Rubik's Touch Cube

The Toy Industry Association's annual toy fair had some standout 21st century innovations. Some were creepy, like the Dora the Explorer doll whose hair actually grows when you play an online beauty game. And some were just plain cool. The best thing I got my hands on: A fully electronic version of the classic Rubik's Cube.

See below for details on the technology, plus exclusive video of one of the two existing prototypes.

Hidden in a darkened black tent in a far corner of the fair -- I think by the time I found it I was technically in Jersey -- was the Rubik's TouchCube. Instead of a bunch of interlocking mini-cubes, it's made up of six LED-lighted touch screens. (The dark room gave it a very disco-floor flare.) You simulate twisting the blocks by sliding your finger along a row of squares in the direction you want them to turn. An accelerometer inside determines which side is facing up (i.e., which one you're looking at), and desensitizes the other five so you don't accidentally make a move with the hand you're holding it in.

The folks at Techno Source, who distribute Rubik's products, brought the prototype to PopSci's office for us to play with. The TouchCube is powered by seven chips, one for each side to control the squares' colors, plus one mother chip that keeps the rest in sync, ensuring that if you swipe a row of green-red-yellow row to the right, you get green-red-yellow around the corner. Every square contains three LEDs, one each of red, green, and blue, which light up at different intensities to produce a square's color (the familiar white, orange, yellow, green, red, or blue of the old-school stickers). It comes with a display stand/charging dock for juicing the battery.

The TouchCube is endowed with internal memory, so it remembers every move you make from the start of the game. Center squares double as function buttons, including "undo" to step back your moves in reverse order. Or if you really get stuck, you can press another button to get a hint, or another to watch the puzzle solve itself. Gives you a different sense of satisfaction than getting frustrated and chucking the darn thing across the room. Of course, at this price point -- 150 smackers -- you don't want to be tossing it around.

www.rubikstouchcube.com/

Sinclair Spectrum +2

The Sinclair Spectrum +2 was the first Sinclair computer made by Amstrad after they bought the rights of the Sinclair computers products. Thus, it is not suprising that the Spectrum +2 is very similar in shape and functionality to the Amstrad CPC-464. It was a kind of mix between the Spectrum 128 and the CPC-464 !

Even though it used several features of the CPC-464, such as the built-in tape recorder and a good full-stroke keyboard (at last!), it is above all an improved Spectrum 128. Thus, the sound chip used is still the well-known Yamaha AY-3-8912 which is the sound chip of the MSX computers, Oric computers,Atari ST series) and many other computers of the 80’s. It was the most popular sound chip at the time.

As on the Spectrum 128, two BASIC versions were implemented : the 48k BASIC to remain compatible with the original Sinclair Spectrum, and the 128k BASIC which was already introduced with the Spectrum 128. There was still a calculator mode in the start-menu but the « Tape tester » option of the 128 had been removed since the tape-recorder was built-in.
As with the other 128k models, and due to the limitations of the Z80 CPU which can only address 65536 bytes, the 128kb RAM was not directly usable (unless with bank-switching routines), but could be used as a RAM disk.

There were several models of the Spectrum +2 : the Spectrum +2 (grey case) which had a motherboard nearly identical to that of the 128, and the Spectrum +2A and +2B (black case) which were simply Spectrum +3 computers with a tape-recorder instead of the disk drive. It means that their motherboards were quite similar to that of the +3. The difference between the +2A and +2B was mainly due to a move in production from Hong Kong to Taiwan.
Note that the first ROMs developed by Amstrad for the +2 model caused compatibility problems with the old Spectrum software, so they changed a few things in later ROMs.


When Amstrad conceived the +2A/B and the +3 they redesigned the motherboard and made some internal changes on the bus. They also removed the keypad scanning routines of the Spectrum 128 and +2 (remember the keypad sold with the Spanish Spectrum 128k ?).

Source: www.old-computers.com