[HN Gopher] ZX Spectrum at 40: a look back
___________________________________________________________________
ZX Spectrum at 40: a look back
Author : elvis70
Score : 134 points
Date : 2022-02-19 14:45 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nme.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nme.com)
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| I think this gets some of the Spectrum experience, and misses
| other parts.
|
| It was never really an open system. The firmware was closed
| source (you could eventually buy an unofficial disassembly) but
| you couldn't update it with your own changes. You could add
| external hardware, with some effort, but it was never trying to
| compete with a backplane system like S-100.
|
| What it did have - apart from very low initial cost and wide
| availability - was instant-on (no formatting, no setting up, no
| downloading and installing), staged progress from beginner to
| expert (i.e. from BASIC to assembler), a small comprehensible
| system (the manual explained everything BASIC could do, assembler
| needed an extra book or two but was still very manageable) a very
| large market with very low cost of entry and high margins (you
| could write a game, advertise it for almost no money, and send
| out the initial copies from home with no duplication costs), and
| a supportive culture of print magazines, occasional TV news and
| documentaries, and computer shows. (Face to face clubs were much
| rarer and less influential.)
|
| The physical case design was just plain cool. And it worked with
| your own TV, which was _almost_ like being on TV.
|
| So basically a combination of instant gratification, tiny-system
| simplicity with tough constraints that rewarded clever solutions
| and creativity, low-friction financial opportunity, cultural
| reinforcement and support among peers working at a similar level,
| distinctive aesthetics with a coolness of a sort, and
| affordability.
|
| I don't think it's a coincidence that it happened not long after
| punk and synth pop in music. Even if their output was very
| different, all of of those had very similar cultural features.
| noobermin wrote:
| How did this compare to the Commodore 64? A few of the details
| are similar it sounds like, (instant-on, a small comprehensible
| system although with a bunch of add-ons). I guess the c64
| wasn't as cheap.
| rhizome wrote:
| Closer to the VIC-20, which was $250 IIRC.
| UncleSlacky wrote:
| Yes, the C64 was more expensive (at least early on, when the
| exchange rate was not in its favour), but also, Sinclair's
| BASIC enabled use of all the graphics and sound features -
| even if they weren't as sophisticated as the C64, they were
| at least accessible without PEEKs and POKEs.
| the_af wrote:
| The C64's BASIC really frustrated me as a kid. Now I
| understand there were license and "being a cheapskate"
| issues regarding the lack of a newer BASIC version, but
| imagine the even bigger impact the C64 would have had if
| most of its features had been available via advanced BASIC
| statements other than PEEK and POKE.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| Very similar. The C64 hardware was better, with a dedicated
| audio chip, better color and (IIRC) hardware blit support for
| sprites. Much better keyboard, too.
|
| But it was double the price, putting it out of reach for many
| more families than the Spectrum. This made a kind of critical
| mass that lead to a huge community around the spectrum in the
| UK. And a fantastic burst of creativity as the barrier to
| entry to writing video games dropped as low as it would ever
| get.
| egypturnash wrote:
| The c64's sprites were not blitted, they were rendered
| entirely by the video chip in a separate path from the
| character/bitmap display.
| Joeboy wrote:
| The C64 was much more game-ready out of the box, with a
| joystick port, an excellent sound chip and hardware sprites.
| Also I think the C64 had a decent disk drive available at
| launch, which the Spectrum never really got one of.
|
| Perhaps the best thing about the Spectrum was that the
| manual, which documented the built in BASIC programming
| language and also the Z80 asm opcodes.
|
| Edit: I should probably steer clear of culture war topics but
| let's be honest - the designers cut every corner they could
| think of and consequently the Spectrum looked and sounded
| atrocious compared to the luxurious C64. But I probably do
| owe my tech career to one.
| elvis70 wrote:
| The 6K VRAM + <1K attribute memory allowed for fast scrolling
| for games like Rastan and R-Type and fast animation for
| simulation games.
| TomVDB wrote:
| Everyone but ZX Spectrum owners understood that the C64 was
| superior in every way imaginable.
|
| The Speccy owners tried to prove otherwise during countless
| arguments in the schoolyard, but deep down they knew.
