Ben Heck’s ZX Spectrum 2.0 Part 1
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 24 ก.ย. 2015
- Ben has modded many old computers into gaming portables and in this episode Ben returns to an old friend - the ZX Spectrum. He gets started by creating a schematic in eagle and designing a small PCB. Ben will conclude his journey in part 2.
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It's been six years and I am still furious that he didn't call it the ZX Hecktrum.
REALLY happy that you keep coming back to original projects and finding ways to improve them. Most people forget that improving is a key aspect of making.
WOW! 2.0 version of my favorite build! Can't wait for part 2!
Great stuff! Look forward to part 2!
Excellent episode, as always! I love your dedication!
It amazes me how you know all this stuff! Watching you create the PCB layout was really interesting. Thx!
My hat off, you're really good at designing PCBs. Amazing!
the speccy 48kb was my 1st computer.
loved that little thing.
(and its ZED X, thats how Sir Clive would pronounce it :)
Thank you for walking through the Eagle design and layout steps in detail. It was instructive. I hope it wasn't too boring for more experienced viewers to watch. :)
Thank you for taking the time to so another ZX Spectrum video. I loved your last Speccy series.
I find all of your projects really interesting and entertaining, but as a Brit, who started out coding on a Speccy and loved it so much I made a career out of it, I enjoy watching these projects even more.
It's so much fun to watch Ben having fun! :)
Oh hell yes.
Got ULA's from two broken ZX Spectrums and I want to make more modern replacements for those old Spectrums.
Game on.
can't wait for part 2 !!!
"Beauty!", it's like I'm watching EEVblog. No complaints, actually
I haven't watched an episode in a while, but I gotta say the production quality is fantastic now! I can't remember the name of the new camera guy/producer but keep up the awesome work!
Ben, thank you so much for this, and for (mostly) respecting the original pronunciation!
As a long term ZX fan (Zed Ex), I always thought the ULA was a perpetual 'unobtainium' - no longer available, and can no longer be produced. Ferranti having custom manufactured it 30 odd years ago.
How happy I was tonight to see Ben design it - and build around it. The Zee/Zed Ex will live on. Can we purchase this as a kit, or at least the PCB and ULA?
- as a side note: I'm Scottish, so pronounce it Zed Ex. The Americans and Canadians, Zee. But I don't view this badly. Look at the WWII fighter named the Mustang. Designed by America and with an American engine, it performed... not well. But with an American design with a British engine..... awesome! :D
The ZeeZed Ex Spectrum is born!
AAAAAnd for your next trick, a 128k version. Please!. So I can take it into the work, and annoy my colleagues with 128k soundtrack Thundercats, and/or GliderRider. And not just as a ring tone on my phone ;)
+CartoonsKick Oh, and I entered the competition to win the original ZX Spectrum portable at www.theregister.co.uk/ when they ran the competition. But I didn't win. Oh well, never mind. I'll look to building one now :)
+CartoonsKick There ... may be another competition ;) th-cam.com/video/Kyvn1Le7aiU/w-d-xo.html
+CartoonsKick Well the ULA is fairly well documented and should be a nice hobby to re-implement in a modern cpld. I remember there being a book covering it in detail with schematics. But no... it's highly unlikely that there's some new-oldstock lying around.
Personally, I'd add some additional logic for simple switchable memory banks, gpio's and a few other things to turn it into a little learning platform to teaching beginners/kids the basics of assembly programming.
com456 dj eat broccoli
+Gert Nutterts WHAT
+The Ben Heck Show
Ben, have you ever considered using KiCAD? I think the make movement should endorse open source software and KiCAD is being supported heavily by CERN, so support is given. It also supports large PCBs (eagle costs when using larger PCBs), so that's useful.
EDIT: Ah, sponsored by E14 who own CADSoft... bummer :P
Andrew Tubbiolo does CvPCB take long to open for you? (footprint to symbol assignment)
Everytime I start cvpcb, it freezes for 15s
+TheTrueM3ga They each have their own pitfalls and benefits.
Kicad is very powerful, but I find it to be anything but nice. It gives me the impression it's trying to mess with my brains with its weird input and control.
