Sparrow

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The Sparrow 48K (formerly known as Sparrow LITE) is a modernized motherboard replacement, that fits into original „rubber“ ZX Spectrum and ZX Spectrum+ cases.

Sparrow Lite Proto3.jpg

The board has a simple design with a number of improvements:

  • composite video output, instead of a RF modulated signal
  • video RAM in a single SRAM chip
  • main 32KB RAM in a single SRAM chip
  • system 16KB ROM selectable from 8 different ROMs in 128KB FlashROM chip, manually by DIP switch or with software via internal MultiROM expansion
  • one small CPLD chip from Altera, instead of old 74LSxx chips
  • pin rows for internal zx-bus expansions
  • LM2596 regulator instead of the overheating original 7805
  • +12V is done by small 1 Watt DC-DC Converter (and now needed only for the LM1889 video chip)
  • -5V power is no longer needed
  • protection against use of power supplies with wrong polarity
  • power supply voltage up to 25V
  • FADI compliant design

Sparrow SX prototypes rev1 and rev2 include these onboard enhancements (each individually switchable):

  • RTC chip
  • AY soundchip
  • MultiROM
  • RAM/CS signal on the edge connector for external upper-memory expansion

External links