ZX Spectrum Plus Restoration eBay Bargain 

Not recapping all of the caps is like only replacing 1 bulb in your car's headlights when only 1 fails. Sure you safe money on not replacing the working one, but it will most likely break not long after. Which just ends in double the work.

The British Empire ran on these mighty machines!

Very relaxing viewing on a Sunday afternoon. Thanks.

3:35 Once upon a time it was foam, and I think its actually for the membrane leads

Nice to get a good, solid Pearl every once in a while 😀 Nive repair and jealous of the IIe !

Entertaining as always, was giggling waiting for you to react to the monitor. Was thinking M1 myself but then others confirmed same in comments. With you on choice of speccy, Rubber everyday as it was my first too with a 16k. Have a + that is my stunt speccy and gets used and abused with peripheral testing and repair.

Pup signifying something bad must be a uniquely British perspective.

Great job you did. I love your content as well. Greetings from Steven from the Netherlands

Another Classic MFMIW adventure. 🥰

When an old speccy has`nt had power for a few years it does take time on the first power up to do anything putting juice back in the old caps..... great video again you make them very entertaining. Keep them coming.

I had both the rubber and plastic variants, due to having a few go faulty under guarantee. So I began with a Series 2 rubber model in July 1983 and gradually with each repair under guarantee ended up with the plastic key model in the summer of 1985. However I already had a third party keyboard ready to fit when I got the + model, so I only tried it once and then fit my new one. That being said my preference was for the rubber model out of the original factory choices. The third party one I saw in an advert in CRASH! magazine, but I have no idea what brand or model as the case was plain with no logo, but it looked very similar to the d'k troniks one but definitely not that one. Absolute joy to type or game with.

This was my first computer, at age 11. Until it broke, and the repair center put a zx80 ROM into it 😢

Pup Pearl sounds a bit like 🟪... 🤔😁

Seen this before myself. What probably happened here was the capacitor that's part of the reset circut took a while to "reform", and held the machine in reset while it was doing so. I had one speccy that initially drew 1A (what I'd current limited the supply to) and in the time it took me to go "oh shit it shouldnt do that", and go for the power switch, it settled down and worked normally !

I don't understand how most devices with fold out legs goes missing?? It's like the owners rips them off because "They're too perfect"

You mentioned checking for resistance on the voltage rails - is that on the regulator? Still new to all of this. I had a rubber key then a plus. I think I preferred the original. That + keyboard was horrible in a new and unusual way compared to the original. Unfortunately PlayZX isn't available one the Play Store for my device so I've looked at ZX Tape Player. Looks OK.

I believe the black boarder and black and white striped paper is the CPU M1 line failing? This is used by quite a few expansion cards, divMMC also requiring the M1 line not being faulty.

Good video as always, although are you 100% sure that there is a fault on your Dandanator, the reason I say is sometimes when such devices do not work it is due to a failed M1 line on the z80.

I rarely see it done, but why don't most restorations include a modern power convertor that isn't a heat dump, as well as up to date capacitors/transistors and a composite mod?

Would it be a problem to have a slightly discolored delete key? If not then you can easily buy some silicone make a simple two part mold and cast it in polyurethane (which is nice and affordable and can get you a 100 or so keys from a single lite). I’ve done this in my recent NOVAG micro chess computer fix that missed a bishop. I just cloned a bishop this way.

Did you work out what was the cause of that very slow reset in the early stages of working on this machine? Was that a problem with the reset circuitry? My first guess would be C27 between the Z80 reset pin and ground, but then it failed to reset properly after the re-cap when you had the Dandanator plugged in, so was that just due to the dodgy Dandanator and it would reset normally without it attached (and hence the reason for the big "wrong" text at 13:35)? I suppose that must be the case given that you show it loading software just fine -- we just missed out on seeing the resolution of the slow reset behaviour.

For those of us a bit slow on the uptake, why is it called a "pup"?

Thanks for the video. Could you please direct a non-native speaker to the source of "pup or pearl" phrase? Is it the authors invention, something from a TV show, or... ?

Hi is there another discord link somewhere? As wen i try to join via the one listed under the video it says its expired.

I almost bought that one lol 🤣

I am sorry, but these "pup or pearl" analogies... they are simply just not working for me at all. Growing up with dogs since an early age, I would much rather have a fun little puppy, than some biproduct of a yucky old oysters anti-irritant defense-mechanism. 🤣 If someone were to walk up and just randomly gift me a pearl, it would be far more likely that I would sell it to buy a puppy (or another Speccy), than actually keep the pearl. - I even have a tendency to get slightly annoyed when antivirus software pops up to inform me that it has found a PUP (Potentially Unwanted Program) and has put it into quarantine. 😂 BTW... my first Speccy was a rubber-keyed one, or a "Spectrum Minus" as it for some reason ended up getting nicknamed around here. But the PSU went nuclear on it after a few years and literally blew up the voltage regulator. I'm not kidding, it actually made a huge POP! sound, a splinter shot out the expansion port, ricocheted off the screen of my little red Sanyo B/W TV-set and zoomed straight past my right eye. So yeah, that was a whole lot of absolutely NOT at all fun, on so many levels. But my dad was kind enough to bring me back a brand new Speccy+ from one of his business trips to England (Yeah, I'm one of those bloody savage Danish vikings, see). I didn't keep that British suicide assassin of a dead flesh Speccy. I do however still have my original 48K+... and have acquired, repaired, and rebuild a 48K Rubber-Speccy from a "spare-parts" board off evil-Bay, and a fresh case and parts from ZX-Renew. I've also since added a similarly rescued Toastrack, the Ukrainian made ITX formfactor "ZX Evolution 2011", and of course the "ZX Spectrum Next" from the first Kickstarter batch... to my collection... (got the ZX Evo while "patiently" waiting for the Next). - Yeah, those are my little puppies 🙃😆

I have a delete key you can have for free.