Designing and building my own 8-bit retro computer has been an ambition I’ve harboured for a few years now. I’ve studied and repaired a handful of computers of that era, and feel fairly comfortable with my electronics skills, yet have always considered designing a full system to be beyond the ken of normal folk. After successfully building a Harlequin 128K, and chatting online to @6502Nerd, who has built his own homebrew computer based upon the …
This mini project was a good opportunity for me to practice my soldering skills, as well as get my hands on a Spectrum 128K clone that I could use for various projects. I have enjoyed reading Chris Smith’s excellent articles on reverse engineering the ZX Spectrum ULA. The Harlequin is the physical embodiment of his work. The board comes in two variants; a 48K version (currently on revision G), and a 128K version (on revision …
You may have already read my posts on fixing my poorly ZX Spectrum, which ended up being possibly one of the longest retro repair projects in history. I also had a poorly ZX81. This was my first computer, and bought by my nan. It was this very machine that sparked my interest in computers that remains to this day. As far as I was aware, this machine worked, but was suffering from a broken keyboard …
