back to article ZX Spectrum reboot latest: Some Vega+s arrive, Sky pulls plug, Clive drops ball

Sir Clive Sinclair's company has accused flailing ZX Spectrum reboot firm Retro Computers Ltd of trading while insolvent. Meanwhile, the firm has delivered some consoles – and been stripped of the brand rights to its flagship product. Last week some customers of Retro Computers Ltd reported on social media that they had …

        1. Michael Strorm Silver badge

          Re: What we need

          I should also add that the 6809 was apparently superior to both... but unfortunately let down by being paired with uninspiring supporting hardware in its most famous applications. (The Tandy CoCo and its near-clone, the Dragon 32 both featured the same dated graphics chip as the Acorn Atom and the sound was similarly limited.)

          1. Michael Strorm Silver badge

            Re: What we need

            I should also add that- although I'm far less familiar with the C64 than the Atari 800- as far as I'm aware, the former also benefits from custom hardware scrolling, hardware sprites and character-based graphics that allow it to outperform (e.g.) the Spectrum on most games despite its slower CPU.

            Unless it's a CPU intensive game that doesn't benefit from such features (e.g. 3D games) in which case it'll suffer.

            1. cream wobbly

              Re: What we need

              The C64 also benefited from the SID audio synth-on-a-chip. Unlike "chip music" from other 8-bit micros which typically waggled a DAC around to make PWM noise, the C64 was actually playing music on a viable musical instrument via simple digital registers. The most notable technical thing about it is that once you started playing a note, you didn't have to tie up the CPU to keep on playing it; ... like you did on the Speccy. Another reason why Spectrum games tended not to have in-game music but C64 games did.

              Another aside: the SID was used in a couple of real synths; although their makers were always desperate for supply.

              The "my CPU is better than your CPU" debate is really irrelevant when your CPU is doing everything and mine is just asking other parts of the architecture to do stuff. The same applies to Firewire vs USB.

              1. ThomH

                Re: What we need @cream wobbly

                I'm not sure it's accurate to say that other micros typically had to live-toggle a bit. Of the successful ones I'm pretty sure that's only the Apple II and the 16/48kb Spectrum.

                None of them is a match for the feature set of the SID, but the 128kb Spectrum and CPC share the AY which is three channels of square wave and/or noise with volume envelopes; the 8-bit Atari has the POKEY which is four channels of more-or-less square wave; the BBC has an SN76489 which is three square waves plus a noise channel, etc.

                The SID's killer feature is phase accumulation for pitch selection rather than simple division, giving much finer control — in a SID there's a 24-bit counter, the top few bits of which are used to form the output level, and an amount that is added to it at each cycle. Plus some analogue filters. On the other chips there is the input clock and then there is an integral divider. So you're controlling the reciprocal of pitch, reducing useful precision.

                Nevertheless, the other chips don't require active CPU participation as the 48kb Spectrum does, and the musical opportunities are still fairly decent.

              2. Michael Strorm Silver badge

                Re: What we need

                > cream wobbly; "The C64 also benefited from the SID audio synth-on-a-chip. Unlike "chip music" from other 8-bit micros which typically waggled a DAC around to make PWM noise"

                (Edit:- @ThomH; If I'd refreshed the page before posting this, I'd have seen that you'd already made much the same point in your reply!)

                That's true as far as the original (pre-128K) Spectrum goes- along with some other machines (IIRC the Apple II and Dragon 32). However, it's far from accurate to imply that DAC waggling was "typical" of the majority of 8-bit computers.

                Many had separate sound chips:-

                - The Atari 800 (which came out in 1979) had a four-channel custom chip called POKEY.

                - Several 8-bit computers used the Yamaha AY-3-8912 sound chip, including the Amstrad CPC, the Spectrum 128 (though admittedly that came later on), the Oric-1 and Atmos, and MSX.

                - Several more used the Texas Instruments SN76489, including their own TI-99/4A, the BBC Micro and the Coleco Adam (and the ColecoVision console it was based on)

                Others had sound generation integrated into multi-function custom chips:-

                - Commodore's own VIC 20 (i.e. the direct predecessor to the C64) already included tone generation facilities as part of the VIC chip

                - Similarly, the Commodore 16 and Plus/4 included tone generation within the TED chip

                - Even the relatively primitive Atari VCS (admittedly not a personal computer) had two-channel audio generation as part of the TIA chip.

