Gregory Wolfe

and that's just the women.

I couldn't believe there wasn't a thread about this on Rllmuk. Of course I've been following this avidly on Twitter and Facebook. I still think the serf should be called Bredbin.

Looking forward to getting this for my Next.

Awesome!

You could easily sell your Next pledge for what you paid for it. Problem solved, there is no financial risk with it.

Well, I'm in.

Project Update #45: ZX Spectrum Next by Henrique Olifiers Deep breath: This update will start with let downs. What should have been a month of wrap-ups, turned out to be four weeks of disappointments with little to no progress on the keyboard. Last month (February) we got the keyboard to a final state with a hand-assembled prototype, with a few minor tweaks requested before getting a small batch produced by the automated assembly line. These tweaks included a lighter press ‘Enter’ key, longer contact strips and 3mm screws rather than 2.5mm. While we got all these changes made and two new keyboards were shipped to us and validated on all these fixes, they were also hand-assembled rather than produced by the automated assembly line as the final product will be. Because of this, we’re still waiting for automated samples to give the final go-ahead for the keyboard production, when we should have done so three or four weeks ago. The silver lining is that we baked six weeks into the forecast of delivering the Nexts to the backers by the end of Q2 (June), so this delay doesn’t change the shipping date. Still, a very disappointing month where we were hoping the Next keyboard and case would enter full production, followed by overseas shipping to the assembly plant in Nottingham. We’re now expecting the automated keyboard to be done in the next couple of weeks, then trigger the production. You might be asking ‘why do we need automated assembly line samples to validate the keyboard into full production?’ and that’s a good question indeed, as all the parts used in the hand-assembled are the same parts used in the automated line, thus no variance should be expected -- except on the keyboard silicone domes placement. The Next keyboard matrix (the contacts layer) have composite contacts for special keys such as arrows, Break, Edit, True Video etc. In order for these to work well (ie. register the key press of two keys at the same time to achieve the composite result, such as Shift and 2 for Caps Lock) the silicone dome that lies on top of the matrix has to be perfectly centered. If it’s a bit to one side, it will register the press of Shift+2 in the wrong order (such as 2+Shift), resulting in ‘2’ rather than Caps Lock. Only the automated assembly can achieve the precision required, the hand-assembled samples do not produce 100% accurate key presses as the domes can be glued to the matrix misaligned by human hands. The keyboard manufacturer promised us a quick turnaround now, we’re on top of them to make sure this happens fast so we can move on to full production. All that’s left for us is to apologise for this letdown and double our ‘is it ready?’ requests rate to the engineers at the factory.

I always thought the C64 version was pretty good. No idea if the ball timing is accurate as I wasn't conciously aware of it. Despite loving the arcade game I was similarly average at the C64 version so it felt right.

Do people not know the difference between a Model B and a Master? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Master

R.I.P. 'String', there was a point during my childhood when you were the coolest.

I have only ever seen the episode broadcast last night. It was breathtaking.