That weird new rubber doorstop thingummy....

DEATH

I'm wondering if that bluetooth Spectrum thingummy will have parts that can be used to restore a real 48K. From what I've seen it's going to be pretty must the same size, but the logo will be completely different. Maybe a Speccy motherboard can be made to fit.....

I'm wondering if its rubber keymat and metal keyboard template will fit a proper Speccy...

Assuming it ever sees the light of day, which seems increasingly unlikely.

Anybody have any thoughts or knowledge on this?

fog

buy a real one.. they aren't too tricky to get.. and coz you know whats what, you can fix a duff one..

it's a bit like that neo geo gold thing, dunno if you have seen it ? looks amazingly nice.. but it's a load of emulated cack and got really slated.

I do think if it came to light it would have bad build quality.. because of profit margins.

rwap

You can hope the rubber mat and faceplate might fit the original Speccy, but in reality that is probably all you could use. The base will not have a cut out for the expansion bus and presumably the screw holes (if there are any!) will be in different places and the internal plastic moulded to suit whatever PCB they put in there.

As faceplates are now readily available once again - it would make for an expensive way of acquiring a rubber mat (presuming that they have all of the original keywords on them).

I have spoken with Elite a few times over the past 3 years in the hope that we could work together on the faceplates and rubber mat - however, they said that they were not interested in spare parts and just wanted to buy the whole unit in ready assembled and tested.

Such a shame, as it would have meant they do not need to re-invent the wheel for the faceplates, and could have meant even just by me working with their supplier, we could have got low cost access to replacement faceplates and rubber mats.

Winston

I was interested in the Elite keyboard for use with clones. I don't really want to use an original case for a clone (especially if I'm going to need to modify the case, for example to put new holes or slots in for ethernet jacks or SD cards and the like), and having a new one to butcher would be very useful - especially given that there's a chance that the raw keyboard output might terminate in a still-in-production type of connector (sadly, the Molexes used by Sinclair are rather hard to get now).

However I get a funny feeling that if this thing gets put into production, probably the cheapest way of constructing it would not be a separate membrane and PCB, the whole thing will be on a single board (on the top side "calculator style" key contacts, the rubber mat having conductive nubs like a rubber calculator keyboard) with the microcontroller and Bluetooth circuit on the bottom side, in other words no connectors.

1024MAK

Winston wrote: »

sadly, the Molexes used by Sinclair are rather hard to get now.

I believe that if you are willing to place an order of 10,000, various sizes are still available. Anyone want to put in a bulk order? :-D

Mark

guesser

1024MAK wrote: »

I believe that if you are willing to place an order of 10,000, various sizes are still available. Anyone want to put in a bulk order? :-D

Mark

Basically pay enough for them to set up the machines to make them. It's the same with edge connectors etc. They have all the tooling to assemble the necessary moulds for any connector in their catalogue (many of which won't ever have been actually made, they're just product specifications) but it has to be worth their while to do it.

rwap

I always have some of the molex connectors in stock - maybe not 10,000 - but a few....

Winston

guesser wrote: »

Basically pay enough for them to set up the machines to make them. It's the same with edge connectors etc.

I contacted a company which advertised a catalogue where you just specified the size of the edge connector and location of the key. The price was ridiculous for a short run (about ?10 per connector, it worked out at). It was much cheaper to buy them off Lothariek and glue in the polarizing keys. (I wish someone would sell Speccy edge connectors with at least polarizing keys supplied if not actually installed, but I've still not found a source of polarizing keys. It looks like you should be able to get ones that you just press fit into the edge connector and they grab the back of it, but they simply aren't sold, even by Chinese ebayers who seem to sell pretty much everything else).

I did manage to pick up fifty or so raw Interface 1 edge connectors at the VCF last year though, which was nice!

morcar

rwap wrote: »

You can hope the rubber mat and faceplate might fit the original Speccy, but in reality that is probably all you could use. The base will not have a cut out for the expansion bus and presumably the screw holes (if there are any!) will be in different places and the internal plastic moulded to suit whatever PCB they put in there.

As faceplates are now readily available once again - it would make for an expensive way of acquiring a rubber mat (presuming that they have all of the original keywords on them).

I have spoken with Elite a few times over the past 3 years in the hope that we could work together on the faceplates and rubber mat - however, they said that they were not interested in spare parts and just wanted to buy the whole unit in ready assembled and tested.

Such a shame, as it would have meant they do not need to re-invent the wheel for the faceplates, and could have meant even just by me working with their supplier, we could have got low cost access to replacement faceplates and rubber mats.

Goes to show they dont care about real Spectrum owners even though we were the ones keeping them in a job for years. I refuse to buy this hunk of rubbish as its only a cash in on what was great back in the day.