| 123pie123 wrote:
| I had both, speccy first and then a C64 later
|
| I used the C64 only for games, and the spectrum for my own
| programs and the odd top game
|
| and yes I was on both sides in the playground,
|
| but the C64 had something missing that the spectrum had,
| hard to put a finger on it, the spectrum did have inferior
| games (based on the specifications), but It was more
| accessable or hackable (in todays speak)
|
| I'd say the spectrum kids was more into modding it, typing
| their own code from magazines and learning stuff, but the
| C64 kids used it more like console. and could not see the
| reason for having a spectrum (due to the inferior spec
| etc..)
| TomVDB wrote:
| I didn't do any speccy hacking, but the C64 was IMO
| amazing in the regard. The way you could reprogram the
| VIC each horizontal line into different video modes,
| changing the screen width to make borders disappear, the
| way you could disable the kernal ROMs to expose more DRAM
| etc.
|
| But all machines of that era were so low level with
| plenty of tricks to exploit.
| Marazan wrote:
| Ah yes, I'll be back to check on all the solid filled 3d
| games the C64 had.
|
| The C64 was a great music-synth with the capability to do 1
| certain type of game kside scrollers) in 16 shades of brown
| vut that was it.
|
| The sheer endless variety of games the Speccy supported
| knocked the C64 into a cocked hat.
| TomVDB wrote:
| Good to see that those misguided schoolyard buddies have
| survived to old age as well!
| kayamon wrote:
| You talk about schoolyard arguments but you seem to be
| the only one here trying to start them.
| rwmj wrote:
| Price! C64 cost PS399 at launch, while the top of the line
| Spectrum was PS175 (and there was a cut-down model for
| PS125). In today's prices it's around $500/700 for the
| Spectrum vs $1600 for the Commodore. And the UK was
| considerably poorer than the US in the early 80s too. The
| Commodore certainly did more, but entry price really
| mattered.
|
| [All prices from Wikipedia]
| compiler-guy wrote:
| Sinclair had terrible keyboards too. C64 had pretty good
| keyboards for the day.
| noobermin wrote:
| Thanks, I couldn't find a usd dollar amount for the
| spectrum. I did know the c64 cost $1600 in today's prices
| (that's a good self-built pc today, not quite gamer specs
| but still decent)
| ido wrote:
| c64 famously had its price cut very aggressively multiple
| time shortly after introduction, as commodore tried to
| drive texas instruments out of the home computing market
| (they succeeded, with atari and the rest of the industry
| becoming collateral damage). I believe not even a year
| later it cost half as much.
| stewbrew wrote:
| Oh come on. The size of the ROM was 16kb. Do you have an idea
| what is the size of the microcode in your Intel CPU?
|
| I'm sure you could have replaced the chip containing the ROM
| and replace it with your own version. Things were a little bit
| more rough back then.
| razzio wrote:
| This is exactly what I did.
|
| I made the ROM writable by soldering a CMOS ram chip across
| the ROM (was it 16KB?) and any write to the ROM would end up
| in the RAM. A switch selected either the ROM or RAM to read
| from. On startup simply copy the ROM to the RAM and flip the
| switch.
|
| From there on you can read/write the original ROM and modify
| it to your hearts content.
| grujicd wrote:
| My only "spectrum" was a paper one - a keyboard drawn from a
| magazine pic. Now you know there's something worse than a rubber
| keyboard! Never got the real thing though, ended up with Atari
| 800XL, better comp in many aspects but pretty rare thing in
| 80-ties ex YU.
| hallarempt wrote:
| I was twelve when I got mine. We first had a 16k spectrum on loan
| from the primary school where my mom was a teacher -- together
| with a hefty course in Informatics from the Dutch LOI training
| school. When the little chap had to go after a month, because
| another teacher needed training, I was inconsolable. Shortly
| after, we got a _48_k spectrum, because I already had showed I
| could code up stuff on the 16k one.
|
| I had to work for it, though! I had to raise my score for English
| from 3/10 to at least 7/10, or no speccy. Fortunately, all
| sinclair magazines were in English, so by Easter I had scored
| 10/10!
