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The first of the ZX Spectrum Next Kickstarter campaign stretch goals established by the development team was to use a bigger and better FPGA. Since the stretch goal was reached, they started to think what to do with the extra power.

The Next is already equipped with three AY audio chips (the original Spectrum 128 had one) which is probably more than enough for most people sound needs. However, even the most fanatic Spectrum enthusiast that hates Commodore with all his/her power will agree that nothing beats the SID chip, found in the Commodore 64.

Well, Henrique Olifiers seems to agree with that and sent out a “backers only” update saying that they just did that – added a SID chip to the FPGA, making the Next capable of playing any SID chiptune. If you are one of the skeptical out there, he actually made a video to prove that, which you can watch here!

[vsw id=”8fusdhM082E” source=”youtube” width=”425″ height=”344″ autoplay=”no”]

Bear in mind that the SID chip implementation is not 100% complete yet, with some tweaks to be done. Also, remember that the Next is an FPGA-based computer, which means, the hardware is actually programmed to implement other hardware. The most purist will probably argue that it is not actually a real SID chip, which is true. However, giving such capability to the Next shows how powerful the machine will be for the Demo Scene as a whole.

If you haven’t made up your mind yet, the ZX Spectrum Next campaign is running for more 6 days (or a bit less depending on when you read this), so there is still time!