Sinclair's ZX Spectrum turns 30 | Hacker News Reader

Sinclair's ZX Spectrum turns 30

bbc.co.uk

93 pointskingofspain53 comments

Good ol' rubberkeys, the computer I grew up with.

Today's UK Google doodle is a tribute to the ZX Spectrum and to St. George's Day. I assume this isn't the case outside the UK, as both events are mainly of interest to the UK.

American histories of computing or video games often show the 80s as a void between the release of the Apple II in '77 and the Mac Classic ('90) or the US popularisation of the NES (I'm guessing not until the Super Mario Bros / Duck Hunt bundle in '88, at least - in Europe I didn't see one until 1990).

But in Europe, where nobody I knew could have afforded an Apple, the 80s were the decade of the home computer for many of us. The Apple II sold for £2400 in the UK, but the ZX Spectrum, Commodore C64 or Acorn Electron sold for less than a tenth of that price, and by 1985 most of my schoolfriends had one.

Budget games were sold (on cassette!) in corner shops. Games magazines included code listings. Libraries stocked Usborne's series of BASIC listings books for kids. And many of us got our first taste of coding at the BASIC prompt of an 80s home micro...

Let's not forget the Amstrads. My first home computer was an Amstrad 464 with a tape recorder. Oh those were the days.

For a fantastic and entertaining look at the story, check out "Micro men"

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1459467/

I just want to add my recommendation for this little film. Its not just technically accurate (well for a film!!!), but really entertaining. A brilliant cast too. Its a good watch even if the one is not in to the subject matter.

Alexander Armstrong did an amazing job. If not already done so, check out the pirates of silicon valley.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0168122/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIcAyFVK0gE

After playing with one at a uncles house, and not shut up about it, I got one for my 10th birthday and I felt like I was king of the world. My parents first made me work through the manual, which was how I started and fell in love with programming.

Still have the original keyboard (the rest was sold in other case/keyboard), maybe I'll try to use it as a Raspberry Pi case.

> My parents first made me work through the manual, which was how I started and fell in love with programming.

I guess given the complexity of modern PCs it's inevitable, but I feel like it's a great loss that computers no longer come with a book that explains how they work. I mean the ZX Spectrum manual not only documented every Basic keyword, it listed the Z80 ASM instruction set, giving you both the mnemonics and the bytes. Maybe Arduinos etc come with something equivalent (?) but the idea that a "home computer" would include that kind of information has been unthinkable for a long time.

> but I feel like it's a great loss that computers no longer come with a book that explains how they work.

That, and the fact it started with a basic "editor" begging for my input and then doing what I told it to seemed magic at the time.

My brother on the other hand, was only interested in playing games and didn't/doesn't care for programming.

Indeed. Also that the Maplin catalogue no longer has full pinouts and mini datasheets alongside the chips they sell.

Brings back good memories.

My dad returned from work one day with a ZX Spectrum 16k for me, I was overjoyed. He worked with a guy who said computers were the future, and that he should splash out (what was a fair amount of money in those days) for one and encourage me to use it.

30 years later and my career is programming, thanks in part to this wonderful machine.

I remember plugging it in and being amazed at the things you could do with it. I avidly bought the various magazines of the day, and typed in the program listings they published, and was amazed when they worked. I do remember the frustration though of loading programs from casette tape, and the number of time they would fail loading after waiting for 15 or 20 minutes.

I still have it in the attic at my parents house, might get it out when I next visit and see if it still works...

It will probably need a new keyboard membrane. Thankfully there are companies making new ones and selling them on eBay. :)

Oh, thanks for that, will plug it in anyway and see what happens!

I guess I can't realistically expect it to work first time considering it is 30 years old. Hopefully I can fix it.

15 minutes? Didn't it take about 5 minutes to fill the RAM from tape on a 48k machine? Edit: It seems that 48k worth of ones (which were twice as long as zeroes) is about 6 and a half minutes.

Maybe it was 5 minutes, but at age 9 everything seems bigger (and take longer!).

The 48k model only had 32k of available ram, of which roughly 8k was screen memory and system variables. The lower 16k was ROM.

