World of Spectrum 404 Page
worldofspectrum.org
worldofspectrum.org
Spectrum in this context refers to the Sinclair ZX Spectrum computer[1].
A contemporary of the Apple 2, it was a LOT cheaper, used a TV as a monitor and a cassette recorder [2] for storage.
It was especially popular in the UK, and was the "first computer" for a sizeable chunk of a generation. (I still have 2 in my collection :)
The page mimics the boot-up sequence.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX_Spectrum
[2] For the youngsters among us, a cassette recorder is a device for reading and writing cassettes. Cassettes? They're removable magnetic storage, most commonly used to store audio (music). They had a running time of between 30 and 45 minutes per side (the cassettes could be removed, inverted and played to get the second side.)
Think ipod with no track selection, and the ability to store 12 songs. High tech baby.
Some early home computers used cassettes as storage instead of floppy disk. It made the computer cheaper dinge everyone had a cassette player. But it you a LONG time to load and save. Think like 10 minutes or more to load.
There was no fundamental limit to how many minutes of audio could be put on a tape, but longer tapes were necessarily thinner and more fragile. Commercially-produced read-only tapes would be however long was needed for their content.
Yes, CD players existed in the 90s. But why would you bother with one, when all your music is on tape? Even if you have one, your car is probably tape-only, and those audio-jack-to-tape converters were finicky, so you want to get music on tape.
If your tape player was fancy, it would be able to automatically start playing the back side. But this sometimes caused problems if you stopped it in the middle of the back side then wanted to start it again.
It was really annoying when you listened to an audiobook and somebody had left the tape in the middle. At least this was easier than VHS since playing the back side of the tape would take care of most of the "be kind, rewind".
If you wanted to listen to same song over and over and over again, you could record it on side A of a cassette, disassemble the cassette to remove the excess tape, reassemble it, and then record the same song in side B.
(Assuming your cassette player had auto reverse)
Heck, CD players were released in 1982! I got my first in 1986, when they began to get cheaper.
>But why would you bother with one, when all your music is on tape?
Because the audio quality was just that much better. It was like saying in the late 1990s/early 2000s "why get a DVD player when all your movies were on VHS tape?"
Eventually most people either migrated to the Amiga or PC, other 16 bit systems were also hardly adopted.
I’m particularly impressed that they even included the jailbars.
Updates to the browsers have broken the audio of it.
WILL SOMEONE PLEASE think of the children, and fix the audio for us please?