Then again I had a recent fail with Eagle where it went out of sync. I hadn't done this for years, but a decade back, I haven't been able to cause that, I designed quite a bit and it stayed in sync. It looks like it paused the autorouter and didn't sync up the changes between PCB and schematic views while I was editing the schematic. Ouch. And no automatic tool to fix it up? >.<
So indeed i'm going to give Kicad a try again, thanks for reminding me.
Perhaps I should have purchased Target. Oh well.
Nice video shot, keep it up, thanks for sharing it with us :)
Ben you have WAY to much fun laying out that board :)
So proud of you saying it the British way "Zed Ex Spectrum" :)
I love these retro computer mods.
Used to and still do love the ZX Spectrum (48k mainly though AY chip is lovely too). Interesting video on the internals of the beloved machine. Oh and it's a Zed Ex Spectrum ;)
Great one, once again! :)
Love the show
lookin good, ben
Yaaay this is what i wanted! Thanks ben!
Awesome. This is exactly what I was hoping to see on your show. The soldered wires work for some projects, but I think the PCB work is more efficient with space and replication. Not to mention that they look cool. I can stare for hours at a circuit board. Does that make me a nerd? :-)
There are actually 2 categories of EEPROM, as well. Standard EEPROM requires different voltage levels to erase data (ie: a 5V chip might require a 12V signal down one of the pins). Flash memory (also EEPROM) was different in that it only required one voltage level, and had specific commands which would write or erase blocks of memory. For some reason, the pattern of addresses 55AA, AA55, 55AA sticks in my brain...I think that was the write sequence? Either way, all Flash chips are EEPROMs, but not all EEPROMs are Flash.
7:45 Beauty! Hiya Dave!
ahh, good Friday morning viewing while at work in my cube.
Here's an idea for a new Spectrum project: Combine the original British ZX Spectrum with the Timex Sinclair 2068, which is the US version. Could be tricky dealing with PAL/NTSC video in the same machine. Also, the TS2068 had a cartridge slot.
Please Ben make a Portable Wii or Wii Laptop tutorial. I haven't been able to find a video on how to do it and you've mentioned you've done one before. I know you have tons of projects but I'd really appreciate it. You've got awesome stuff Ben keep up the good work :)
It's been done just google wii or GameCube portable and you will find tutorials/ build logs on some forums.
+Pixelated Thomas I've looked but I haven't been able to find specifics. its all so vague and I don't find every instruction for example: how to make it run on batteries
This was very interesting. It would be nice to see how you decided what resistors, caps, transistors to use in each place. It would be an interesting video for those of us who never got the training for our hobby and just guess! A tutorial on eagle with your method of explanation would be nice if you could find the time..
Thanks for the video.
+amtpdb1 Sparkfun.com has an Eagle Tutorial that got me going in just one evening. It covers everything from start to finish. It's a written guide versus a video, but is perfect to learn from.
Thanks for the information,
Ben you are a genius
Automatic closed captioning suggests the episode is about ...
* Zantac Spectrum
* He Expect Room
* Headaches Spectrum
More interesting than Roomba Dart Collector. Probably a lot less frustrating too LOL.
el z80a es un invento italiano .el spectrum es britanico y los que mas lo quisimos o le dimos larga vida fuimos los españoles y sudamericanos. unico ordenador con alma del planeta. un alma noble.
Ben for president!
Dave Johns Beauty impression? :P
+thingyee1118 Dave Jones.
Yes dam auto correct fail. I meant to say Dave Jones. EEVblog
Since all this stuff is possible,I might try to make a Macintosh 128k replica,it may have multiple boards though because I think the 128k has a multiple layered main board... And if you're wondering what my age is,i'm 11,and I KNOW this stuff...
Could you do a tear down on the zx spectrum next
How hard would it be to add the edge connector to attach real Speccy peripherals like the Kempston Joystick, the thermal printer and the ZX Microdrive etc. ?
I'd have been impressed if you had recreated the BBC micro - not the crappy spectrum. From someone who bought the original ZX80 in kit form as well as the Sinclair calculator watch in kit form !
While you're on a Z80 kick, here's an idea: Turn your normal shtick on its head by turning the portable Gameboy into a console for TV
that zx spectrum survived 35 years before it met you
"Zed" seems fair because it's a British computer and that's how it was intended to be called. It's not exactly the same as just any old Z floating about, it's part of the name. Hell I think I have little sprinkles of Australian in my accent now that rubbed off from watching Dave Jones so much. At least some of the phrases...
