18 September 2021, 11:29 | #41 |
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R.I.P
I started with a ZX81 too and I was able to did it because it was the first very affordable computer. The ZX81 and especially the Spectrum had so cool design. The C64 was ugly in comparison. Genius to take on a brilliant industrial products designer and made machines with a soul. |
18 September 2021, 16:21 | #42 |
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A reminder of what the very limited ZX Spectrum graphics system is capable of, given extremely talented hands - ENJOY!
[ Show youtube player ] I'd go so far as to say that these graphics are much better than the Commodore 64! |
18 September 2021, 16:38 | #43 |
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I would not say that. Graphics of both have their strong personality. Much vivid for the Spectrum, much sharper for the C64.
Playing a game on the Spectrum was a real experience on its on. Blessed times. For the record, C64 graphics: https://mingos-commodorepage.tumblr.com/ A site I like to visit each day. |
18 September 2021, 18:16 | #44 |
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C'mon, let's not start with the "vs" stuff. So many other threads dedicated to that All these machines had their weak and strong points, and Clive's genius was to offer so much for so little money.
(some great shots on this Mingos page thou) |
19 September 2021, 07:11 | #45 | |
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I ported some of those pictures to the Mattel Aquarius, using a programmable character set upgrade that I designed (normally the Aquarius has a fixed character set that is severely limiting). Now I see there is a lot more Spectrum artwork out there that I didn't know about! |
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19 September 2021, 10:13 | #46 | ||
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My first experience of the ZX81 was rather disappointing, quickly discovering that 1K of RAM was not enough to do anything useful. So I got a 16K RAM pack, then made a backplane bus to plug other cards into, and put the whole thing inside a steel-cased monochrome monitor. I reconfigured the self-made keyboard from my old computer to suit the ZX81, producing a nice portable system that looked a bit like a classic Mac. But it didn't have a disk drive, and the tape interface was slow and iffy. I couldn't afford the stuff to add a floppy drive to it, but I got an IBM 5444 'Dolphin' hard drive from a mainframe computer that I helped dismantle. I don't know how heavy it was but the sticker said 'warning: over 25kg' and I almost broke my back moving it. I also got a few 10" disc cartridges for it, and the technical manual with circuit diagram and explanation of operation. From this I was able to design a board for the ZX81 that could read and write sectors on the hard drive at over 100kB/s! Before getting around to developing a proper DOS for the ZX81 hard drive I picked up a second hand 16k ZX Spectrum for $250. Unfortunately it had a fault, which turned out to just be a bad RAM chip. After fixing that I quickly discovered that most games needed 48k, so I added some 64kx1 RAM chips and had an 80k Speccy! (with a small circuit to switch 32k banks via an I/O port.). The Spectrum's tape loading was so much more reliable and faster than the ZX81 that I forgot about hard drives and the Spectrum became my main computer. It had practically everything else I wished the ZX81 had too, like color and bitmap graphics, a full speed CPU and usable keyboard. I made a parallel interface for it to connect a joystick and printer, and later got an MGT 'DISCiPLE' interface with 3.5" floppy drive. Then Amstrad released the CPC664, so... Sir Clive's genius was taking minimalism to the extreme. The ZX80 had 21 chips - mostly standard TTL logic - and a clever method of producing video using the CPU to read characters from RAM while it was executing NOPs. This greatly slowed the CPU down because it couldn't do anything else while reading the character lines, but used far fewer chips than a conventional design. Then for the ZX81 he put all that logic in a single ULA, using almost every gate in the chip. As a result the ZX81 only had 4 chips! The cost savings were enormous. But he didn't skimp on the OS or expansion bus, making the ZX81 extremely popular because it was very cheap but had a good BASIC and could easily be expanded. The ZX Spectrum followed the same design philosophy. It was the first(?) machine to drop complicated text-based graphics modes and just have a single bitmap screen. Many other home computers were let down by poor tape interfaces - but not the Spectrum. Using the screen border to show the detected tape signal was pure genius - no more having to guess what level to set the recorder to! There was something about the minimalism of that little slab that made it more appealing than physically larger machines, like it was pulling beyond its weight. I don't remember what happened to mine, but a few years ago I decided to import a +3 (which was never released in New Zealand), thinking it would be even better. But it turned out to be disappointing. I found the 'improved' BASIC editor to be slow and the extra typing required a pain, then in 48k mode - with no labels to refer to - I couldn't remember which keys to press. The machine takes up a lot of room on the desk compared to the original Spectrum, and I still had to make a Kempston interface for it because the built-in joystick ports are non-standard (thanks Amstrad!). Quote:
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19 September 2021, 12:22 | #47 |
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Great write up Bruce. Sinclair brought us workable computers at accessible prices. It didn't matter that they were a bit limited and rough around the edges. He got them into the hands of people who wouldn't have had them otherwise and great things were done.
The BBC got computers into classrooms, but Sinclair got them into bedrooms. |
19 September 2021, 22:22 | #48 |
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The ZX81 Basic Book was an incredible work of art. A gate for the imagination. I wonder who designed it. The best cover for a computer manual ever?
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19 September 2021, 22:30 | #49 | |
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I hate to say it, but the ZX Spectrum BASIC book was a lot more disappointing. |
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24 September 2021, 22:26 | #50 |
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What I want to know is how on Earth did Clive manage to pull that lapdancer and even marry her?
I can't imagine for a second that he would go to lap dancing clubs and let's face it he wasn't exactly an oil painting and there were far richer better looking younger guys out there, they really looked a total mismatch so what's the deal?! ?? Good for him either way. |
25 September 2021, 15:55 | #51 |
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I mean he was knighted... meaning she did get a title when she married him.
Not many other people wandering around with that. |
25 September 2021, 19:46 | #52 |
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25 September 2021, 20:50 | #53 | ||
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The desperately frail millionaire, his jealous ex and a VERY unladlylike war that left Sir Clive Sinclair's pole-dancer wife pole-axed Quote:
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25 September 2021, 22:57 | #54 | |
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Wow lol, I'm actually quite shocked after reading that and at the same time thinking "Yeah Zeus, actually I'm not surprised and feel a bit silly asking" lol. Those pics of him groovying on down at clubs made me laugh, just a nerdy looking bloke with a big wad,...money I mean sheesh , and where there are rich men women will be sniffing regardless of the age or looks of the bloke,...I mean look at Mick Jagger,...one ugly dude Also I know that tv film Micro Men made Clive come across as a rather nasty bullish bloke but when you watch that and then look at that news link it really is a vast difference between the 2 versions of Clive, I think that's what shocked me when I first heard he married a much younger lapdancer, I just couldn't imagine the Micro Men version of him getting up to all that |
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25 September 2021, 23:54 | #55 | ||
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