Who would have thought......

[Lankan]

......that we would ever see this again - the Sinclair ZX Spectrum is back!

Of course the original device did not have the more modern technology such as Bluetooth, ability to download and run apps etc, but it certainly brings back memories - my first 'computer' was the ZX81 (Sinclair's first creation), if one could call such a device a computer by today's standards!

Anybody else had one?

 

[Jamesv6]

I recall having a ZX 81 for a while. The moved to the Commodors and Acorns, Amiga etc.

Wrote my first ever stock control program on one.

 

[Kett]

Yep, I did - 48k for her pleasure.

Was very frustrating waiting to load games, but many hours of fun too. Hungry Horace, Pimania, Manic Miner, The Hobbit, Jet Pac. I also remember typing out loads of code from 'popular computing weekly' for free (crap) games - it was a type of masochism on a ZX Spectrum keyboard!

I had a BBC Model B 32k soon after - and preferred the games on this somehow. I think there was a closer likeness to early arcade games and Elite was amazing. There's a version of Elite out on Xbox One - not that I'd have the time to play these days...

 

[Ali]

Showing your age boys!

 

[rustedandrotten]

Though cutting edge in their time, they were all crap!! :ihatpcs: :ihatpcs:

 

[ravydavy]

Amstrad cpc464 for me.

 

[Lankan]

Though cutting edge in their time, they were all crap!! :ihatpcs: :ihatpcs:

Not sure they were cutting edge even back then, but then again when the ZX81 came out there was nothing else that was suitable for 'home use'. A 30-line BASIC program filled ZX81's 1KB memory!

 

[rustedandrotten]

Though cutting edge in their time, they were all crap!! :ihatpcs: :ihatpcs:

Not sure they were cutting edge even back then, but then again when the ZX81 came out there was nothing else that was suitable for 'home use'. A 30-line BASIC program filled ZX81's 1KB memory!

Remember using Dan Airs 146 pilot traing simulator, based on a Commodore, used to get its knickers in a twist regularly so you would nip off for a cup of tea whilst it settled itself out, regular crashes into LAX :ihatpcs: :rofl:

 

[Lankan]

Though cutting edge in their time, they were all crap!! :ihatpcs: :ihatpcs:

Not sure they were cutting edge even back then, but then again when the ZX81 came out there was nothing else that was suitable for 'home use'. A 30-line BASIC program filled ZX81's 1KB memory!

Remember using Dan Airs 146 pilot traing simulator, based on a Commodore, used to get its knickers in a twist regularly so you would nip off for a cup of tea whilst it settled itself out, regular crashes into LAX :ihatpcs: :rofl:

Not surprised at all, and that would be the Commodore Pet, which had a 'massive' 64KB of memory. :rofl:

Having said that the Commodore Pet was used by small businesses to run their basic operations. Even business systems in the 80's (e.g. Wang VS) were so slow that 'set a program to compile and go make a cup of tea' was common practice.

 

[WONGY]

I was unlucky eg my parents bought me a commodore plus 4 - remember those? None of my friends had one and you couldn't use the 64 games so pretty useless

 

[DFB]

Ha, I remember the '81. It used to use punctuation signs as graphics.

The speccy was a great bit of kit, playing games on that keyboard gave the best cramps.

I then moved onto the Acorn Electron and spent lots of life playing Elite.
I downloaded the trial version of it on the Xbox1 the other day for a nostalgia fest.

 

[® Andy]

I too started with a 48K Spectrum . We ordered it early on but then there was a big backlog and so the day it finally arrived was almost a surprise. I still remember that day well! I never really looked back from there ... hours of tinkering of it, even to the point of Z80 assembly language and early disk drive interfaces.

After a few years I did move on to a BBC Micro though, since it aligned better with what my school had. Again spent way too much time on it, messing around in 6502 assembly and adding a second processor.

My last bit of British era computing was an Acorn Archimedes.

 

[Eastlmark]

was I the only loser who bought an Oric then?

 

[Kett]

was I the only loser who bought an Oric then?

My mate had a Dragon 32.
He also had a Phillips V2000 video player. Total loser!

 

[Lankan]

I too started with a 48K Spectrum . We ordered it early on but then there was a big backlog and so the day it finally arrived was almost a surprise. I still remember that day well! I never really looked back from there ... hours of tinkering of it, even to the point of Z80 assembly language and early disk drive interfaces.

After a few years I did move on to a BBC Micro though, since it aligned better with what my school had. Again spent way too much time on it, messing around in 6502 assembly and adding a second processor.

My last bit of British era computing was an Acorn Archimedes.

Ah, yes, 6502 assembly language kept me busy when I moved on to a BBC Master (with its 'huge' 128KB RAM ). I remember spending hours trying to perfect a screen dump utility that would dump a pixel-perfect dump of whatever that was displayed on the monitor on to a dot-matrix printer! No colour printers or the luxury of having Print Screen (Prt Scr) button at your disposable! It certainly was fun at the time.........

 

[ian hosk]

I have my brothers commodore 64 still in its original box in store. He had ZX-81, Vic 20, the 64 and the BBC B over the years, he is now Global Director for a company making games for Apple in San Francisco, so they can't have done him any harm!