Very interesting and in depth book. Much more than a normal recollection / history of tech style book, this truly delved into the engineering behind the ZX ULA chip, and by extension the design of the Spectrum.

I would have loved to have had access to this book back when I had my ZX Spectrum back in the 80s.

You will likely love this if you are thinking of writing your own ZX Spectrum emulator for fun, or if you are building your own Z80 based computer from scratch.

My first computer was ZX81. At that time it was not very educative on the HW side as all interesting was stuffed inside the ULA chip. This book gives lots of general information about how ULA works and how it is put together.

This was a much more interesting book than I expected. Even if you’re not a ZX Spectrum enthusiast, the way in which the ULA was reverse-engineered is interesting to hobbyists who might consider using FPGA to replace older bespoke ICs.

Great book, well structured and if you were a ZX Spectrum owner way back in the 1980s you'll love it. Great book to get an insight into building a simple computer.

This book is truly exceptional, real gem. It goes into ULA design down to the gate level, describing the role of each and every gate, flip-flop and signal. It even describes the semi-analog stuff (e.g. YUV signal generation, sound/tape output, etc.). I wasn't aware that ZX Spectrum contained so many clever hacks, like stopping Z80 clock during video generator RAM fetch to avoid bus contention, pretty cool stuff :)

This book is not for the faint of heart, but if you like such a low-level, hardware stuff - it's a must.

This is a great book, not just for ZX-spectrum fans & hobbyists but, in my opinion, for anyone interested in really delving into the nuts and bolts of a classic 8-bit computer.

Detailed outline of the system, the hardware and how it was implemented in the original ULA. Full of diagrams, schematics representations and thorough descriptions.

Along with "The Complete. SPECTRUM. ROM. DISASSEMBLY" this book is a must have.

- J

A nice book. It explained the chip very well.

Si vous souhaitez comprendre le fonctionnement des "entrailles" de votre ZX Spectrum, c'est LE passage obligé.

Ouvrage indispensable à tous les nostalgiques et passionnés de "vieilles" technologies.

This book is a must read for anyone that had contact with ZX Spectrum (or its Brazilian/Russian clones) during the 80s. It will enlighten a ton of the quirks of the machine.

If you grew up in the British 80's, you probably either had or knew somebody that had the ZX spectrum.

This book is super nerdy, it covers the design of the ULA chip that was a core chip that was in the specie, the ULA was a custom chip that was responsible for tieing the various other chips inside the spectrum together, it was the bit that made the spectrum, well, the spectrum.

The ULA was a forerunner of the PLD and FPGA devices, they were effectively "blank" chips that were configured in the factory.

This book strips the chip down to circuit diagrams and explanations of how the ULA worked, what it did, and a whole host of other information. The information inside this book would allow you to create your own working ULA on a modern CPLD or FPGA device.

These chips are a common problem when trying to use a spectrum these days, over time many of them have just failed, some had faults from the factory and some were just poor quality, so it might come in handy if you ever wanted to create your own....although there are people around who have already done this and you can buy replacement "modern" ULA's that plug straight into an old speccy to bring it back to life.

Not a book for people who do not understand digital logic or electronics (at least at a basic level), but interesting non-the-less.

Es steht alles drin, was man über den ZX Spectrum wissen muss.

Very good explanation of the Ferrantis ulas architecture, design process from zero to the max and it's appliance in the zx spectrum devices control. Usefull for everyone to learn electronic circuit design from the basis and how the TV interfaces are done.

Quite good edition, readable in a handleable size