[HN Gopher] Celebrating 40 years of ZX Spectrum
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Celebrating 40 years of ZX Spectrum
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 252 points
Date : 2022-04-23 07:12 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.blog)
| ilaksh wrote:
| https://worldofspectrum.org/
| opinali wrote:
| I was a late Spectrum dev, as a Brazilian geek several years
| behind the international market due to draconian restrictions on
| computer imports at the time (also, dad not rich enough to get me
| an Amiga...). Got one of my programs survive for posterity:
| https://worldofspectrum.org/archive/software/utilities/stk-y...
| (unfortunately only loading screenshots here; check YS #75).
|
| That was a powerful hacking/debugging/programming utility. I am
| still proud of the HILOAD command which was capable of loading
| files from tape in any condition: if any error was found, this
| command would fill a separate buffer with the relative address of
| every error. Then you could use other commands to inspect the
| data and painstakingly recover it by guessing the correct value
| for damaged bits or bytes (they utility could dump memory in many
| ways, including some popular encodings of sprites for games).
| There was also a whole-block SHIFT command useful for this task
| because a loading error could make all following bytes to be
| shifted left or right some bits, because the tape data format
| didn't have a byte-boundary delimiter, it was just a stream of
| bits.
| mdb31 wrote:
| The Spectrum was probably the last computer I truly understood.
| Not at a hardware level (too young for that, plus the Spectrum
| squeezes so much functionality out of the cheapest chips
| available at the time that it's not trivial to reverse-engineer
| what was going on even today), but just the software bit.
|
| 16 Kilobytes of ROM, which (with, I think, a whole KB to spare!)
| implemented a pretty functional BASIC environment. This was good,
| but still had significant limitations, especially when looking at
| all the cool stuff other people were doing.
|
| At age 12 or so, I became absolute fascinated with a pretty
| simple thing: Spectrum programs included a 'loading screen' most
| of the time, which, while being loaded from tape at a leisurely
| 100bps or so, populated the screen top-to-bottom, left-to-right,
| pixels first, then (color) attributes, as per the layout of the
| video RAM. However, some games loaded the screen in reverse, or
| did not incrementally show the screen content while loading at
| all!
|
| The latter problem was the easiest to solve: instead of loading
| directly from tape (the header of which included the base
| address) into video RAM, those programs would use an alternate
| base address, plus a small program to copy the contents
| afterwards. The former was way, way more tricky, and required the
| realization that you did not need to use the actual ROM code to
| load from tape, but you could disassemble/change that code,
| include it in your own program, and make it do whatever you want!
|
| This realization enabled me to implement my own 'speed loader'
| (bumping tape I/O speeds from 100bps to, like, 111!), in addition
| to the usual fare of removing copy protection from programs and
| cheating at games by adding extra lives, removing barriers, or
| just fixing broken levels (waves at Jet Set Willy).
|
| Is a Spectrum a useful computing device today? Absolutely not,
| and it hasn't been for over two decades or so. But that's not the
| point of all this nostalgia: it's the fact that it instilled a
| "Hackers mindset" in me and many, many others.
| ilaksh wrote:
| Video of a demo loading in Spectrum magazines and massive games
| shelf into a 3d emulator environment:
| https://youtu.be/qs3JhZlgS9k
|
| at vintagesimulator.com
| enneff wrote:
| I bought a ZX Spectrum in 2009 and taught myself z80 assembly to
| write a little intro for a demo party:
| http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=54076
|
| It was a lot of fun! Coding for these strange old machines is
| very interesting and challenging.
|
| You can see the source code in the nfo file:
| http://www.pouet.net/prod_nfo.php?which=54076
| mark_round wrote:
| I grew up with the Speccy and it's what kick-started my interest
| in computers and ultimately led to my career. I still have a +3,
| which is connected to the internet [1].
|
| It's amazing to see that there's still a sizeable scene devoted
| to this humble little box, and there's new hardware and
| impressive hacks being built to this day. In the words of one of
| the messages from a user of my site: "It's mad being online with
| a 40yr old computer designed around a tape recorder."
|
| Part of it's longevity and appeal is how simple the system was -
| even 11 Year-old me could grasp the memory layout and experiment
| with writing assembler. I expect I'll still be hacking away on it
| in another 40 years!
|
| [1] - I wrote a series of blog posts on how I mashed up a modern
| GitOps/k8s dev environment with 1980s Sinclair BASIC to build a
| community site: http://www.markround.com/blog/2021/12/21/devops-
| for-the-sinc...