                The point here isn't whether or not these were up to the standard of SID. It's that they were separate sound generation facilities that- like the C64's- freed the CPU to do other things.

        2. Peter Gathercole Silver badge

          Re: What we need

          The 6502 and Z80 clock issue is really a precursor to the great RISC vs. CISC debate.

          Generally, the 6502 would execute each instruction in about 2 clock cycles, although there were a few that only needed one. The Z80 required between 4 and 13 clock cycles per instruction depending on what the instruction was (this is from memory), so although it generally had a faster clock speed, and more sophisticated instructions, for many of the simpler operations that these processors typically ran, the 2MHz 6502 in the BBC performed tasks faster than the 3.75 MHz in a Spectrum.

          The memory access was also more simple for 6502, which enabled it to work with slower memory than the Z80, mainly because memory and CPU clock speeds were linked together.

          For complex workloads, the Z80 could run rings around a 6502, but in order to do that, you would need to have work that needed 16 bit registers, and used the complex instructions to their maximum benefit.

          The Z80 was more memory efficient (so long as you used all of the instructions) although clever use of the indexed addressing modes of the 6502 could save memory, and allowed you to use zero page memory almost as registers on a 6502, negating some of the benefit of the Z80's more generous register set. The Z80 also had the basic support for bank-switched memory and port driven I/O, neither of which the 6502 had.

          It's also worth remembering that processors of this age executed instructions strictly in the sequence they were written, with no overlapping or super-scalar execution, and all memory read and writes went strictly to the RAM, no caching or pre-fetich of instructions or data.

          So the Z80 was a more sophisticated processor, but not necessarily a faster one than the 6502.

          1. ThomH

            Re: What we need @PeterGathercole

            I think you're off by one; the shortest 6502 instructions take two cycles, and the most common ones — those which read from or write to the zero page — take three.

            But the issue in a real machine is that a 6502 uses only half a clock cycle to perform an entire memory access whereas the Z80 uses at least two. So pick your clock speed as a function of those constraints and your memory speed.

          2. Dan 55 Silver badge

            Re: What we need

            the 2MHz 6502 in the BBC performed tasks faster than the 3.75 MHz in a Spectrum.

            The memory access was also more simple for 6502, which enabled it to work with slower memory than the Z80, mainly because memory and CPU clock speeds were linked together.

            The BBC had 4Mhz memory multiplexed between the 2Mhz CPU and the video display, so the CPU always never had to wait to access the memory.

            The Electron on the other hand had the same 2Mhz CPU but used a contended memory model (similar to the Spectrum). When the video output needed to access the memory, the CPU was paused. On the Electron this meant the machine was pretty slow, far slower than BBC and slower the Spectrum. Unlike the Spectrum, it had no uncontended RAM area.

          3. Mage Silver badge
            Boffin

            Re: Z80 was a more sophisticated processor

            Essentially an 8080 designed by people that left Intel.

            the 8085 was Intel's answer to Z80. The bankswitch on Z80 allowed fast context switch to a scheduler for Round Robin multitasking. Ultimately it was CP/M that made 8080/Z80/8085 popular along with Wordstar and Supercalc (vs Visicalc on the Apple II). The CP/M computers tended to be more business orientated with 80 column displays, monitors rather TVs and at least one 5.25" or 8" floppy. The original PCs. No surprise CP/M was ported to 8086 and the bought in MS clone (MS DOS / PC DOS) was the main OS for IBM PC. The 8086 / 8088 wasn't a "real" 16bit CPU like later 80286 (which ran Xenix and UNIX), being basically an 8080 with segment register for addresses outside the 64K byte block and a few 16 bit instructions.

            Whatever about 6502 vs Z80 (or 8080/8085), the 8088/8086 was crippled junk compared to almost all other 16 bit CPUs. No comparison to 68000 or indeed some 16bit parts IBM used. The IBM PC wasn't really meant to be the success and industry standard. Sadly it was and it held back mainstream PCs till maybe NT4.0, Windows 2000 or XP, because Win9x / ME was a garbage OS, basically Win3.x shell with Win32s and Explorer lipstick on the pig. Win9x had the evil 8086/80386 pseudo 16bit/32bit hybrid architecture under the hood which is why it ran so badly on the Pentium Pro compared to "real" 32 bit NT 3.1, NT 3.5, NT3.51 and NT4.0

            I used the Z80 in many projects and also some CP/M desktops (last was the PCW8256/PCW8512). However the 8088/8086 based PC and MSDOS made me wish the 8080/Z80/8085 had never existed.

