
Arrr! Could we be having a C64 version mate?
You have a woman's hands, Arrr
Youtube Video Many of you reading this will have had a Sinclair ZX Spectrum as their first computer [or second, anyway. And it was the first one that really worked. - Ed]. With 16k or 48k RAM and a Z80 processor it was the first mass market colour home computer. Now you can win a one-off portable Spectrum built by legendary …
http://www.benheck.com/commodore-64-original-hardware-laptop/
I wish I had the space & money for the cool shop tools he's got; 3d printer, huge CNC router, laser cutter etc...
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>> Do we have to get the questions right? <<
This is a reasonable question - making assumptions about project requirements leads to waste and fuckups. Many of us are engineers, and as such have a duty to confirm the *real* requirements, not our assumptions. So let's examine the evidence -
The article says "All you have to do is sign in with your Reg account (or sign up for one), and answer three questions." - no requirement for the answers to be correct there.
Click through "All you have to do click below to sign in or create a Reg account, then answer the three questions on the next page..." - no requirement there then. You do have to accept the terms and conditions (fair enough) link is http://whitepapers.theregister.co.uk/tac/3500
"By downloading any of the papers in this library, or by registering for any of the live or on-demand events, you agree that your supplied personal details will be passed on to the sponsor of the paper or the event, and that this organisation or one of its trusted partners may contact you in the future by phone and/or email, with further information about their products and services. In this instance the sponsor is The Register. You additionally agree that The Register may contact you regarding related products and services. You can request a stop to such communications from The Register at any time by signing into your account and altering your preferences."
T's and C's appear to be completely unrelated, don't have any competition rules requiring correct answers, and do not exclude errors or omissions (so retrospectively changing the competition rules isn't covered by an E&O clause).
As such, there is NO requirement for the competition answers to be correct and as such, l answered with the first option from each drop-down and the confirmation page says "You are now entered into the draw. The very best of luck!"
There is nothing in the rules to exclude me from the draw, my chance is the same as everyone elses, despite being pretty certain I answered incorrectly :-)
Engineers are a pain in the arse. Fuck assumptions.
IIUIC, the reason why this kind of competition always asks really noddy questions is because then it's a quiz rather than a lottery; lotteries are regulated by law, quizes aren't.
I suspect that if they *didn't* check you'd answered them correctly then they might have trouble explaining to The Man that this is in fact a test of skill and not simply gambling. But that's assuming that the law makes sense (which is in itself a very dubious assumption).
I was actually keeping up with part 1 based on my very limited electronics knowledge and what I could vaguely remember about the Spectrum but then when part 2 started the breadboard suddenly had about 5 more chips and a whole load of spaghetti underneath.
I hated it when they did that on Blue Peter too.
Same here. From the 'Terms and Conditions':
"By downloading any of the papers in this library, or by registering for any of the live or on-demand events, you agree that your supplied personal details will be passed on to the sponsor of the paper or the event, and that this organisation or one of its trusted partners may contact you in the future by phone and/or email, "
So one lucky entrant gets the prize, everybody gets spammed silly.
'Trusted partners' = paid for the list of suckers.
They want extra bits of your soul to accept an answer. I could make it up I suppose!
But I'll leave it to someone more enthusiastic.
Now to customise my PCW8256 (which already has a 1.44 3.25" 2nd floppy, extra RAM, dual Serial port and Mouse added by me) into a "netbook" using a separate WiFi to Serial port module. and nintendo / console style wobble stick. It also has franken tilt and swivel base. So seriously lacks value as vintage computing artefact.
I also had a stupidly slow 1 bit scanner attachment that used the printer with ribbon removed.
SuperCalc clone, New-word Wordstar Clone, X25 PAD modem SW, for 1987 email via Telecom Gold gateways to Telex and Bitnet. Spice & DTP, Prolog, Pascal and Modula-2 all on CP/M.
I can't remember there being any games.
