Goldarn it, why has no-one built a "Spectrum-on-a-chip" yet?  The
wretched C64 (spit) has had one for nigh on a squillion years!

I have a dream.  A dream of cheap, modern, replacement boards for
knackered old 48ks, with built in support for SDcard and a modern TV
out!

Just one word. Emulation.
Brian

-- 
Brian Gaff - briang1@blueyonder.co.uk
Note:- In order to reduce spam, any email without 'Brian Gaff'
in the display name may be lost.
Blind user, so no pictures please!
"resident" <cheeseslice73@hotmail.com> wrote in message 
news:5695864b-0286-497c-b7c0-366c7fd2c4e9@k19g2000yqc.googlegroups.com...
> Goldarn it, why has no-one built a "Spectrum-on-a-chip" yet?  The
> wretched C64 (spit) has had one for nigh on a squillion years!
>
> I have a dream.  A dream of cheap, modern, replacement boards for
> knackered old 48ks, with built in support for SDcard and a modern TV
> out! 

On Wed, 18 Nov 2009, resident wrote:

> Goldarn it, why has no-one built a "Spectrum-on-a-chip" yet?  The
> wretched C64 (spit) has had one for nigh on a squillion years!
> 
> I have a dream.  A dream of cheap, modern, replacement boards for
> knackered old 48ks, with built in support for SDcard and a modern TV
> out!

There is the ZXGate project - a complete Spectrum on an FPGA - but the 
links to the source code have been broken for many moons. 

http://zxgate.sourceforge.net/

But I guess it shows that someone has done it once. 

resident wrote:
> Goldarn it, why has no-one built a "Spectrum-on-a-chip" yet?  The
> wretched C64 (spit) has had one for nigh on a squillion years!
> 
> I have a dream.  A dream of cheap, modern, replacement boards for
> knackered old 48ks, with built in support for SDcard and a modern TV
> out!

Taking 'Spectrum-on-a-chip' as meaning any clone with an FPGA core:

ZX Evo: http://www.nedopc.com/zxevo/zxevo.php
Pentagon 2.666: http://pentagon.nedopc.com/info.htm
ZX-Badaloc: http://www.zxbada.bbk.org/badaloc_fpga/index.htm
Harlequin: http://www.zxdesign.info/

....although if you want any of the above in a hurry, you may have to do 
some or all of the following: send money to Russia, solder it yourself, 
invest in the project so that the creator can work on it full time.

On 19 Nov, 18:50, Matthew Westcott <gas...@raww.org> wrote:
> resident wrote:
> > Goldarn it, why has no-one built a "Spectrum-on-a-chip" yet? =A0The
> > wretched C64 (spit) has had one for nigh on a squillion years!
>
> > I have a dream. =A0A dream of cheap, modern, replacement boards for
> > knackered old 48ks, with built in support for SDcard and a modern TV
> > out!
>
> Taking 'Spectrum-on-a-chip' as meaning any clone with an FPGA core:
>
> ZX Evo:http://www.nedopc.com/zxevo/zxevo.php
> Pentagon 2.666:http://pentagon.nedopc.com/info.htm
> ZX-Badaloc:http://www.zxbada.bbk.org/badaloc_fpga/index.htm
> Harlequin:http://www.zxdesign.info/
>
> ...although if you want any of the above in a hurry, you may have to do
> some or all of the following: send money to Russia, solder it yourself,
> invest in the project so that the creator can work on it full time.
Nifty stuff.  Thanks for the links, everyone.

On emulation:  It's not the same.  It's really not.  PC keyboards are
a poor match for the notrious rubber johnny keyboard of the 48k, and
the Speccy isn't just about playing games - if you're really hankering
after Outrun, it's unlikely you're going to reach for the Spec version
when the original arcade version is emullatable.

To be honest, I wonder if there isn't a market for low powered "kit"
micro-computers, particuarly those based on nostalgic faves like the
Speccy.

