News Sinclair ZX Spectrum celebrates 30 years

The Sinclair ZX Spectrum was launched 30 years ago today, kick-starting the home computing revolution.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2012/04/23/zx-spectrum-30-years/1

 

Oh happy days, went from Vic 20 to this...

 

I had the +3, no sitting around listening to the whole silly tape for it to not load properly. I only waited about 30 seconds for it to not load properly

 

Got my 1st computer (ZX Spectrum) in August 1984 as I started working as a student worker. It was my second greatest purchase I had made in my live the first being a Walkman. Had computers ever since from Amigas to PCs. After the Spectrum i was going to buy a Sam Coupe but instead got an Amiga 500.

30 years ago! I am getting old.

 

My first comp, spent many a day with my head buried in a copy of Input magazine, then spend hours typing up lines code for entertainment, which was better than holding your breath in case a game did not load, lol.

 

I upgraded my speccy with a 48k ram pack , hard keyboard and microdrive... loveed games like - manic miner / jet set willly / elite / all the utimate games (jetpack / atic atak / sabretooth.) those were the days

 

I was 6 when I played Match Day at a friend's house. I learnt Z80 assembly from Andrew Hewson in Sinclair User, and made my own disassembler.. in assembly. I made a silly Space Invaders clone in BASIC then assembly. Then I made a shooting gallery sort of game. And I made a paint programme, and my own word processor. And now... I play games and do shift work

 

Not as good as my Commodore 64....na.na.na.na.

 

I had it's daddy, ZX81

 

I have a Spectrum +3 Action Pack collecting dust in our spare room. It was my Wife's when she was younger, and as far as we know is working. I just haven't had time to plug it in and test it out! What are these worth now - is it worth selling?

 

My first experience of programming was on my dad's old spectrum, a few years older than me. I will have to dig it out when I get back home from work.

 

This.

The Speccy was a pale imitation of the all-powerful C64, and anyone who had one was a complete loser and a dosser too. At least, that's what I told my school friends.

Manic miner, anyone?

 

I grew up with an Acorn Electron. I used to spend hours copying code from magazines to build programs - saving them to tape and then running to find I had mis-spelled a command at line xx. Load it up, edit, save and hey presto a little white ball moving around the screen

Happy days

 

i was more of a commodore fan, vic 20, commodore 64, amiga 500(converted with denise)added a cdrom drive, then a cd32 with sx1 module.

 

Had a Speccy 48K (rubber keys) before moving onto the Commodore 64. The Ultimate games (Tranz-AM, Sabrewulf, Knightlore etc) were classics but who could forget firing up Chequered Flag in the tape deck!.

I now have a ZX Spectrum+ and Spectrum +2 hooked up and my 10 year old son loves it (not as much as Sensible Soccer on my Amiga's though), I'm even going through Sinclair BASIC with him - and realising how much of a pain in the a*** it was when you type run and got an error!

 

I still have one [possibly 2] and a zx-81 somewhere, still worked last time I checked...

might have to dust them off and have a play while TVs still have analogue tuners...

 

I had a second hand 48k rubber key jobbie for a while before getting a 128k +2 for christmas in 1987. I remember exactly what year it was as that was the year that The Living Daylights was out and I had the tie in special edition pack with the HUGE box and light gun. The whole boxed set is still in my parent's loft and as far as I know still works fine (well it did last time it was used)

 

It's quite obvious that their designers were Pink Floyd fans. lol

 

Awesome, i remember playing ELITE on this, had to put a stupid glass thing onto the tv screen to see the code...loved it....shooting at ferdilance ships and bloody flying saucers (who battered me) lol

 

Yes, I remember the "Lenslok" security system, bloody awful it was too but it seems the a lot of the games I liked had it.

I loved my old Speccy, the ingenuity that some of the programmers had more than made up for the lack of processing power. I really loved the isometric 3D games, Knight Lore was the first one I remember playing, loved Batman and I thought Head over Heels was just brilliant. I also reckon that I don't recall a better first release strategy game than the Lords of Midknight - I played that game to death!!