Retro Assembly Language

Started by Steve Elliott, August 02, 2020, 23:28:13

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iWasAdam

quick pic to show the love and attention to both detail and end users:


The Spectrum design is soo well thought about with all of this :)

Steve Elliott

#61
I'm sure the time will fly col.

Yes attention to detail even on the personalised SD Cards - and now in colour.  Very nice.  The team spent a lot of time getting all the details just right, with the original designer of the ZX Spectrum Rick Dickinson producing another great design.  Plus the time was taken to have it manufactured to a standard everybody was happy with.  The huge in-depth manual will be in full colour too this time, so even better than the Kickstarter 1 version.
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Xerra

I never had a Spectrum as a kid, only borrowed one for a month or so. I wish the guys behind the Spectrum Next would turn their heads into an updated C64 or Amiga after they've finished with it. They obviously have the tech know-how and can deliver on the project.
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Steve Elliott

#63
Well the tag-line on the Kickstarter is about imagining an alternate timeline where Sinclair produced a machine to rival the Amiga or Atari ST.

While only 8 vs 16-bit, in the Next Modes it also has extra abilities over a standard Spectrum.  Like turbo modes up to 28Mhz, hardware sprites, hardware scrolling, hardware collision detection, copper chip, 9 channel sound, 256 colours on-screen, no colour clash, 2Mb RAM etc.
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col

As you say... the team have added hardware sprites and they've also added a 'tile map' too which can be scrolled with the copper. There are a couple of areas of RAM that shadow the screen (couple of different methods to do this) so that you can utilise double buffering. Both sprites and tile maps can be displayed over the border area given you 'full-screen', with resolution of 320x256 with 256 colours to play with ;)

There seems to be a couple of different ways the graphics modes work, with the graphics modes, 4 bit colours, 8 bit colours, 9 bit colours, register bits to flip sprite images plus more but it certainly looks to have some great potential for what it is.
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dawlane

#65
Quote from: Xerra on September 11, 2020, 22:50:08I wish the guys behind the Spectrum Next would turn their heads into an updated C64 or Amiga after they've finished with it. They obviously have the tech know-how and can deliver on the project.
Never going to happen for the Amiga. Nobody in their right mind would want to get mixed up in the legal battles of Cloanto, Hyperion Entertainment and A-EON. Possibly the longest legal disputes in history. They'd need another crowed funding campaign just to pay for the legal costs if they tried to create such a device to sell. If someone has the cash, then they could get hold of the limit Mega65 developer boards costing almost a €1000, or the technical know how to build their own FPGA based computer. But any device to be distributed would have to use the open source almost compatible roms or expensive licenced roms.

The Sinclair ZX Spectrum Next is a different story, with the exception of CP/M due to licencing issues. The ZX Spectrum Next has the blessing of the current IP owner (I believe it's still BSkyB) to use the Sinclair ZX Spectrum moniker and roms. And according to the wikki, they only needed to make donations to a charity designated by the owners of the IP. For the Commodore brand, it's a legal minefield.

Xerra

Yeah, the mega65 is one of the things I've been looking at as well as what the 8bit guy is up to. I didn't fancy forking out a grand for a dev machine, though. I'll be interested once it actually makes it out there, though. Assuming it does.
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dawlane

Quote from: Xerra on September 12, 2020, 13:38:48
I didn't fancy forking out a grand for a dev machine, though. I'll be interested once it actually makes it out there, though. Assuming it does.
There's always the Ultima64. Which is more reasonably priced, but looks like it requires a case and the legal status of the roms supplied is not defined.

Steve Elliott

Quote
As you say... the team have added hardware sprites and they've also added a 'tile map' too which can be scrolled with the copper. There are a couple of areas of RAM that shadow the screen (couple of different methods to do this) so that you can utilise double buffering. Both sprites and tile maps can be displayed over the border area given you 'full-screen', with resolution of 320x256 with 256 colours to play with ;)

Oh yes the tilemaps too, it all sounds awesome. Plus a case/keyboard too lol.
Win11 64Gb 12th Gen Intel i9 12900K 3.2Ghz Nvidia RTX 3070Ti 8Gb
Win11 16Gb 12th Gen Intel i5 12450H 2Ghz Nvidia RTX 2050 8Gb
Win11  Pro 8Gb Celeron Intel UHD Graphics 600
Win10/Linux Mint 16Gb 4th Gen Intel i5 4570 3.2GHz, Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 2Gb
macOS 32Gb Apple M2Max
pi5 8Gb
Spectrum Next 2Mb

Steve Elliott

Quote
Hi there! We need your information to produce and ship your ZX Spectrum Next.

:D
Win11 64Gb 12th Gen Intel i9 12900K 3.2Ghz Nvidia RTX 3070Ti 8Gb
Win11 16Gb 12th Gen Intel i5 12450H 2Ghz Nvidia RTX 2050 8Gb
Win11  Pro 8Gb Celeron Intel UHD Graphics 600
Win10/Linux Mint 16Gb 4th Gen Intel i5 4570 3.2GHz, Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 2Gb
macOS 32Gb Apple M2Max
pi5 8Gb
Spectrum Next 2Mb

Baggey

Quote from: dawlane on September 02, 2020, 21:29:58
This looks like it may be an interesting series if you happen to have a C128.


Nice site! Good information which relates to 6502.

Baggey
Running a PC that just Aint fast enough!? i7 Quad core 16GB ram 1TB SSD and NVIDIA Quadro K620 . DID Technology stop! Or have we been assimulated!

ZX Spectrum 48k, C64, ORIC Atmos 48K, Enterprise 128K, The SID chip. Im Misunderstood!