Spectrum Vega: A Blast From the Past 110
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.
The thing that made the Sinclairs popular ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:The thing that made the Sinclairs popular ... (Score:5, Informative)
Not only that,but according to the article on The Register last week, they haven't actually got the games yet, they are just hoping that the rights holders are going to come forward and give permission for them to include the games for free. They've sent out a letter to the rights holders, no idea if they've had any replies yet. So even the games are in question.
Re:The thing that made the Sinclairs popular ... (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly. Ultimate have a long history of actively denying and taking down tape images and snapshots of their games. No Knigtlore, Underworld, Jetpac, Sabrewulf, Alien8 etc.
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How strange, given that anybody with a license to the original ROMs (yes, there were Interface II ROMs - I have a Jetpac one!) or tapes would be the people legally allowed to use them (and that only under a grey-area of the law) and they wouldn't have to worry about them being bundled.
[And it was "Underwurlde", I believe.]
Re:The thing that made the Sinclairs popular ... (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand, modern TVs aren't the best thing to program on. Granted, they are sharper than old analog TVs we used to hook our 8-bits (bitters?) up to, but they still have non-square pixels making text fuzzy, and are usually situated in a family room in a spot nonconducive to sitting in front of and staring at for long periods of time.
A much cooler feature would be the ability to develop a game on your Win/Mac/Lin laptop, and bluetooth it over to the Speccy to play, with full remote debugging support. Stepping through code and immediately seeing the results on the system itself would be awesome.
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And what does the shape/ratio have to do with fuzziness?
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The assertion in the previous comment was that it was the "non-square pixels making text fuzzy".
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and LCD pixel is made of of three coloured square panels. A CRT phosphor is made up of three coloured round dots.
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ooh, pretty. That subpixel RG-B-GR setup looks fast.
Re:The thing that made the Sinclairs popular ... (Score:4, Informative)
On the other hand, modern TVs aren't the best thing to program on. Granted, they are sharper than old analog TVs we used to hook our 8-bits (bitters?) up to, but they still have non-square pixels making text fuzzy
What are you talking about? I think some very early plasma screens cheated on the horizontal resolution a bit, but otherwise any HDTV (720p or 1080p) uses square pixels.
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I haven't got up close to a screen with a magnifying glass in a while, but last time I checked, pixels on anything but a CRT changed shape depending on what color they were.
OTOH, most of the time if you're pretending a LCD is a CRT it's upscaling your signal considerably and that's the least of your problems. Now you're going to find out how good your scaler is.
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What are you talking about? I think some very early plasma screens cheated on the horizontal resolution a bit, but otherwise any HDTV (720p or 1080p) uses square pixels.
You're right - I had it stuck in my head that monitor manufacturers were upset at the original HD spec as it didn't *require* square pixels, and the first HD sets used rectangular pixels - mainly early plasmas and CRTs.
I'll still contend that staring at a TV to type in a bunch of text isn't an ideal situation.
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Modern TVs use exactly the same panels as low-end monitors. If you get a 1080p TV that can do 60Hz, then you've got something that's pretty much the same as a monitor. If you get a 4K TV, then you've got something that's a lot nicer than many monitors.
The big problems with using TVs as monitors before flat panels became popular were the low resolution and refresh (PAL and NTSC interlaced, so you got a flickery picture with around 500 lines, but only half that per update) and the fact that they were optim
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If you get a 1080p TV that can do 60Hz, then you've got something that's pretty much the same as a monitor
Unfortunately in some cases they then go and ruin it by putting inappropriate signal processing in the path which can't be turned off. I have a hanspree TV which has the "FULL HD" badge on it and supposedly has a native resoloution of 1920x1200 but trying to use it as a computer monitor (regardless of input resoloution) results in a blurry mess.
My parents also have a smaller TV (think it's a sharp but I can't remember for sure) that supposedly has a native resoloution of 1366x768 but I never managed to get
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My parents also have a smaller TV (think it's a sharp but I can't remember for sure) that supposedly has a native resoloution of 1366x768 but I never managed to get it to accept a signal at that resoloution.
How are you hooking it up, HDMI or VGA? It matters because some TV's only respond properly to EDID requests over HDMI. I had one like that. Had to set the resolution manually in Xorg.conf using a gtf created modeline when I used it with VGA. I later installed a video card with HDMI on it, that worked properly with a default Xorg.conf, though Windows wasn't happy so I had to still set Windows manually (Had to tell it to specifically use gtf timing)
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I tried using a VGA cable and also a DVI to HDMI cable.
