Page 1 of Sinclair Speccy Turns Thirty

BBC News is celebrating the thirtieth birthday of Clive Sinclair`s groundbreaking ZX Spectrum by interviewing the boffins behind the computer.  Sir Clive himself declined to contribute, but engineer Richard Altwasser and industrial designer Rick Dickinson give some insight into the building of this iconic home computer.

Interestingly Dickinson makes a typically arrogant Designer statement about the comment the keys of the original ZX Spectrum were like "dead flesh" - he says he "loves" that kind of comment but there was no cheaper way of doing the keyboard so tough.

I had a 48K Spectrum.  It had its shortcomings, but it was a great machine - the first genuinely useful computer I ever had as it could output to a printer.  Later on I rehoused it in a proper keyboard which could be bought as a kit.

Although at the time it was expensive, it wasn`t as cripplingly expensive as the competition.  I had no chance of affording the Commodore 64 or the BBC Microcomputer, but I could just afford the Speccy.

For me, the most important aspect of the Speccy was that it got me on to the idea of using a computer as a writing tool.  Up to then computers had all been about learning Basic to write computer games.  With the Speccy you could buy software ready to run, and a very basic text editor proved a real eye-opener for the potential of computers as word-processors (at the time I was using a bog-standard typewriter and wasting reams of paper typing and retyping.)  Suddenly a computer wasn`t an end in itself - it became a tool to do other things and I was on the slippery slope of tech addiction.

ZX81 - ZX Spectrum - Sinclair QL - Atari ST and finally my first PC in 1995.

J Mark Oates

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Hear All, See All, Say Nowt.
Eat All, Sup All, Pay Nowt.
And If Tha` Ever Does Owt For Nowt,
Do It For Tha` Sen.

sprockethole.myreviewer.com

This item was edited on Monday, 23rd April 2012, 03:25

I`ve re-edited out a bit I added to the above about a piece of kit I`d almost forgotten.  I`d mis-identified it as the Cambridge Z88, Clive Sinclair`s 1988 successor to the Speccy.  The thing I was remembering was the Amstrad NC100 or Amstrad Notepad.  It was very similar to the Z88 - a portable device with a narrow LCD window across the top.  It offered word processing, a spreadsheet and a few other goodies, and it had an early version of a PCMCIA slot for a battery backed-up solid state storage.  What they didn`t tell you about it was it would crash like a bastard at the drop of a hat - usually when you were right in the middle of typing something and you would inevitably lose everything you`d keyed in (even with regular saving to storage.)

I can`t believe the damn thing was in 1992!

J Mark Oates

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Hear All, See All, Say Nowt.
Eat All, Sup All, Pay Nowt.
And If Tha` Ever Does Owt For Nowt,
Do It For Tha` Sen.

sprockethole.myreviewer.com

Thanks for the link, I`ll enjoy reading that.

If people like a C64 vs Spectrum rant, here was mine from last year:
http://www.myreviewer.com/ZX_Spectrum_vs_Commodore_64_-_My_Computer_is_Better_Than_Yours/a142108

I remember knowing all the crazy combinations to do commands on the Speccy off by heart, it actually made coding in BASIC very quick. One day I`m going to try and find any things I wrote I the loft, I should at least have some assembly I wrote back in the day on the Spectrum +3, if the disk is still readable.

I got a BBC Master a few months ago, cheap off ebay, which was broken, and managed to repair the PSU on it. Dug out my old beeb disk drives and have been looking through what I had on that, though mostly playing Elite.

It`s still amazing how many good games the Speccy has, it takes checking out the library of the beeb to realise how many.


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I always thought the most amazing part of the ZX spectrum was the optional printer, which use a silverised roll of paper, that printed out your `BASIC program` in burned on lettering.

The smell of it burning and the racket it made, was computing in motion.

Considering it was ony 48K memory, it did have some very remarkable games produced, like `Dizzy the Egg`, and it was not like nowadays with instant game solutions and walkthrough off the internet, No, you waited for one of only a few monthly game magazines at the store to give you advice (in my case it was posted to me all rolled up in brown paper packaging, to Oz).

Even then you would get `trolls` giving false advice for fun in these magazines, like if you waited `Dizzy the egg` at the Pier terminal for four hours (real time), a ship would come in and take you to another Island in this platform game. Always remember that to this day, as the ship never came in after four hours, as it was a lie and total fabrication to fool us all

This item was edited on Monday, 23rd April 2012, 11:33

Those were the days. I remember being quite chuffed having a ZX81 even though I couldn`t do a bloody thing with, then nearly pee`d when the 48 can along. Then one Christmas sometime in the 80`s (I think) mum bought me a ZX Spectrum +3 and with excitement levels at an all time high I exploded, no more fecking tapes, no more waiting ages for something that might not load, it couldn`t get better.. 

Does anyone remember what the CAT command did?

Happy memories..

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"So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable."
- Christopher Reeve (1953-2004)

On my 128K toastrack it catalogues the Microdrive. :)


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One of my earliest memories is my Dad upgrading our 16k Speccy to a 48k. I think you basically just bought the upgrade and plugged it in.

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Brian Elliott is a British journalist, covering soccer, MMA, and pro wrestling. He has written for the likes of the Associated Press, the Canadian Press, and Fighting Spirit Magazine, and has also appeared as a guest on Fight Network Radio.[url=

Looks like all the news services are at the Speccy party!

I might fire the old emulator up for a little nostalgia fest later. Jet Pac calls.

===========================
Jitendar Canth

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Never liked the speccy more of a games console than a computer 

Preferred the BBC Micro

Quote:
Jitendar Canth says...
Jet Pac calls.

BEST game ever!
(Regardless of what Mr S comes back with )

I may have to dig out my old speccys now too... and I think our Mr S has some links to online versions of Speccy games.
Quote:
kebabhead says...
more of a games console than a computer Of course, because all consoles in the 80`s came with a flexi keyboard, a wobbly RAM pack and tape loaded games.

No wonder I put my NES away for my speccy cos the games were so much more detailed, better graphics and much easier to play using the keyboard (where`s that rolling eye emoticon when you need it)

I played games on my Speccy (and my ZX81) but I`d find myself more often than not playing around with stuff on BASIC (most of which I`ve now forgotten) and as to the BBC and the Acorn I never liked their input formats.
They may have been more like the industrial units of their day but the Spectrum brought home computing to the masses and IMHO helped get us to where we are today.

If all that were available had been the BBCs, Commodores, Dragons and Atari machines I think we would have been much further back in development.

Jimbo : oÞ

"There`s that word again... is there a problem with the Earth`s gravitational pull in the future?"