ZX Spectrum Next Laptop

Posted by utopcell 3 days ago

Counter127Comment27OpenOriginal

Comments

Comment by rtmkrptn 1 day ago

My grandpa kept Soviet copy of ZX Spectrum called Leningrad 1. You can read more about this thing here.

https://zxbyte.org/leningrad.htm (it's in Russian but I hope you have an auto translator in a browser)

Great post overall!

Comment by utopcell 18 hours ago

Most clones I've seen don't look that great, but this one's nice. I noticed that the PCB has no ULA. I'm reading that it was impossible to procure in the USSR because of embargos so the designer, Sergey Zonov, reverse-engineered it and used 74xx ICs. That ..is an impressive feat. It has been replicated by Chris Smith, but by actually opening up a ULA and looking at the circuit. Doing this blindly is just awesome.

Comment by rtmkrptn 15 minutes ago

It really does look great. Unfortunately for me, grandpa’s one has a broken bottom part and died battery. I tried to repair it but I did not have enough tools not to burn the plate.

Comment by masfuerte 19 hours ago

It appears to have a better keyboard than the original. The rubber keys were an abomination.

Comment by ovidiu 23 hours ago

Website does not load for me, unfortunately.

Comment by rbanffy 1 day ago

The obvious next step would be to put it inside the case of a Pandora.

https://www.reddit.com/r/cassettefuturism/comments/1tnsb2u/s...

Comment by MomsAVoxell 1 day ago

I already have a ZX Spectrum - well, a couple really - in my Pandora:

https://repo.openpandora.org/?page=detail&app=zesarux

.. incidentally, the Open Pandora runs a ton of great stuff:

https://repo.openpandora.org

Comment by rbanffy 1 day ago

Sinclair had, it seems, a design tradition that oddly mirrors Apple's. Lots of brilliant prototypes, and I hope the Delete book, which is where I first saw this, hasn't exhausted the treasure trove.

Comment by TheOtherHobbes 1 day ago

Mostly Rick Dickinson, who was a superb industrial designer.

Comment by usern20260720 1 day ago

Where is the slot for then cassette tapes?

Comment by gizajob 21 hours ago

You have to whistle in the code down the microphone.

Comment by firedev 17 hours ago

It would make sense with those Soviet homebrew OSs, like iS-DOS, that rendered 64 characters per line on the Speccy's 256x192 screen, and featured a file commander and a full software package.

Comment by bitwize 1 day ago

I love it. I mean laptops are billed as the tool for "productivity on the go", but this thing just screams "sod all that, I want to play some JetPac on the go".

Happy SPECtober everybody!

Comment by jrmg 22 hours ago

Happy SPECtober!

I was going to ask how we got three quarters of the way through SPECtober without me noticing, but I guess you just invented it?

I love (‘love’?…), though, that when I searched for it, Google confidently told me all about it, and suggested some ways to celebrate and games to play, despite the fact that your comment was the only actual search result! It’s like it agrees it should be a thing.

https://postimg.cc/VSRMCLPF

Comment by bitwize 19 hours ago

Yeah, it's something I just made up, following on from the YouTube trend of SepTandy and later DOScember and Marchintosh. I just figure other platforms should get their own month as well: Mayframe, Amigust, Spectober (alternatively: DECtober), Februatari ST?

Comment by pmontra 1 day ago

2020.

Looking at that chassis I'd like to retrofit a touchpad with 3 buttons on new standard laptops.

Comment by whilenot-dev 1 day ago

Title needs a (2020).

Comment by avadodin 1 day ago

6h?

I get that this is a hack rather than an actual product but I'd have expected something more in line with 6 days of continuous gameplay with 4 AAA batteries.

Comment by criddell 23 hours ago

I keep hoping somebody makes a product similar to the TRS-80 Model 100 - a slab laptop that ran for 20 hours on 4 AA batteries. With 40 years of technology improvements, I'd hope that a similar machine could run for months or even years on those same batteries.

Comment by RetroTechie 11 hours ago

> I'd hope that a similar machine could run for months or even years on those same batteries.

Reducing power draw becomes increasingly harder as you go down the scale. And in use, it's either "sleep/idle" (not doing work) or "draw power" (however modest).

More likely / practical use for those 40y tech advances: similar runtime & power draw, but waaay more compute power (and RAM). Like 32-bit 100 MHz+ vs few-MHz 8-bitter. Oh and more beefy battery ofc.

A $1 microcontroller + a character LCD (or epaper) could get you there. Leaving software + physical construction.

Comment by numpad0 1 day ago

No LED torches the size of LCD backlight last 6 days. More like up to 8 hours.

Comment by utopcell 18 hours ago

Ok avadodin@, we'll give you your money back.

Comment by Marazan 1 day ago

This thing has a 14 inch LED screen never mind the actual computer part. How much energy do you think they can hide in a AAA battery?

Comment by avadodin 1 day ago

The Gameboy lasted 30h. With all the improved processes and powering off the modern peripherals when not in use, I think the computer part should draw very little current during operation. The screen may require some compromises.

Comment by peterfirefly 1 day ago

Tiny display + a lot of them didn't have a backlight. This laptop has a big display.

Comment by Marazan 1 day ago

1. The Gameboy was powered using AA batteries not AAA which have about triple the capacity.

2. The Gameboy screen was LCD not LED, with no backlight, and had a 2.5 inch diagonal compared to this laptop's 14 inch diagonal.

3. Also if you read the article you will see a technical limitation was that the screen had to be run at full brightness

Comment by nottorp 1 day ago

Umm the next draws like 3 watts without a display. Which is still 3x less than the original zx spectrum.