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Spectrum Vega: A Blast From the Past
mikejuk writes A new games console is being launched based on the classic Sinclair ZX Spectrum from the 80s. Within days of the start of its Indiegogo campaign all of the 1000 Limited Edition Spectrum Vegas had been claimed but there is still the chance to get your hands on one of the second batch. The Sinclair Spectrum Vega is really retro in the sense that it plugs into a TV, thus avoiding the need for a monitor, and comes complete with around 1,000 games built-in. Games are accessed through a menu based system, and once selected load automatically, taking the player directly into the game play mode. This is very different from the original Spectrum with its rubber-topped keyboard and BASIC interface. If you have existing Spectrum games you'd like to play, you can use an SD card to load them onto the Vega, though the current publicity material doesn't give much clue as to how you go from ancient cassette tape to SD card. As for programming new games, there are ZX Spectrum emulators for Windows that are free and ready to use.
Not having a keyboard (onscreen keyboards suck), and being required to load an emulator onto your PC to program make this an item for people who want to have a bit of nostalgia without actually reliving the past.
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there are ZX Spectrum emulators for Windows that are free and ready to use
There are quite a few of them, on a number of platforms. There's even one that runs in a browser.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Every time I hear about the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, people seem to think it was a world-wide phenomenon. In the USA and Canada, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum did not exist.
If you want to talk about a true classic, go with the Commodore 64.
I never had access to a Sinclair. I did own a Mattel aquarius, but did not have the controllers and games. All I did was try to program in the (16 or 64) whatever it had memory in BASIC. Learned quite a bit then. Primarily that while I can program (some) it is not my forte. I am a hardware geek at heart.
Silence is a state of mime.
The article is light on technical details, so I wonder if it's an emulator like the NeogeoX, or a reimplementation like the C64 DTV. The price also seems a bit steep since it is now possible to re-implement a full ZX Spectrum on a user-friendly FPGA board which loads games from sound files dumped from tapes. Compatibility is still worked on but you get many other systems as an added bonus, and the HDL code for all of it is open source and available online.
The ENIAC Demo Competition
While early computers had very limited graphics and usually no sound, the arrival of colour and sound (er beeps) resulted in a large number of games and kids at the time clamoured to get a spectrum, C64 or whatever because it was a games machine and nothing else to them. Sure, you could program them but very few did. I started on a Commodore Pet (horrible BASIC) and went through the Sinclairs, the BBC Micro and then onto UNIX machines skipping PCs entirely (at least until Linux came along) and what I appreciated about all these was the ability to program them (same goes for Linux) but I was a minority.
The sad thing is once you got to PCs and GUIs, programming was largely a thing of the past. My son just got interested in computers and asked me to teach him to program so I pulled my actual Spectrum out and gave it to him. Sadly, age hasn't been kind to the hardware so the modulator failed and wouldn't display a picture. I bypassed that and got composite video out but in the process the keyboard membrane cracked so I had to order a new replacement (yay for retro computer fans) and it works again. He's getting on well and hasn't really shown interest in games on it. I did load up Manic Miner for a laugh but it was awful. I forgot how precise you had to be.
I just wish this was a real Spectrum with a keyboard. As it stands, meh. Emulators are also hard work without the real keyboard.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
From the linK:
If you want to use an emulator, you don't need one of these. Just get a tablet with an HDMI connection, or an Ouya, or a jailbroken Wii.
I was wondering if this implements the Spectrum in hardware the same way the Commodore 64 direct-to-TV did, but apparently not.
Some of the emulators even allowed you to load directly from tape with a simple interface.
As far as I'm aware, the Vega *is* effectively just a cheap ARM-based computer running an emulator anyway (as opposed to a logic-level reimplementation of the original circuitry like the C64 Direct to TV was), supplied in a parodically cut-down mockery of the original Spectrum keyboard.
If I was a Spectrum fanatic, I'd want something that was either a "true" reimplementation of the original Spectrum and/or something that looked and could be used like the original Spectrum- possibly with additional features or connectivity, but retaining the original features.
This is- in some respects- better than Elite's "relaunch" of the ZX Spectrum (reported as such in many places) as a Bluetooth keyboard (i.e. they designed a Bluetooth keyboard that approximates the old Spectrum case and works with some crappy proprietary Android app). But that's a pretty low bar... the Vega is still just an emulator in a nostalgia-exploiting case that won't properly replicate the experience anyway, so why bother? I've no doubt it'll still sell, though.
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In the USA and Canada, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum did not exist.
In the U.S. I had a Timex-Sinclair 2068, which was basically the Spectrum but with some improvements.
It was a lot nicer to use and program for than the Timex-Sinclair 1000 (ZX-81), really a pretty solid machine and nice to program for.
It absolutely was a classic in every sense that the C64 was, just for a smaller group of people.
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If they accept games from an external sd card, then the spectrum games archive, worldofspectrum, will have a lot of work for a time...
50 quid for this thing? Just put a zx emulator on a rasberry pi, attach a keyboard and call it a day.
I'll be interested to see how many rights holders agree to contribute their games for free, especially when the unit itself is being sold for such a tidy profit. I can't imagine it would be very many.
Or maybe they plan on shipping the games of 'uncontactable' (ie those who don't reply) rights holders and 'remove' them if they later turn up and complain? Kind of shifty if this is the case.
Someone I know has pointed out that Clive SInclair doesn't actually even own the rights to the Speccy; he sold them to Amstrad. So having him as a shareholder may not actually give this mob the right to replicate the likeness or the ROMS.
This could prove interesting...
Is it going to have "R:Tape Loading Error"?
That was always my favourite.
Thing is ZX Spectrum is part of my childhood, and as my thesis I wrote the first emulator for Windows. I cut my teeth on understanding how a computer worked, and BASIC was too limited for me, it was almost assembly from the very beginning. The best present my father gave me was either a book of Z80 programming and I asked for money to buy the ZX Spectrum ROM listing. And thanks for the MicroHobby and their articles, we knew that machine inside out. But besides this, at the time, we had the notion that games were too limited, and that darn tape interface was horrid and slow. Some things are best left in the past. While I enjoy the ocasional peek or game on an emulator, it is just ocasional. An iPad or iPhone nowadays is a world of distance in capabilities, and whilst that games are the basis to many of the ideas of later games, they are rather poor on the interface side, and the sound is terrible. The speccy would be another machine with a proper sound chip. It would be far more interesting to have a interface to develop and debug assembly as an educational introduction to programming. P.S. I still have a directory of around 6000 speccy games on my NAS at home.
Online archive of the most popular magazine for the ZX Spectrum in Portugal and Spain, and for those saying ZX Spectrum was only a uk craze. http://www.microhobby.org/