Amiga.org
The "Not Quite Amiga but still computer related category" => Alternative Operating Systems => Topic started by: runequester on November 21, 2010, 12:08:26 AM
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So never saw a ZX spectrum in my life. I've read plenty of articles about it, but I wanted to hear from people who owned or used one.
What was cool?
What was peculiar?
What did you do on it?
What do you miss about it ?
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It was my first computer.
It is a great machine because between other things, it is dead easy to program it (I took my first steps at programing with it), it is dead easy to create your own peripheral/expansion hardware with just basic electronic skills, it has to this day a very active community that releases a couple of dozen new games each year. It is also very small compared to ordinary desktop pcs.
I still regret the day I sold my enhanced Spectrum 128 :(
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The Spectrum was my first computer as a young lad, and it was truly an inspiring machine. Loading games was always great fun, and also I found out that you could usually interrupt the execution of the game and delve into the program listing behind it. I had no idea how to program at the time, but I learned a little bit by reading the code, fiddling around with different things, and seeing how they effected program execution. This curiosity is what first got me into computer programming.
I spent ages playing a game called "The Great Escape".
Unfortunately my particular Spectrum also spent a lot of time back and forth the computer shop from which my parents had bought it. It had a really weird intermittent problem and they didn't seem able to solve it. Eventually, they offered an exchange and my birthday was coming up so I asked if I could have it exchanged for a C64 instead, with the extra money required being my birthday present.
Deal done, and now I was a young lad with a C64. I never looked back after that, the C64 was a superior machine. Still, each machine has its own charms and I am still fond of the old Spectrums.
AH
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Well, it was cool when I got it. The original 48K rubber keyed spectrum was the first computer we owned first hand. Prior to that had an upgraded zx81 (rehoused in a 3rd-party proper keyboard unit and 16KB Ram Pack) that was previously my uncle's.
In comparison to the rehoused '81 it was so sleek looking. Quick and dirty BASIC programs seemed to run significantly faster, you could get colours, "high res" (256x192 :lol:) modes and sound (1-bit beeping). It was damn cool.
The manuals that came with it were exceptionally cool. They were proper ring-bound and written with some humour too. They also contained useful appendices that covered the memory map and Z80 instruction set. Having already learnt a bit of Z80 on the ZX81 it wasn't long before I was able to do some freaky things. Despite the 1-bit resolution, I was able to write a small sound record/playback routine that basically read the mic socket state at a much higher rate than usual. It was actually possible to get some recognisable audio out of it, but you couldn't store a lot between the top of the BASIC area and the area where I'd located the routine (for speccy users, it was just below the normal UDG).
The games were just awesome, at least compared to anything on the ZX81 at the time.
As for peculiarities, the way the display area was arranged was just bizarre. You had a single bit plane, starting at address 0x4000, which had a resolution of 256x192, thus occupying exactly 6KB.
Ok, so that's not unusual, anybody that understands how the Amiga graphics system works is totally fine with bit plane graphics. What made it unusual was the way it was layed out. As you accessed successive 32-bit spans, you got scan lines 0, 8, 16, 24, 32, 40, 48 and 56, next you got scan lines 1, 9, 17, 25, 33, 59, 57 and so on, until you got 7, 15, 23, 31, 39, 37, 55 and 63. Then this sequence would repeat for scan lines 64 - 127, then finally once more for scan lines 128-191.
After that came a 768 byte "attribute" buffer that defined a 32x24 character grid on top of this. Each cell had a 3-bit foreground colour (applied to any set bit in the bitplane within that cell), a 3-bit background colour (applied to any clear bit in the bitplane within that cell), a 1-bit "bright" attribute and a 1-bit "flash" attribute.
The 3-bit colour values basically gave colours in order of brightness, so they were 0:black, 1:blue, 2:red, 3:magenta, 4:green, 5:cyan, 6:yellow, 7:white. These colours were only about 70% bright. If the "bright" bit was set, you got a brighter version of the colour which was fully bright. If the "flash" bit was set, the foreground and background colours would invert on a 2Hz interrupt (IIRC).
A side effect of this display layout was that you only got 2 discrete colours for each 8x8 pixel block on screen. This lead to a lot of "colour clash" in games, where sprites would partially change colour when some of their pixels ended up in a neighbouring cell.
As for what I miss? Actually nothing. I still have a fully working 48K ZX Spectrum that I can fire up whenever the mood takes me :D
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This was my first computer and that was 1982. The Commodore was too expensive for me (I bought it last year, never's too late), although we used it at school.