On Nov 25, 4:44=A0am, resident <cheeseslic...@hotmail.com> wrote:

> To be honest, I wonder if there isn't a market for low powered "kit"
> micro-computers, particuarly those based on nostalgic faves like the
> Speccy.

There isn't.

And verily, didst OwenBot <cheveron@gmail.com> hastily babble thusly:
> On Nov 25, 4:44�am, resident <cheeseslic...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> To be honest, I wonder if there isn't a market for low powered "kit"
>> micro-computers, particuarly those based on nostalgic faves like the
>> Speccy.
> 
> There isn't.

Well, there WAS that stupid little joystick thing from a few years ago that
was basically an atari joystick with a commodore 64 inside and a few games
built in...

Or am I misremembering?
-- 
|   spike1@freenet.co.uk   |                                                 |
|   Andrew Halliwell BSc   | "ARSE! GERLS!! DRINK! DRINK! DRINK!!!"          |
|            in            | "THAT WOULD BE AN ECUMENICAL MATTER!...FECK!!!! |
|     Computer Science     | - Father Jack in "Father Ted"                   |

spike1@freenet.co.uk wrote:

> Well, there WAS that stupid little joystick thing from a few years ago that
> was basically an atari joystick with a commodore 64 inside and a few games
> built in...
> 
> Or am I misremembering?

Only partly. It was a Comp. Pro.

And it wasn't that stupid. If you opened it up, you could connect a
keyboard and disk drive to it. Nice little thing, actually.

-- 
Duncan Snowden.

On 2009-11-25, OwenBot <cheveron@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Nov 25, 4:44 am, resident <cheeseslic...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> To be honest, I wonder if there isn't a market for low powered "kit"
>> micro-computers, particuarly those based on nostalgic faves like the
>> Speccy.
>
> There isn't.

Well, there is, just not "nostalgia" ones. There are plenty of hobbyist
kits built around 8 bit microcontrollers. Low powered "kit" computers
can be found all over the place. The market is about as big as it ever
was for "kit" computers.

"Dylan Smith" <dyls@alioth.net> wrote in message 
news:heltml$4e4$1@xen1.xcski.com...
> On 2009-11-25, OwenBot <cheveron@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Nov 25, 4:44 am, resident <cheeseslic...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> To be honest, I wonder if there isn't a market for low powered "kit"
>>> micro-computers, particuarly those based on nostalgic faves like the
>>> Speccy.
>>
>> There isn't.
>
> Well, there is, just not "nostalgia" ones. There are plenty of hobbyist
> kits built around 8 bit microcontrollers. Low powered "kit" computers
> can be found all over the place. The market is about as big as it ever
> was for "kit" computers.
>

I think this is quite cool....

http://www.xgamestation.com/

I know it's a bit deverse and not really comparible to the kind of hardware 
on the speccy...(cpu memory and not much else); but it still looks like fun 
to experiment with.

Mark

On Nov 19, 7:44=A0am, resident <cheeseslic...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> I have a dream. =A0A dream of cheap, modern, replacement boards for
> knackered old 48ks, with built in support for SDcard and a modern TV
> out!

I'd prefer if someone just found an easy way of making replacement
chips actually.

On Dec 1, 4:37=A0pm, DanSolo <daniel.oto...@ucd.ie> wrote:
> On Nov 19, 7:44=A0am, resident <cheeseslic...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I have a dream. =A0A dream of cheap, modern, replacement boards for
> > knackered old 48ks, with built in support for SDcard and a modern TV
> > out!
>
> I'd prefer if someone just found an easy way of making replacement
> chips actually.

They have. The ULA was the only component you couldn't replace and
it's now been replicated on a CPLD.

On Dec 2, 10:56=A0am, OwenBot <cheve...@gmail.com> wrote:
> They have. The ULA was the only component you couldn't replace and
> it's now been replicated on a CPLD.

The ZX is blessed with sturdy and easily sourced chips alright.
I was more talking in a general 8 bit sense I guess. What would be
well nice would be if every chip for every machine had some code to
emulate it that could be used for off-the shelf FPGA chips. Could
become a bit of a Ship of Theseus after a while I guess...