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Offline runequesterTopic starter

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Tell me about your spectrum
« on: November 21, 2010, 12:08:26 AM »
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 ?
 

Offline Gulliver

Re: Tell me about your spectrum
« Reply #1 on: November 21, 2010, 12:20:56 AM »
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 :(
 

guest7146

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Re: Tell me about your spectrum
« Reply #2 on: November 21, 2010, 12:21:13 AM »
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
 

Offline Karlos

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Re: Tell me about your spectrum
« Reply #3 on: November 21, 2010, 12:34:05 AM »
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
int p; // A
 

Offline Retrofan

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Re: Tell me about your spectrum
« Reply #4 on: November 21, 2010, 12:44:49 AM »
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.
« Last Edit: November 21, 2010, 12:54:21 AM by Retrofan »
A1200, Lateral 32GB CF, internal Dvd, ACA 1230/56 with an MKII Fast ATA at 9,5Mb/s, another A1200 BPPC project in progress (more or less), and posting from my own/better C64x in my Tv using Hdmi.
 

Offline fitzsteve

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Re: Tell me about your spectrum
« Reply #5 on: November 21, 2010, 12:59:12 AM »
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.
 

Offline Retrofan

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Re: Tell me about your spectrum
« Reply #6 on: November 21, 2010, 01:07:54 AM »
Quote from: fitzsteve;593330

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...
A1200, Lateral 32GB CF, internal Dvd, ACA 1230/56 with an MKII Fast ATA at 9,5Mb/s, another A1200 BPPC project in progress (more or less), and posting from my own/better C64x in my Tv using Hdmi.
 

Offline A4000_Mad

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Re: Tell me about your spectrum
« Reply #7 on: November 21, 2010, 02:01:51 AM »
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:
« Last Edit: November 21, 2010, 02:04:06 AM by A4000_Mad »
A4000 Mad
 

Offline kolla

Re: Tell me about your spectrum
« Reply #8 on: November 21, 2010, 04:26:23 AM »
I never had one, but a friend of mine did, and some years ago he did this :)
B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC
---
A3000/060CSPPC+CVPPC/128MB + 256MB BigRAM/Deneb USB
A4000/CS060/Mediator4000Di/Voodoo5/128MB
A1200/Blz1260/IndyAGA/192MB
A1200/Blz1260/64MB
A1200/Blz1230III/32MB
A1200/ACA1221
A600/V600v2/Subway USB
A600/Apollo630/32MB
A600/A6095
CD32/SX32/32MB/Plipbox
CD32/TF328
A500/V500v2
A500/MTec520
CDTV
MiSTer, MiST, FleaFPGAs and original Minimig
Peg1, SAM440 and Mac minis with MorphOS
 

Offline kickstart

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Re: Tell me about your spectrum
« Reply #9 on: November 21, 2010, 04:53:44 AM »
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.
a1200 060
 

Offline fishy_fiz

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Re: Tell me about your spectrum
« Reply #10 on: November 21, 2010, 07:17:13 AM »
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.
Near as I can tell this is where I write something under the guise of being innocuous, but really its a pot shot at another persons/peoples choice of Amiga based systems. Unfortunately only I cant see how transparent and petty it makes me look.
 

Offline Karlos

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Re: Tell me about your spectrum
« Reply #11 on: November 21, 2010, 12:16:42 PM »
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 :)
int p; // A
 

Offline Khephren

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Re: Tell me about your spectrum
« Reply #12 on: November 21, 2010, 04:28:20 PM »
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.
 

Offline runequesterTopic starter

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Re: Tell me about your spectrum
« Reply #13 on: November 21, 2010, 04:51:32 PM »
What was the price difference between the spectrum and the C64 when it appeared ?
 

Offline Karlos

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Re: Tell me about your spectrum
« Reply #14 on: November 21, 2010, 04:54:18 PM »
Quote from: Khephren;593411
As a working class family in the eighties, thank god for Clive Sinclair!


+1
int p; // A