Didaktik Skalica Co.

Didaktik Skalica Co. is a slovak company that produced a series of Spectrum clones. The company was founded in 1972 and produced school equipment. Between 1987 and 1992 they also made computers.

Didaktik Gama

Didaktik Gamma is a clone of the 48K ZX Spectrum made by the slovak company Didaktik Skalica Ltd. All models come with 80 KB of RAM and 16 KB ROM, built-in paralel i8255 interface, 40 key keyboard, power and bank LED and reset button. They all use the original Ferranti ULA, Z80A and russian memory IOs. The 80 KB RAM consisted of 16 KB base memory (as the 16K Speccy) with another 32K (as the Speccy 48K) but instead of just one it had two 32K blocks that was switchable using OUT 127. Because some differences in the system variables it wasn't 100% compatible with the ZX Spectrum but it was possible to do some pokes and get it almost fully compatible.

The Gamma was made in three different versions.

Didaktik Gama ´87

The first one was released in 1987 and was called Gama'87. The bank switching cased some problems in this version. If the RAMTOP was above 32768 and you tried switching pages the computer simply crashed.

The first ones was made in black plastic but later it changed to the one shown above.

Didaktik Gama ´88

To correct the memory page error Gama '88 was released. OUT 127 was changed so that if RAMTOP was more than 32768, then the memory from 32768 to RAMTOP was copied to the other bank before switching. These computers came in the gray case.

Didaktik Gama ´89

The Gamma series was ended with Gamma '89. It had a wide charset for both latin and cyrilic characters and there were some changes into main computer.

Didaktik M



Picture by CVM/ZeroTeam

A slovak clone of the 48K ZX Spectrum. It comes with a reset button (marked R), monitor output and two joystick ports (one Kempston and one Sinclair) marked K and S. However these joystick ports use non-standard connectors.Some russian circuitry is used instead of the ULA and it causes the screen to be a square. The speed of the computer is different from the standard 48K and there is no difference between fast and slow memory. It comes with 64 KB RAM (but uses only 48K). It was manufactured in two models called 90 and 91.

A 3 channel sound interface with ACB stereo called "Melodik" was also available. The Melodik is now being sold by Sintech.

In the box.

The box.

Manual.

Open.

Rear view. The ports are (from left to right) Sinclair joystick, Kempston joystick, system bus, tape, power, video out and TV.

The system.

Side view.

Closeup of the keyboard.

Mainboard with built-in speaker.

Clos-up of the mainboard.

Open case with keyboard separated.

Didaktik Kompakt

The Didaktik Kompakt is a Didaktik M with a built-in 3.5" disk drive that uses non-standard MS-DOS formatted disks at 840 KB. It has standard connectors for joysticks and printer and a built-in paralel interface using i8255 as in Didaktik Gama. All other features are the same as Didaktik M.

The Kompakt is still being manufactured by Kompakt Services and is being sold for 250 DM by Sintech. It can also be bought rebuilt to be compatible with ZX Spectrum 128K (minus the sound, but that can be fixed by using the Melodik).

Didaktik have homepages at http://www.didaktik.sk and http://www.didaktik.cz/ and it probably contains more info but it's in Czech so I don't understand much of it. I'm also told the company handling 8-bit computers is now http://www.kompaktservis.cz/.

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