Who is in debt to this machine?

[BeyondCloister]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6572711.stm

25 years have now past since the ZX Spectrum came out.

How many of us here owe our love of computing and writing games to this wonderful piece of technology?

[Zwilnik]

It did inspire the UK to catch up with the US a bit at least (The Apple ][ had been big in schools and homes for a few years by 1982) and in doing so kicked off a trend for bedroom coder based software companies.

Combined with the BBC Micro it also held the UK back in a strange time bubble of 1st gen home computers that while having the positive benefit of letting the small games companies settle and develop businesses based on fairly stable platforms also helped developed the UK's now ingrained belief that computers have to be clunky, unreliable things that should have bad UIs.

:)

(btw, the BBC plug for the spectrum is more than likely because of the later Amstrad links and the boss of Amstrad being the chap in the current BBC series of the Aprentice. The earlier Sinclair ZX81 actually kicked off the UK's serious home computing fad and was more revolutionary for getting basic computing power in a very low budget package ).

[BeyondCloister]

Combined with the BBC Micro it also held the UK back in a strange time bubble of 1st gen home computers that while having the positive benefit of letting the small games companies settle and develop businesses based on fairly stable platforms also helped developed the UK's now ingrained belief that computers have to be clunky, unreliable things that should have bad UIs.


Excuse me, but Microsoft is not a UK company ;)


(btw, the BBC plug for the spectrum is more than likely because of the later Amstrad links and the boss of Amstrad being the chap in the current BBC series of the Aprentice. The earlier Sinclair ZX81 actually kicked off the UK's serious home computing fad and was more revolutionary for getting basic computing power in a very low budget package ).

Actually it is more likely so they can claim they are not Apple biased by pointing to this positive article about another make of computer :) Also it is now 25 years old.

I think the big thing about ZX Spectrum was that it is was affordable.

[AnotherJake]

How incredibly interesting that this thread came up right now! I kid you not when I say I just spent this morning learning more about one of the old computers I had: the Timex Sinclair 1000, which I understand was essentially a re-branded ZX81 for the US. I've heard it was the first `Trans-Atlantic' computer. My main (and first) computer was actually a TRS-80 Color Computer 1 (the CoCo, as it was known), but my aunt won a TS1000 plus the 16k memory pack in a contest, so naturally I inherited it shortly after she didn't know what to do with it ;)

I have good memories of messing around with it for many many hours, but it was really no competition for the much more powerful CoCo -- except for the price. The TS1000 could be had brand new for less that $100 USD at the time, compared to like $400 for the CoCo. Because of that, they sold insane amounts of them here in the US, and undoubtedly had an original influence on many of the programmers out there today. The TS1000 was the only computer of the day that didn't use some form of Microsoft BASIC for its built-in interpreter. MS was making BASIC for every processor they could get their hands on at the time. Sinclair BASIC was one of the rare exceptions to be found here in the US. It had only slight differences from the dialect of MS BASIC of the day, in my recollection.

There were a few crappy things I remember about the TS1000: The keyboard was itty-bitty, like six inches wide! I remember a lot of people complaining about how it operated with shift combinations for everything including the keywords, but I liked that because I didn't know how to type back then and it saved me some trouble. If you didn't have the 16k memory pack expansion for $50 extra you were stuck with 2k of RAM, which was small even at the time. I also remember that the cassette system for data storage wasn't anywhere near as reliable as the CoCo's was.

[Zwilnik]

Well, the Apple ][ was the first transatlantic PC (especially once the clones kicked in ;) ) but it didn't make it big in the UK as it was pricey and we were all poor at the time. It also had a non Microsoft BASIC option (Integer BASIC, as written by Woz), but AppleSoft BASIC was usually the standard (and slower ;) ) option in past the first revision or so.

The ZX81 had just 1k of RAM without the 16k pack, which wobbled notoriously, often zapping your carefully typed in game just before you saved it. There were a lot of interesting shortcuts to save on memory though. For instance, the screen was mapped as 25 strings. So having something only on the left side of the screen used less memory than if there was something on the right hand side of the screen :)

One of the biggest annoyances of Sinclair BASIC was that it didn't use ASCII for its character set (another memory saver I suspect), which meant that if you were writing cross platform type in listings for magazines etc. you had to do quite a bit of work for the ZX81/Spectrum changes. (I've got one of those Apple ][/CBM/Sinclair etc. "Battle Games" books sat around somewhere. I should scan it in :) )

[kamelito]

Hi
I still have my Spectrum+.
I remember back in the day the first time I saw KnightLore, I was searching which computer was able to do that, it was for me like a cartoon.
I was hesitating at that time between the Oric and the Spectrum, The Oric 1 got a price (Videor) and I chooose it, but KnightLore and all Ultimate play the game games force me to convice my mother to buy me one.
I still have them plus a C64. (that's for the 8bits)

It was the best days of computing, the 16bits era was good too but not as good, nostalgia I suppose...

Kamel

[AnotherJake]

It was the best days of computing, the 16bits era was good too but not as good, nostalgia I suppose...
Yeah, there was something to be said for a computer you could turn on and it automatically expected that you wanted to program on it -- no compilers, just simple, line-numbered BASIC. The next computer I got after the CoCo was the Mac Classic. I was totally confused as to where to start programming with it. I couldn't even find BASIC on it! Of course, there *was* no built-in BASIC... Which led to learning C, which leads to here, but that's a whole `nuther story.

Well, the Apple ][ was the first transatlantic PC (especially once the clones kicked in ) but it didn't make it big in the UK as it was pricey and we were all poor at the time.
Most of us couldn't afford one either. I was in elementary at the time, but our high school had a couple dozen Apple ][s. After I got to see the computer lab one time I jumped on my parents' bed every Saturday morning begging for one, but they got me the CoCo for christmas instead. I didn't mind that at all actually because it turned out to be a great computer. I found out later why I didn't get the Apple... That computer lab must've cost a fortune!

One of the biggest annoyances of Sinclair BASIC was that it didn't use ASCII for its character set...
Oh yeah, that's right. I had totally forgotten about that. It took me a long time to figure out what ASCII was in the first place back then. Pfft... Internet? We didn't need no stinkin' internet!

[Zwilnik]

(I've got one of those Apple ][/CBM/Sinclair etc. "Battle Games" books sat around somewhere. I should scan it in :) )

I've just emailed Usborne books to see if they'd like to put some of their old type in books on the net as PDFs for historical purposes.

[AnotherJake]

I've just emailed Usborne books to see if they'd like to put some of their old type in books on the net as PDFs for historical purposes.
That'd be really great if they did. Sadly, it seems like a lot of that old stuff just up and disappeared like a fart in the wind. The monetary value is completely gone, but it's not like there isn't at least a few of us interested in looking at it one more time for the fun of it. :)

[BeyondCloister]

I've also got one of those books - bought with Christmas present book tokens. I can remember buying it as if it were yesterday!

There was some kind ships hunting each other across a grid game I seem to remember. I too will dig my copy out.