Sunday, August 28, 2016

AZ15 Raspberry PI 3 Upgrade

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I've taken the opportunity to upgrade the heart of the AZ15 to a Raspberry PI 3, up from a PI 2. The neat thing about the last few models of PIs' has been the unchanging form factor with increasing capabilities.

There has been a noticeable speed boost between the PI 2 and PI 3, this has been most evident when using the ZEsarUX emulator. Previously ZEsarUX has seemed somewhat sluggish on the PI 2, leaving SZ81 as my emulator of choice. With the performance improvements on the PI 3, the choice of emulator is now wide open, a nice change indeed.

Also  the PI 3s' addition of baked in Bluetooth and WIFI has meant that a number of the USB ports formerly dedicated to these tasks are suddenly free. With the PI 2, I had dedicated one of the internal (to the AZ15) USB ports to a WIFI dongle, with the advent of the PI 3 new found connectivity option, I've instead inserted a small in stature and capacity USB flash drive for ZX81 ''P" file storage. Additionally with Bluetooth now available, wireless mice in particular are easy to add.

AZ15 With Bluetooth Mouse and WIFI

AZ15 Concept Image

A What's in the Box Shot


All the nice additions to the PI 3 bring the whole AZ15 project pretty damn close to the original concept image; thanks to the addition of a Bluetoooth mouse and the ever unseen WIFI.

So now it's time for a new glory shot, a shot which I've taken at as close to the same angles and lighting conditions as manageable.

What do you think?


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