Nope, the lowest 16k of address space was ROM all right but on top of that the ZX 48k had a total of 48k RAM (as the model name implies.)

The lower 16k RAM was in fact a bit special in that it was shared with the graphics chip (which read the lowest 8192 bytes of RAM constituting screen memory and interrupted the CPU while doing that) System variables (POKE for the win) sat on top of that. The upper 32k RAM was a bit faster since CPU had it all for itself.

Sorry you're absolutely right. I'm getting mixed up with the use of 64k chips in the 48k model[1], which was a cost cutting exercise allowing sinclair to use potentially faulty 64k RAM in the 48ks.

[1] - http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~jg27paw4/yr07/yr07_33.htm

I cut my teeth so to speak on a 48k rubber keyed ZX Spectrum. For years I didn't have an assembler so I had to use the opcode reference in the back of the manual, which would often lead to interesting if somewhat annoying moments. It taught me the meaning of backups (SAVE your file before hitting RANDOMIZE USR).

A few years later I got a Multiface One and a copy of 007 disassembler and my life changed forever, or rather my infinite lives changed forever.

Eventually the spectrum got old and long in the tooth, I badgered my parents to get me the spiritual successor, the Sam Coupé and got one, but sadly that never took off.

I only had a 16kb one and some of that memory was used for the screen etc. Almost all the game and other program listings that were in magazines were written for the 48kb version. Consequently an early skill I picked up was typing in the programs and simultaneously editing them to take up less space. Back in those days even comments took up memory so they had to go too.

I also had exactly the same experience with hand assembly. The first computer book I ever got and thoroughly enjoyed was the Spectrum ROM Disassembly which was a detailed commented list of the ROM (reverse engineered) showing how it all worked.

Some folks have recreated the book:

http://freestuff.grok.co.uk/rom-dis/

I had one too in India when I was 13. The ZX Spectrum 48K. Loved it to death. Magazines were a bit hard to come by here, but I managed to get my hands on one book, I think it was called "Machine code with ZXSpectrum". I remember a program called HELPA, which you had to first enter by hand, then you could use that to enter machine code. I remember writing my first program using HELPA, a block which would change colors randomly. I still remember being stunned by how much faster machine code was compared to BASIC.

Also cant forget my favorite game at the time - Highway Encounter.

I was there, at the PCW Show at Earls Court, when the Spectrum was launched. Well, it was actually just a brochure that was launched IIRC.

But it was incredible; the 13-year-old me and hundreds of other people all just sitting where they could on the floor around the margins of the exhibition hall, reading about this incredible game-changing computer.

Of course my dad got nagged to death for days afterwards, and eventually an order was placed but, when the end of the school summer holidays came round in September and it had still not arrived (I was up early every morning to meet the postman, just in case) we eventually cancelled the order and bought a Dragon 32 instead. That's a different story...

The ZX Spectrum 48K was my first computer. I loved it to pieces but couldn't understand the manual as my English skills were not good enough at the time ( I was 10 living in Portugal ) so I used it mostly for playing games. It took me another 2 years to start programming on an Atari 800XL. I remember using it with an old B&W valve tv set that kind of improved on the graphics because it was so blurry.

Fond memories.

My first computer was a Timex Sinclair 1000, circa 1983.

It had the add-on memory module (16kB I think). It might have even had a tape drive later on, if memory serves. It plugged into my TV.

I had some book, looked like a comic book. Had some simple programs in them. I typed them out on the god-awful keyboard, but had fun playing them. It was in no way a good computer, but I'm glad my dad bought it for me, as I work in computers now.

Since my dad had built a ZX81 from kit, we were on the Sinclair mailing list. I remember reading the promotional leaflet announcing the Spectrum. I could hardly believe what it could do. This leaflet would have been classic Uncle Clive hyperbole. Yet, the reality of this little machine was even more magical.

Having to find the right key for the BREAK keyword was especially interesting (you couldn't just type out B-R-E-A-K).

I started programming without even reading the manual: having all the keywords laid out there made me think 'just what is POKE anyway?'. Great way to pique interest.

I remember being fascinated by the keywords PEEK and POKE, and fiddling around with POKE statements to try to cheat at games.