Ben, please!! Make a portable 128K model already!
I had the ZX81 with the 64kb expansion pack, i have never lusted after something so much in my entire life, I had a picture of it in my wallet, suffice it to say I was not popular with, well anyone.
Lol zee ex
But seriously, this sounds like a fun project for those of us who had speccys back in the day.
To supplement you saying "Zed" start using the metric system too!
Heck Yeah! :-p
What about the ULA and Video chips? Where are other people supposed to get them? I have a funny feeling that they are going to be quite hard to come by. Nice for someone with a ZX Spectrum laying around, but not so good for the rest of us who would like to build one. Any plans to emulate their function with a microcontroller or FPGA?
ZED X SPECTRUM FFS! NOOOO ZEEEE! and that outburst came from across the pond, my American cousin.
Your show is excellent and if you were my next door neighbour I would be working with you and helping you with your pronunciations of the machine until you brought a restraining order or ASBO against me:)
PS why the hell aren't you teaching this in schools or colleges as you clearly have the ability to teach!, sir.
PPS there is nothing wrong with the English language and it was the Americans who first Bastardized the English language eh? (color aHHHHa)
GOD bless you mate:)
I can't help but feel that the PCB could have been much less of a headache if you had gone for the approach of re-creating functionality, rather than trying to cram the same design as the original motherboard only using newer components.
Do you think you could create a replica of the Science of Cambridge (Sinclair) MK14? I think it sold more units in the UK than the Apple II in the US at the time.
Don't worry, you're not British until you start drinking tea.
I'm just going to go ahead and put this out there... It's ZEE! :p
Why didn't you re-implement the ULA in a Propeller, it would have given you the video ram and video interface without a real ULA.
Finally got rid of that comeover
I'm surprised a "modder" (if that's a real word) like you didn't mod in a sound chip to the ZX Spectrum. Though useless that would be. It would still be cool.
Just bung an AY in it like the 128's
Protip: DO NOT rename the schematic pins before connecting the schematic and layout. Connect the pins with the default names (P$1 eg) their respective layout pin, and thus you'll have perfect 1-1 mapping. Once you connect them, then rename the schematic pin (eg P$1 to Vcc) and arrange as you wish.
Yay, it's zed-ex never zee-ex, well done 😃👍
I say Z(ède) all the time cuz i'm french :P. You have nothing to worry about Ben
so next week will be part 2 of this or is it gonna be something different?
+Mb0ts what other parted eps are still hanging out there? did they ever finish the Roomba?
0:55 doesn't zed ecks just roll of the tongue so much better?
i know you cant load audio files from modern devices to a ti99 4a i dont know about the spectrum
How do you think people should start to get into this kind of thing?
is the audio messed up some? it changes loudness randomly.
Here's a game, ever time "Zee Eks" is said, Sir Clive Sinclair runs over a puppy in a Sinclair C5
are the flip-flops called jandals in New Zealand?
Don't forget to make it compatible with floppy diskettes and dot matrix printers like the original.
Why so much trace zig-zagging under (behind, blue traces) the ULA @ ~23:20?
Ghostbusters had Zuul , close enough.
21:14 - 21:16 -- Some weird glitches happening in this episode. Look at Ben's nose here.
7:45 Dave Jones (EEVBlog) impression?
I have no idea, so i'm always interested how much things cost. so what was the great price for the 3 boards?
Just Google "OSH Park" to see their pricing, if interested. Much will depend upon how many square inches your board requires coupled with the number of layers, etc.
You might as well have made a troll face after saying "zee-X"
+Troy Adams he has to let people know he knows of Zed so the anal folks will shut up about it in the comments.
But the pronunciation is ZED EX
ZX*
@@dcsMagazine yes ZED ZED !!!
Zed zed top.
How do you yanks like it!!!!!
Wasn't there also a tri-core AMD CPU that they sold because they had a ton of faulty quad-core CPUs or something? I seem to remember something like that...
+Bright Spark I believe so, but if I remember correctly you could actually unlock the fourth core on a lot of them and they'd still be perfectly stable and usable., so a lot of people ended up buying that triple-core CPU and unlocked it for a super cheap quad-core.
