The Sinclair QL Forum

Some assembly required!!!

tofro wrote:S_Next.JPG

I watched Nostalgia Nerd do his unboxing video. Funny how your box also has the tear on the left side. It definitely has lots and lots of features and I kind of got lost at one point after he mounted a raspberry pi internally to speed it up?!?!?

bwinkel67 wrote:

tofro wrote:S_Next.JPG

I watched Nostalgia Nerd do his unboxing video. Funny how your box also has the tear on the left side. It definitely has lots and lots of features and I kind of got lost at one point after he mounted a raspberry pi internally to speed it up?!?!?

My box is all good - The photo might be misleading.

And yes, the pi is being installed inside. As of today, however, there's not much essential use for it.

Tobias

tofro wrote: My box is all good - The photo might be misleading.

And yes, the pi is being installed inside. As of today, however, there's not much essential use for it.

Tobias

Oh, my mistake. I saw a little white from the edge of the black insert poke up on the left and thought it had torn (the left side of the machine where the 4 colored lights are). Looks like it is maybe just being poked up a bit. For the Nostalgia Nerd he had it ripped completely to the edge of the box since the machine must have shifted all the way to the left. Not a big deal but the box is so nice that having it in one piece is a bonus.

I might do the second kick starter. Never had a Speccy (just a ZX81) but I like that Dickinson had a part in the design because it's one of the many things that draws me to Sinclair products. I really like the lines of the Next.

SinclairSociety wrote:I am also waiting for mine.

I'll be eagerly awaiting your unboxing video :-/

tofro wrote:

Pr0f wrote:It says the speccy next is out of stock on the web site - so they must have flown off the shelves. They are charging quite a lot for RTC and the few addons that appear to be included in the more expensive version - If the board layout hasn't changed that much, I don't think the addtioanal components will be that expensive to fit yourself if you can handle a soldering iron.

Did they do away with the raspberry pi helper board in the end?

Well, of couese it is out of stock - It's never been freely available other than for Kickstarter backers. It's rumoured they will do another run soon. So, pricing that's shown on the web site is largely academical.

The extensions (RTC, memory, RPi Zero, WiFi) are easy enough to add. For most, you don't even need a soldering iron.

The RPi is no longer needed for HDMI output if that was the question. But it's still there, acting as an optional co-processor for whatever stuff you like to use it. People have written music players and tape recorder emulation for it.

Tobias

It's also there to translate TZX files into digital audio which is fed into the main system to load games which have their own tape loaders and hit the hardware directly.

XorA wrote:841E6AA7-B2ED-470F-8888-B29CA7EF27F7.jpeg

Some assembly required!!!

NMI button and a spectrum like edge conector pin spacing - some kind of multiface type thing ?

Pr0f wrote:some kind of multiface type thing ?

Multiface 128 - written on the PCB.

dex wrote:

Pr0f wrote:some kind of multiface type thing ?

Multiface 128 - written on the PCB.

Couldn't see that until I zoomed in the picture

QL-VGA prototype review on my blog...

https://dilwyn2.wordpress.com/2020/02/28/ql-vga/

(Note: review based on a working prototype, product not yet available at time of writing. Marcel has kindly given me permission to write this today).

dilwyn wrote:QL-VGA prototype review on my blog...

https://dilwyn2.wordpress.com/2020/02/28/ql-vga/

(Note: review based on a working prototype, product not yet available at time of writing. Marcel has kindly given me permission to write this today).
ql-vga11.jpg

Hi Dilwyn,
thanks for the writeup - I had the pleasure to beta-test QL-VGA as well.
In short: Brilliant picture on any VGA monitor I have, no flickering, and even a bit better picture quality than the HDMI scalers I used to be happy with during the last years.

Tobias