21–30 of 37 posts
I visited a couple years ago - it was lovely to finally touch an authentic Spectrum, 3 decades after spending my early life hacking around on various clones. Was well worth the 30 minute ride from Coimbra.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, one reason why I grew up bilingual, besides having grandparents close to Badajoz, was the amount of Speccy stuff in games and magazines that we got from the other side of the border, because why bother with translations. :) Microhobby, Micromania, Solo Programadores (this one came later in 32 bits days), are some I still remember the names. La Abadía del Crimen, Sir Fred, Livingstone Supongo, Game Over, and suc…
And Aventuras AD; but TBH most modern games written for the ZX in Spanish (especially text adventures) are many times better than "La edad de oro del software español" (The golden age of the Spanish software).
I visited a couple years ago - it was lovely to finally touch an authentic Spectrum, 3 decades after spending my early life hacking around on various clones. Was well worth the 30 minute ride from Coimbra.
Really? That sounds strange to me. I still have one somewhere.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course there was the 'holy trinity' of the TRS-80, PET and Apple II in 1977. But even with Sinclair, the ZX80 / ZX81 came before the Spectrum. https://cybernews.com/editorial/the-1977-trinity-and-other-e...
And before the Apple II, the Apple I and Kim-I. As a sokoban lover I'd love one for the Apple I or the Kim-I over serial, but the 1K RAM limit looks tiny. But you can always create several tapes/ROMs with different level sets...
The ZX81 and the ZX Spectrum were interesting machines at the time, but man did they have crappy keyboards. Perhaps with a decent keyboard, the ZX Spectrum could have stood a chance against the Commodore C64. The price of the ZX Spectrum was 175 £ ($306 at the time) and the Commodore cost $595. Of course, the C64 also had much better gfx and sound capabilities.
Isn't it kind of the other way round? When both machines were current there wre about ten ZX Spectrums sold for every Commodore 64, at least in the UK and Europe.
The Commodore 64 like the Apple II was very much a North American thing.
The ZX81 and the ZX Spectrum were interesting machines at the time, but man did they have crappy keyboards. Perhaps with a decent keyboard, the ZX Spectrum could have stood a chance against the Commodore C64. The price of the ZX Spectrum was 175 £ ($306 at the time) and the Commodore cost $595. Of course, the C64 also had much better gfx and sound capabilities.
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The ZX81 and the ZX Spectrum were interesting machines at the time, but man did they have crappy keyboards. Perhaps with a decent keyboard, the ZX Spectrum could have stood a chance against the Commodore C64. The price of the ZX Spectrum was 175 £ ($306 at the time) and the Commodore cost $595. Of course, the C64 also had much better gfx and sound capabilities.
The ZX81 and the ZX Spectrum were interesting machines at the time, but man did they have crappy keyboards. Perhaps with a decent keyboard, the ZX Spectrum could have stood a chance against the Commodore C64. The price of the ZX Spectrum was 175 £ ($306 at the time) and the Commodore cost $595. Of course, the C64 also had much better gfx and sound capabilities.
It was manufactured to be as cheap as possible. There were the plus editions that had much better keys.
Exactly. The membrane keyboards weren't aesthetic choices, they were one of a number of compromises that were necessary to achieve the price point set by Clive Sinclair. He intuited that a sub-£200 colour computer would sell in huge quantities, and he was right. My (middle class) parents couldn't countenance the cost of a Commodore 64, but they were prepared to buy me a ZX Spectrum.
I visited a couple years ago - it was lovely to finally touch an authentic Spectrum, 3 decades after spending my early life hacking around on various clones. Was well worth the 30 minute ride from Coimbra.
Really? That sounds strange to me. I still have one somewhere.