The Sinclair Spectrum

Here are a few photos of a very odd looking Sinclair Spectrum, dressed up as in a BBC case.

	An exciting picture of the circuit board. Before the power supply (to the left) decided self immolation was the way out rather than me using it.
	Yet more exciting pictures of the circuit board. See, Ferranti (my ex-employer) did do real work once upon a time.
	And this is what it looks like fully clothed. Go on, worth the wait wasn't it?
	The loading screen to Manic Miner! See I can solder wires. And you can see my dear old ZX81 before I fried its ULA trying to fix it. I really should learn to leave well enough alone.
	And the awe inspiring Ant Attack. Who needs Doom 3? Tension, fear and confusing key combinations with nary an NVIDIA chipset in sight. Of course I'm only jealous as my TI4200 doesn't run it (Doom 3 that is, not Ant Attack) very well.

 

The fantastic slab of silicon above was generously donated to me by a boss at work - the company we both work for is what used to be Ferranti, so I assume he could filch a ULA from somewhere.

From there it's a case of common or garden components, a Z80, a dodgy EPROM copy of the ROM (the ROM has been verified as a normal 48 ROM) and slap the entire thing in an empty BBC case that was lying around and there you have it.

When I got it I had no idea how compatible it was. There were two stumbling blocks:

• In classic home-build style of using whatever is lying around, the mic and ear ports are wired up to a D-socket. So I have to work out what goes where. Also, perhaps, more importantly...
• The power supply set on fire! I'd waited over 20 years to try out the FLASH and BRIGHT attributes in the silicon flesh, and the damn thing explodes!

The power supply problem has been fixed so that the 12V and 5V supplies are being provided with a much more modern voltage regulator and power supply brick combination.

And it now works! And with the cunning tape lead construction, as can be seen at the top of the page, I can even load tapes. As long as I angle the tape lead I soldered up just so - see, said I was bad. Still, it's authentic to the original. And at least I didn't blow anything up this time.

Video output is still a bit ropey though - the display actually started breaking up on Ant Attack once you start playing. I suppose I could have carried on, but wasn't sure what was going to happen when the hardware really decided to have a hissy fit and say "More AMPS!". I hope that's all that its after - I've already blown it up and set fire to it once, the poor devil.

So I think a chunkier power supply is in order before I do some serious work (gaming, surely? - ed) and start some Z80 coding again (hurrah)! I suppose you could do the coding on an emulator, but it's not the same as having the real fairy in the silicon do its magic. Still, the doctors say I should get over this with the correct drugs.

You can get some utilities I've written from the Console & Emulation section.