8 October 2019

As you may have read just over a week ago on our Facebook channel (click this link), we at ByteDelight needed to pause production for a moment, since it was finally clear that we couldn’t keep up with orders anymore the way we did it until now.

Who runs ByteDelight?

ByteDelight is currently run by me, Ben Versteeg, and my wife.
We are not planning on taking employees or moving to a bigger space yet.
It’s not that we don’t want to, but as long as we can do this from our current space without the added complexity of taking care of employees and an external space, we will continue here (it’s lovely being able to drink our own fresh coffee).

(Semi-) Automated production line

In december last year we ordered and received a pick and place machine, which we should have bought way earlier when we had more time.
We did do some initial runs with the PRO ONE interface on it, but also knew some more setup work was needed to make it more efficient, be able to do more products on it and avoid defects because of the still unmodified manually operated reflow oven.

So during the last months we did all production work manually again.
But the demand was progressively increasing up to the level of which we can now simply say is impossible to keep up with manual production.

Another reason to step over to automated production is the requirement for businesses to solder lead-free.
This is something that is a lot tougher to do by hand with small pitched SMD (surface mounted) parts.
The semi-automated production line does this without much hassle.
It’s a semi-automated production line because we still need to manually assemble some connectors, and of course do testing, rework if needed, and packiging.

So we decided to finish the production line instead of doing any more manual production work, knowing very well that we would get some complaints of people that are waiting for their orders.

We are very sorry for that!

Really, it frustrates me a lot that I am keeping people waiting, I am very very sorry.
But we hope you can forgive us because of the above reasons.

Order status

As we are writing this, we are finally shipping out about all orders from the end of September up to now.
We still need to finish some niche products like Dual Floppy Drive sets, Rainbow LED cases and assembled Harlequin boards.

Also about 15 Spectranet interfaces need to be assembled – we will work on adding Spectranet to the production line configuration this week, and hope to ship them out at the beginning of next week (14 October).
It’s very unwise for us if we would decide to do these manually otherwise, as you can imagine.

Underneath you will find some photos of our workplace.
We still need to do some minor improvements, but we think we can use the place like this for the next years, whatever new products we decide to add to our assortment.

Thank you for reading this,

Ben Versteeg

Finally assembling PRO ONE interfaces on the semi-automated production-line at the end of September 2019:

The new manual / rework setup with extraction hood (finished this week):

Our beloved pick and place machine:

“Can I use a Spectranet and DivMMC together?”
“Can I use the PlusDlite and the ZX Spectrum +3 disk drive at the same time?”

I get questions like these a lot!
And yes, they are totally valid questions.

So let’s finally put the anwser in this post, will try to keep it in a nutshell!

ZX Spectrum architecture

The ZX Spectrum was developed to be an affordable machine back in the days.
One way of making that possible was by leaving out many components that other much more expensive systems had.

If you add external hardware to the ZX Spectrum, it’s usually accessed by I/O (input/output) ports.
The proper way of designing external hardware would be by ‘decoding its address bus’ using ALL 16 address lines from the ZX Spectrum.

However Sinclair themselves (the development team of the ZX Spectrum itself) already made an exception of this by claiming one address line for ULA (that big chip) purposes.
So it wasn’t already possible anymore to do proper address decoding.

And the way Sinclair did it, became kind of a standard with many hardware add-ons.
Many producers used just one or two address lines to decode for their hardware.

Doing it that way resulted in many devices becoming incompatible, especially more complex devices like Floppy Disk interfaces and these days the SD storage interfaces and now the Spectranet ethernet interface.

As a comparison: at the time when the ZX Spectrum was sold, many other machines had several expansion slots, but interfaces developed for those had more complete ‘address decoders’ to avoid conflicts.
Hence though those machines and add-ons were a lot more expensive.

So what about interfaces on the ZX Spectrum then?

The basic rule is: every two interfaces with ROMs and NMI circuits will collide by default.
All storage interfaces have at least their own ROM, and many have an NMI circuit.

Now some interfaces like Disciple have an inhibit switch that adds some kind of compatibility, but not much.

And there is no magic / standard way of working around this.
One ‘very difficult’ solution (it IS possible) is disabling the ROM and NMI on one interface but leaving it’s hardware available, so it can be accessed by commands from the other interface.
For example someone could write %-commands on Spectranet to add support to the +3 disk drive or DivMMC SD card and so on.

But there is another catch: with complex interfaces like Spectranet, DivMMC and others, there are often I/O conflicts as well.
That means that when the software tries to access the hardware on one interface, it accidentally may activate hardware on the other device.
To solve that, one of the interfaces needs to be changed on a hardware level.

Hence I keep saying: there is almost no way of doing this.

So you have to pick the setup you like the most.
Or two setups, or three… Mancave anyone??

A new version of ESXDOS, version 0.8.7, has been released.
Amongst the changes is a bugfix for the ‘.MKDIR’ command that created nested folders that didn’t work.

Here’s the announcement and place where you can download this new ESXDOS release: http://board.esxdos.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1240#p1240
And here’s an upgrade instructions page: https://www.bytedelight.com/?p=140.

I’ve made some photos with details of the SMD capacitors used on the Sam Coupe disk drives.
I hope to be able to add the package specifications as well.

I’ve seen two revisions of the circuit boards inside the drives.
One has 3 capacitors and the other four, hence here you have 2 photos with the specs.

And underneath the photos you will find part numbers at Farnell or Mouser (not tested myself yet when writing this post, parts are on their way).

