My ZX81 clone now called "ZX81+34"

[BMS Doug]

"it makes moving pictures appear by magic."

You propose this as an alternative name tp ZX15 or ZX81+34?
Isn't it a bit long for a name?

Nope, I haven't voted on your poll as I have no preference as to what you call your device, I was a BBCmicro owner (with extended memory, to 32k!), not a spectrum owner.

Or do you mean it as an alternative to "it outputs monochrome composite video, in either PAL or NTSC."
not really a good reply.....

perhaps as an answer to the comment that caused the question

Q: impressive. Give it HDM
A: it makes moving pictures appear by magic.

Q: Why not call 625/50 monochrome SECAM?

A: it makes moving pictures appear by magic.

sorry won't do.... (talking about dumbing it down, jeez.)

meh, I thought it was funny.

Edit:
I Have now voted.

Call it MSCM15
Mahjongg's Spectacular Calculating Machine 2015

[Ravenous]

P.S. I'm thinking about another newer design, (for ca. 2017) a Retro computer with color VGA output, based on ARM (but not Linux).
My current name for it is RhoCoCo for Retro Home Color Computer (its also a pun on rococco, the style) with the Greek Rho ρ symbol as logo ρ ≠ π) !

Now that is a clever name. You'd better get that name out there in circulation, before someone else sees it and steals it. (Banana Rococo anyone?)

[mahjongg]

Thanks, did I mention that Rho is the letter directly following PI in the Greek alphabet?

I started a new project page for rhococo at the revspace site.
Although its very early yet.
In principle the Rhococo is my "remake" of the Spectrum, but unlike my ZX81 clone it wont be a direct clone, but rather something that is inspired by the Spectrum.

[DougieLawson]

You'll need to learn how to spell colour correctly with that extra "u".

[mahjongg]

I know the difference between american color, and British colour, and am largely impartial, but my spelling checker is not and tends to change colour to color behind my back.

Also, I tend to write a lot in US english instead of UK english (for example in Wikipedia).


I'm hardly alone in using color instead of colour here in fact if you search the forum both for color, and colour, surprise-surprise, color is used more often!
But yeah, in here I should use "the Queens English" thus colour... thanks for reminding me.

[mahjongg]

Thanks all, for helping me to make my mind up! I decided to name my ZX81 clone the ZX81+34. This evening I will finalize the PCB accordingly.

[mahjongg]

oh, and here is a picture of the PCB, actually being assembled, at RevSpace.

[tdg8934]

Great project! I'm trying to build just the ZX81 keyboard part of the project. Do you have a PDF for the ZX81 keyboard that shows the new commands for ZXPand? I don't have adobe acrobat pro to edit it myself so I was hoping this might have been created for the members with ZXPand. It's basicly 3 items that need to be updated on the PDF as shown in the attachment JPEG.

Thanks,

Tim
[attachment=0]ZXpandKeyboard.jpg[/attachment]

[mahjongg]

yeah, the .pdf of my clone of the x81 keyboard layout can be downloaded from my revspace project page, its here: https://revspace.nl/File:Nieuw_keyboard_ZX14.pdf if you print it on A4 it should come out to the exact right size for a fit with the keys on a 1/10" perfboard. like this:

the .pdf of the schematic can be found here:
https://revspace.nl/File:KB_matrix_schematic.pdf

I'm not sure I understand which error you refer to in your picture. Are you referring to new keys only used by an emulator?

I'm still struggling with my ZX81+34, unfortunately due to an early incident much of the logic on my first prototype was damaged, and after fruitless attempts of getting my first prototype to work, and finding several bugs, I decided to bite the bullet, and create a new version. I've just finished its layout. As usual I have made the bugfxes and changes available as a new schematic, The layout (gerber files) will be released when I can say for sure that the ZX81+34 works, which probably will be early 2016.

I made a new 3D preview of the improved/corrected ZX31+34, for one the Joystick port (DB-9 female) is no longer soldered to the board. Most of the betterments are invisible in the 3D view though, such as the fact that I switched from an EEPROM to a FLASH ROM. but here it is:



my revspace project page is here: https://revspace.nl/ZX81%2B34_ZX81_clone

[tdg8934]

yeah, the .pdf of my clone of the x81 keyboard layout can be downloaded from my revspace project page, its here: https://revspace.nl/File:Nieuw_keyboard_ZX14.pdf if you print it on A4 it should come out to the exact right size for a fit with the keys on a 1/10" perfboard. like this:

the .pdf of the schematic can be found here:
https://revspace.nl/File:KB_matrix_schematic.pdf

I'm not sure I understand which error you refer to in your picture. Are you referring to new keys only used by an emulator?