I did buy a ZX Spectrum in 1982 possibly as a Test Card Generator.
So there can be only 1 winner, but for everyone else who has an Android device there's always Marvin for portable ZX Spectrum gaming.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cz.dejvice.rc.Marvin&hl=en_GB
Works great with a bluetooth joystick such as the Zeemote JS1 along with the Bluez IME software.
Plus you can make Marvin load the .tap save games in real time just for the nostalgic beeeeeeeeeeeeeee bip! beeeeeee bugfhwiuehfskjfsshbfjsbf shhhhhhhhh biwouhiwugiwurgu sounds :)
No, but if I were the author, I surely would have included an "insane authenticity" option for the lulz, which (if activated) requires you to hand-trim the "tape head" using your volume buttons during loading, guided only by your ears as you try to find the sharpest pitch, unless you want to end up with a "TAPE LOADING ERROR"...
Spectrum games on a touch screen? Yuck!
I've tried many emulators on Android and iThing devices. They never work. The games simply were never designed for touch screen use and the control systems these things use are never as good as a good old fashioned joystick or keyboard.
Much better to run the original hardware and use the tablet as a tape recorder to play tape images off of the web.
I was previously aware of Ben Heck from his various portable console conversions that appeared on gadget blogs from time to time. But I just spent more hours than I care to admit to watching his show on You Tube. Compelling stuff even though I'm my electronics skills stretch about as far as replacing obviously blown components with identical parts.
put as much time and effort into thinking of something useful to hack/make as they do into making these pet rocks.
I think the dumbest thing I have ever seen is a digital clock which displays the time as a QR code on an LCD screen. To tell the time you have to take out your phone (which almost certainly has the time displayed as soon as you turn it on) and run an app to take a photo of the LCD so it can decode the QR code and tell you what time it is.
Are hackers not allowed to be creative and have fun just for the sake of having fun?
Like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Djc8FPHs45o
"Are hackers not allowed to be creative and have fun just for the sake of having fun?"
I think that making something which has more use than showing it to other makers and saying "look what I made" would be rather more fun and satisfying.
Coming up with something useful that you can't already buy for less than it would cost you to make is where real creativity is required and lacking.
"@JP I think the point is that in the making"
I make electronic things for a living. It started as a hobby and remains so. The hardest part is coming up with something useful to make for the hobby. It used to be much easier when there were far fewer electronic things you could buy and they were more expensive. I know people who made their own colour TV sets for less than they cost to buy (not counting their labour). I made my own audio equipment, I made digital clocks when they were a novelty, I made a Z80 based computer before the spectrum came out.
Today I could not bring myself to make something as pointless as a clock displaying time as QR codes and a hand held version of an ancient crappy computer isn't much better. I stand by my comment that I wish makers would put more effort into coming up with something useful to make.
Just got around to finally watch the vids - what can I say... calling that 'bodging' would be far too kind; it's the sort of thing one might cobble together on an alternate universe electronics-themed episode of "Scrapheap Challenge". FFS, 10-year-olds have already managed to figure out to how to order their ten-pack of custom PCBs for ten bucks from China whenever they make anything more complicated than a blinking LED! To each his own, but I for one prefer to take some pride in my work and quite frankly, having seen those vids, I have some urgent eye-bleaching to do. Now 'scuse me...
Erm, I was waiting for Sir Sinclair to pop and say "Hey! You! No! You can't go sticking my royally appointed name on any old horribly designed product. I could do that myself. Besides everyone knows that a PSION series 5 makes a cooler looking Spectrum Emulator even if it's on a black on grey screen." (His words probably not mine).
The Z80 is still available today in tiny QFP package:
http://au.element14.com/zilog/ez80l92az020sg/mcu-8bit-ez80-20mhz-lqfp-100/dp/2113949
Use that, some external RAM, some CPLD for the video controller and flash the EEPROM into the internal ROM of the Z80 and you are done!