[anjc]

Cool article, but the Spectrum really only had 7 colours and black. And at the time I hated the Commodore 64's colour palate (and any non ZX Spectrum palate, until I saw the beautiful SAM Coupé's) so I guess it's a matter of preference.

[dirtbox]

You could use this same palette flicker on the speccy to remove the attribute clash and create new colours, I remember someone demoing a more or less pixel perfect version of Super Mario World, albeit with a black background.

The spectrum was capable of all sorts of odd things that were never intended. http://tarjan.uw.hu/zx_gfx_modes_en.htm

[anjc]

That's very interesting. I'm always impressed at how dedicated some people are to old systems too. My Spectrums haven't been touched in 15 years and here's people making graphics cards for them still.

[dirtbox]

There's even a new speccy coming out. http://www.specnext.com/

[anjc]

Niceee. I wonder if it has a real Z80 or it's implemented on an FPGA as mentioned.

[dirtbox]

As I understand, the FPGA is to interface the Z80 with the raspberry pi that's onboard to include extra graphic modes and HDMI output, but I could well be wrong. There's a lot of unanswered questions about its inner workings, but they have some good looking test boards already etched.

[_Codemonkeyism]

I also preferred the vibrant colors of my CPC to those of a C64.

[avian]

Sinclair ZX Spectrum had a palette of 15 colors. 7 base colors, plus 7 "bright" versions, plus black (bright black was the same as normal black).

[anjc]

Ah yeah but they're essentially the same colours, whereas the C64 had 16 unique ones. If it had only used 4 bits for colour then I don't think it would've maintained its earthy palate because it wouldn't have been useful enough.