As we get a lot of emails concerning when DivIDE stocks will be available, we’ve now created a mailing list so potential customers can be informed when stocks are available.

To subscribe to this list, simply click on subscribe and alter the at and dots in the address, then send it. You should get a confirmation email which you need to follow the instructions of. Once you have completed this section successfully, you should receive an email stating you’ve joined the list.

We are proud to announce that the Papaya Labs shop has been updated and now has a stock level feature to show if a product is in stock or not. Currently it’s showing as being out of stock as we update our inventory list. Once this is done, we shall add the new stock to the shop for you to order.

Just a quick post to let you all know that if you have not received your order, or are still awaiting an email to say your order is ready to ship, then you will have to wait until the new year before any more orders are shipped. This is due to the amount of post/packages the post office has to deal with over the Xmas period. So our orders don’t get lost at this manic time, we’ve decided to postpone shipping any further orders until the new year. This should allow for the postal backlog to have time to clear so orders can be shipped safely again.

We hope you understand and if you have any questions, please email us: sales[at]papayalabs[dot]co[dot]uk

On a brighter note, we’re pleased to announce that the shop will have new stock of DivIDE boards and kits in the new year along with an overhauled form.

We have managed to work out a solution to the horizontal CF card adaptor problem. We have found a CF adaptor that we can modify so the end result is a horizontal adaptor. Unfortunately, it means only one CF card be used at a time. But with cards of 1GB and greater being available at dirt cheap prices, who needs more than one card?

Below is a pic of the adaptor in action. Our test DivIDE has high power LEDs and so they shine through the board, which is a nice effect

As you may know, we’ve setup a CF card database so you can see which CF cards work with the DivIDE. One of the columns is “requires power”. Basically, we included this column as it was discovered that some CF cards can be used without the need for an external power source.

Recently, one of our customers, Tim Fardell, asked “Why can’t we use the Spectrum’s +5v supply to power the CF card?”. Good question. Well, after some research, we found we can!

We’ve even come up with a simple solution that requires just one wire to be soldered to your CF card adaptor. Some CF card adaptors have an option to use either IDE pin 20 or an external source to power the CF card. Some are hardwired to a floppy power connector, others are hardwired to use IDE pin 20. So basically you’ll have to adapt the hack to suit your CF adaptor. The ones we sell in the labs shop are selectable.

The main problem with the DivIDE is that Pin 20 isn’t connected to +5v normally. In fact, on the DivIDE, it isn’t connected to anything (it’s missing as it’s a ‘key’ pin). But, the good news is that pin 38 of the DivIDE IDE connector IS connected to +5v. So a simple link from pin 38 to pin 20 or to the +5v pin of the floppy power connector of your adaptor should work fine.

Below is a pic of the CF card adaptors we sell with the simple one wire link in place (it’s a thin green wire very close to the IDE connector). Pin 38 is connected direct to pin 20. We’ve got a few CF cards in the labs that don’t work unless powered externally. They all worked fine with this simple hack.

So many thanks to Tim for coming up with the great idea. Something so simple, yet so effective

Please note that this hack is only valid for the DivIDE, other IDE connectors may not have +5v present on pin 38.

Well, it’s been a while since we tested some new CF cards in the labs, so we forked out and got a few. The results can be found on the DCFCD.

For the time being, here’s a pic of the cards as we know you love those hardware pics so much…

It was only pointed out to me today that emails have been bouncing from the papayalabs.co.uk domain. This is due to our web hosting service moving servers and some settings not moving with it. Like the mail forwarding settings!

Anyhow, it should all be sorted now. So if you’ve tried to email us and had your mail returned, please try it again now.

Sorry for the inconvenience, and many thanks to Anestis Koutsoudis for the heads-up on this one.

Well, just as the first few DivIDE orders are ready to ship, we have news of a new possibility for our PCBs. At the minute all boards are made with a green solder mask. The solder mask covers the vast majority of board so it appears green.

After researching some cheaper PCB fabrication sites, it appears we can have our boards made in a variety of colours, they are:

• Green (normal)
• Blue
• Red
• Black
• Yellow
• White

We assume that everyone would want a black DivIDE board to match their Speccy. But what do we know? So we’ve put a poll up on the right hand sidebar so you can vote on what colour you’d like to see DivIDEs produced in.

So how much would this cost? Initial calculations show it’d push the final cost up by about £1 to £2 maximum. Add this together with the custom selection of LEDs you can get when ordering a DivIDE through us (see this post for the colours), and so a really customised DivIDE can be had for around £27.

We’re also considering a DivIDE board swap over service. Where you can send your DivIDE to us and we fit your chips to a new board of your chosen colour, then you get a new board and your old board back (if you want it). We haven’t done proper sums on this, but we expect the swap over would cost around £10 to £15 per board.

Another possibility may be purple, but we’re waiting to have this confirmed. Watch this space for updates…

We here at Papaya Labs like to experiment with technology. Especially when this technology is connectable to a ZX Spectrum. After finding some ultra cheap 5GB 1″ hard drives (see this post for details of a 6GB version), we played with them and found them to be very sensitive to being pulled in and out of card readers, and CF->IDE adaptors.

So we managed to get the 5GB drives sent back and fully refunded. The next stage was to find something a little more robust and less sensitive. So we started looking at normal CF cards.

What did we find? Some uber cheap 4GB CF cards that DO NOT require power! They’re branded as DataWrite and come with a limited lifetime warranty. We found them cheapest at Burn-Media currently at £19.40. If you buy two you’ll qualify for the £10 discount when you buy through the Google Checkout. So either be greedy, or team up with a mate and get them even cheaper

We’ve now opened a new section to the Labs site, namely Hacks. It’s for hardware hacks that mainly relate to Speccy stuff, but we might throw in some extra stuff that may be of interest to others. At the minute we have just one hack, the PSOne LCD hack. But I’m sure this’ll grow over time…