            The PIC was originally a peripheral for I/O on a more powerful CPU. The onboard EPROM and later Flash memory coupled with cheapness and Zero extra chips meant it was a success for simple projects. The Flash version of original PIC1684 still sold last time I looked. Using Basic, C or JAL on a PIC18Fxxx that only needs a capacitor and socket to be a USB slave and can be reprogrammed easily in circuit means the simple PIC still lives despite some ARM Cortex as cheap as 50c.

            Who would use an x86-64 Intel/AMD part today for anything portable if you didn't need legacy Windows applications?

            The ARM was born from Acorn's use of 6502 and their horror of x86. So in a sense the 6502 won. There are more ARM CPUS made in a week than x86 parts in a year. The Raspberry Pi is supposed to be the modern take on BBC Micro (6502). It's little more than an ARM CPU for a phone /tablet on a breakout board. A brilliant alternative for projects unsuitable for either a PIC or a full $200 tablet. Choice of various OS (RiscOS, various Linux distros and if you are bonkers, an embedded Windows that can't run any regular Windows applications, the Linux has ARM versions of Gimp, Libre Office, Firefox etc, most of what is common on an x86 laptop with Linux)

            1. Michael Strorm Silver badge

              Re: Z80 was a more sophisticated processor

              > The Raspberry Pi is supposed to be the modern take on BBC Micro (6502).

              In the sense that it's educationally-oriented, possibly. On the other hand, the Raspberry Pi is very cheap, which- for all that I liked them- was *never* something you could say about the BBC Micro.

              The 1981 launch prices of £235 and £335 for the Model A and B respectively are equivalent to £940 and £1340 in today's money. And that was *without* disk drives or the obligatory Microvitec Cub monitor...!

            2. Tom 7

              Re: Z80 was a more sophisticated processor

              @mage. I am a fan of ARM (I fucking wish I was still a shareholder though) However for nearly 40 years I have always thought that if IBM had chosen the 6809 computing would have been 10 years further on than it was. But would the future, ARM*, have still been around?

              *I say the future is ARM - if there ML stuff comes out at a Raspberry Pi level they WILL be the future.

      1. smot

        Re: What we need

        And don't forget that massive 6502 stack - a whopping 256 bytes.....

      2. J. R. Hartley

        Re: What we need

        LEAVE PEDDLE ALONE!!

      3. Sam Liddicott

        Re: What we need

        > And only putting three registers on the 6502 was just dumbfuckery of the highest order.

        > Shame on Peddle!

        Once we decide something is not worth knowing about, we lose the opportunity to find out we are wrong.

        I used to have that view, but years later found out that 6502 page zero access was treated specially and very fast, effectively giving another 256 registers.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: What we need

          As we used to say: the Z80 was fat and weighty, and the 6502 was faster than spew.

        2. Dan 55 Silver badge

          Re: What we need

          I used to have that view, but years later found out that 6502 page zero access was treated specially and very fast, effectively giving another 256 registers.

          But then again you have to do stuff like reset the carry flag before operations meaning the code size was bigger, and there were fewer conditional jump commands available after you'd done your operation.

          That kind of stuff would get old quickly (as you can guess I learnt Z80 assembly).

    1. DrBed

      Re: What we need

      is someone to do a BBC Micro reboot.

      It should be done at Raspberry Pi 3 IMHO. Open, DIY project. No silly IGG scams anymore.

      @Z80 vs 6502:

      Z80@Amstrad != Z80@Speccy; Only few specific games could run faster / equivalent at Speccy, compared to C64 etc (6502/6510); e.g. those based on Freescape / 3D Construction Kit iirc.

      Compare it to the Novagen's Encounter @ C64 or Atari 8-bit.

      Uridium? Speccy does not have VIC-II (hardware scrolling, sprites etc). Impossible. Spectrum version has 20FPS compared to the 50Hz update of the original.

      However, isometric games @Speccy becomes that nice touch / genre, those 2,5 D graphics looks nicer and plays smoother (then at C64), although technically inferior.

