Modern ZX Spectrum today

This page is about a Speccy for 21st century, enhanced in all important parts like turbo CPU, memory upgrade, DMA, professional PC keyboard, scroll-wheel mouse, ethernet/comms/SPI/I2C, expanded sound (SAA or 2xAY, FM synth, SID), high quality digital display and modern storage device with a PC-compatible DOS.

Forget about old chips, FPGA rulez!

When purchasing a new ZX Spectrum, think about...

• capacity of the FPGA is big enough and the core should be easily expanded
• unified one core, no limited small cores for different peripherals (no fragmented Speccys!)
• all zx-expansion and interfaces combined in one FPGA core, without compatibility issues and without collisions
• implemented interfaces do not cause problems with other connected external interfaces
• all devices can be used, if possible, at once and in parallel
• both west- and east-european hardware is supported (Timex with Pentagon, Radastan with General Sound, DivMMC with Z-Card)
• single peripherals can be easily switched on and off "on the fly"
• whole hardware is linkable with common cheap PC peripherals

A good modern Speccy clone should be able to run all software written for any ZX Spectrum model or a popular clone, it also should support brand new and innovative programs (in recent years coming mainly from East Europe), using advanced hardware like TSFM, GS, ULA+, DivSD or HR(X)C.

After years, most ZX Spectrum followers do not meet abovementioned requirements (sorry, old ZX-Unos and SpecNext users...).

Currently there are only two perspective compact models with common expansions built-in (DivSD, ULA+, Covox+Soundrive, etc.).