On VGA I couldn't get it to go above 1024x768, when I tried forcing a 1366x768 output on the computer it refused to display it (which I found very surprising as there really shouldn't be any significant differences in the sync timings between the two). I can't remember exactly what the results with the DVI to HDMI cable were but I remember having even more trouble..
I admittedly didn't have a video card to hand with an actual HDMI output to try.
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Depends on the resolution in use.
1080p and 720p use square pixels. 480p uses rectangular pixels, which is why 480p (720x480) has both a 16:9 and 4:3 mode even though they are the same number of pixels across.
EDTVs had to have non-square pixels because of this, and HDTVs do processing to ensure the aspect ratio is maintained when passed in 4
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Since it can run Sinclair code, what's to stop an enterprising person from building a recreation of the sinclair's main system ROM?
Also, what interface type does the controller use? If it is a serial interface, it is reasonably possible to get a standard keyboard to play nice with a little ingenuity.
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As for how to get files from tape...
Use PCM encoding and post-processing to get the data from a soundcard? Just play the whole tape through, and dump to PCM lossless data. Then, comb over the PCM data for the corresponding tone signals, and translate.
PITA, but doable. (Or, if you have an actual sinclair laying around and it has a serial port, just use the sinclair to ship the tape's contents over a null modem cable.)
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These things have already been done. It's a solved problem. Some of the emulators even allowed you to load directly from tape with a simple interface.
Just emulation anyway, not a reimplementation (Score:3)
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 [wikipedia.org] 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
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I don't care. If Sir Clive Sinclair [bbc.com] is behind it, then I'm getting one :-)
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I'm big on nostalgia for the Spectrum but I'm not sure too much is gained from a direct reimplementation. Original Spectrums can be had and emulators are good enough. Really though, it's old tech and very limiting A "next next next (by now) generation Spectrum" would probably be interesting but I think that's what the Raspberry Pi is aiming for (and doing a reasonable job of). Though it needs some cool games.
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Hi
The NMI code was fixed by Amstrad, the +3 and +2A/+2B have the fixed code, this is actually detailed in the manual if you look up the system variable entry for NMIADD.
There are also many other good replacement ROMs for the Spectrum, most notably Open SE Basic which is a free and open source implementation of the Spectrum ROM.
But the main point I should make is that the vega will /already/ have the Spectrum ROM built in, just no way of controlling it. If you have a Vega just download a copy of the Dizzy D
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Re:The thing that made the Sinclairs popular ... (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing that made the Sinclairs popular was that you could actually program them yourself. Not the games.
That may have been true of the ZX80 and ZX81 (since those weren't ideal for games anyway).
However, while the Spectrum may undoubtedly have attracted hobbyists in its early days, I suspect that long-term the vast majority were sold for playing games on (regardless of what schoolkids told their parents to get them to buy one!). Yeah, some of those kids did write games on them... most of them probably didn't!
The reason is almost certainly that the Spectrum was the first really cheap home computer on the UK market to feature high-resolution graphics (*), colour and "sound" (**) sufficient to render acceptably realistic approximations of early-80s arcade games.
It's obvious that the Spectrum- having got there first- benefitted from the "network effect" [wikipedia.org] (***) I assume this is why- despite countless "me too" competitors released in the wake of the Spectrum's success- almost none gained significant market share, even when they may arguably have had better specs, or been cheaper. (****)
The Spectrum's established software base and continued support meant it continued to be popular for gaming for years, even when its limitations (e.g. "attribute clash", 8-colour palette, lack of hardware scrolling or sprites) became more obvious when trying to replicate newer arcade games with more detailed background graphics et al.
As I said earlier, I've no doubt that a significant number of early adopters were "serious" hobbyists, and it would still been a major success with them alone. However, it probably wouldn't have lasted as long; it's clear that they'd started to move on by the mid-80s as the Spectrum was superseded technically and the "never mind the limitations, check out the massive amount of very cheap games" younger gaming market remained.
To back this up, it's worth noting that after Amstrad bought out Sinclair's existing computer line in 1986, their marketing was almost entirely gaming-focused. It's also notable that by this point almost all the Spectrum magazines concentrated on games.
That's probably why the mainly-hobbyist ZX81 (for all its influence) had a much shorter lifespan- only around three years- yet the Spectrum continued to be sold for a decade until 1992(!!), by which point the Mega Drive (AKA Genesis) was quite popular.
(*) "High resolution" by the standards of the time, i.e. 256 x 192, as opposed to (e.g.) the ZX81's 64 x 48 character-based graphics
(**) Albeit via the very limited single-channel "beeper"
(***) i.e. people rushed out to buy the Spectrum, so many games were written for it, so many people more bought it because it had the most games, so more games were written for it... etc.