|
| And after that... I coded, I gamed, I read books, bought extra
| programming languages, coded, gamed -- and by the end of my high
| school career, its keyboard had died.
|
| The empty shell hangs from a picture hook in my study, to remind
| me of where I came from, and also, because I have always loved
| its gorgeous design.
|
| (Weird to think that the speccy sold 5 million units or so...
| Which is about the number of people using my open source
| application Krita every month, too.)
| earth_walker wrote:
| My first computer was a Spectrum 48k. My school bought a ZX81 and
| a logo turtle - one for the whole school. We went down as a class
| and got to play with it a group, calling out instructions that
| the teacher would type in. Other kids seemed to get bored with it
| quickly, but I was hooked.
|
| At home, I went on and on about this to my parents.
|
| My mother had done punch card work in University so recognized
| how big of a leap it was to be able to have a computer in the
| house. A few days later they announced that we would get one.
|
| This was in Asia, and the Spectrum 48k had just been released
| there. Games rarely made it all that way, but the magazines did,
| so I spent hours upon hours typing code in, bug fixing, modifying
| things here and there. Save it to cassette tape. I still have
| dreams where the sound of software loading from cassette appears
| - kind of like the sound a modem makes connecting, but longer and
| somehow softer.
|
| Every few years we'd go on holiday to the UK and I'd save up my
| pocket money to buy as many games on cassette as I could. Then
| I'd spend the rest of my holiday reading and re-reading the
| inserts, trying to imagine what the game would be like when I
| finally get it home. Titles like Ghostbusters, Dungeon master,
| The Hobbit, Zzoom, Chess, Horace and the spiders, there was even
| a 3d maze with skulls and jewels. It wasn't all good through - I
| waited weeks to play Cookie only to get home and find the
| cassette didn't load properly!
|
| But the most time I spent was trying to write my own games in
| Basic. It was amazing - a machine with everything you needed
| right there, a language, colours, sounds, all built in, ready for
| a young mind to explore. The keyboard even had the keywords and
| colours printed on each key and the editor knew when to expect a
| keyword rather than a letter. The whole of Basic was right there
| in front of me to explore without having to read through thick
| manuals.
|
| After a while the 128k came out, and the new games no longer
| worked on my lowly 48k machine, and as my cassette tapes started
| to wear out or worse (where I lived there was one particular
| insect that liked to make little clay nests in cassette
| tapes...). Soon I was a teen and more interested in meatspace
| than the gaming world, but that early programming experience
| informed so much of my life and career.
|
| Fond memories. Thank you, Sinclair, for opening up a whole world
| to me.
| mdb31 wrote:
| I have _very_ fond memories of the ZX Spectrum. By modern, or
| even contemporary, standards, it 's a weirdly under-powered
| machine, yet it introduced a (mostly "continental") generation to
| gaming, programming and much more.
|
| The built-in BASIC made the Spectrum very accessible. But it was
| also quite limited, mostly due to being very slow. But: the great
| thing was, all the machine code that processed said BASIC was
| right there, in the ROM, just waiting to be examined.
|
| I still remember disassembling the machine code responsible for
| handling the "LOAD" and "SAVE" commands, which were an interface
| between memory and the tape deck (the only long-term storage
| available). It was surprisingly small and elegant, and easily
| modified to perform certain tricks, such as varying the baud rate
| of the cassette interface, the order in which bytes were loaded
| (allowing for cool effects like "the screen is populated, but not
| from top-to-bottom, but the other way around), and many other
| things.
|
| And this was all waaaaay before the Internet, relying on
| (photocopies of) library books about the Z80 and magazine
| articles, which arrived late-if-at-all. At some point, I'm pretty
| sure I had memorized the purpose of every "OS-related" memory
| location of the Spectrum (all 16384 bytes of it).
|
| The complexity of today's systems makes all of that impossible.
| But that's mostly nostalgia talking: the capabilities of the
| Spectrum would be laughed away (and rightfully so) these days.
| stevesimmons wrote:
| I did a similar thing with the ROM of the VIC-20. I didn't have
| a printer though. So I wrote out the entire BASIC ROM in 6502
| assembly language, longhand, in my school exercise books
| starting from the empty pages at the back...
|
| My greatest sense of accomplishment came from figuring out how
| floating point arithmetic worked in an 8-bit processor, and
| then the sin, cos and tan functions.
| rcarmo wrote:
| It was a thing of wondrous beauty, pretty much all rainbows and
| unicorns, especially if you'd upgraded from a ZX81 :)
| [deleted]
| noobermin wrote:
| I could have a rant about your last line there. I even long for
| the days of the 00s when web programming was much more simpler
| albeit a little hairy. The obtuseness of modern js development
| is obscene and with little sincere justification. I think it's
| true capabilities bring about some minimum level of complexity
| but the level of complexity in modern software sometimes seems
| rather unnecessary.
| [deleted]
| mdb31 wrote:
| I sort-of get what you're saying here, I think, but I'm not
| sure you're right.
|
| As an inquisitive young person, you are, quite likely, at
| some point confronted with something that seems like magic.
|
| If you're truly (or perhaps excessively?) inquisitive, you
| try to dissect that magic. Sometimes that leads to true
| understanding, sometimes just to confusion, or at best the
| understanding that you don't understand.
|
| The "home computers" of the 1980s were still simple enough to
| allow "true understanding". But only up to some point: I
| could find my way around a ZX Spectrum memory map just fine,
| but could I have built such a machine from scratch? No way!
|
| In hindsight, I only understood a very small portion of the
| technology I was working with, even though that understanding
| was absolutely _mindblowing_ at the time. Today, that portion
| would very likely have been "higher up the stack": let's
| say, I would be an absolute master of the DOM using
| Javascript, instead of a master of the ZX Spectrum ROM using
| Z80 assembly.
|
| But would that portion be less "worthy" or less useful? I'm
| not so sure...
| laputan_machine wrote:
| I don't think GP is talking about JavaScript dom
| manipulation, i think they are talking about
| typescript/babel/webpack/esm basically even before nyou
| start programming in a high level language like js you have
| to use a bunch of tools that you don't even know how they
| work, it's just some magic config you set up and cross your
| fingers.
|
| But maybe I'm reading too much into their post.
|
| I'm a dev of 12 years who cut my teeth on assembly and c, i
| currently write "modern" js and I feel this way, if it's
| far too complicated for me, it's going to be even worse for
| a newbie
| noobermin wrote:
| Nope, you're 100% on the money. I'm talking about any
| modern web app's dependencies and the mountain of tooling
| overhead, it's all so complicated it's hard to really
| understand completely.
| pvg wrote:
| Every desktop browser can drop you into a full-blown,
| highly interactive IDE at the press of a button. It's far
| more capable than any 8-bitter ROM BASIC but just as
| accessible.
| tragomaskhalos wrote:
| There was a wonderful book called 'The Spectrum ROM
| disassembly' that gave a full and detailed analysis of the
| whole thing. A good chunk of the code was cloned from the ZX81,
| but as you say the tape routines were very nice, as was the
| stack-based calculator which was invoked via an RST call
| followed by opcodes for pushing numbers plus all the arithmetic
| and trig functions. I got knee deep into my own disassembly of
| the Interface 1 (?) ROM which has all the microdrive code, but
| never finished it :-/
| mdb31 wrote:
| Yeah, that seems to have been a pretty popular book, but I've
| literally never seen it. At the time, no library near me had
| it available, and ordering it from the UK was just too
| expensive for 13-year-old-me. I did have my own ROM
| disassembly, in two school notebooks, that I still keep to
| this day. Mu handwriting was pretty bad already then, though,
| so I prefer to think of all this as "lost in time" anyway.
|
| Decades later, I did (pre-)order and read "The ZX Spectrum
| ULA", which documents, in painful detail, the inner workings
| of the custom Ferranti chip that powered most of the
| Spectrum.
|
| This really did drive home the message that, no matter how
| much I thought I understood the low-level workings of my
| Speccy, there were still many lower-level layers left to
| explore. Which, I guess, is the central lesson of IT...
| belter wrote:
| https://archive.org/details/CompleteSpectrumROMDisassemblyTh.
| ..
| razzio wrote:
| Ah yes that brings back memories. I knew that book inside-
| out.
|
| I made the ROM writable by soldering a CMOS ram chip across
| the ROM (was it 16KB?) and any write to the ROM would end up
| in the RAM. A switch selected either the ROM or RAM to read
| from. On startup simply copy the ROM to the RAM and flip the
| switch.
|
| After this operation, using 'The Spectrum ROM disassembly'
| book the world was your oyster. I modified the ROM routines
| for reading/writing those little tape drives and bypass copy
| protection, for experimental purposes of course :)
| YZF wrote:
| I still have the book...
| JoeDaDude wrote:
| There was an enterprising coder who would sell a Basic compiler
| the related Timex 2068 computer. It had lots of limitations,
| such as only allowing one dimensional arrays, but I was able to
| use it to implement Conway's Game of Life which I let run for
| days on my CRT TV.
| [deleted]
| Instantix wrote:
| The Spectrum was first a very beautiful object thanks to Rick
| Dickinson. And, as a side note, he proved with the Spectrum Next,
| he still have all his talent.
|
| Frankly, to have this object at home in the 80 was classy! A work
| of art.
|
| And for me it's what define the Spectrum. The main games were not
| the most beautiful but had a very distinctive and enjoyable
| touch. A tiny machine but which a lovely and specific spirit. It
| was a so nice time in my memory.
| pjmlp wrote:
| I remember seeing the ZX 81 assembly kits on electronic stores,
| and eventually my parents managed to buy a Timex 2068 when they
| became available.
|
| Now I feel rather old, but happy to have been part of the 8 bit
| revolution.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| Brilliant machine, sadly unsupported. Had built in sound via an
| AY-3-8912, two Kempton compatible joystick ports, a cartridge
| port and extra high resolution modes. Plus an incrediably cool
| case. If you were determined you could get a Spectrum rom
| cartridge to turn it into a Spectrum, a twister board and even
| hookup micro drives...
| pjmlp wrote:
| It had good support on the Iberian Peninsula, because for
| whatever reason Timex had a factory producing them close to
| Lisbon.
|
| So no need for being determined, those eprom cartridges where
| in every computer shop.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| Ah yeah-- the "rogue" Timex-Sinclair subsidiary in
| Portugal. Kind of a cool story. I've always wondered how it
| happened, but glad that it did.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Great machine. My first program was written on it, at an age of
| 10. It was an animation of a flying bomber that dropped a bomb -
| and to do that I learned how to redefine sprites, encoding bits
| in hex!
| tromp wrote:
| The speccie certainly helped kickstart my computer science
| career. Sinclair BASIC made for a friendly programming
| experience, and once outgrown, I enjoyed learning the intricacies
| of Z80 programming. Even the attribute color system where each
| 8x8 block of pixels had one dedicated color byte including a
| foreground color, background color, and I think brightness and
| flash bits, proved very charming when I programmed a connect-4
| game using attribute memory as storage for the board. You could
| literally see the alpha-beta game tree search progress through
| the screen colors. Some of my favorite games were Lords of
| Midnight, The Sentinel, and Underwurlde. Good times...
| stevekemp wrote:
| Definitely how I got my start too, and a lot of others of a
| similar age:
|
| https://blog.steve.fi/how_i_started_programming.html
|
| My personal-favourite was "Chaos: The Battle of Wizards", by
| Julian Gallop. I still play that every few months under
| emulation. There are modern sequels and remakes, but I've
| avoided them lest I be disappointed!
|
| But there were lots of great games, the Dizzy series, RoboCop,
| Strider, R-Type, and many many more.
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| > But there were lots of great games, the Dizzy series,
| RoboCop, Strider, R-Type, and many many more.
|
| There was also the peculiar experience that the Spectrum
| version of a game would often be more playable or essentially
| faithful to its arcade parent than that of platforms with
| more power (even the C64).
|
| Because the Spectrum developers had to work hard to make the
| game playable in essentially monochrome, with nearly no
| sound. There is no better way to make art than through
| constraints, and the Spectrum was all constraints.
|
| All 8-bit systems benefited from this art-through-constraints
| situation, though, and gaming culture owes everything to it.
| This could be why I am more inclined to play a cartoon MMORPG
| like Dofus than anything else; if a games designer is
| unwilling to choose their own constraints I am going to find
| the game uninteresting.
|
| [Edit to change last sentence: wrong choice of words]
| wslh wrote:
| Linked topic: where do you buy a working (used) ZX Spectrum
| nowadays? The ones I quickly look at eBay are "untested".
| rwmj wrote:
| If you genuinely want the real thing, the best bet is to learn
| how to restore them. There's a whole network of Youtubers who
| teach people how to restore them[1], but you'll need basic
| electronics and soldering skills. Beware that even once you've
| obtained/fixed a ZX Spectrum, they won't work with modern TVs
| or monitors. There's a simple mod for composite output, but
| that means you have to find something with composite input. And
| they're quite frustrating to use (I say this as someone who
| owns two! including the legendary "toastrack" Spectrum 128K)
|
| If you just want a taster and/or to play games then I'd go for
| emulation.
|
| [1] start with these two and follow the related channels:
| https://www.youtube.com/c/NoelsRetroLab/videos
| https://www.youtube.com/user/markfixesstuff
| christkv wrote:
| There is even a community spectrum next computer that is fully
| compatible and then extended. Seems to be popular with people
| who want to code for nostalgia. I'm more of an c64 and amiga
| head and have my eye on the vampire v4 as it seems like it
| scratch the nostalgia itch and could even be useable for
| general computing.
| christkv wrote:
| Forgot the link https://www.specnext.com/
| wslh wrote:
| Yes, a friend is even doing new joysticks and controllers:
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCX_dqlpVpYtlm2Es_PAZcA
| register wrote:
| The experience on an emulator is not always 100% accurate.
| Sometimes the small lag added can change the gameplay feeling
| considerably and there might be tiny differences in the sound
| and the colors. I would suggest you to look for an FPGA
| replica. An N-go board or a ZXUno is a very reliable replica of
| the original hw for a decent price. If you have more money to
| spend then try to purchase a used ZX Next. If you do not care
| about such finesses then go for emulation though.
| YZF wrote:
| 40 years. I must be old.
|
| My ZX Spectrum was an upgrade from a ZX-81. I had the thermal
| printer and a microdrive at some point. I have a few microdrive
| cartridges still sitting around right here (I still have my
| Speccy and the microdrive as well).
|
| Fond memories trying to write some simple programs, working
| around the various limitations. Monopolizing the family TV,
| sitting on the carpet in front of it tinkering with things...
|
| Lots of games, lots of pirating (copying tapes around). I did
| actually buy a couple as well ;) Playing or programming with
| other friends that owned Spectrums (and some rivalry/jealousy
| with the guys with Commodore's or Apple II's).
| harel wrote:
| I ended up restoring and modding 2 Sinclairs just now (regular
| speccy and the plus version). I remember it was much easier to
| enter programs as a kid. Now my muscle memory in front of a
| keyboard is working against me. Fast typing is frowned upon.
| Still, despite all that, what a glorious piece of hardware.
| neilwilson wrote:
| Found myself humming the Avalon theme tune for no particular
| reason the other day.
|
| Great times, to which I occasionally wish I could C9
| becurious wrote:
| That and ED B0 are burned in my mind forever.
| DaveSapien wrote:
| Low Spec Gamer just dropped a brilliant (and entertaining) wee
| video on the beginnings of the ZX Spectrum.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKYOjDz_RT8
| flohofwoe wrote:
| The Sinclair home computers (ZX80/81 and Speccies) were probably
| the main inspiration for most Eastern European hobbyist
| computers, because (unlike the C64, CPC or Atari 400) the
| hardware was simple enough that it could be built with relatively
| cheap domestic chips and standard TTL logic.
| klelatti wrote:
| It's easy to quibble about some aspects of the Speccy - the
| rubber keyboard or the limited BASIC for example - but the key
| thing is that it offered an awful lot for the price - starting at
| PS125 in the UK when the cheapest BBC Micro was PS300.
|
| This made computing with colour and enough memory to write
| programs that were substantial and interesting available to a
| much wider group than before.
|
| Sir Clive Sinclair had a unique genius for designing and then
| marketing products that caught the public imagination. Sadly, he
| seemed to lose interest in building on his success and quickly
| moved on to the next project. Famously the C5 electric "car" but
| also wafer scale memory! [1]
|
| If anyone hasn't seen Micro Men, on the Sinclair vs Acorn
| rivalry, its definitely worth a watch:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXBxV6-zamM
|
| And seeing some of the participants watch it and recall their own
| versions of the story is good too:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaonVYOTSsk
|
| [1] http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/3043/Anamartic-
| Wafer-...
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| "the cheapest BBC Micro was PS300"
|
| This is a great point. The Acorn Electron (a PS129 cut down
| version of the BBC Micro) wasn't available until a couple of
| years later.
| bane wrote:
| It's almost impossible to understand how minimal and spare of a
| design the Speccy was. Yet it fostered a creative community that
| produced literally thousands of titles. It's something of a
| lesson in how you don't need the most powerful computing device
| to do great things.
| buildsjets wrote:
| Throughout 1982 I begged my parents for a ZX Spectrum, after
| reading all about it in the computer magazines we had in our
| public library for months.
|
| On Christmas morning, I woke up to a BASIC program running on the
| TV screen welcoming me to my brand new TI-99 4/A. Probably a
| better choice for us as I don't think I knew anyone else in the
| US with a Spectrum.
|
| I still have the TI, it's upgraded to HDMI output using an FPGA
| replacement for the display processor, and has all the software
| ever released for it installed on one cartridge. Fun to break it
| out when the family gathers for holidays. There's even some
| modern game development going on that really shows how capable
| the old hardware was, but was limited by primitive software
| development tools and practices.
|
| https://circuitmaker.com/Projects/Details/Matthew-Hagerty/F1...
|
| https://endlos99.github.io/finalgrom99/
| noobermin wrote:
| On the modern game dev around 80's machines, there is a sort of
| rebirth of 80's computing lately. I was born in the 90's but I
| learned 6502 asm to make an NES demo and now this thing is a
| hobby of mine. Since it's the same cpu (albeit pretty different
| arch) I'm learning about the C64 too now.
|
| It sounds like the TMS9900 has a very different architecture
| with the workspace idea although it looks like the ti-99 4/a
| only allowed you to do this scheme with only 128 words. The
| idea itself sounds pretty cool.
| the_af wrote:
| A bit of advice: never let go of your TI. You'll regret it
| after a few years, when nostalgia and the urge to turn it back
| on strikes again.
|
| It happened to me as a middle aged guy when I remembered the
| C64 my dad sold in order to buy me my first PC XT.
|
| That's why I ended up buying a retro clone of my cherished C64,
| TheC64. ARM-inside running VICE, but it looks and behaves a lot
| like a real C64. It has a real keyboard and you can use it to
| program, not just run games.
| noobermin wrote:
| A decade later but the games I had growing up for the N64 and
| gamecube now cost a pretty penny. I've learned now to buy the
| best games for modern systems physical because in 2040 I
| don't want to have to pay $200 to play metroid dread
| JasonFruit wrote:
| I had both a Spectrum (actually the Timex-Sinclair 1000) and a
| TI-994/A. The TI was a lot more capable, but having the
| Spectrum first was a good gradual learning experience. I think
| it was a great way to get into computing and gain the lifelong
| attitude that the computer does what I tell it, not what
| someone else thinks it should do for me.
| ionwake wrote:
| I just saw they made a new ZX Spectrum version.
|
| It doesn't have grey keys.
|
| Sorry to be a negative nancy! - but whoever thought a new ZX
| Spectrum should not have grey keys, made a slight error on that
| decision.
|
| On all other aspects, I love the ZX good stuff all round, all the
| best everyone working in this space.
| UncleSlacky wrote:
| The keyboard seems to be based on the Spectrum+:
| https://img.microsiervos.com/images2017/ZX-Spectrum-Next.jpg
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