This is a copy of the recreation that used to be hosted at http://projectspeccy.com/projects/ with permission from Steve SmithA long time ago (2002), I came across a design for an IDE interface for the +3e. I loved this idea, a Spectrum with a Hard Drive, even if this particular interface only gave you half the hard drive’s capacity. At the time, I was getting into PCB design, and with a dodgy version of Ares/Proteus, I designed a gosh-awful board covered in links (since I couldn’t produce a double-sided PCB at home). However, it worked! I was very chuffed with myself and sent the design and an internal version to Garry Lancaster, who kindly published it for me. I included images of my interface captured with the then brand-new Casio QV-10 Digital Camera!
Since getting to grips with KiCad, I have designed a few Spectrum-related PCBs, so I thought I’d re-design the IDE Interface with a double-sided board. The process was pretty simple since the interface only uses three components.
The board presented here was designed a while ago and bears the ProjectAVR logo rather than the newer ProjectSPECCY logo. I included holes for mounting the PCB in a case if required, and the IDE and Spectrum Edge connectors can be straight or angled depending on the builder’s preference. To use this interface, you must replace the two ROM chips in your Spectrum +3 with versions on the WOS +3e pages. Full instructions are given there.
Here are all the files necessary for fabricating the Simple 8-Bit IDE Interface for +3e can be found here https://github.com/lostretrotapes/Simple-8-Bit-IDE-Interface-for-Spectrum-3e