Various Spectrum magazines would publish cheats based on POKEing memory with new contents.

Ahh, those were the days!

Once I broke the loading sequence of a game and discovered I could see all of the source right there. It was as simple as BREAK if I remember.

That kicked me off on my favourite learning method: reading someone else's code.

Sorry for the spam, but ZXPlectrum is free today to celebrate! Just cool wee toy. http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/zx-plectrum/id477244691?mt=8

I still use my Oric-1 and Atmos for fun .. got my 2 year old and 4 year old sons hooked up with them, and they're very kid-friendly computers, still to this day. We have a blast with the 8-bit world, quite!

And that's how it all started for me (as in, that's where I typed my first lines of code, good old orange book from Sinclair with code examples like creating hangman).

I am trying to get a sense of how popular its clones were back then.

I owned a TK90X (16kb RAM) - brazilian produced clone. I lived in Argentina back then. Any other clone owners?

Everyone in Russia had a clone, mine was built in Romania IIRC. This was late 80's - early 90's, way after Spectrum became irrelevant in other countries. But nobody in USSR had money for real computers like IBM PC. The rich kids had a Commodore, the rest of us Spectrum clones with tape recorders :))

I still have one in my parents basement.. I should play with that. It still worked last time I tried it!

IME the keyboard membrane would degrade from overuse, and the power socket would degrade from being used to reset the machine, but otherwise I think their simplicity made them pretty robust.

Yes, Sinclair was incredibly bitter that he lost out to Acorn for the BBC Micro, but there was no way that the rubber keyboard would stand up to use in schools day in day out.

I still marvel that anyone did any serious development on it, without also developing RSI too! Surely most professionals used cross-compilers/emulators on real computers ("real" in this context meaning, with mechanical keyboards), but I can find little evidence of that. You could buy proper[1] dev tools (like Hisoft's Devpac) than ran natively on the Speccy.

[1] Of course the Beeb had an assembler built in :-)

> Surely most professionals used cross-compilers on real computers

I've often wondered about that. Writing machine code on an off-the-shelf Spectrum with a tape deck was extremely painful, and I never really got beyond a few funky machine code graphics routines. I'd be really interested to know how many of the people that did were working with the same limitations I was.

I first got a ZX81 and learned to program on that. When I got the Spectrum I started writing assembler on it. The first few games were developed entirely on one Spectrum in my bedroom. In hindsight it probably was difficult, but at the time it was wonderfully exciting and that is the way it was.

I did use Hisoft tools at some point, can't remember from how early. I also wrote a few of my own.

When I later went in-house with a company they used TRS80s with a hardware link. The code was edited and assembled on the TRS80 then downloaded and executed on the Spectrum.

They were fantastic pioneering days to me. I owe a lot to Sir Clive.

I once read an article on "Ultimate Play The Game", masters of the Spectrum from Ashby-de-la-Zouch, and they did indeed cross compile their code from a mainframe I believe.

garymcm, I'm not sure about a mainframe for Ultimate - they were very clever guys though.

I know Imagine (spin off from BugByte) used Unix workstations for development. I can't remember what they were called but when they went bust I went to the auction and drooled over all their kit

Early on there just weren't cross compilers and "real computers", at least not in the British "back bedroom" games scene. I didn't write on the Spectrum, but certainly on the Dragon and the C64 it was a case of write, save, execute, reset, load, write some more.

It was this sort of tedium which provoked at least one of my more able chums to write out his assembly in longhand and then produce pages of handwritten hex to type in instead.

After I made a bit of money I upgraded to two C64s and two floppy disk drives, so I could write on one and test on the other. That would have been about 1985.

And then a while after that a miraculous invention called "PDS" came along, which involved a hardware connection from a PC to the target system, and simplified everything greatly. You wrote code on the PC and just squirted it into the target's brain. Oh how I wanted to use that, but by then I was out of programming...

The Oliver Twins have written reams of background about the early days that touches on this: http://www.olivertwins.com/history

Both of those had keyboards you could use comfortably for long periods tho' (as did the VIC-20 and BBC Micro). Certainly they're as good as if not better than many modern keyboards!