(****) Other 8-bits, such as the Commodore 64, BBC Micro and later Amstrad CPC enjoyed success in the UK, but those were aimed at distinctly different (higher) price points and market segments
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It was, essentially, used as a games console by most buyers.
Just like the C64 here, but only after the crash of 84'
and the Atari 2600, which never really took off here.
Well the protectionist UK market and additional tariffs on imported and/or entertainment devices helped.
What made the Spectrum and C64 popular? Well, games cost somewhere between 2GBP and 10GBP, and there were a lot of them. By comparison console games generally started at 15GBP.
In the US, console and computer games has similar pricing. Though sometimes the better technology in the machine, the more they cost. Titles for older hardware were discounted compared to those for newer hardware. For example Atari 800XL and Atari 5200 games cost more than Atari 2600 titles. And since we didn't have import duties affecting cons
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That was wonderful time. I really look forward to when we get a new generation of computers as easy to pick up and develop for as home computers were. It's a shame Microsoft didn't bundle VB with Windows back in the 1990s, and we're still stuck with relatively impenetrable - for newcomers - tools for mainstream development elsewhere.
The web was kind-of sort-of another programming renaissance (of sorts), but as the years go by, I'm not sure such a thing as our beloved 8-bit years or the web will ever happen again. Software expectations are too high. Nobody is amused by simple text games anymore. Once in a while a retro graphics style game makes an impact but it's pretty rare and not much of an impact.
I fear those days are over, never to return.
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The ZX81 didn't last as long, more because it had limitations compared to the Speccy.
All that is true, and I'm aware of it, but it misses the point. The point wasn't why the ZX81 didn't last long- that, of course, was because it was superseded.
The point I was making was why the Spectrum *did* last so much longer despite also being eclipsed in purely technical terms. That, as I mentioned, was because it was the first machine "good enough" for arcade games and "good enough" for its existing software base to have value. The mid-80s point circa the Amstrad buyout, when "serious" support start
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I had one of those, and a port replicator built from a kit because I NEEDED the joystick controller as well.
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I suspect that long-term the vast majority were sold for playing games on (regardless of what schoolkids told their parents to get them to buy one!).
Yeah, we still have Spectrum fanboys on Slashdot claiming people in the UK bought them instead of 2600's/NES's because you could do homework on them because it was a "computer". I doubt anyone was doing any serious word processing on that 48K spectrum keyboard, not even taking into account the fact that the Spectrum printer was a thermal printer.
Of course, the Speccy fanboys then bring up the cheap tape games and how easy it was to have one "mate" buy one and then copy it for everyone else.
And people wond
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Yeah, we still have Spectrum fanboys on Slashdot claiming people in the UK bought them instead of 2600's/NES's because you could do homework on them because it was a "computer".
I said most people used them for games; that, as the other guy said, still leaves a small but significant percentage who *did* end up programming them. It's just that a lot more of them were basically bought for games playing. And I think the "word processing" thing is a bit of a strawman; the Spectrum never had a reputation as a home office or business machine anyway.
The VCS/2600 was around for five years before the Spectrum. Some people here did own it; it just wasn't as ubiquitous.I don't know when it
not just for Windows (Score:5, Informative)
there are ZX Spectrum emulators for Windows that are free and ready to use
There are quite a few of them [worldofspectrum.org], on a number of platforms. There's even one that runs in a browser [zxdemo.org].
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No-one thinks that the ZX Spectrum was a world-wide phenomenon. You're thinking that because you're interpreting overwhelmingly British media through the eyes of American media (which *does* pitch purely American things as a world-wide phenomenon). Sinclair Research were (are) a British company. The Spectrum was a British computer, and was notoriously eccentric. The American release was a Timex (T-1000, perhaps? I forget, because American media means fuck all to me because I'm not American, and though I don
Re: Classic? Only if you lived in the UK. (Score:4, Interesting)
The thing though is - and maybe the GP was trolling and I'm falling for the bait - as far as the rest of the world that is not North America (and maybe Japan too) was concerned, the Spectrum *was* a world-wide phenomenon. He could have used the argument that the C64 was technically superior, and then there would be few people to argue that. But market-wise, as you correctly pointed out, the Spectrum beat the shit out of the C64, and not only on the UK, but most of the world.
Case in point: I'm from Brazil, we didn't have legit Spectrums here back then, but we had locally-made clones, which amounted to the same thing and ended up getting exported to all of South America, and you know what? The only way anyone on Latin America knew the C64 actually existed was that it was often mentioned on computer magazines, and that was it - I never knew anyone who even heard about of the C64 around here, let alone owned one. We heard a lot about the TRS-80, Apple II (or rather its clones that were produced locally), MSX and so on, and it wasn't uncommon to find users of such systems, but the C64? Nada. I understand the C64 actually managed to chew a bit more of the market on some parts of europe, but the Spectrum was still far more popular. IIRC, on Russia the situation was similar to South America, in that they had Spectrum clones, and the C64 was a computer only the US cared about.