Almost all my fellows had an Spectrum 48k. That was very cool... we were sharing games, just copying with a casette. Knight Lore was an awesome game and I think never went to Commodore.
I remember there's somewhere a great discussion that some tv or radio organized trying to know what was better if the ZX48 or the C64, and the Spectrum seemed to get winner in general (at least about programing I think can be understood). It seemed for example that to make a circle on the C64 has a lot more work than in an Spectrum (with a command for that). Music and graphic/colors were better in the C=
But I will never forget the first time I played One on One on the C64. It was incredible for that time... nothing to do in the Spectrum.
Now I've got an Spectrum emulator which I like to play on the Amiga.
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Speccy's is where it started for me too!
My step dad had a 48k and then a 128k (toast rack) which he let me use :)
Next Christmas they bought me my own +2a when it was new out, came with 007 and light gun and was truely awesome.
My fav games were the Dizzy series and I dabbled with some simple program code from some books we had like the big book of games.
Have a +3 now which I got in about 98' for nostalgia reasons, but still to this day have all my original Speccy Tapes from back in the day and all the original accesories. Sadly the +2a went to the Speccy graveyard in about 94/95
I recently picked up a DivIDE and its great stuff for anyone getting back into the speccy scene :afro:
Steve.
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I recently picked up a DivIDE and its great stuff for anyone getting back into the speccy scene :afro:
Steve.
I was looking at the Divide too, but one thing old gamers will like to remember was that sound when you were loading a game from a casette...
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A rubber keyed ZX Spectrum was my first computer too. I saw a friend of one of my mates playing Jetpac on one and bought it off of him there and then for twenty five quid in about 1982. It was only 16k so paid another twenty five quid for it to be upgraded to 48k :)
What was cool?
Yes, it sure was.
What was peculiar?
No, not at all.
What did you do on it?
I played games on it mostly but I did write my own simple program for my daughter to learn her times tables with. It would display a sum and ask her to enter the answer. It would praise her for getting it correct or ask her to please try again if it was wrong. I also wrote another couple of simple programs that chose the 11 pools numbers and 6 lottery numbers for my Grandad. He also bought a Spectrum of his own to run the programs I had written and to play Fighter Pilot and Chess on. He also copied me and bought an Amiga not long after I did, so that he could use the flight simulator Airbus 320 Volume II and play Battle Chess :)
What do you miss about it ?
Nothing cos I still have a Spectum +3 with floppy drive..hehehe.. But better still my Amiga's emulate one perfectly so no waiting for tapes to load :D
:drink:
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I never had one, but a friend of mine did, and some years ago he did this (http://old.no/8bit/Auf%20wiedersehen%20Monty/) :)
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The good:
Insane catalog of games and some demo scene.
The bad:
Quality of some models.
The ugly:
Chamaleon sprites, if a blue ship pass throught some red asteroids ship becomes red.
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I've never seen a real one unfortunately. Apart from my 1st computer (tandy trs80 coco1), I was a c64 man in my 8bit days as were most people where I grew up. I did have a few amstrad cpc owning friends, but I guess the speccy wasnt overly successful in Australia. As has happened with most popular systems I used to see in multformat magazines I bought as a kid I've developed a bit of an interest in recent years and one day I'll hopefully get ahold of one.
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Another plus point for the spectrum is that it was the first machine I ever tried to write an emulator for, which helped when learning 68K assembler. I didn't get that far, but I did have a mostly-working Z80 emulator by the end of it :)
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all my mates had 48k speccy's. There were loads of games, but the graphics choices were: monochrome (often old tobbaco yellow) or colour clash. Sound and keyboard were awfull.
I had a zx81, so I thought the speccy was ace! Games were pretty fast.
As a working class family in the eighties, thank god for Clive Sinclair!
My brother had a 48k+ with the cool carapace keyboard, later I got a 128k, with AY synth, which was ok.
Once I got a C64 though, I didn't look back.
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What was the price difference between the spectrum and the C64 when it appeared ?
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As a working class family in the eighties, thank god for Clive Sinclair!
+1
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What was the price difference between the spectrum and the C64 when it appeared ?
The Spectrum was half the price of the Vic when announced, predates the C64 in Europe, C responded by dropping the price of the Vic but too late, gained back some traction when the C64 finally arrived but never again became market leader
The great thing about the spectrum was the industrial design and the software catalogue, the graphical adventures in particular both from the UK, Australia and Germany never had their equal in USA made software during the 8 bit era, a bit like the Atari ST which had OK hardware, the lamest excuse for an OS but a catalouge of German and French utility and application software that meant that both my Mac and my Amiga were relegated to being used as toys.
