Adventurer #14 30 июня 2003

Железо

Review - Review sovrennogo Spectrum iron.

Hardware Review
Clear

Almost every (periodic and
a) publication, which goes to the ZX
Spectrum, is committed to
make regular reviews of software.
But I have never met a Review
Hardware (except for a variety of improvements to the
Spectrum'u). So I decided to fill this gap in the pages
Adventyurera.

Progress by leaps and bounds
goes ahead: the giants of the silicon
Valley is already mastering the 65 nm
process technology for its 3 ... GHz's
Stump, Athlone, etc., with the CPU core voltage is less
1 (!) Volts, and we're all there - 5V,
3,5 / 7 MHz ... It seems that in terms of technology, we are 
very far behind (Although it can and for the better).


To date, Russia has only two companies make clones
Spectrum'a: Peters + and Nemo.
(The famous "in the distant past"
Scorpio company has three years
both production and razarabotkami not engaged and sells 
remnants of their machines from the warehouse). 

Firm Peters +

At the time, done a lot of
noise when in 1997 at Enlight'e showed his last
development - Sprinter. Constructing
machine naigibchayshey (downloadable) architecture, using 
instead placer FPGA logic "Altera" developers seem to be

intended to "conquer" the world.
Having all sorts of bells and whistles in several graphics 
modes and PC - primbambasy type of screw and

mouse, Sprinter and have not received
distribution. Then we say
bad emulation AY, whether people
was too conservative for such a radical change ... Or maybe the 
whole thing in an inadequate price for this iron? Even today it 
is, I believe, very large - $ 115 for a fee, and $ 170 for

system unit assembly (board,
body, mouse and keyboard).

Therefore, there is no information and
descriptions as well live with nick
this computer.

In subsequent years, nothing new in architecture kompyutera
brought was not - just changed to a more modern chip FPGA.

Now produced a model
2000. The developers apparently
shalturili - especially as they say
close to production
cars people: each instance
collected manually and then
to ... olgo configurable. At this point, all production is 
aimed at foreign markets. One time, their site did not even have

Russian pages are now paid attention to the criticism - and it
(Page) has appeared.

More:

http://www.petersplus.com/sprinter.htm

Nemo

Produces its own "Kay 1024" 7
MHz and is "the last best hope nick, so how to buy
anything else due to lack of
other producers of iron can not (except used).
U Kay 1024 "there are many
The pros and one big disadvantage which spoils all the virtues 
- can not turn off "Turbo", because this is normal

See bolishinstvo demo and play the game, calculated on
Pentagon is 3.5 MHz, it is impossible.

Contact Nemo, can only
through the usual "paper"
email, it allows him to "blunt"
with answers and orders and causes
a lot of inconvenience and distress to the customer, and many 
general discourages anything ordered from him. Publishing their 
"deep Thought "in the media, Mr Nemo

all showed a "shift" or
"Philosophy" in connection with which
it with one hand trying to promote a "mass" (as it seems) "the 
most advanced machine, but on the other hand ignores the modern 
means of communication and actually sits in the "Stone Age"

separate from the general world of
"Wall".

Would have had a website and E-mail,
perhaps it is less than would be complaining about his life in 
the sense of "The gravity of making money"

on the Spectrum.

I want to mention another project that was created in the 
Ukraine in Lisichansk. 

This is a fee to the Pentagon in 1024
all modifications to existing
at the time of this creation (in more detail in Adventurer # 
13). 

It dawned on me the information that
this board was made in
single copy and was
terribly unstable operation.
If such payment is buggy with the developers, what would be in 
any person who decided to collect on her own

"Cars". He was not aware of all
zadumok authors (I mean
logic signals - what, where, when
to come). Even if
scheme it will be bad job for
him.

Mediocrity developments show and sizes 25x40 board
cm below a little more than 100
buildings logic-only crawls
in the Big Tower. And this despite the fact that
Standard charges the Pentagon-128 also has the 100 chipset and 
has much smaller dimensions - 31h13, 5. 

Throughout 2002, inernet nothing has been published
on this subject, this one can conclude that the project is 
closed and further development ceased. So what about buying 
this board You can forget it.