      BUT: Z80 version at Amstrad (Schneider) is totally different story. It is just faster/stronger machine.

      1. ThomH

        Re: What we need @DrBed

        The Z80 in the Spectrum is not only nominally clocked at 3.58Mhz but also genuinely runs at that speed for as long as you avoid the physical chips that are shared with the ULA. E.g. on a 48kb Spectrum that means that as long as your code is in the top 32kb of RAM rather than the bottom 16kb.

        The CPC is nominally clocked at 4Mhz but via use of the WAIT line permits a Z80 memory access on only one in every four cycles, regardless of what you're accessing. The standard fetch cycle is four cycles long, so single-byte instructions that don't cause a memory access run without a speed penalty (once you're in phase, anyway) but everything else is subject to delays. As a result code often ends up running more slowly than it would on a ZX Spectrum.

        It depends how often the Spectrum code is seeking to update the display though, obviously. And the CPC's main problem isn't this clocking scheme or that one, it's the annoying large percentage of titles that are so lazy as just to be the Spectrum code plus some extra work at the end to translate the Spectrum graphics to anything that looks sort of right. It's almost a revelation every time you load a game that was converted properly, like Chase HQ, Robocop or Gryzor.

      2. Dan 55 Silver badge

        Re: What we need

        BUT: Z80 version at Amstrad (Schneider) is totally different story. It is just faster/stronger machine.

        Nobbled by memory contention and the Z80 not having enough grunt to deal with the amount of video memory in the higher res/colour screen modes.

    2. Uncle Slacky Silver badge

      Re: What we need

      If you're desperate to recreate the Beeb experience, there's a stripped-down version of RISC OS (i.e. just BBC Basic) available for the RasPi:

      https://www.riscosopen.org/content/sales/risc-os-pico

      Direct link to the file: http://packages.riscosopen.org/RISC-OS_Pico.zip

    3. This post has been deleted by its author

    4. Tom 7

      Re: What we need

      BBC micro reboot? I've seen a copy of BBC basic for the Pi somewhere. The 6502 is easily emulated on it. So unless you're anal enough to want to put it in a box like the one you cant remember anyway your pretty much there.

  1. John70

    Over on eBay

    Those that have got the Vega+ and flogging them on eBay and so far fetching on average £250

    eBay ZX Spectrum Vega+

    1. sal II

      Re: Over on eBay

      That's silly IMHO, they have so much bad press and i understand they are quite rubbish, but in 5-10 years time might fetch much more as collector items, being so rare and infamous.

      1. stephanh

        Re: Over on eBay

        Now all we need is a port of "E.T." to the Vega.

        1. BRYN

          Re: Over on eBay

          ET on ZX spectrum/Vega+?

          Already been done (kinda)

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imbKN1oaQpQ

  2. ForthIsNotDead
    Stop

    Give it 10 years

    A boxed Vega+ will be worth a fucking fortune. Like the Jupiter Ace. Ironic really.

    1. Velv
      Coat

      Re: Give it 10 years

      Judging by the commentary in the article and elsewhere, "boxed" is a loose term

    2. Duffaboy
      FAIL

      Re: Give it 10 years

      it would have probably disintegrated by then,

    3. asdf

      Re: Give it 10 years

      Kind of like a Microsoft Kin.

    4. Mage Silver badge

      Re: Like the Jupiter Ace

      Pacman in 1K was impressive.

      I gave away my Jupiter ACE maybe in 1984. The novelty wore off once I'd learnt Forth. It certainly wasn't much use for anything else, though I did a tester using HW I/O and Forth for something in work. I forget what it tested.

      The ACT Sirius One in work was nicer than an IBM PC, but I couldn't afford anything at that time at home with floppies, never mind an HDD.

  3. ForthIsNotDead
    FAIL

    Shitty packaging...

    Wow - look at the shitty way it was packaged. Why didn't they just put it through a tumble dryer first?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9i2aBPKiRw

    1. LeahroyNake

      Re: Shitty packaging...

      Wow, I have had a hammer delivered with better packaging !

      Maybe it will come in handy to push the buttons lol

      1. VinceH

        Re: Shitty packaging...

        An unboxing video I found on the twitter a few days ago: https://twitter.com/ChinnyVision/status/1023198756018122752

      2. Red Bren

        Re: Shitty packaging...