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the death of the Spectrum for me was the Psion Series 3. Still got mine, same one I bought in 1991 just before I started college. Did all my WP on that.
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Re:Classic? Only if you lived in the UK. (Score:4, Insightful)
I grew up in Serbia and Spectrum meant the world to many kids in my generation, even though we had no direct connection with the UK market whatsoever -- no magazines or TV programs or anything really. So it is fair to say that Spectrum was a cross-European phenomenon. C64 was (almost) equally present, though everyone I knew who had a Commodore just played games, whereas lots of Spectrum folks dabbled in programming, at least a little.
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'classic' as a term doesn't really mean anything, other than related to nostalgia from a past era, and nostalgia is entirely subjective. Certainly some things enjoy wide nostalgia, like big-band music, the Radio Flyer, and the 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air, but most other things lack that widespread appeal.
No one cares about the Apple Newton eMate or the the Packard Bell PB500, but a
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For me, 'classic' would be the Apple II or the early 8088 XT clones
I guess the GP meant a/the good classic ;D
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It did too exist, the Timex Sinclair 2068 (Score:3, Informative)
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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This got me thinking... (Score:2)
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I have a Mattel Aquarius over on the other side of this room. In original box and I think it may have never been used. It's something that I got in an auction years ago that I've never done anything more with yet.
Emulator or Reimplementation? (Score:3)
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 [google.com] 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.
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Correction: it's an emulator, as somebody else pointed out in a comment. Meaning that it won't "feel" as close to the original, but might be good enough for those who can't be bothered to hunt for games online or to attach a keyboard to a phone and use one of the existing Android/iOS Spectrum emulators.
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There's no reason it couldn't be almost identical to the original. The Spectrum's display was not as complicated as that as the C64 or BBC for example. Full speed emulation was available on 486s back in the early 90s (I used the excellent z80 by Art Gunter but there have been many other good emulators since).
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Nowadays people are trying to reimplement the ZX Spectrum on FPGA, which gives you a hardware clone of the original and (in theory) could be made compatible with legacy hardware. It's still not perfect, but somehow feels closer to the real thing than emulators (and they use less power than a PC).
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Games were the death of programming (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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You can get stickers for a USB keyboard... it's not the same as the real rubber keys, but at least the solution is future-proof in that it is inexpensive to re-print.
Combine this with a system re-implementation (FPGA or dedicated SoC) and the experience should be very close to the original compared to emulators (instant on, no lag, etc.).
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https://www.kickstarter.com/pr... [kickstarter.com]
No affiliation.
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...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.
You seem to be mourning an mythical alternate universe where 50% of kids pestered their parents for a Nascom, UK101 or a Kim 1 so that they could learn programming or digital electronics. Sorry - that was just a handful of us nerds, it never had mass appeal.
What the 1980s games boom did was create mass-market demand for computer hardware, which brought the prices down for everybody. Plus, for those of us who were interested in programming, it ensured that there was money to be made from knocking out simp
Is there a point? (Score:2)
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.
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Thanks for pointing it out, I was wondering the same thing. Probably too expensive for them to use/design a custom SoC (given how the DTV story turned out).
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£20 for a RPi.
£10 for an SD card.
£10 for a pretty casing.
£10 per hour of faffing about getting it to work and installing 1000 games for it.
And you have spent as much in time/money as it costs, for an unlicensed, homebrew, sort-it-out-yourself solution, without electrical certifications, etc. as it costs for an off-the-shelf "just works" official Spectrum-y looking cool gadget.
The price is not a problem. The licensing may well be, but that's another matter.
Rights holders (Score:3)
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.
Does Sinclair even have the rights? (Score:2)
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...
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Depends on the wording.
As far as I know, Amstrad may only have the license to make their own Spectrum models (kinda like ARM's licensing - you can make an ARM chip, and call it ARM, but you don't own the ARM name and have no control over others making their licensed ARM chips).
Given that Sir Clive was a multi-millionaire, and creator of the thing, chances are he had the lawyers present to do things properly.
Amstrad may own just the licence to make their OWN Spectrum (+2, +2A, +3, etc.), use the name, etc. n
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Best Game Ever (Score:3)
That was always my favourite.
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I was a ZX user and wrote an emulator too (Score:2)
Bit of nostalgia here (Score:2)