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Introduction
Jan's history with the ZX Spectrum began in a whole ‘nother era, during the Cold War when the
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| Jan Kucera |
The cryptically named expansion (long story and legacy, too long!), offers some amazing features, many of which have never been combined in this particular way before. It aims to offer integration of all ZX Spectrum expansions and interfaces into one device.
Sure, individually we have seen mass storage devices, sound card expansions, mouse adapters, joystick interfaces and video output adapters, etc, before. But the ZX Spectrum only offers one ZX Bus in the form of the edge connector. The MB03+ Ultimate to the rescue! Inside its very powerful FPGA, which implements all the devices virtually, side by side, all running at the same time. Thus in one expansion, one single physical device plugged into your ZX Spectrum, you can have all the expansions that you ever dreamt of. Not bad.
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| Then and now. |
Features and functionality
Let's go over MB03+ Ultimate’s currently supported features:
- General Sound. Sound interface which allows you
to play a smaller selection of games with sample based music and effects.
(partial list of GS-supported games here). You can also use it to play .MOD-files, a popular sound-format known from Commodore Amiga and PC. As all devices
exist side by side, you can easily launch a MOD-file and let it play in the
background while you’re playing your favorite ZX Spectrum game.
- DivMMC. From the boot-screen you can choose to
jump right into regular DivMMC with ESXDOS. For your convenience there are two physical micro sd-slots in the MB03+
Ultimate. Or, instead, from the boot-screen, you can choose to boot into BSDOS
and access the CF-Card in the physical CompactFlash (IDE) card slot. There is
also an ESXDOS for DivIDE, which can also be used to access the CF-card. ESXDOS
even has support for DMA (direct memory access) file transfer on both MMC or
IDE. Advanced users can switch between BSDOS and ESXDOS via two simple OUT
commands.
- Mini-jack stereo sound output. You take all
audio from here, while you grab the picture from your normal ZX Spectrum video
output, be it RF, composite or RGB (depending on your ZX model and
modifications). The virtualized sound expansions won’t automatically be routed
through your video connection, as they only exist in the MB03+ Ultimate. So
audio out must be taken from the mini-jack. (Digital video output is currently
being developed, more on that further below.)
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| MB03+ Ultimate on a +2A |
- Two USB-ports. One of which you can plug in a
standard USB-mouse that then acts as the somewhat widespread Kempston Mouse Standard
(partial list of mouse-supported games here). The
other USB-port can be used to interface with a PC. Further future uses of the
USB-ports (USB2.0) are possible, such as USB-joypads and keyboards.
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Other supported sound interfaces: 3xAY sound
chip, incl. TurboSound, SAA1099 sound chip, Soundrive/Czech DA/Stereo
Covox/Specdrum, ULA sound (beeper).
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DB9 joystick port. Plug in your favorite
atari-standard joystick. I personally just used a Sega Master System joypad.
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MB03+ Ultimate is powered by the ZX Spectrum! No
need for external power supply unit. This is a huge plus in my humble opinion,
as there is nothing more annoying than expansions that requires their own PSU.
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LED matrix display for cool-factor. Works as a
typical audio VU-meter during normal operation. Displays greeting on boot
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RTC – real time clock.
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Additional features: Optional Wi-Fi module.
Theoretically it should be possible to do a over the air (OTA) firmware upgrade
without the use of a PC. IRC (inter relay chat) and file downloads (games,
let's be honest..) are also a very distinct possibility. Check out some of the Wi-Fi developments here. Note. The Wi-Fi module is optional. The wifi module can also be replaced with
an UART – RS232 module.
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| The hardware and the case |
The MB03+ Ultimate comes beautifully packaged. Every accessory is included in the package, and the unit comes fully loaded with both micro SD-cards and CF-card. There are printed manuals, USB-mouse,
The MB03+ Ultimate comes housed in a beautifully 3D-printed white case. The texture of the case, as well as the three physical buttons, ‘Reset’, ‘Extra’ and ‘NMI’, has an unparalleled quality to them. Often, in my experience, 3D-printed cased can look like ridiculous melted cheese, but this team have used a top notch high-end 3D-printer. The raised logo and design is also of a particular good quality. They don’t cut corner in the quality department.
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| Led matrix |
Future
MB03+ Ultimate is in very active development. Here are some of the plans for the future:
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Digital video output through its built-in display
port. Through the included Display
Port
- The MB03+ Ultimate team is working together with
several partners. ESXDOS-creator Miguel Guerreiro of Papaya Dezign is working
on expanded ESXDOS features, such as the long awaited long file name (LFN)
support. Busysoft is developing a new BSDOS, which is a Czech disk operating
system (DOS).
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| MB03+ Ultimate on a +2 |
The manual, which is being updated steadily, forces you into the different areas of the MB03+ Ultimate. It was pedagogical, and trying out the different features was very interesting and a fun time. BSDOS isn’t exactly my preferred mode, I much prefer using the joystick to select stuff from menus, like in ESXDOS, but it did seem like a really solid DOS. Jan Kucera explained to me that ESXDOS is handy for running games and demos, whereas BSDOS is more useful for coders and developers. BSDOS is twice as fast, and it has a rich software library.
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| Batty with mouse and sampled sounds |
If you can afford an MB03+ Ultimate, then of course I would recommend anyone getting one. In all honesty, and I’m not being paid to write this, but it is the ultimate ZX Spectrum expansion. At the time of writing there are 15 in stock.
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| View from above |
Hardware specs
Here are the hardware specifications taken from the main website:
* Square shape 10x10cm board, connected to ZX edge socket in horizontal position
* Powered by ZX Spectrum - very efficient switch power supply
* FPGA Xilinx Spartan7 - XC7S50 484pins, the main brain of the machine
* 16MBytes SRAM + 4MBytes Fast SRAM + 2MBytes FLASH + FRAM 8KB(system info, bios config); every RAM is expandable through expansion sockets;
* RTC DS3234 - extremely Accurate RealTimeClock with SRAM (can also be used as a bios config storage) - emulation of RTC72421 via FPGA (ports, regs, etc.)
* CompactFlash(IDE) card and 2x microSD cards sockets.
* Optional WiFi ESP8266 - wifi module. (Two coders are currently working on software for the wifi-module. At the moment of writing this, it is possible to download files from HTTP-servers, synchronize time and communicating with the module via AT command. They plan to use Spectranet servers for software downloads.)
* 2x USB ports, one for user friendly firmware update, second for K-Mouse
* Z80 DMA
* Tremendous sound capabilities: 3xAY - TurboSound, SAA1099, SounDrive/Stereo Covox/Specdrum and General Sound.
* FADI compliant, fully compatible with all ZX Spectrum models (ZX 128+2 standard recommended for the best gaming and demoscene experience)
* Ultimate firmware - a quick startup with all basic options, switchable configurations
expansions sockets
* MB02+, MBIDE and BSDOS308 compatible.
* divIDE, divMMC and ESXDOS 0.8.7 , Unodos compatible
* Compatible with other systems, like Residos in the MB02+ mode
Links
Main website, Facebook, Twitter, Development blog, Forum, Sales.
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