Abroad on the Spectrum, too
there are still many talented
people who are not sitting idle,
enjoying "bylymi time" and create the hardware. At the moment 
there are many various projects at different stages of 
development. But worthy of my attention, I discovered the 
Internet only 3: 

ZX Spectrum SE (Germany, inspirer Andrew Owen)

ZX Spectrum +3 e (Spain, the developer Harry Lancaster)

Sparky eZX (U.S. developer
Richard Kelsh's)

Reading the description of these developments, I
came to the conclusion that Western
Developers although living in different countries, more 
integrated, than ours, in an effort to make

their computers compatible
between them. We also - who in the forest
who, for firewood. For example, Nemo
Kay directs his work for
under is-dos, and Peters + for its Sprinter generally re-
something of themselves created that is not compatible with 
anything. Even for an old Good Pentagon created a large number 
of "operatsionok" absolutely incompatible

themselves. It seems that every such coder thinks himself a 
genius and does not Despite the other in his bed,

wondered then: why is it
naikruteyshaya axis was not adopted
masses?

All computers are described below
will be running
the so-called "Extended
BASIC "at which a given
time-intensive work is under way.

So - ZX Spectrum SE - for the first time
information about the project appeared in
1999, now the development is completed in full and made
prototype, although the specification is not entirely 
consistent with the fact what was intended in the beginning. 
Served as a prototype for the Portuguese Timex TC2048, heavily 
updated Jarek'om Adamski, who developed and made all the 
modifications. Models Timex TC2048, TS/TC2068 UK2086 and can be

easily modified to ZX
Spectrum SE. Other models
You can also get most
features
ZX Spectrum SE, except for additional RAM, and additional video 
modes Timex. 

"Freaks": an extended video mode 512h192, emulating TR-DOS,
280 kBytes of RAM + Video RAM, 1927
kBytes, and possibly in the near future
time to get the IDE screw. Clock
frequency of 3.528 MHz processor with
70512 ticks per int, unlike
Pentagon, whose frequency
exactly 3,5 MHz, and 71,680 cycles. Himself
int is the frequency 50.04 Hz - in
Pentagon, 48 Hz. Completely when
This emulates the Pentagon they have
clearly failed, and our software does not
all will work fine.

Some people may think, why am I
compare all the time with the Pentagon? The answer is: because 
the Pentagon-128 3.5 MHz is in the CIS the de facto standard, 
under which written and fixed all the software.


More:

http://zxse.raww.net/

Now the ZX Spectrum +3 e.

ZX Spectrum +3 e - expanded
version of the corporate computer
Sinclair ZX Spectrum +3, which
produced by Amstrad in
the late 80's. All improvements
amounts to replacing the original
ROM to the new ROM, in which
Remove the old bugs and added some additional commands to
BASIC 3. One of the most important features of the new ROM,
is to support the use of IDE
disc. In general, it is something like the Petrograd 
neturbirovannogo Scorpion ZS-256, only the number of virtual 
disks is equal 65536. Since the appeal to the screw

goes through a 1 byte, the amount
Winchester is only used
half. These diskettes can
have a maximum size of 16Mb,
but TR-DOS-disks, they can not be due to the lack of the
TR-DOS in ROM'e.

More:

http://www.zxplus3e.plus.com/

Next project - Sparky eZX.

It is based on an 8-bit processor eZ80 50 MHz. As written by 
the developer, the system was designed for experiments and 
entertainment. Due to the fact that the processor is 
manufactured exclusively in the shell VQFP (this is a 
"cockroach", with four sides that stick legs Surface Mount size 
0,5 x1, 5 mm), which can not be soldered to the board (although 
I doubt in this statement)

had to abandon the development board. As it will be used by the 
so-called "ZiLOG eZ80 evaluation board ", for it is sealed by a 
processor ZiLOG. This board is moving on

market as a ready web server for
Internet.

At present the complete specification is not published, it is 
known only slightly: Sparky eZX will

have 16 Mbytes of RAM, keyboard and
podlyuchayutsya modem ports
RS232 directly to the processor. For this board has its own 
written version of the Extended BASIC "

using all 16 MB of memory and will be sewn into the ROM.

The project is not finished yet and the judge
It is still early.

More:

http://members.cox.net/rjkelsch/

In conclusion I wish to express their
The view of all these projects.

So much effort has been put into them,
but applied to the CIS, unfortunately, none of them has
any large
prospects. This is due to our
TR-DOS and 3,5 MHz. My vision
Spectrum'a in the future - if any
bloat mandatory 100% work as a Pentagon-128 3.5 MHz
TR-DOS 5.03. Otherwise it will be the isolation of the platform 
from the people, and it sink into oblivion, like many other

projects that have long been forgotten by us.