Farnell part numbers:

22uF 16V 5mm – Farnell: 2611359
1uF 50V 4mm BIPOLAR! – Mouser: 647-UWP1H010MCL
2.2uF 35V 4mm BIPOLAR! – Farnell: 2326177 / Mouser: 667-EEE-1VA2R2NR
10uF 16V 4mm – Farnell: 2901318

I would like to share my thoughts about FPGA clones of ZX Spectrums.
I was discussing this with some people during the last weeks, and thought to gather the things I wrote and make them public.

First, I really do like the developments that are going on, like the the ZX Spectrum Next, the ZX UNO and its XL brother the ZX GO, and more FPGA implementations.

But even though both the Next and the ZX-GO have some kind of an edge connector, to be honest I don’t think they are what the majority of enthusiasts are looking for.
Please read that again carefully: I say ‘majority of people’ since there its definitely interest in improvements like the Next, but machines with specific new features IMHO actually create new communities with ZX Spectrum roots.
I do want a complete Next myself 😉

But getting to what I call ‘purely ZX Spectrum FPGA based clones’..
(And again: this is what I think, and with some details I might be wrong or misinformed)

I think there will be interest in a ‘fully ZX Spectrum compatible’ FPGA-based board, when it:
1. Can be used with no hassle
2. Has a completely hardware add-on compatible edge connector
3. Are really affordable

Let me explain.

1. No hassle, just plug and play

When it comes to starting to use an FPGA clone, it’s often or maybe in al cases not as simple as one would like I think:

• A problem with many FPGA based clones at this moment is that they’re most often not as intuitive to use as an original ZX Spectrum: power on, get to BASIC and do what you want.
• Also documentation is IMHO far from available or ready, which makes it users hard to use it simply as a ZX Spectrum.
• Then I don’t like boot-delays because the system needs to go through a more general startup-procedure.

Then none of the current implementations as far as I know fit in an unmodified rubber-key case.
You only can easily obtain replicas of rubber-key cases, the other cases are harder to get but if you want to use an original case, the rubber-key one is the easiest choice.

So I think a clone should have just composite at RF, tape in and out at EAR and stereo sound at MIC (like the Harlequin 128) and DC in with an integrated bridge rectifier for safety and PSU compatibility.
I think there would be a LOT of interest in a ‘drop-in replacement’ board.

2. Hardware compatibility

When I was testing the edge connnector of the Next with several add-on, I couldn’t get it working.
The assistance I got during a live stream gave me the feeling that the team not yet put in much effort to test this themselves.
Which also gives me the feeling it doesn’t have much priority, and I wonder it’s actually possible to make it work completely: my experience with the development of the ZX-HD is that if it needs to do a lot on hardware level, a SOC or FPGA has its limitations.

Now with the UNO both the original version and the ZX-GO variant do not get a compatible edge connector.
I personally don’t like a breakout-box like required on the ZX-GO to make it possible to connect add-ons.

I think I’ve seen one other FPGA based clone with edge connector, but I think it was using a separate Z80 and many more parts, so it wasn’t as integrated as the ZX UNO and Next.

When it comes to the emulation: of course it should be accurate, but I have no doubt that is at a high level at this moment.
Though I do wonder how hard it will be to integrate full hardware I/O compatibility on the edge connector.

And that’s where I think a major problem lies: FPGA developers tend to spend a lot of time pushing as many features into the core as possible, and maybe only later start to think of hardware compatibility when it’s requested to use their FPGA implementation on a ZX Spectrum compatible board.
I think many cores started as ‘software emulation with original ZX Spectrum keyboard inputs’..

3. Affordability

I think a FPGA based clone board should be available for under a £100, maybe even less, something like £75.
The reason I say £75 is that since it can be done with only an FPGA and some minor and very cheap discrete parts, the board should cost less than a Harlequin kit, JS128 or something else.
But I know the cost price of one FPGA alone can be around £50, but maybe I’m mistaken.

My conclusions for now then

I think it’s time for someone (or a team) to create a, let’s say, an FPGA based toastrack clone, that fits in a rubber case without the need of customizing the case.
For about £75, which means parts should be £30 or less to make any profit (really, I know).

If anything should be added – like an SD card slot with logic inside the FPGA core, or RGB, VGA, HDMI or anything else, there should be a lot of thought put in of how to add those without needing to modify the case.
If that can’t be done, I’d say: put the additional features in an external interface.
But people should be able to use existing add-ons as well.

Talking about a ‘it can do all’ interface: I’m really curious about the DivGMX which seems to combine things like HDMI with sound over HDMI, DivMMC, TurboSound and much more on an ordinary ZX Spectrum.
But.. I’m not sure if it actually ‘uses’ the connected ZX Spectrum and acts like an interface, or that it ONLY uses the ZX Spectrum ‘as a keyboard’.
There should be one on its way for me to test soon.

Made these since I’m servicing quite a lot of these.

ZXSpectrum.shop (the ByteDelight webshop) is temorarily closed for production line automation.
The webshop will be available again around 6 May.

Check out our overall planning (click).
And keep an eye on our Facebook timeline (click) for the latest updates!

When we’re done, we will have a lot more brand new products available!
We’re sorry for the inconvenience!

‘It’s real’ they said:

Yes, RealSpectrum is one of the best ZX Spectrum emulators out there, though some of its features only work on a older machine with a 16 or 32 bit version of Windows98/XP.

But, it made it possible to get to use the MB02 interface for free!

Read the full story here!

In case you missed it: Spectranet is coming up (again)!

This is the only Ethernet interface for the ZX Spectrum with an awesome amount of software support:
– Great BASIC extensions: connect to a server without the need of loading additional software
– Browse through filesystems with very easy to use commands!
– Load games and other software directly from the internet!
– Set up a public or personal server with the available tools!

Dylan Smith developed this interface years ago, but the community is finally ready for it!
Join the brand new Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/317751018885010/