Well, it finally happened. I have a ZX Spectrum Next coming thanks to the my wonderful fiance, Emma. Ordered as a Christmas present for the end of the year, assuming it arrives on time. if it doesn’t… that’s fine too.
I have avoided KS1 with a real lack of interest because I didn’t see a use-case for it. I have three Spectrums including the one I use for streaming, my wonderful +2A 128k with Tape Deck and I was never really wanting to emulate (yes, FPGA is still emulation so don’t be stupid) what I could play on Real Hardware. The KS2 nearly got me to try it as I was seeing other things I wanted to do on the Next but I am happy I waited. KS3 is the one, the Magenta machine pushed me over plus all that extra power the new FPGA has and the accelerator board for coding on it. And that’s the thing I want, to create with it on the Next, live on stream.
So the bullet is bitten. Emma saw how much I wanted this one and she was wonderful. Now I need to get the delivery (Dec 2025 possibly), learn, or re-learn how to code on one and probably try to learn C too and then I can try and create. Current plans are a sequel to Planetoids, some kind of Internet program and a graphical/music demo just for the fun. Can I? Well I am going to bloody well try, and yes, I believe I can. Last time was 40 years ago but hey, old not dead!
I am extremely excited and cannot stop smiling when I think about it!
One thing I will probably not use are the extra cores. I simply don’t care to have a mister in a fancy box because I never wanted a mister in the first place and lets be honest, why would I want to emulate Commodore or a CPC?!? The Sinclair cores though, I will try them at least. As for my old fear of never using my other Spectrums if I went the FPGA way, that is still there but we shall see what happens. I will certainly be booting up the +2A for tapes as I do not have an external deck… so far, lol.
