[0:00] all right it’s time for an update on my
[0:02] ESP rainbow my ZX Spectrum emulator with
[0:05] its nice full color silk screen printing
[0:07] so I’ve been testing out the latest
[0:09] boards from PCB way did a fantastic job
[0:12] as always the uh the full color silk
[0:14] screen has come out amazingly well but
[0:17] let’s have a look at what’s been changed
[0:19] so there’s been some enhancements to the
[0:21] um firmware and I’ve added the 128k ZX
[0:25] Spectrum emulator on top of the 48k so
[0:28] the 48k still works so we can go into
[0:30] basic and we can do the usual um let’s
[0:33] do
[0:35] Hello World um yeah and run there hello
[0:39] world so that works nicely and we can
[0:42] now go into one 128k Spectrum basic um
[0:47] so go into basic and this has prompted
[0:50] me to do an upgrade on the old speaker
[0:53] so we now have a 2 wat speaker we used
[0:57] to have a 7 watt buzzer so I can use the
[1:01] Spectrum Play command to play some
[1:04] musical
[1:09] notes so that’s pretty cool we get quite
[1:12] a nice output this is just using pwm so
[1:14] that’s pretty impressive but if I load
[1:16] up a um dedex Spectrum 128k game with
[1:20] some nice music so oops let’s go into
[1:22] the actual game picker so games and I
[1:27] quite like The Never Ending Story so
[1:29] I’ve enhanced the search as well so we
[1:30] can now just type the first few letters
[1:33] so never ending 128 so let’s load this
[1:37] up the music slowly ramps up um so I’ll
[1:40] play this and you can hear just how good
[1:42] it is
[1:50] [Music]
[1:50] [Laughter]
[1:54] [Music]
[2:10] so that’s not bad at all and of course
[2:12] the uh the old um 48k Spectrum buzzer
[2:15] games also get a bit of a boost but they
[2:17] they sounded good already but let’s just
[2:19] load up manic minor just to show that so
[2:22] go down to manic minor
[2:36] now the other enhancement I made is you
[2:38] can now hit the boot button and you can
[2:40] save a snapshot so let’s do uh let’s do
[2:42] manic um 99 there we
[2:48] go so now go back to the main menu go
[2:53] snapshots and we can find our manic
[2:56] 99 we’re exactly back where we started
[3:07] now since we’ve now got quite a nice
[3:08] speaker I thought I’d Port my video
[3:11] player across to the um to the system so
[3:14] we can run the video player and let’s
[3:16] just um let’s just play a battle of the
[3:19] planets
[3:38] so that’s pretty cool as well um other
[3:41] enhancements to the hardware you’ll
[3:43] notice there’s a few more capacitors um
[3:46] I’ve switched over to a new power
[3:47] control chip I it is pretty tiny it’s
[3:50] it’s somewhere here on the board but now
[3:52] we can switch between battery mode and
[3:54] USB mode pretty seamlessly so if I
[3:56] unplug the USB
[4:00] you see we still carryon running
[4:02] completely as normal um of course we can
[4:04] turn the power off and turn the power on
[4:06] but we’re running off battery power now
[4:08] and then if we plug USB back in or
[4:11] seamlessly switch back to USB power so
[4:15] there we go and you can see a little red
[4:16] light indicates the battery is charging
[4:19] so so that’s a nice enhancement and
[4:21] little addition the nice thing about
[4:22] this power control chip is it controls
[4:25] the slew rate of the current so with USB
[4:28] you’re only actually allow owed 10
[4:30] microf of capacitance on the end of the
[4:32] USB and obviously with all our
[4:34] decoupling capacitors and this big bolt
[4:36] capacitor we got a lot more than that
[4:39] but this nice little power control chip
[4:41] controls the amount of current that is
[4:43] drawn initially so it ramps up slowly so
[4:45] it’s like a sort of soft start um so
[4:47] that’s pretty cool so the hardware is
[4:48] progressing nicely I think the hardware
[4:50] is actually pretty much done I do need
[4:52] to send this board off to be C certified
[4:55] and hopefully we w’t get any issues with
[4:57] that but if we do we’ll have to do
[4:58] another version and go through that
[5:00] process again um so obviously we’re
[5:02] getting crowd supplies set up so the
[5:04] boards will be available soon we’re just
[5:06] working through things like pricing and
[5:07] stuff to make sure that it actually
[5:09] makes sense and is commercially viable
[5:11] there’s no point doing this and losing
[5:13] loads of money but we’re getting there
[5:15] um slow and steady progress um it should
[5:18] be up hopefully before Christmas but
[5:21] shipping Before Christmas might be
[5:22] tricky um so yeah it’s looking good um
[5:26] there is an endless question does it run
[5:28] Doom well hold on to your hats
[5:37] [Laughter]
[5:43] [Music]
[5:57] [Music]