I had a Coco and a Memotech MTX during the 8 bit era so I misssed out on it all
My studio still has a couple of Atari Falcons operational for stuff that is too timing sensitive to use a PC/MIDI/VSTI
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I had a Sinclair ZX81, Spectrums/CPCs/C64s were the stuff of dreams to me... then I got an A500... and those lumps could swivel!
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Well my first ZX was a 128K the large heatsink on the side. I thought the 64k RAM disk was a very usefull thing to have on a computer.
Now I use the Zx Spectrum+3 with the sound mod I done myself a simple 1 resistor mod to gain pure sound and no distortion. With a Multiface 3. If you use any that has the RGB port then use it the picture is amazing.,Ohhh yes and for those who do not know on the Amstrad Spectrums like the +2A, +2B, +3A, and +3B try this:-
Press the RESET button then Keys QAZ and PLM all together at the same time you come up with the engineers program to test out these machines.
Mike.
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I had a few of them after buying them up at car boot sales, then ended up ditching the whole lot when moving to a smaller house as I just didnt have the room :/
I had Spectrum 48K, Spectrum+, Spectrum 128, +2 and +3 machines with various peripherals including interface 1 and 2, another interface I had for the 48K plugged into the expansion port and added a 3.5" drive to the machine as well as additional ports, parallel etc. Literally 100s of tapes and some game cartridges that plugged into the top of interface 2 i think it was. I deeply regret parting with them now, as well as my C64 and Amiga collection :/ I never seem to learn lol.
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Hi Guys,
Talking of Spectrums, does anyone know of any decent emulators for it on the Amiga or Windows?
I downloaded one for the Amiga off Aminet years ago and it was slow and seemed to only play games which turned out to be crap. I Googled a few for Windows but they were either fiddly or weren't free.
Cheers,
Rob.
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Hello,
I bought one 16k in 1982 (still have it)
Spectrum is a great home computer. Faster than C64 and with a much clear Basic.
The sound was not very good, but they made miracles, like the tune of Agent X.
Later, 128k came with a decent soundchip. More or less the same yamaha of the original Atari ST.
There are thousands of g-r-e-a-t games for Spectrum.
There are some impressive demos for Spectrum (I'm thinking of one called kkolor).
Comparing to C64, Spectrum demonstrations are much more creative, thus making me think that C64 was less versatile. In fact, you can play many games that look like C64, but you can't play head over heels @ C64...
Well for me, Spectrum is the father of Amiga. Same spirit.
Spectrum has also the best emulators (in all O.S., inc X and Workbench), sometimes better and stable than the real machine.
So YES: this computer is a legend not because of propaganda, but by it's own merits. -Exactly like Amiga.
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+3 was my first computer, second was a500.
there were no original games on 3" diskettes in my country. so I played only those few that came with +3.
after some time (years) I figured out how to connect a tape recorder and play all those 48K games..
also there were always problem with sound and picture because of poor RF out (and different PAL system). wish I knew about RGB SCART then, and composite hack..
if the zx game is really good (and there are many of them), after some time you forget about its graphics limitations.
@Managarm
spectaculator is very good, I think.
basically all modern zx emulators are very good, best ones can do advanced stuff like microdrive and fdd emulation..
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I never got to own a spectrum, but the static noise it created is like music to my ears. :)
This is probably the best spectrum song I like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4ZdrQRi6W8
Raw Recruit from Tim Follin
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I never got to own a spectrum, but the static noise it created is like music to my ears. :)
This is probably the best spectrum song I like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4ZdrQRi6W8
Raw Recruit from Tim Follin
Man, that's awesome. None of your 3-channel AY nonsense here. Pure software PWM/PDM :D
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Well for me, Spectrum is the father of Amiga. Same spirit.
I don't see your point. The Atari 800XL is in fact the real father of the Amiga, and technically beseen, the C64 has also the custom chipset concept implemented. The ZX spectrum line does not in any way. That's why you hear those bleeps when loading a program from a cassette. Also think of the color 'leaking'.
Maybe the processor of the ZX spectrum is more powerful than that of the C64, but it also NEEDS to be more powerful.
Very PC like indeed (apart from the fact that the Z80 is a fork of the x86 architecture)
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both my Mac and my Amiga were relegated to being used as toys.
I had a Coco and a Memotech MTX during the 8 bit era so I misssed out on it all
My studio still has a couple of Atari Falcons operational for stuff that is too timing sensitive to use a PC/MIDI/VSTI
wow. I guess your a midi boy through and through? ST was great for MIDI, and had great midi software.