I'm still struggling with my ZX81+34, unfortunately due to an early incident much of the logic on my first prototype was damaged, and after fruitless attempts of getting my first prototype to work, and finding several bugs, I decided to bite the bullet, and create a new version. I've just finished its layout. As usual I have made the bugfxes and changes available as a new schematic, The layout (gerber files) will be released when I can say for sure that the ZX81+34 works, which probably will be early 2016.

I made a new 3D preview of the improved/corrected ZX31+34, for one the Joystick port (DB-9 female) is no longer soldered to the board. Most of the betterments are invisible in the 3D view though, such as the fact that I switched from an EEPROM to a FLASH ROM. but here it is:



my revspace project page is here: https://revspace.nl/ZX81%2B34_ZX81_clone

Yes I saw your PDF of the keyboard and printed it out but my question was concerning a version that supported the ZXPand keyboard which were for 3 key changes. Can you update your PDF file or let me know how I can update it for ZXPand?

Thank you

[mahjongg]

let me see what I can do for you.

[mahjongg]

Okay, I created a new version with ZXPand options, you can get it here: https://revspace.nl/File:New_ZX81%2B34_ ... ersion.pdf
Let me know what you think of it.

[tdg8934]

This is Great! I know others with ZXPand will love this also.

Just as a note and you don't need to fix this minor issue but I noticed that the keyword "step" is lower case and should be "STEP".

Great Job - Thanks again!

Tim

[mahjongg]

ah, thanks, I missed that step was in lower case, I will fix that tomorrow.

I hope that others will also use my keyboard, that is also why I designed it.

I hope that the dimensions are perfect, I had to scale the .PDF print as close as possible to the real dimensions (160mm wide), but the scaling is only possible as whole percentage points, its now 32% of the .PNG original.
Anyhow buttons arranged in a 0.6 inch matrix should fit well.

[mahjongg]

The corrected version is now available, I corrected the lowercase step to STEP, and I also made the arrows massive, I like that better. I hope you do too.

It now looks like this:

[tdg8934]

Thanks so much for the update. I have been printing them out on 8.5x11 letter size paper (US) as "actual size" and they look good. The hardest part I have is aligning a hole puncher to the keys as a hole puncher makes a little bigger cuts then what is on the keyboard layout. I will post pics of my finished keyboard when complete. I am waiting on 6mm [8.5mm (height)] tactile switches that I found online from Walmart (going through a company in China - so I should have them by the end of the week). I hope the height wont be an issue but I can always use spacers if needed.

Thanks again for your excellent support and great project.

Tim

[mahjongg]

I laminated my printout, that helped a bit with the perforations, and keeps it clean, and it also stiffens it a bit.
IMHO buttons with longer "plungers" are better than too short ones, but you can overdo it. (but as you can see in the picture of my keyboard, I definitely used buttons that were too short, it prevented me from adding cardboard underneath to stiffen it more) .

There is plenty of space around the keys, so generally long ones are okay, although it might look a bit silly if you overdo it.
I'm awaiting your picture with interest.

Note that in my keyboard I also added two (red) reset buttons, and two LED's, (power and turbo) as an afterthought, so outside of the layout.
Perhaps I should create a layout that includes them.

[tdg8934]

I finally finished my handheld keyboard replacement for the TS1000 / ZX81.

Thanks for a great website and sharing the information!

http://www.sinclairzxworld.com/viewtopi ... 312#p18312

[expandables]

I have no idea of what this is but it looks really interesting, so your saying you made a board or something please speak in lower level so i can understand

[tdg8934]

expandibles.

by tdg8934 » Sun Nov 01, 2015 2:18 pm
Great project! I'm trying to build just the ZX81 keyboard part of the project. Do you have a PDF for the ZX81 keyboard that shows the new commands for ZXPand? I don't have adobe acrobat pro to edit it myself so I was hoping this might have been created for the members with ZXPand. It's basicly 3 items that need to be updated on the PDF as shown in the attachment JPEG.