| timthorn wrote:
| Your site deserves a front page listing of its own - great
| content.
| mark_round wrote:
| Thanks! Looks like it's just been submitted at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31134121
|
| I'm glad you liked it, the whole project was a labour of love
| and a huge amount of fun to put together. Particularly the
| whole "running unit tests through an emulated zx printer"
| thing!
| shever73 wrote:
| Bookmarked. This is superb! Thank you :)
| lee337 wrote:
| Just seemed right to share:
| https://twitter.com/github/status/1517986014114975744 :)
| mark_round wrote:
| Oh wow, that's seriously amazing! It's great to see others
| enjoying my crazy ideas :) These old systems sure can be a
| lot of fun. You definitely get your moneys worth!
| davidwritesbugs wrote:
| I remember coding a basic personal database on the Speccy and how
| one had to keep the strings short because the ZX string functions
| weren't O(1) and a big character string made it sloooow. I also
| remember at the writing an exit prompt "Did you change anything?
| If so save.". Ah, cringe/bless.
| fit2rule wrote:
| josefrichter wrote:
| We used to call it "Sinclair" rather than "Spectrum".
| jast wrote:
| Portugal has a museum dedicated to ZX Spectrum:
| https://loadzx.com/en/
| DaveSapien wrote:
| Damn, I forgot it was the 40th anniversary today!
|
| The ZX Spectrum was my first computer and I was a bit too young
| to write any software for it sadly, but it was my second (TV Pong
| was my first) introduction to gaming...on a black and white TV.
|
| Still managed to get into tinkering with computers and it opened
| a big door for me later in life. I am now a game developer
| (designer/engineer), and might not have gone down this amazing
| path if it wasn't for the familiarity with computing at an early
| age.
|
| It was such an important computer and I'm glad to see the price
| of capable computers continuing to fall, so that more and more
| kids can have a similar experience to mine.
|
| The loading sounds still give me chills!!
|
| If you're looking to relive the loading sounds as a musical toy,
| check out the ZX Plectrum.
| brigandish wrote:
| Aphex Twin included the loading sound inbetween some of the
| tracks on his Richard D James album and it pleases me no end
| that he did. That you can also make the loading sounds with
| your own mouth is also a giant plus!
| DaveSapien wrote:
| oh yeah!!
|
| " loading sounds with your own mouth " I feel thats a video
| or it didn't happen moment.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Happy birthday, getting a Timex 2068 (with the ZX Spectrum
| cartridge) is what placed on this path.
|
| Although the first year was mostly spent playing River Raid,
| Lunar Jetman, Spy Hunter, while trying to understand the manual
| as a 10 year's old kid.
| jlokier wrote:
| I learned to program without having an actual computer, from a
| wonderful full-page magazine advert of a ZX Spectrum, just a
| photograph of it in glorious full colour.
|
| I didn't have access to a computer, just lots of old magazines
| and books. The Spectrum photo's colourful keyboard with all those
| interesting keywords was really inspiring to 10 year old me.
| Somehow, between gazing at that for hours and reading, I would
| dreamily imagine typing on it, and started to guess what many of
| the keywords meant. Being colourful, interesting, and decorated
| with all the keywords was super helpful.
|
| There were type-in listings in magazines in those days, as well
| as schematics showing how basic computers worked, so there was
| plenty to learn from even though they didn't specifically explain
| programming.
|
| Eventually I got a BBC Micro, rather than a Spectrum like most of
| the other boys at school. The BBC was great and is where I
| learned to program properly, but socially I'd go round to friends
| houses where we'd play Spectrum games and write little programs
| there.
|
| (Yes I do mean boys: I had the strong impression parents bought
| computers for boys but not girls in those days, and the girls
| didn't have any access to computers to learn from.)
| kingcharles wrote:
| I learnt programming from a BBC Micro manual my Dad brought
| home from a second-hand shop when I was 5. I would just sit and
| read it and imagine the programs in my head.
|
| It's funny you mention that computers were a boy's thing - they
| definitely were, but two of my neighbours were girls and they
| both had computers before me, so I would annoy their parents by
| going around there as often as I could and getting them to help
| me type out pages of BASIC.
|
| Later my parents bought me a Spectrum, but I always wonder if
| the neighbours just paid them off in the end to stop me turning
| up at all hours of the day and night.
| jlokier wrote:
| I may have written the first ZX Spectrum emulator, for some
| definition of emulator.
