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Sinclair Zx Spectrum: absolutely better than Commodore 64 (2005)
- vardump 7y agoSilly ZX Spectrum people. Of course breadbin is better! ;-)
- jascii 7y agoExcept that pesky -used chewinggum- keyboard..
- nickt 7y agoJust get a Spectrum+, a better keyboard than some modern laptops... :)
- amiga-workbench 7y agoApart from when you hit a key at just the wrong angle and it sticks.
- nickt 7y agoHa, didn't have that problem with my A4000 keyboard.
- juskrey 7y agoSide note: ZX Spectrum was my first computer, and since then I have never ever experienced such a joy about working with new gadget.. I even thought it was some childhood effect, never to be repeated again. Can't describe in words, I think everyone here know what I mean. Until I have made a Tesla test drive..
- noir_lord 7y agoMine as well and a similar feeling, 33 years later and still a programmer, never wanted to do or be anything else.
- tluyben2 7y agoI know what you mean. Not about Tesla though...
- danielrpa 7y agoTotally get it - part of it was that you could fully control and understand that machine. It could do so much and you were able to fully master it! Modern computers are largely black boxes full of software that you can't understand and end up using through experiences that sit on top of dozens inscrutable layers. Not the Spectrum - you had the full power and control always!
- juskrey 7y agoI could hardly understand it at that time. What a kid could do? I was playing games, tweaking strip dice vars to always assign points to myself, moving circles across the screen with Basic, and trying to peek poke that alien assembler universe, one byte at a time.
- danielrpa 7y agoThat's ok. But it was possible to do it if you wanted.
- stevekemp 7y agoI grew up in the UK, and my first computer (shared with the family) was a ZX Spectrum. The fact that we couldn't load games over hte christmas period, because the cassette player was broken, was the reason I started programming: https://blog.steve.fi/how_i_started_programming.html https://blog.steve.fi/how_i_started_programming.html
- UncleSlacky 7y agoI couldn't afford to buy any games between the February when I got the Spectrum (1983) until my birthday the following November, so I learned a lot of programming in that time.
- regularfry 7y agoThe jack socket on my 48k+ had a fault where you needed to hold the plug at a specific angle or it wouldn't make contact. You had to do that and remain motionless for the entire loading cycle. Something like 40% of the tapes I bought never actually loaded, and I was never sure if it was because I wasn't holding it right, or they were faulty out of the box. And no, I never had the confidence at the time to take the lid off and see if I could fix it. It was just too precious to take the risk.
- Razengan 7y agoWatch it. Wars were started for less. The Spectrum was my first ever computer, and the Commodore 64 my second.. Or rather, our computer, as it was shared by the adults in our family and their adult friends, who only let me use it with supervision so I wouldn't break anything. :) My best memories from that era are the MAGAZINES. The art, the wacky reviewers (some of them fictional characters), the slang, the in-jokes, the readers' letters, the tips, the maps, the type-in programs, the pull-out posters, previews, developer diaries.. It really was a great time to be growing up, and computers and video games were the best hobby, because there was never a period when there wasn't something NEW. There was always something to be amazed at. Always something to look forward to. New software and new hardware were constantly coming out. All other interests seemed so dull and uneventful. Ooh, 16 colors! then ooh, 32! then omg, you won't believe this, 256!! Entire genres being born right before your eyes. Sound channels were also increasing, music the kind you didn't hear anywhere else, speech synthesis to call your friends naughty words with, mice like they used in posh offices, game controllers like in that arcade your parents never let you stay long enough in, new operating systems... what's an operating system? Why do we need one? Computers run just fine without it.. I wouldn't pick any other childhood. I fantasized about owning an Amiga but the C64 was good enough too. I still remember the very first game I played on it and its music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slBHx5_8fms https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slBHx5_8fms
- jacquesm 7y agoTyping in programs from magazines was one way to learn how to program. After a while you couldn't help but pick up some knowledge about the machine.