Thanks,

Tim

I never liked the keyboard on the ZX81 / TS1000 so I used mahjongg's design and keyboard layout where he updated the keyboard pattern for ZXPand which many of us own now. I found some parts online and used the information to create another keyboard extension. The pictures are posted on the other site as this site limited my pictures size so I used a link show them. It was a bit of a pain soldering the ribbon cable to the ZX81 / TS1000 so I had some long pins I extended the connections to to make it easier to troubleshoot and connect the colored wires to them. I bought the case from Mouser.com and had to hacksaw off the "inside" battery casing roof to make the PCB fit. I found a radio shack PCB online to solder the wires too. The push buttons are nice as the make a clicking noise when pushed as the ZX81 / TS1000 keys do not. I believe they are 8mm high and I bought them from Walmart online from a company overseas like china or asia. I should have looked for keys a few mm taller but these are sufficient. Overall, I am happy with the design and I can hold it in my hands like texting on a cellphone. Holding a ZX81 / TS1000 in your hands with a ZXPand connected is just not realistic and would cause problems. This makes it much easier to enter commands. I used exposed tin wire from Radio Shack to solder between the pins to the PCB. I used clear packing tape over the printed keyboard layout (top and bottom) to make it more stiff. I used a hole puncher to make the holes as this created larger holes than shown but acceptable. I carefully folded over the top and bottom rows in half over the holes punched to get access to the 3rd and 4th rows for hole punching. I used more clear packing tape (heavy duty) to tape the edges of the keyboard layout to the case. I started with 1/8" holes in the case but noticed I wasn't too straight with drilling. I eventually moved up to 3/8" holes and it fit better with some manipulation of the drill bit to the case holes. I hope you all like.

[trollshill1]

Not read the whole thread so maybe I am talking nonsense and missed someone saying this already, but I thought 81 had nothing to do with chronology or dates, was the prior model called the zx78?

I was under the impression it was zilog z80 based with 1k of memory??

has anyone asked clive about copyright infringement?

[RaTTuS]

the first one was the ZX80 brought out in 1980
the 2nd one was the ZX81 brought out in 1981
the 3rd one was the ZXSpectrum brought out in 1982

[drgeoff]

Not read the whole thread so maybe I am talking nonsense and missed someone saying this already, but I thought 81 had nothing to do with chronology or dates, was the prior model called the zx78?

I was under the impression it was zilog z80 based with 1k of memory??

has anyone asked clive about copyright infringement?

There was never a ZX78 or any ZX model prior to the ZX80.

The MK14 is probably the most eligible to claim the title of 'prior model to the ZX80'.
http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/ ... idge-mk14/ The one pictured does not have the keyboard as originally shipped. See https://www.flickr.com/photos/avaragado/16836529299.

[DougieLawson]

has anyone asked clive about copyright infringement?

Sir Clive doesn't own the copyright. My brother put it and the Amstrad stuff in the public domain.

http://web.archive.org/web/200805101315 ... chomec.htm

A word about CPC emulators

If you follow some of the links below you will find that a number of people have written programs that emulate the CPC on other machines. Not only on PC's but also Amiga and Unix systems. Nothing quite like Roland in Time on your PC!

If you are the authour of such an emulator then you don't need to write and ask me for Amstrad's permission to distribute copies of the CPC ROMs. Amstrad's stance on this is that we are happy for you to redistribute copies of our copyrighted code as long as a) copyright messages are not changed and b) either in the program or the documentation you acknowledge that "Amstrad has kindly given it's permission for it's copyrighted material to be redistributed but Amstrad retains it's copyright."

Note: Some of the CPC ROM code is copyright Locomotive Software so you should also seek their permission as well - I think you'll find the answer's very similar but you must check.

The Amstrad stance also applies to those writing Sinclair Spectrum emulators and who want to redistribute code for which Amstrad holds the copyright.

[mahjongg]

Here is the keyboard tdg8934 created, using my modified ZX81 layout, which I created specifically for 6mm keys on a proto-board with a 1/10" grid of drill holes. Except for the slightly over sized holes it looks alright.


in comparison my own one looks like this:

As you can see, I too used buttons that were slightly too short, longer ones would have been better.

You can find a .PDF of the layout here: if you want create one too.
https://revspace.nl/File:New_ZX81%2B34_ ... ersion.pdf