@flatduckrecords.co.uk Yep! Counterintuitively, under the games menu you can find “128K BASIC” and “48K BASIC”.

@flatduckrecords.co.uk ¡Muchas gracias!

@flatduckrecords.co.uk I was inspired by your post earlier! I’m away from my Speccy but I thought I’d knock something together in mobile Spectaculator “over lunch” …but now I see it’s gone 5pm! 😅

@ambientcoder.com Cool! 😎

@breakintoprogram.co.uk Nice to see a “not interested” these days that’s not just a “maybe later”!

@rhayadercomputer.bsky.social Hah, I had those! (In black plastic but otherwise identical). A gift from my gran. The combined weight of those D (?) cells was more than the bike. 😅 🚴

@jimblimey.com Creator of the GIF: oh no jim just juffed

@samsterdave.bsky.social Just one question; was this you last week? #legit #banger

@samsterdave.bsky.social This was my first CD. Comix Zone soundtrack that came with the MegaDrive game. I still have it!

@breakintoprogram.co.uk Parallel bus problems are a universal issue. Be vigilant!

@mcphail.uk Wire-bound copies were a pre-order option, but I don’t think Amazon print-on-demand offers that so they were organised as a separate print-run. (Worth the extra cost IMO so it can lie flat open on the desk next to your Next!)

@mcphail.uk I agree! As it happens I missed out on those 80s/90s books and articles at the time (but I’ve enjoyed catching up with them in recent years thanks to ZXDB etc). This new book maintains Simon’s characteristic vibe, very enjoyable and highly informative. And encouraging to explore further.

@leesmithsworkshop.bsky.social Ah cool, I was assuming you’d power it separately. Defo much neater to have it internal.

Some floppy controllers need 12v, but not 177x AFAIK. None of my drives need 12v, but they do seem to pull 5v quite sharply. I assume this board accounts for that but I doubt my Spectrum’s regulator would cope!

@fuzzweed.co.uk Hahah! I came here to post the same thing. Look like one of @futurewas8bit.bsky.social’s patented* Edge Connector Cleaning Tools 😁

@leesmithsworkshop.bsky.social I mostly use USB. Ben at ByteDelight fits his with a barrel jack which is quite convenient with an adapted USB lead.

@leesmithsworkshop.bsky.social I found that my VR-1772 isn’t that keen on disks authored by Greaseweazle, so I’d reccommend loading up the MGT System Tape on the Spectrum first, and formatting/creating your system disk that way.

@leesmithsworkshop.bsky.social This it looking great, Lee! Are you already familiar with the PlusD? It’s much easier and nicer to use than BetaDisk (TR-DOS) but if you need a hand getting started just shout. You’ll need a boot disk, but all the files you need are on ZXDB / Spectrum Computing.

@flatduckrecords.co.uk Close! But no, it’s “Sonic”.

@sloanysoft.itch.io I remember one summer we got really into “Rola Cola” which seemed to be exclusively stocked by the Dunfermline branch of What Everyone Wants, and convinced ourselves it was incredible. Years later, we discovered Fentiman’s Ye Olde Poshe Éxpènsive Cola — and you know what? It’s Rola Cola. Always was.

@samsterdave.bsky.social I can only speculate but I would have thought they want as close to a drop-in as possible? One difficulty between the first two campaigns was the different FPGA (Spartan-6 to Artix-7). This time they’re sticking with Artix-7 but bumping it from XC7A15T to a XC7A35T www.amd.com/en/products/…

@specnext.com Yes, there are some really smart custom-loaders that TAP files just can’t handle so it’s a nice thing to have. It should be straightforward to fit your own Pi Zero if you want to: wiki.specnext.dev/Pi:Main_Page

@specnext.com Yes the accelerator board is a Raspberry Pi Zero, it’s not essential but enables a few features. The main one is loading TZX files, but things like MP3 playback and MIDI are possible too. (TZX files are a form virtual tape files, the Next can load TAP files without the accelerator).

@ambientcoder.com I quite like it, it’s built on top of Gary’s work on +3e. (Not everyone loves that Plus3 heritage of course!) But it’s under active development and is readily extensible with dot-commands (inline ASM is a good example of that). PROCs and LOCALs bring structure. Oh and integer vars at last!

@flatduckrecords.co.uk Indeed! 👾

(Hah, I didn’t but I do now!)

@specnext.com Ah, me too! Oh well; Magenta it is, then!