- yodsanklai 7y agoI had the exact same childhood. Somehow I feel that the limited resources of the computers back then made the games more fun and original. There was a lot of creativity. People would come up with new concepts all the time, you never knew what the next cool games would be like. Another notable point is that not everybody had a computer (at least where I lived). Something like 10-20% of the kids were actively using their computer, so you could be part of a tribe. It was also easy to get into programming. The OS presented itself as a basic interpreter, and any manual that you would buy with your computer would explain how to write simple programs. It was definitely a particular era. I wonder if there is something equivalent today. What do 8-years old kids do nowadays? besides watching youtube videos.
- Marazan 7y agoTitle is factually correct. Article is superfluous.
- jacquesm 7y agoHilarious story. I repaired both for a living at the time for Cafka (when they were still small), an Amsterdam computer store that did great business until one day the owner went to his accountant and upon returning shot himself. He never factored in paying taxes. The C64 had pretty good hardware, but absolutely terrible software. The BASIC it shipped with was just good enough to load machine language from disk to run it, compared to let's say BBC Micro basic it didn't stand a chance, so it isn't all that surprising that the Spectrum ran rings around it when it came to basic (pun intended) functionality. Both the Spectrum and the C64 were left in the dust by the BBC by the way, but it cost a large amount of money so that shouldn't be a surprise. It was also built like a tank and came with a ton of expansion options. Pity it wasn't a three way match :)
- zabzonk 7y agoAnd yet the C64 (and VIC) far outsold the BBC Micro and the Spectrum. And yes, BBC Basic was a very nice language, but it wasn't very fast for real-world tasks. Way back then I implemented the KERMIT file transfer protocol (and a VT100 terminal emulator) in BBC Basic and it was very slow. I re-wrote it in 6502 assembler to make it really usable. So for anything serious you needed to do on the BBC Micro, you needed to write it in assembler. And don't get me started on that "reset" key that could be hit by accident at any time. Or the crap DFS disk file system.
- jacquesm 7y agoAh, but the assembler was built in, for other computers that was extra, and the 'reset' key (aka the 'break' key) was annoying but the BASIC interpreter had the 'old' command which would usually - but not always... - restore your code. Still, to make that key a keyboard key right next to a function key wasn't the best UI decision, to put it mildly. As for speed, it wasn't very fast in absolute terms, but it was very fast compared to other BASIC implementations, and pretty much bug free (only one bug was ever found in the code, which I think is absolutely amazing for a ROM that size).
- zabzonk 7y ago
- tluyben2 7y agoI love the Z80; it was my second (the first was a luggable IBM XT clone; it truly sucked compared to the home computers of that time) CPU experience beginning of the 80s and it was great. I couldn't imagine anything better and I have not found anything better. I do a lot of embedded asm coding now with modern CPUs and it is just not as nice to me as writing asm on a Z80 system is. Probably because I did so much of it at a young age; it is still fun and fluent. No manuals/internet needed on msx or spectrum, which is also fun; if anything tells me it is not only nostalgia, it is that; being able to write programs without needing to look everything up or download libraries. Not practical these days (mostly because everything has to be modular, so almost nothing ships with batteries included anymore), but still preferable in my opinion.
- stevekemp 7y agoI'm reliving my youth by programming assembly which is running on a real Z80 processor, driven by an arduino mega.
- tluyben2 7y agoI collected old (60s-80s) machines for many years when they were still free or very cheap. So I have all kinds of ZX spectrums and MSXs and others (very rare dual cpu Z80) to play around on reliving my youth. With Symbos [0] it is a lot of fun. [0] http://www.symbos.de/ http://www.symbos.de/
- karmakaze 7y agoThe Zx has a Z80 3.5 MHz where the C64 has a 6510 1.0 MHz. With this difference it would take major limitations in the graphics/sound hw of the Zx to come off worse. Edit: I had an Atari 6502 1.79 MHz and I wouldn't say it was clearly superior to the C64 because the C64 had more flexible sprites and sound. What I would say is that the Atari peeps I met were more hacker-like than the C64 folks who were more like users/gamers.