        "I have had a hammer delivered with better packaging !"

        Lucky! Think of how many Vega+s have been saved from damage!

  4. werdsmith Silver badge

    Don't they owe people 4000 of these?

    I think there were 50 done, judging by the size of the order for populated PCBs.

  5. Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

    Wah. What a sad tale.

  6. Ross 12

    Crowdfunded projects are risky definition, because you're financially backing something, not merely purchasing an item.

    But I don't think that's necessarily something to be scared of - just be cautious. And with that in mind, whenever you see a crowdfunded project by a **company**, run away, because it means they're not risking their own money.

    Just compare this sorry Vega+ tale to the ZX Spectrum Next. Yes, it's running late, but the first stage of developer boards went out. There's been regular monthly updates from the team which actually detail and show photos of the production process and how it's going. And the team is made up of passionate people who actually care about what they're doing, and are doing it not-for-profit. There's no shareholders and directors siphoning off money and bickering with each other. And the community of backers are actively involved - helping out with documentation, OS and firmware, writing emulators and games for it..

  7. Haku

    Yeah, well, I'm gonna go build my own Vega+...with blackjack and hookers!

    In fact, forget the Vega+!

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: Yeah, well, I'm gonna go build my own Vega+...with blackjack and hookers!

      "...with blackjack and hookers!"

      Wouldn't that make it a Vegas+?

  8. ItsMeDammit
    FAIL

    I was "lucky" enough to receive one...

    ... although I was expecting two. For those not in the know, RCL emailed the backers offering a "Blankety-blank" unit with just a handful of games (instead of the 1000 promised) as a means of getting their hands on a unit "early". Bearing in mind I figured this was probably the only chance I would ever have of seeing one I elected to receive my units "blank" and install my own choice of games via the microSD card route.

    The unit I have received arrived scratched, has appalling controls that are unresponsive and hard to use and is further tarnished by buggy software. Turning the screen brightness down introduces flicker and an odd interlacing anomaly. Sometimes it doesn't want to turn on at all unless I plug it in to recharge, then you can't turn the unit off and if the brightness is all the way up the battery takes forever to recharge (if at all - I haven't left it on to see if it ever charges completely).

    No cables, manuals or adequate packaging for that matter were supplied. Not even a photocopied A4 sheet describing how to load games onto it were included. I consider it to be a real slap in the face to the backers who actually receive one now since it was only ever going to be the love and nostalgia of the retro community that made something so niche work in the first place. It is no wonder so many are already appearing on ebay and no doubt selling for their rarity and novelty value.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I was "lucky" enough to receive one...

      > "Blankety Blank"

      I've got that bloody theme tune in my head now.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I was "lucky" enough to receive one...

        "Its the supermatch game, supermatch game"...

        1. Duffaboy

          Re: I was "lucky" enough to receive one...

          "But you're not going away empty-handed - no, by Jiminy, you're not! You're taking away with you" (pause for dramatic effect) - "a botched together vega +!"

          1. Uncle Slacky Silver badge

            Re: I was "lucky" enough to receive one...

            The second prize being TWO Vega+-es....

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: I was "lucky" enough to receive one...

          Damn you all to hell..

          I have that stuck in my head now

  9. barrejam

    You've only got yourselves to blame.....

    IMHO those left out of pocket only have themselves to blame. 1980's computers were crap and by modern standards are really crap - why would you invest to buy one of these things when you can emulate it on a standard PC (for very little/no money) to satisfy your nostalgia?

    Incidentally, if you look at how Sinclair originally operated, this very much fits the MO - shoddy products, rushed out of the door to either meet artificail deadlines or to stave off moves by investors/share-holders to shut them down. My favourite indicattion of build quality was the company recommendation to use Blu-Tack to fix the wobble in the RAM expansion unit. It shows how poorly engineered the products were. How they sold millions of units is beyond me! The BBC film "Micro Men" tells the story quite well.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: You've only got yourselves to blame.....

      My 1985 Amiga 1000 (#2038 off the production line) was most definitely not crap.

    2. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: You've only got yourselves to blame.....

      Say what you like, Sinclair never delivered something this useless two years late.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: You've only got yourselves to blame.....

        Say what you like, Sinclair never delivered something this useless two years late...

        Er... the c5.

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