Celebrating 40 years of ZX Spectrum(github.blog)
github.blog
Celebrating 40 years of ZX Spectrum
https://github.blog/2022-04-23-zx-spectrum-40-year-anniversary/
75 comments
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.
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.
>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.
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.
The prices weren't close in NZ, 11yr me paid NZ$525 for my spectrum, and C64s were well over NZ$800 about the same time - that was an unimaginable extra year or more of delivering newspapers on top of the two I'd already spent. I think the gap closed a lot later on.
Did Spectrum have much market share in New Zealand? I don't believe it did in Australia. (Same with BBC Micro; its power supply fails in Australian temperatures.)
I think it was pretty popular (totally guessing), probably 2nd place behind the C64 in terms of those home/game oriented 8bit machines. There were about the same amount of spectrum vs C64 games in the shops.
The weird thing was that nobody I knew had the same computer - in my circle of friends and family, there was a ZX81, my Spectrum, a Vic20, a C64, an Apple II, a TRS-80, a BBC Micro, and a friends family even had a Dick Smith computer (after some searching it might've been a VZ-300). Only the ZX81 and the Spectrum got any programming done on them though :(
The weird thing was that nobody I knew had the same computer - in my circle of friends and family, there was a ZX81, my Spectrum, a Vic20, a C64, an Apple II, a TRS-80, a BBC Micro, and a friends family even had a Dick Smith computer (after some searching it might've been a VZ-300). Only the ZX81 and the Spectrum got any programming done on them though :(
Easily the best ZX Spectrum emulator is fuse, which is not on GitHub as far as I know.
http://fuse-emulator.sourceforge.net/
http://fuse-emulator.sourceforge.net/
We used to call it “Sinclair” rather than “Spectrum”.
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 £175.
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
Not necessarily: EACA VideoGenie EG 3003 for approximately $1400 (in Germany).
Hardware was very expensive back then. Even the ZX Spectrum's "rock bottom" price would amount to several hundred dollars today.
It was expensive, but Dwedit's point is correct. The main competitor was the BBC Micro, the cheapest version of which cost £235 at launch, compared to £125 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.
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).
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).
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).
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).
Was Prism PD your own thing?
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
[0] https://rk.nvg.ntnu.no/sinclair/jmg7/groups/prismpd.html
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.
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.
>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 (<https://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.
PC Magazine's December 1983 issue was almost 800 pages (<https://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.
Practical Electronics is still going strong (monthly, though)
In Spain we had MicroHobby[1], it was coming with a cassette tape, sometimes two.
[1] https://microhobby.speccy.cz/mhforever/index.htm
[1] https://microhobby.speccy.cz/mhforever/index.htm
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 Abadía del Crimen, for being bilingual in mother languages instead of doing the usual Portunhol.
I have to thank Spanish game and programming magazines, as well as some famous adventure games like La Abadía del Crimen, for being bilingual in mother languages instead of doing the usual Portunhol.
La Abadia del Crimen had a remake 15-20 years ago.
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 :)
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.
This continued even after consoles were popular, with pirated multi-game carts freely available on the high street.
You had pirate GB and NES carts on video renting stores...
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
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]
> 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
It's how Future Publishing started, their first magazine was Amstrad Action:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_plc
Which in turn gave us the TED talks.
Also LibreOffice can trace its lineage back to StarWriter on the CPC.
Also LibreOffice can trace its lineage back to StarWriter on the CPC.
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.
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.
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.
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 :)
> 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.
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.
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 !
I guess with internet, it's more like joining something that's rolling on but as big as an ocean..
Times ! they're changing !
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 "Programación Actual" issues, but from a later stage (end of 90s IIRC)
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.
Exactly the same. I’ve added to my collection over the years and am eagerly awaiting my ZX Spectrum Next Issue 2
Same here. :-)
It still turns on, however, approx. 90% of the keys don't function anymore.
It still turns on, however, approx. 90% of the keys don't function anymore.
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).
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).
Looks like you can order entire replacement keyboard membranes for a reasonable sum at [1].
[1]: https://www.sintech-shop.de/en/48k-keyboard-membrane/a-3025
[1]: https://www.sintech-shop.de/en/48k-keyboard-membrane/a-3025
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.
Replacements are sold on ebay and online retro stores. I've had to replace the membranes on both my acquired Speccys.
That's why the ZX Spectrum clone I had used keys with magnets and reed switches. Super smooth, quiet, indestructible.
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.
Looks like they have those here:
https://retroradionics.co.uk/#!/Zx-Spectrum-48k-&-128k-toast...
https://retroradionics.co.uk/#!/Zx-Spectrum-48k-&-128k-toast...
Is Matthew Smith your hero?
Most definitely mine too.
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
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
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.
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.
I got started with the Spanish 48k+ version. It defined my life path. Thanks you, Sir Sinclair.
Portugal has a museum dedicated to ZX Spectrum: https://loadzx.com/en/
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.
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.
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!
oh yeah!!
" loading sounds with your own mouth " I feel thats a video or it didn't happen moment.
" loading sounds with your own mouth " I feel thats a video or it didn't happen moment.
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...
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...
Just seemed right to share: https://twitter.com/github/status/1517986014114975744 :)
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!
Your site deserves a front page listing of its own - great content.
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!
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!
Bookmarked. This is superb! Thank you :)
POKE 35899,0
From memory, 40 years later...
From memory, 40 years later...
Jet Set Willy?
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.
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.
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.)
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
The loading sounds and graphics still make me feel very nostalgic...and I don't care what anyone else says - chuntey is real!
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.
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.
Tools: PlayZX is awesome.
© 1982 Sinclair Research Ltd
LOAD — argh, symbol shift doesn't work any more!
LOAD — argh, symbol shift doesn't work any more!
Video of a demo loading in Spectrum magazines and massive games shelf into a 3d emulator environment: https://youtu.be/qs3JhZlgS9k
at vintagesimulator.com
at vintagesimulator.com
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.