But the 'toys' you put away had photoshop, lightwave, deluxe paint, quark express octamed, and the one we are all here for had one of the biggest freely downloadable software archives in the world (aminet), and the first computer to feature a digital soundprocessor.
Now your here...you might as well try them!
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Hi Guys,
Talking of Spectrums, does anyone know of any decent emulators for it on the Amiga or Windows?
I downloaded one for the Amiga off Aminet years ago and it was slow and seemed to only play games which turned out to be crap. I Googled a few for Windows but they were either fiddly or weren't free.
Cheers,
Rob.
Hi Rob,
What spec Amiga do you have?
ZXAM Spectrum runs perfect on 030 or 040 Amiga's and ASP is the best one if you have an 060.
I play a lot of Speccy games on the Amiga because you can use a regular Joystick and full screen on TV is about as close as you can get to to the real thing.
PeeCee emulators all suck, seems sooooo fake....
Steve.
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Speculator, originally written for QL, wasn't bad either IIRC.
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*cough*Image to ZX Spec (http://silentdevelopment.blogspot.com/search/label/image%20to%20zx%20spec)*cough*
Written by yours truly when you just can't get enough of that colour clash ;) or simply want to mash up your jpegs or avis retro style.
Note first post at the top of that link is a hack I made to have it run as a proxy, you really want this link right here (http://silentdevelopment.blogspot.com/2010/04/image-to-zx-spec-121-released.html) to get the software (runs on any Java 6 capable machine...).
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The only one I ever had was used to keep the back door wedged open on hot summer days... :)
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wow. I guess your a midi boy through and through? ST was great for MIDI, and had great midi software.
But the 'toys' you put away had photoshop, lightwave, deluxe paint, quark express octamed, and the one we are all here for had one of the biggest freely downloadable software archives in the world (aminet), and the first computer to feature a digital soundprocessor.
Now your here...you might as well try them!
Nah, MIDI is important to me but there was a DTP program for the Atari so good especially when it came to multilingal constructs and font control that I know people that still use it today, even though it is 20 years old, calamus or something like that, I was pretending to be a publisher at the time ....
I had a Mac 128 and an SE (literally the first SE shipped to Europe, I had to scream at a lot of people to get it) and an Amiga 1000, the 128 was useless but a neat toy, the 1000 blew my mind but the software never showed up really (I stopped playing games in the early 80's) and there was a problem with interoperability both at the hardware level, i.e. floppies (running around with a null modem and Kermit, silly) and the Amiga specific file formats and so on, the lack of output filters on the digital audio on the Amiga made it unusable for pro sampling etc
Animation and especially titling animation was the only professional use I personally saw the Amiga used in and they were dropped in the late 80's because Acorn Risc computers with genlocks could do the same task faster and cheaper, there was also a problem with a lot of the USA Amiga titling software, most of them only supported the ASCII character set, so only usable in the USA, Holland and South Africa .....
The first 2 versions of Photoshop were playing catchup with a DOS based program that the pros used at the time, it was not until V3 that it came into its own
The Atari was sold in France almost as a cheap intelligent terminal so there was a trickle from there of serious specialised software for the ST that was sometimes not even available on the PC, we could use the ST as a frontend for a Norsk Data pre-press unit which otherwise required an expensive ND terminal etc., people tend to forget how important those niche markets are.
Remember the Apple II? already outdated in 1979 but still selling in the late 80's because of specialised hardware that was too costly to redevelop for the PC et al, people talked about the Apple II software base but it was really the Apple II hardware base that kept it going in the professional markets.
I even knew a guy who ran an Apple III software development business until 1998, the accounting software he wrote integrated so well with the Appleworks app and the Pascal based OS on the III that his customers refused to move over to the PC version he had introduced in the late 80's....
The Amiga today needs something like that, stop playing catchup with all and sundry and start filling niches, move sideways ....
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Animation and especially titling animation was the only professional use I personally saw the Amiga used in .....
Actually come to think of it that is not completely true, for a time in the 80's Psychick TV used an Amiga and software from the guys that designed the Soundchaser, what was the name of that company? Mimetics?
They were a pro band at the time so I guess that counts as pro usage although Hilmar and Gen are not your typical professionals.
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What's a Spectrum!, With a Commodore factory in town, what was going to be cheaper a spectrum or a through the back door C64............duh!
Irony is today its Sat/Cable boxes....then it was commodores. U needed to know friendly stores people and techies and u got a C64 for peanuts.