Brand: SpecNext Ltd.
Model: ZX Spectrum Next
Made in: United Kingdom
First year of production: 2023
Price: £300 (RTC, Wi-Fi); £325 (RTC, Wi-Fi, Raspberry Pi Zero); £300 (SpecNext webshop)
Board design: Victor Trucco, Fabio Belavenuto
Software: Garry Lancaster, Alvin R. Albrecht
Case design: Rick Dickinson
Dimensions: 330 × 147 × 27 mm
(feet adds 2 mm; keys or R-Pi HDMI adds 2 mm)
Height with legs extended: 38 mm
Weight: 841g (including Raspberry Pi)
Box dimensions: 363 × 310 × 61 mm
Issue 4, also known as the “KS2” as it was the second KickStarter campaign.
The Kickstarter campaign started in August 2020. In August 2021 the motherboard (Issue 2C) was finalized, but the Xilinx Spartan-6 FPGA’s from KS1 were no longer available due to a global chip shortage. In Januari 2022 the switch was made to the Xilinx Artix-7 with a lead time of 65 weeks in the Issue 4 motherboard. In April 2023 these FPGA’s started to show up. In September production of the cases started and in December the computers were shipped from China to Europe to find their way to the customers.
The Artix 7 is configured with a 17.5 million bit bitstream and these are stored in one of 15 slots in the 256Mbit flash used in KS2 machines. This allows KS2 machines to store up to 15 different cores.