{"id":285,"date":"2007-04-24T18:53:58","date_gmt":"2007-04-24T18:53:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/?p=285"},"modified":"2007-04-24T18:55:55","modified_gmt":"2007-04-24T18:55:55","slug":"sinclair-zx-spectrum-25-years-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/?p=285","title":{"rendered":"Sinclair ZX Spectrum: 25 years on"},"content":{"rendered":"

The ZX Spectrum<\/a> is 25 years old. Wow, that’s a long time ago. That machine was my first real introduction to computing, specifically to programming.<\/p>\n

The early days of what was called “home computing” were very exciting. There were those of us with Speccys and The Other Lot with Commodore 64s. There were also a few odd characters with BBC Micros and various other things. But by far the most popular system to have was the Spectrum; possibly because it was the cheapest and also possibly because it had the best games available.<\/p>\n

The Spectrum came in two flavours: 16K and 48K. That’s kilo<\/i>-bytes, not megabytes. It is a credit to the programmers of those early software titles, especially the games, that so much could be squeezed into just 48K of RAM.<\/p>\n

When I first got my Speccy, the first program I wrote was probably the eternal classic:<\/p>\n

10 PRINT \"I am brilliant\"
\n20 GOTO 10
\n<\/code><\/p>\n

or something very similar. Everyone did this, just because you could. (This program prints “I am brilliant”, line after line, forever).<\/p>\n

Since I probably presented my parents with the idea of getting a computer as an educational tool, I had to use it to write programs. My first ever proper program was something like this:<\/p>\n

10 RANDOMIZE
\n20 LET x=INT (RND*100)+1
\n30 PRINT \"I am thinking of a number between 1 and 100\"
\n40 PRINT \"Your guess?\"
\n50 INPUT a
\n60 IF a=x THEN GOTO 100
\n70 IF a<x THEN PRINT \"Too low...\"
\n80 IF a>x THEN PRINT \"Too high...\"
\n90 GOTO 40
\n100 PRINT \"Well done!\"
\n<\/code><\/p>\n

Fantastic. I think my parents were reasonably impressed by this at the time.<\/p>\n

Of course, back then, it was all about the games. They’re all classics, now. JetPac, Manic Miner, Jet Set Willy … You can still play them if you use a Spectrum emulator for the PC too! They load in about half a second now. In 1982, you had to let your tape recorder screech away for five minutes to load most games, and often it wouldn’t work first time either … \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

Other things I remember:<\/p>\n