum market.

[SiriusHardware]

I think a lot of what is happening with the NEXT is good, mainly the way it is gradually accommodating the nuances of the many different Spectrum clones From Brazil to Russia - in CfCH the other day I noticed a Ukrainian Spectrum clone - and it's OK for it to emulate all of the official Spectrums and the Sam Coupé which was the 'original' SuperSpectrum. No problem there.

But emulating C64, BBC B on the same platform is off-the-scale mission creep. Just calm down and focus on making the NEXT the best SuperSpectrum it can be.

I was going to suggest that anyone who really wants a wide-coverage (I nearly said 'Broad Spectrum'...) hardware system emulator should look at the (cheaper than a Spectrum NEXT) 'MiSTer' which is just an FPGA 'brick' for which numerous 'cores' have been developed - but then I read a little bit more about that and it seems it was originally focused on being a hardware emulator of the 68000 based AMIGA and Atari ST, but has now gone rocketing off in all sorts of directions.

It's obviously just too easy (for those who know what they are doing) to go running off down the nearest rabbit hole. ...What Tim refers to as 'Look, Squirrel!' syndrome.

[Mark1960]

Originally Posted by SiriusHardware

...What Tim refers to as 'Look, Squirrel!' syndrome.

Or as I thought the other day, look a black squirrel with a white patch on its head, no wait, that’s a skunk.