[Jim] sent in this interesting laptop modding project. He started with a Spectrum ZX and a Toshiba Libretto 110. The libretto kept its brains, but the lower case and keyboard was replaced with the ZX hardware. Since both machines use matrix style keyboards (but different matrix layouts) he was able to create a passive adapter circuit to match things up.
It’s ZX Spectrum, not Spectrum ZX.
(It was the first computer I bought, almost 25 years ago)
Posted at 2:52 am on Mar 20th, 2008 by John Bokma
Great retro mod. Don’t envy him typing on that thing though the Speccy was renown for having one of the worst keyboards around!
Posted at 3:50 am on Mar 20th, 2008 by g
it’s a ZX Sp.. oh.
Posted at 5:54 am on Mar 20th, 2008 by sweavo
#3- It wasn’t just difficult to type on, it was unreliable too- the membranes wore out very quickly (3 times on my Spectrum).
I’ve done the reverse of this- I wired a PC keyboard to work on a Spectrum. I just cut all the tracks on the PC keyboard’s PCB, and wired up the switches in a matrix matching the Spectrum’s one.
I didn’t fancy soldering onto the Spectrum’s PCB, so I just pushed the wires into the connector. Worked well till I gave it away a few years ago.
Posted at 8:25 am on Mar 20th, 2008 by Beanolini
Yup, the last thing I’d do with a ZX Spectrum (or speccy) is use its keyboard for something – hacking stuff is cool, but there are limits, its keyboard sucked so badly, that for mine, I actually went out and bought a third party keyboard that a local company made. We must be talking 1984 or 1985 here, wow.
Now if he could turn that whole mod ass about face and put the guts of the speccy into the libretto and turn it into a mobile speccy, that’ll be better.
Posted at 8:30 am on Mar 20th, 2008 by Stu
for anyone interested, you can also replicate the feel of a zx spectrum keyboard by covering your existing in 10-20 layers of cellophane. or wearing boxing gloves.
Posted at 11:04 am on Mar 20th, 2008 by matt tc
make that ‘existing keyboard’
Posted at 11:05 am on Mar 20th, 2008 by matt tc
i thought he had “merged” a zx and a libretto…but just replacing the lower bit with a craptastic keyboard is rather lame
Posted at 5:01 pm on Mar 20th, 2008 by zigzagjoe
The ZX keyboard is indeed quite terrible. It is just a bit of fun, not intended to be anything practical.
Keeping the real ZX motherboard seemed a bit silly, since the libretto can easily emulate a spectrum and many other more powerful retro computers. Also, cutting up a 20 year old computer’s case was quite traumatic enough without taking an iron to the electronics. The original spectrum board is safely stowed in an antistatic bag and still works fine.
@frk-kun – you can get hinged TFT screens for playstations, which presumably take a composite video input – perhaps you could fix one of them to take a spectrum’s video output.
Posted at 8:21 pm on Mar 20th, 2008 by Jim MacArthur
@jim macarthur – you can get hinged TFT screens for playstations, which presumably take a composite video input – perhaps you could fix one of them to take a spectrum’s video output.
Like this fun li’l mod here?
http://www.neoncherry.com/retrorepairshack/readarticle.php?article_id=8
:)
Posted at 1:40 pm on Mar 21st, 2008 by Moonlit
hack a day serves up fresh hacks each day, every day from around the web and a special how-to hack each week.
powered by wordpress
Awesome mod… Do you have the libretto running a zx emulator though? :P
Why must every pic on this site be greyscale – with the only exception (atm) being the laser etcher?
Posted at 12:34 am on Mar 20th, 2008 by atrain