This thread is a follow up on my post about a Sinclair ZX Spectrum +2 in Zelandeth 's thread linky
This reminded me of a call I got from my sister about 10 years (or more) ago when she was moving house. She wanted to know if I wanted her kids old Spectrum or it was going in the skip Naturally I said yes, got the box, stuck it in the attic and promptly forgot about it until I read your post. Dug it out the attic and had a look, thought you might like to see some pics of what I got
Haven't tried it yet (my sister reckoned it was working) but since I have it down I will try it and see what happens
Also got the light gun but forgot to take a picture
I decided to risk a tape and try it out, I used the RF connection to hook it up to a small flatscreen tv, game loaded and worked, chuffed at that, picture was poor on RF.
Then tried another game .... nothing wouldn't load, went back to the original game .. nothing, tried a few other games with the same result. Unfortunately on this model the headphone jack is out only ( I believe some models can use it as a aux in for an external tape player)
Did some investigating and came to the conclusion the the quad op-amp that's used as a preamp for the tape head had thrown its hand in. Found some NOS ones on eBay and ordered a couple, also ordered a cassette tape adapter and a scart/din(?) lead to replace the RF output.
this is the little devil
The replacement duly arrived and I fitted it,
Re-assembled the Spectrum and fired in a tape, wooohoo worked fine. The new AV lead worked great as well, much better quality picture & sound.
Used the tape adapter to hook up an old Nexus 7 (2013, which I still use) tablet and used an app (PlayZX) to try loading a game, works great, you just have to get the volume at the correct level.
Very good app accesses thousands of Spectrum games online or in your local storage.
Also tried the ZX Tape Player app, which works, but I prefer PlayZX.
Found that if I press Play & Pause on built in tape player it still loads OK from the tablet (so no clicky noises from the tape player.
Can't get the joystick to work yet, had a quick peek inside it and wow it's basic, not even microswitches, just sprung contacts.
Going to have a look for something a bit more sophisticated, I believe its possible to make NES/SNES/PlayStation controllers work with the Spectrum, I certainly got them to work with a PC running various games console emulators by making parallel port adapters.
Jimi
This reminded me of a call I got from my sister about 10 years (or more) ago when she was moving house. She wanted to know if I wanted her kids old Spectrum or it was going in the skip Naturally I said yes, got the box, stuck it in the attic and promptly forgot about it until I read your post. Dug it out the attic and had a look, thought you might like to see some pics of what I got
Haven't tried it yet (my sister reckoned it was working) but since I have it down I will try it and see what happens
Also got the light gun but forgot to take a picture
I decided to risk a tape and try it out, I used the RF connection to hook it up to a small flatscreen tv, game loaded and worked, chuffed at that, picture was poor on RF.
Then tried another game .... nothing wouldn't load, went back to the original game .. nothing, tried a few other games with the same result. Unfortunately on this model the headphone jack is out only ( I believe some models can use it as a aux in for an external tape player)
Did some investigating and came to the conclusion the the quad op-amp that's used as a preamp for the tape head had thrown its hand in. Found some NOS ones on eBay and ordered a couple, also ordered a cassette tape adapter and a scart/din(?) lead to replace the RF output.
this is the little devil
The replacement duly arrived and I fitted it,
Re-assembled the Spectrum and fired in a tape, wooohoo worked fine. The new AV lead worked great as well, much better quality picture & sound.
Used the tape adapter to hook up an old Nexus 7 (2013, which I still use) tablet and used an app (PlayZX) to try loading a game, works great, you just have to get the volume at the correct level.
Very good app accesses thousands of Spectrum games online or in your local storage.
Also tried the ZX Tape Player app, which works, but I prefer PlayZX.
Found that if I press Play & Pause on built in tape player it still loads OK from the tablet (so no clicky noises from the tape player.
Can't get the joystick to work yet, had a quick peek inside it and wow it's basic, not even microswitches, just sprung contacts.
Going to have a look for something a bit more sophisticated, I believe its possible to make NES/SNES/PlayStation controllers work with the Spectrum, I certainly got them to work with a PC running various games console emulators by making parallel port adapters.
Jimi