am on the lookout for zx spectrums

[InTheSand]

Yep, eBay's your best bet!

Or alternatively, if you're in the UK, it's worth checking out car boot sales / garage sales. However, people are a lot more clued up on such things these days and it's more and more difficult to find bargains like those in the pre-2000 days!

I got some great bargains in the UK in the 1990s, before retro computing became fashionable!

 - Ali

P.S. My two favourite Spectrums are the 48K rubber keyed model and the original Sinclair 128K with the external "toast rack" heatsink. None of this Amstrad rubbish!!!  :-)

[InTheSand]

Speelgoedmannetje wrote:
Every spectrum I owned was dodgy, also, QL was a failure because of being dodgy.

Heh! The Spectrum was OK! Issue 3s onwards were of a non-dodgy nature, but certainly the earlier ones were a bit suspect, with some having overheating problems and the issues 1 and 2 having "dead {bleep}roach" IC bodges soldered in place!

EDIT: Err.. "{bleep}roach" !!!  :-)  :lol:  :lol:

And the QL was a failure because it was released before being completed. I guess the use of Microdrives rather than disk drives didn't help its case either!

I have one working and one dead QL, plus used to use the excellent QL emulator for the A500. Oh, and countless Spectrums! (All working and non-dodgy the last time I checked!!!)

 - Ali

[InTheSand]

As far as I know, there were around 100,000 QLs sold worldwide. Not exactly the success Sinclair Research had hoped for...

Still, it did have a multi-tasking OS and was based on the good old 68K we know and love! I haven't powered my one up for years but I was at least able to track down a disk drive interface for it and transfer stuff from the few QL-formatted Microdrive cartridges I own. Bought the QL, literally "mint in box", from a radio/electronics fair in the UK some time in the 1990s for the princely sum of £5! Bargain!

I'd also love a SAM Coupe, but these are very rare and I've got pretty much zero chance of finding one in New Zealand!!! Shame it was released so late and at a comparatively high cost vs the Atari ST. I'd have had that over the ST if it'd been available in 1988...

Another old rarity I'd like to find is the Enterprise 64 or 128. This was definitely ahead of its time but ended up hitting the market way too late. It could be made to run Spectrum software via a bit of code plus a ROM image file.

 - Ali

[InTheSand]

What's wrong with your 128s? It usually only seems to be the keyboard membrane that dies... And they can be got hold of fairly easily.

I must admit I can't remember the last time I powered up real Spectrum hardware! Emulation is so perfect these days... All I need is one of these to complete the experience! :-)

 - Ali

[InTheSand]

Cool!!!

It's always fun to be using vintage hardware!

Makes me wonder why nobody (Amstrad, are you listening?!) has made a Spectrum-in-a-joystick yet, as the innards are so much simpler than a C64...

 - Ali

[InTheSand]

CannonFodder wrote:
I would imagine it's because the games look (and sound)  like crap in comparison to C64 and Megadrive joysticks etc.

"Crap"??! Spectrum sound and graphics?!  :-o  :-o  :-o

That's just sacrilege!!!  :-)

Everyone knows the Speccy had the best graphics and sound of all the 8-bitters!  :-D

/me runs and hides from the imminent roasting! :madashell:

 - Ali

[InTheSand]

The (UK-only) enhanced phones made by Amstrad have in-built Spectrum emulation, shame this wasn't taken further into a stand-alone product.

Though the C64's sound was miles better, and its graphics were better for probably 85%+ of games, quite a lot of us old ex-Speccy users were (at the time) ardent haters of Commodore!!!!! So even given the size of the market, I'm sure a fair profit could still be made if such a device was sold for around the same price as the C64DTV... A couple of million would probably be sold in the UK alone!

 - Ali

[InTheSand]

Vincent wrote:
The keyboard was tops though :-D

Nooo! Rubber keys rule!!!  :crazy:

 - Ali

[InTheSand]

A4000_Mad wrote:
...a boxed, fully working +3 with floppy drive that I managed to sneek up into the loft   :lol:

Any idea of its value now?

Hi,

It's unfortunately probably worth less than you'd hope... It helps that it's boxed, but I'd guess at somewhere in the £40-£100 range...

Much better to keep it!

 - Ali

[InTheSand]

Vincent wrote:
I always wanted this though.

Me too!!! But IIRC, it required a small loader program to be loaded in from tape before the CD's stuff could be accessed!!!

As for the Microdrives and ZX Interface 1... What about that lovely syntax to load and save?!

Anyone remember LOAD *"m";1;"program" and other such nice commands??!

 - Ali

[InTheSand]

Vincent wrote:

Anyone remember LOAD *"m";1;"program" and other such nice commands??!

I couldn't remember it when I last posted, but I do now!  Kinda simple really when you think about it.

Simple for the likes of us lot! perhaps! But not so great for less techie people!

IMO, the "m";1; should have been made optional (after all, how many people had a ZX Net and/or loaded/saved programs via the RS232 port?) - and not many people at the time had more than a single Microdrive!

Then it could have just been LOAD *"program" - much neater!

at least the Speccy+, +2 and +3 had Tape Loader

Sorry to be picky, but this was on the 128, +2 and +3 - the original + didn't have it as this was basically a standard 48K machine in a new case but with the same old ROM.

There were a few games that used Load "" CODE.

IIRC, this was done as a form of "copy protection" (yeah right, all were futile on tape-based media!!!) where the whole 16 or 48Kb of RAM was loaded in from tape, including the display, system variables, stack, etc - and once loaded, the stacked return address from the ROM's tape loader routine would point to the entry of the game's code and start execution that way.

PMC wrote:
I mean, typing J""....

Heh! But after a few years of Spectrum use, the positions of most of those keywords were committed to memory! Even now, nearly 25 years on, I still remember at least where all of the primary keywords are (the unshifted letter keys in "K" mode), and most of the punctuation! Perhaps I should get out more!!  :-)

 - Ali

EDIT: one of the early Spectrum emulators was called JPP for that very reason!

[InTheSand]

Vincent wrote:
To be picky myself - didn't the +3 just have "loader" as it had the floppy instead?

Yep, you're right! The +3 and +2A/2B both just have "Loader"...

 - Ali

[InTheSand]

Hi,

The original Sinclair 128 and Amstrad +2 have "Tape Loader", whereas the +3, +2A and +2B (which are based on the same revised Amstrad +3 ROM) all just have "Loader".

And, of course, the original 128 has an additional "Tape Tester" option!

Ah, the joys of cassette-based loading!!!

 - Ali

[InTheSand]

Vincent wrote:
If you're still nostalgic about Spectrum games, I'd strongly suggest you pick up a copy of The ZX Spectrum Book - 1982 to 199x.

Ooh! Thanks for the info! I'd have missed that otherwise!

Colour clash rules!!!  :-)

 - Ali

[InTheSand]

Get it fixed!!!

What doesn't work on it? Does it start up with randomly coloured/flashing squares all over the screen? Or no picture at all?

Actually, monochrome vector graphic games were one area that the Spectrum beat the C64  :-o  - faster CPU helped, though the Speccy's "interesting" screen layout negated that a bit!

 - Ali