- midnightclubbed 7y agoThe Spectrum had major limitations with the graphics, which I'll get to, but the 'sound' was nothing more than a single io pin on the Z80 wired to a piezo sounder (or the cassette 'line-out'). To make a tone you had to run an assembly program to toggle the io port pin on and off at the correct frequency. When you made a tone in basic your program paused until the tone was done. The graphics were a 256x192 memory mapped 1bit buffer (6144 bytes). There was an additional 768 byte buffer that determined what the on and off color was for each 8x8 square of screen pixels. There were 8 possible colors, the byte used 3 bits to select the on color, 3 bits to select the off color, 1 bit to determine if the colors were 'bright' and 1 bit to determine if the colors would flash (alternate every second). Many games would have a 'play area' that was monochrome to avoid the issues of so called color clash where differently colored sprites overlapped and fought over the color selection. The further problem with the screen (and the major headache as soon as you wanted to do anything performant) was that the buffer was not laid out linearly. The top line of the screen (y=0) was at ram address 0 (byte 16384 in memory, rom space went first) and spanned 32 bytes (256 pixels). The next 32 bytes were y=8 on screen. Then y=16 etc. Once you got to byte 256 you were back at y=1 on the screen. Next 32 bytes was y=9 etc. Line y=2 started at byte 512... If you're paying attention (and if you are just imagine what the code to blit sprites looked like) we've only covered the top third of the screen. At byte 2048 you get into the second third of the screen (y=64) and the pattern repeats. I loved the Spectrum (had the 48k and +2, with MGT +D and Swift Disk disk interfaces) but damn that screen layout!
- karmakaze 7y agoThat's very interesting and unfortunate. The Atari had a brilliant 'display list' method where you defined the screen as a series of raster lines and each raster line could be in a different graphics mode varying from 1-bit monochrome graphics, 2-bit 4-color, 4-bit 16-color and there were scan-line doubling versions of many modes that used the same memory but covered more vertical lines. The character modes similarly defined 8x8 sized blocks that varied in size with each character mode, or 4x8 in 4 color which the character bitmaps being read from modifiable RAM. The display list itself was defined in RAM so you could dynamically change the screen layout, even in sync with the horizontal flyback swapping color definitions between lines. The player-missle 'sprites' were crippled compared to the C64 but worked well enough with hardware collision detection, but was limited to 4 on any scanline as Ms. Pacman would show unwanted flicker of ghosts being alternately rendered.
- Causality1 7y agoJust from a usability standpoint, what is it about the ZX Spectrum that could possibly make up for the horrific rubber keyboard?
- enneff 7y agoThey released a Spectrum+ that has a much better keyboard.
- Causality1 7y agoIt went from horrific to merely bad. That model also had a 30% unit failure rate.
- regularfry 7y agoWhen you were typing in BASIC, a single keypress gave you an entire word, and it wouldn't let you make a syntax error.
- sys_64738 7y agoThe Commodore 64 is the best selling 8-bit computer in the world. Nobody really used the Spectrum outside the UK and eastern Europe.
- KC8ZKF 7y agoIt was sold as the Timex Sinclair in the USA. I was planning on buying one, but ended up with a used VIC-20 instead.
- Someone 7y agoThe Timex Sinclair was a variation on the ZX81, not a Spectrum.
- UncleSlacky 7y agoThe Timex Sinclair 2068 was the US Spectrum variant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Sinclair_2068 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Sinclair_2068
- sys_64738 7y agoCommodore USA had a trade in offer that you got 100$ off the cost of a C64 if you bought a new C64 and traded in the ZX81. You could pick up ZX81s for 50 bucks at the time. Meanwhile Commodore was flooded with ZX81s that they didn't know what to do with. Then the C128 came along and the needed Z80 chips. The rest is history.
- jaclaz 7y agoWell, I had many Sinclair's: ZX80 ZX81 Spectrum (original) QL <- the best less known computer of all times Spectrum+ (first one broke and I still had a lot of small programs for it) while living in Italy (please read as not UK, not Eastern Europe) and there were at the time lots of (italian) users besides magazines, clubs and what not about them. The C64 came a little later than the spectrum (a question of months, but those were fast moving times about computers) in 1982, and everyone that already had a computer in 1981 were loosely divided in two: 1) those that had a ZX81 before all went for the spectrum sometimes even pre-ordering it or having it bought in the UK 2) a number of the VIC-20 users (that frankly was worse - keyboard aside - than the ZX81) went for the spectrum There was also a huge difference pricewise, the Spectrum was around 400,000 the C64 was 973,500 Lire (think of 200 Euro vs. 500 Euro).