|
| In the 80s I had a BBC Micro with a Z80 second processor attached
| to its "tube" bus. Usually the Z80 ran CPN, a business operating
| system similar to CP/M with its own flavour of BBC Basic,
| including a built-in Z80 assembler. But it could be asked to do
| anything.
|
| Some Spectrum software ran ok on the Z80 if you could get the
| memory image loaded, which I eventually did. The 6502 wasn't fast
| enough to provide good emulation, but it could poll the Z80
| memory and convert the video image to something the BBC side
| could display. With some clever tricks the BBC's ULA could even
| be persuaded to simulate Spectrum square pixel resolution with
| most of the colours, and I used rapidly flashing colours to get
| more.
|
| It wasn't good enough to run games, though it could show some of
| the screens.
|
| But I remember it successfully playing one of the best Spectrum
| music demos of the time, because the 6502 was fast enough to poll
| and relay the 1-bit audio signal being generated by the Z80 music
| software.
| veltas wrote:
| Easily the best ZX Spectrum emulator is fuse, which is not on
| GitHub as far as I know.
|
| http://fuse-emulator.sourceforge.net/
| antirez wrote:
| Tools: PlayZX is awesome.
| Dwedit wrote:
| The big thing about the ZX Spectrum was its rock bottom price.
| You got a TRS-80 system for $2495, or you got a ZX Spectrum for
| PS175.
| f_hollmann wrote:
| Not necessarily: EACA VideoGenie EG 3003 for approximately
| $1400 (in Germany).
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Hardware was very expensive back then. Even the ZX Spectrum's
| "rock bottom" price would amount to several hundred dollars
| today.
| timthorn wrote:
| It was expensive, but Dwedit's point is correct. The main
| competitor was the BBC Micro, the cheapest version of which
| cost PS235 at launch, compared to PS125 for the 16k Spectrum.
| Compared to the machines available from the big US names,
| these weren't as capable but were so much more accessible.
| nivenkos wrote:
| It's about the same price as a reasonable laptop (e.g.
| Vivobook is now) or a games console.
|
| And it had to be, because the UK was much, much poorer in
| terms of average disposable income than the US at the time
| (and still is really).
| billywhizz wrote:
| one of the reasons it was cheap was they got faulty 64k ram
| chips at a knock down price - hence the 48k. this film about
| sinclair is well worth a watch.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXBxV6-zamM
| sharken wrote:
| For me the ZX Spectrum is defined by the competition with
| Commodore 64.
|
| When faced with the difficult decision between Spectrum or C64, i
| turned to my older cousin for advice.
|
| He recommended the Spectrum so that was chosen. However in
| hindsight the quirky keyboard, colour clash and less impressive
| sounds made the C64 look like the superior choice.
|
| Colour clash can be seen in this link:
| https://www.nomadsreviews.co.uk/post/the-history-of-video-ga...
|
| Still, the Spectrum had some awesome games back then, such as
| Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy.
| TMWNN wrote:
| >He recommended the Spectrum so that was chosen. However in
| hindsight the quirky keyboard, colour clash and less impressive
| sounds made the C64 look like the superior choice.
|
| 64 was and is clearly the better choice over Spectrum--superior
| in every single way other than perhaps the BASIC--but the
| relatively small price difference even then (and even more 40
| years later) was enough to cause many Britons to choose the
| latter. That said, there is a reason why 64 dominated the
| wealthier US, Canada, Germany, and Australia.
| shever73 wrote:
| Very fond memories of the Speccy. We got ours for Christmas 1982
| with the Horizons demo cassette and Hungry Horace. I learned
| BASIC and then Z80 machine language (using Terri Baker's
| "Mastering Machine Code on Your ZX Spectrum") and plugged out a
| couple of games. I loved programming then and still do now.
|
| The loading sounds and graphics still make me feel very
| nostalgic...and I don't care what anyone else says - chuntey is
| real!
| donbrae wrote:
| Loved my ZX Spectrums (+2A/B then +3). Used them to make games
| and other software, which I sold via mail order and then through
| a public domain library called Prism PD. I also made a monthly
| wrestling fanzine on it; and it was my introduction to making
| music on computers (courtesy of the `play` command, which allowed
| for three channels of polyphony, if I remember correctly).
|
| Can't wait to receive my Next in 2023.
|
| Cheers to Clive and the team (and also to Alan Sugar for keeping
| it going into the 1990s).
| mattl wrote:
| Was Prism PD your own thing?
| donbrae wrote:
| No; it was run by a guy called Martyn Sherwood. I found a
| page about it online[0], which I see includes a reference to
| my 'company', Micro Spec Software!
|
| [0] https://rk.nvg.ntnu.no/sinclair/jmg7/groups/prismpd.html
| DrBazza wrote:
| POKE 35899,0
|
| From memory, 40 years later...
| zwischenzug wrote:
| Jet Set Willy?
| DrBazza wrote:
| Yes. One of the highlights of being a speccy owner. Other
| than the attic bug. Taught me all about machine code and
| memory as an enthusiastic 10 yr old.
| otikik wrote:
| I got started with the Spanish 48k+ version. It defined my life
| path. Thanks you, Sir Sinclair.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| I'd almost forgotten the excitement I felt running to the shop to
| buy a "computer magazine". Typing in new games line by line and
| then hitting "run". Saturday morning well spent.
|
| Looking back now the publishing industry around home computers
| was a whole world in itself. And in general, the nerdy publishing
| world was something to behold. Instead of websites we had weekly
| paper digests like "Practical Electronics", "Wireless World",
| "Electronic Music Maker".
|
| We also had an electronic component shop in every town, even
| before Tandy (Radio Shack) and Maplins most places a "radio
| repairs store". Going to the shop to buy some BC108s, a 555
| timer, and a list of caps and resistors was where pocket money
| went.
|
| I think there is something else going on for the retro-wave
| generation. who cannot possibly be _nostalgic_ , since they
| didn't live through that. Instead the relative simplicity and
| accessibility of old tech has an appeal. When a 12 year old can
| understand the _entire system_ (yes full schematics), program it
| and build peripherals with components from the high-street, it
| felt like an entirely different relationship with technology.
| alfonsodev wrote:
| In Spain we had MicroHobby[1], it was coming with a cassette
| tape, sometimes two.
|
| [1] https://microhobby.speccy.cz/mhforever/index.htm
| detritus wrote:
| I fondly remember the almost bazaar-like experience of
| perusing the tape racks in local Spanish supermarkets, trying
| to work out which (if any) of the offerings were worth my
| couple of hundred peseta investment. Sometimes lucky with a
| great game, othertimes.. not so much :)
| kingcharles wrote:
| I don't know how it is now, but I always looked forward to
| my holidays in Spain as a kid in the 80s because of Spain's
| lax copyright laws. Every shop seemed to have racks of
| pirated 8-bit video games for sale and I would always go
| home with a few.
|
| This continued even after consoles were popular, with
| pirated multi-game carts freely available on the high
| street.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Usually all the Spanish stuff also landed on our side of the
| border as well.
|
| I have to thank Spanish game and programming magazines, as
| well as some famous adventure games like La Abadia del
| Crimen, for being bilingual in mother languages instead of
| doing the usual Portunhol.
| Schiphol wrote:
| I remember the Alice in Wonderland text adventure they
| shipped in that cassette once and the sense of, uh, wonder
| and adventure as I progressed through the game <3
| VariableStar wrote:
| ahh me too ... between ages 10-14 in the 80s I would spend my
| way back from school looking for magazines with schematics,
| then on saturday mornings I will bike to the local component
| shop and spend my money there, back home the rest of saturday
| and sunday went by soldering boards, building amplifiers,
| alarms, thermometers, regulated powersupply units, radio
| transmiters, random LED arrangements and what not ... ah, and
| also exploding capacitors
| [deleted]
| TMWNN wrote:
| >Looking back now the publishing industry around home computers
| was a whole world in itself.
|
| _PC Magazine_ 's December 1983 issue was almost 800 pages (<ht
| tps://books.google.com/books?id=05wAGZQlo9QC&pg=PP1#v=onep...>)
| ; almost certainly the thickest in the history of magazine
| publishing. ( _PC_ soon began publishing every two weeks.)
|
| _BYTE_ peaked in, I believe, November 1983 (
| <https://archive.org/details/sim_byte_1983-11_8_11>, with a
| comparably thick issue. _80 Micro_ peaked in November 1982 (
| <https://archive.org/details/sim_80-micro_1982-11_34>, at more
| than 500 pages; by 1983, with the IBM PC clearly becoming the
| standard, serving the TRS-80 market was less lucrative.
| timthorn wrote:
| Practical Electronics is still going strong (monthly, though)
| UncleSlacky wrote:
| > the publishing industry around home computers was a whole
| world in itself.
|
| It's how Future Publishing started, their first magazine was
| Amstrad Action:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_plc
| mattl wrote:
| Which in turn gave us the TED talks.
|
| Also LibreOffice can trace its lineage back to StarWriter on
| the CPC.
| parenthesis wrote:
| (c) 1982 Sinclair Research Ltd
|
| LOAD -- argh, symbol shift doesn't work any more!
| meheleventyone wrote:
| I still have my ZX Spectrum, it's the very first computer I ever
| programmed on and the first I made games for. It basically
| defined my entire life path.
| ggambetta wrote:
| Came here to post exactly this :D I also have the collection of
| Microhobby magazines I copied game listings for, and learned
| programming by osmosis at a very young age :)
| luismedel wrote:
| I don't consider myself a "collector" but I have in my shelf
| a good pile of Microhobby and Micromania issues from the
| golden age too. Also I have a few "Programacion Actual"
| issues, but from a later stage (end of 90s IIRC)
| O_H_E wrote:
| > Learned programming by osmosis
|
| I'm too young for what you guys are talking about, but I've
| always have trouble articulating how I got [sucked] into
| computing. It feels like I did a similar thing with HN and
| the internet in general.
|
| I think osmosis is one of my new favorite ways to put it
| hehe.
| wiz21c wrote:
| As an old guy, I'd say computers where a pretty unknown
| thing when we got them... That was new and niche when it
| all started. So we had the feeling of entering something
| totally new. But we were alone, on different computers, so
| a lot of islands...
|
| I guess with internet, it's more like joining something
| that's rolling on but as big as an ocean..
|
| Times ! they're changing !
| softwarebouwer wrote:
| Same here, still have mine too and sometimes play a bit with it
| for old times' sake. I still remember how mesmerised I was when
| an uncle let me play with his Spectrum, and how happy I was
| when I got my own for my 10th birthday and my dad made me work
| through the basic manual.
| chx wrote:
| Most definitely mine too.
| alok-g wrote:
| Same here. :-)
|
| It still turns on, however, approx. 90% of the keys don't
| function anymore.
| qiqitori wrote:
| I've only seen the Sinclair ZX81. If the ribbon cable is
| similar (and it sure looks similar from a cursory image
| search) you should be able to fix the keyboard with just two
| electronics-related items, a multimeter with continuity mode
| and electrically conductive tape.
|
| On the ZX81, the metal on the ribbon cable is exposed on one
| side. Which means you can put one multimeter lead somewhere
| close to the bottom of each trace, and the other lead you
| trace along the exposed wire. If your multimeter stops
| showing continuity, you know you have a break there and if
| you look really hard you should be able to see it.
|
| If you have a lot of breaks close to the connector (quite
| likely), take a pair of scissors and cut off the part with
| the break and plug the remainder of the ribbon cable back in.
| Otherwise, cut the electrically conductive tape into a thin
| slice and tape that over the affected spot. (Soldering won't
| work, you'll just melt the ribbon cable).
| linker3000 wrote:
| That's very common. The keyboard membrane material loses its
| flexibility over time and cracks, breaking continuity of the
| embedded conductive traces.
|
| Replacements are sold on ebay and online retro stores. I've
| had to replace the membranes on both my acquired Speccys.
| andrewshadura wrote:
| That's why the ZX Spectrum clone I had used keys with
| magnets and reed switches. Super smooth, quiet,
| indestructible.
| alok-g wrote:
| Great! I did not know that replacements are available for
| ZX Spectrum. Mine is ZX spectrum+, hopefully would be able
| to find for that too.
| UncleSlacky wrote:
| Looks like they have those here:
|
| https://retroradionics.co.uk/#!/Zx-
| Spectrum-48k-&-128k-toast...
| gizajob wrote:
| Is Matthew Smith your hero?
| shever73 wrote:
| Exactly the same. I've added to my collection over the years
| and am eagerly awaiting my ZX Spectrum Next Issue 2
| stevekemp wrote:
| Same here:
|
| https://blog.steve.fi/how_i_started_programming.html
|
| I don't have a physical machine any more, but I have a framed
| print of the keyboard hanging on the wall behind me, and I've
| got a single-board Z80-based system running CP/M 2.x on the
| shelf to my side.
|
| Even now I still go back and play "Chaos" under emulation every
| month or two. I'm looking forward to introducing our child,
| currently five, to some of the classic games in the future.
| He's young enough that they'll be impressive as he's seen
| nothing more modern. I hope.
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(page generated 2022-04-23 23:00 UTC)