Welcome to the Sparky eZX BASIC Project Web Site

 This web site is updated every time there is a significant change to warrant news.

Contrary to unreliable sources elsewhere, the Sparky eZX BASIC project is alive and well and welcome to all who wish to contribute.  However, I have not been able to work on Sparky regularly and I hope to be able to complete this project eventually.  I would rather have some more people involved to help alleviate the burden.

THANK YOU

I say Thank you to the following people for their help and contributions:

  • Andrew Owen - A fan of all things ZX Spectrum and has been given stewardship authority over Amstrad's Spectrum ROM code.  He's in charge of the open source SE BASIC project which is intended to improve the existing Spectrum ROM and yet maintain existing software compatibility.  Currently the project focuses on the 48K Spectrum, but also benefits the 128K series.

  • Geoff Wearmouth - For his absolutely magnificent work on the Gosh Wonderful ROM code.  This guy must live and breath Spectrum to be able to do this great work.  The goal of his project is to make the ROM code the way he believes Sinclair originally intended it to be with full streams support etc.

NEWS
January 8, 2010

I have also acquired a USB to serial device, an MP3 decoder for some awesome sound capability, AND a genuine DOS Flash module that has full FAT file system smarts built right in.  This will ease the burden on saving and loading files in the ROM.

I have found another contrubutor.  She doesn't wish to have her name revealed, but she is one smart cookie!  She's going to help with the OS.
November 13, 2009

Great news!  I have located the perfect display device!  The MicroVGA PICASO by 4DSystems in Australia.  SparkFun Electronics in the USA is an authorized distributor.

The device is capable of displaying 800x600 with 256 colors.  However, that is only when the supporting firmware is ready.  Currently it supports 320x240 and 640x480 with 256 colors.  it does not rest on the memory bus.  It uses a high-speed serial interface to communicate with the CPU, and has its own onboard memory for display and buffering.

I'll be attempting to get the display working with the existing codebase as it stands now.  I'll let you know how it works out.
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