+Bright Spark It's called binning and all processor (cpu or gpu) manufacturers do it. It would be far more expensive for them to spin the entire lines of slightly different chips so they just disable X amount of cache, X amount of cores or X amount of shader units. They don't even need to even be faulty depending on what yields they're getting. It was just a few years back that motherboard manufactures found a way to allowed AMD users to enable disabled cores to see if they worked and many of them did with no problems.
Just like some 4GB RX480s are actually 8GB ones if you change the BIOS
would love the eagle files if you can post them,
Have you considered designing a custom mechanical keyboard?
+James Coyle Oh hello.
+James Coyle I second that! Great Idea!!
+James Coyle That would be great
How much hours did you spend routing the pcb?
It's not that some people call it the Zed X Spectrum it's that just about everyone but Americans correctly call it that.
And while I'm at it...
A.L.U.M.I.N.I.U.M
There I feel better now.
+Trakker The way I've always figured it, we never got that computer proper over here in the US so I'm going to call it what it's native market calls it. "Zee-Ex" just sounds stupid anyway. I know Timex Corporation released an enhanced Spectrum as the Timex Sinclair 2068 over here but I honestly never knew anyone that owned one or even talked about it. We had all Commodore computers when I was young.
Alan Rizkallah Yeah I'm the same with some American pronunciations sounding a bit silly when i say it, like lieutenant(loo tenant) to British people sounds like someone who lives in a toilet.
The latest one is "Societal" or, given the love of juvenile spelling, perhaps "Sosietal"; either way it's a straight face replacement for "Social" :-(
The oversimplification and flattening of US vocab seems to be in overdrive at the moment. For years I've reckoned there's a policy to inflict kindergarten level vocabulary on the population, after all a neutered vocab can manage no more than a two dimensional debate. :-(
I want someone to open a pools on how long it takes for official adoption of "sheeps" as the plural of sheep or maybe "mouses" for mice! - They've already dropped "twice' which now has to be "two times" - I really do despair :-'(
There was no BIOS. Sinclair BASIC was the OS.
Ben's thumb looks like it's in a lot of pain
Will there be a PCB available to buy for this project?
I'm shocked no one has started a whole aluminium vs aluminum etc war after this...
Ashley Underwood because clearly aluminium is wrong
It's the equivalent of saying Titanum instead of Titanium, it just sounds odd.
Considering the American version of English is based on proper English, they must have forgotten how to say and spell many words whilst sailing across the Atlantic.
Ben, try to controll your anxiety. Your dermatophagia is getting out of hand. Pun intended.
IT IS PRETTY! Me likes lines!
You're not saying zed by accident, that's the correct way to say it in relation to this computer. You ARE incorrectly saying zee though. As usual.
+SmoothEmJay Zee Zee Zee Zee Zee neener neener neener!
can you make a tutorial for making a gamecube portable withoutthe original gamecube dvd player please
The ZX Spectrum was my first computer, but they are not as easy to get hold of these days, especially since I now live in Canada. I'm all for an updated mod of the spectrum but I wish you would attempt to recreate the ULA with modern parts, those are getting harder to find, and recreating the ULA could open up the possibility of having the video going to VGA or NTSC for those in this continent. I've got an old portable DVD player with A/V input that I would love to a spectrum working on but it's NTSC.
Also have you seen the Spectrum sythesis on a DE1 board?
www.mike-stirling.com/2010/11/zx-spectrum-on-altera-de1-source-code/
17:50 - DEEZ NUTS!
it does lol
what control panel is the one you are using
Is turning British a problem Ben?
I think he lives in England.
He lives in America, somewhere
+MrElliotness1 He actually lives in Günzburg, Germany.
+MrElliotness1 Depends on how much he likes his teeth.
***** Erm... Sure?
as a consideration, regarding the legalities of using official roms and legal modified roms, would you consider using the open se rom?
based on the zx81 rom (not owned by BSkyB) as was the spectrum rom, this is a legal to distribute rom which is highly compatible with the original 48k rom but does not share copyrighted code
www.shadowmagic.org.uk/spectrum/roms.html
sourceforge.net/projects/sebasic/files/OpenSE%20BASIC/
Hi Ben , I want to know how to proceed to if i am making a wifi controlled bot,
just woke up.
So where are the files posted? I want this.
Zed not Zee! :)