- mbroncano 7y agoEveryone knows MSX were the truly superior computers at the time https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSX https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSX
- lstodd 7y agoNah, I had a C64c and access to YIS503II MSX. MSX is nowhere near a C64. It's just.. bland. Also ugly.
- desireco42 7y agoOh yeah, I heard about those :) Nice one.
- kresten 7y agoI wish I knew back then all the technic knowledge I have now. I really had zero idea what was going on inside the machine and no-one to teach me.
- stevekemp 7y agoI was lucky enough to be able to get a couple of books from the local library with coding examples. Usually these would be the usbourne books - which had BASIC listings for multiple home-computers at the time. I did come across a couple of books that briefly documented assembly language stuff, and of course the (orange) manuals included with the computer contained a lot of good information. Even now I have my Z80 books, they've moved house with me and even emigrated to a whole new country.
- cromwellian 7y agoCan the Sinclair do nearly full-screen 16fps video and 8khz digital audio streamed and real time decompressed from a floppy? Demoscene shows how vastly more capable the C64 was. Look at the hi-res ultra-color art in this demo. (watch from beginning to see some of the art) https://youtu.be/FTtKHLZTbtA?t=653 https://youtu.be/FTtKHLZTbtA?t=653
- cromwellian 7y agoThe downvotes by Sinclair owners proves it. :)
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- desireco42 7y agoZX Spectrum of my childhood. Some of greatest moments spent thanks to it. Determined my career. And superior to C64 :), except turbo loader was just a thing we couldn't have properly. Raspberry Pi could become something similar with a little love and support.
- Razengan 7y agoFor those who're interested in the 1980s "micro wars", BBC's Micro Men TV movie (2009) is a nice dramatized glimpse of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXBxV6-zamM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXBxV6-zamM Though it does paint Clive Sinclair (the Steve Jobs of the UK) in a somewhat unflattering light.
- christkv 7y agoThe craziest c64 thing I've seen recently is this 48Khz audio player https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYAf_awh5XA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYAf_awh5XA, blog post here http://brokenbytes.blogspot.com/2018/03/a-48khz-digital-music-player-for.html http://brokenbytes.blogspot.com/2018/03/a-48khz-digital-musi.... Its quite outstanding what you can do with the SID chip.
- nickswan 7y agoIf you can find it, MicroMen is a really good watch you’ll all enjoy (this is just a link to the trailer) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fGiGrf2YyZE https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fGiGrf2YyZE
- speakeron 7y agoFirst program I ever wrote on a Sinclair Spectrum was to spin a disk on the screen. I was disappointed with the performance, so for the second program I precalculated the sin/cos values and stored them in an array (and learnt that all programming is an exercise in caching). I was still disappointed with the performance, so the third program I wrote was a hex loader so I could poke machine code straight into it (had to run down to the local electronics store to pick up copy of the Z80 assembler manual). I then was happy with the speed. That kickstarted a career in software development which I still derive immense enjoyment from.
- alok-g 7y agoOh my! Your story is a very significant overlap with mine! I started programming at an age of 11 years, when I did not even know the meaning of sin and cos. The spinning 3D ring I had created was slow like yours, speeded up by caching sin and cos values like yours. The final one had entire frames precomputed in memory and cycled by hand-written machine code into the video memory space. That last one was when I was when 14 years of age.
- zzo38computer 7y agoWe can see then, there are some advantages and disadvantages each one. Clearly, ZX Spectrum has a better included BASIC software; will allow you to make large strings, screen pausing automatically, and the Commodore 64 system software must take up too much RAM that only 38911 out of 64K is available for BASIC (or maybe it is due to bank switching; I don't know). But because they compare disks with tapes we cannot compare the loading speed properly, and do not know which is better.
- rasz 7y ago"..for BASIC" and as everyone should know "It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration."