Month: July 2021

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Dk’tronics Spectrum keyboard

When I was younger we had our 48k Spectrum in a big black plastic keyboard shell. So I didn’t have to put up with trying to type on the little rubber keys that people normally associate with the Speccy 48k (This was before the Spectrum+ came out).

For a while, I have wanted to get one of these again as I have no idea what happened to ours. I think it’s probably sat in a loft somewhere well and truly buried!

Well, I finally managed to get one, and it’s also complete in its original box. Not only that but it appears to have never been used as the stickers for the keys haven’t even been applied yet.

Of course, you know what the next problem is. Do I actually use this and apply the sticker set? Or does this one need to stay in its current condition and I now need to buy another one to actually stick a speccy inside!! 🤣

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Amstrad GX4000

With an estimated 15,000 units sold worldwide, the GX4000 is still quite easy to get hold of. That probably tells you something about how good it is! Although the price of this console does seem to be going up recently.

The console is still a nice looking machine though and there are a few good games that were launched for it. Only around 30 cartridges ever came out for the console. These now seem to sell for more money than the actual console. I have looked around and there is an SD card solution for this console but considering the small size of the library and the quality of most of those games, I have decided to go down a different route.

The user “Chinnery” on the CPC forums has released the designs for a blank PCB for this unit. All that is then needed is an EPROM chip to write the game to and a couple of other components. Stick this in a 3D printed case and we are done.

Considering there is probably a maximum of 10 games that I want then this should be a cheap way of getting them in my collection.

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Commodore Plus/4

So another new computer added to the collection. This one is a bit weird! After the Commodore 64, Commodore decided their next computer would be worse in pretty much every way. Although it was cheaper and more focused as a business computer with a built-in word processor, spreadsheet, database and graphing functionality. Not surprising that it was a bit of a failure.

Still, it has a bunch of games available as it is essentially a C16. And I do actually like the overall design. Kind of reminds me of an MSX.

As you can see in the photo I’ve connected up an SD2IEC to load the software from SD-Card.

I actually have two of these currently as one was bought for cheap as untested which didn’t work. The second was from eBay and was advertised as fully working. The fully working one didn’t however display the built-in applications so I suspected a faulty ROM. I managed to get a discount on the price I paid and swapped the “3 plus 1” ROM chips over from the other unit which sorted that issue.

Whilst I had it apart I also swapped the CPU over and found that both CPUs are working fine which is a relief as they are pretty rare. So on the faulty unit, I’m going to swap out the TED chip next as I expect that is the reason why it’s not working. Hopefully, I can get it back to full working order in the near future.