Surely most professionals used cross-compilers/emulators

What is this "compiler" you speak of :-)

I have fond memories of writing a version of Tron's light bikes on my 16k Spectrum by hand-assembling Z80A machine code from my notebook[1] using the opcode lookup in the appendix of the manual.

[1] and if it isn't obvious - by notebook I mean one made of paper

Yeah, I was using the modern terminology, any Z80 assembler is going to produce the same machine code, it just needs to be loaded into the Spectrum's memory somehow.

Can you imagine using that keyboard 8 hrs a day as a fully grown adult?

I too recall the power sockets wearing out - something that still afflicts many gadgets these days.

The microdrive connectors were also a little flaky at times.

I had a rubber keyboard lose some if the print on it so you couldn't read all the functions but it would still work. I'm sure I've still got a spare one somewhere, new and unused.

Shame I didn't get to experience any of this, my first computer ran Windows 95. My granddad does have an Amstrad in his back room.

i use to have 16kb one and then commodore64 came that changed the world for me :-)

How the spectrum's cousin is in your pocket today: (shortened version, of course)

The spectrum was produced by Sinclair. Sinclair was a partnership of the eccentric Sir. Clive Sinclair and Chris Curry. During a bit of financial trouble Clive Sinclair and Curry split. They were both working on reducing a computer to the simplest thing possible so everyone could afford one. Eventually Curry's company became Acorn and got the BBC home computer contract. Acorn flourished and eventually migrated to a RISC architecture. When Acorn was split up, Apple and others invested in them to produce ARM and the ARM architecture. This ARM architecture lives on in every iPhone, iPad and probably a majority of android devices. ARM stands for "Acorn Risc Machine"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Computers

Quick qualification, by the time it was spun off and Apple invested in them, ARM actually stood for Advanced RISC Machine.

> every iPhone, iPad and probably a majority of android devices

That's a mild understatement. ARM practically owns the entirety of the mobile device market. Every major mobile OS is near-exclusive ARM based (Android being a very recent exception, and Intel handsets haven't shipped yet) Outside of China (where MIPS seems to have a bit of marketshare); you'd be hard-pressed to open up a reasonably smart non-PC device and /not/ find an ARM chip.

Some lower end routers/modems may still be MIPS and some set top boxes/media players are as well.

Slight fact check here:

Apple had nothing to do with ARM until it was well established.

It was designed and built independently and was on the market for years first as a coprocessor add-on for the BBC and as a standalone workstation (Archimedes).

I have my original Archimedes (310) in my loft. It's still the most productive and powerful machine I ever owned.

My first purchased computer was a ZX81. My second was a US variant of the ZX Spectrum called the Timex Sinclair TS-2068. Yep, back then the home computer market seemed so wide open, even watch companies were making them!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Sinclair_2068

This was a great machine- it had a cartridge port, and was well appointed in every way the ZX81 was lacking.

This was also the machine where I learned that the ecosystem around a computer was at least as important as the specs. The TS-2068 excelled in all of the specs, but unlike the UK, there wasn't much of a community. My dreams of shelves full of game cartridges for this machine never came to pass- in fact I don't think we ever got a cartridge for it.

That's ok, I was writing my own software.

Some of you may remember the noise that modems used to make when negotiating a connection (it is kinda surprising that even that sounds ancient now) ... but these machines used a tape deck, and would record their programs out on audio tape. I remember entering programs from books and magazines line by line-- there were books like "100 games for the ZX Spectrum" and stuff like that. Even a special magazine printing format that came with a hardware accessory to let you read in the code in the magazine to avoid having to type it all out.

One of the great things about these machines was that millions of kids were exposed to programming. At that time, "computer literacy" meant programming, and it was obvious that you'd continue to need to program, because you'd always want your own variations of things, or at least to be able to script stuff.

I think its a real tragedy that schools have not taught kids this level of literacy. At my high school in the 1980s, I learned Pascal and LISP and would have learned BASIC if I hadn't already known it-- three languages coming out of high school. Every graduate of that school in my day left knowing at least the basics of pascal programming.

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