7 ms·

My story is so similar to yours (and I’m sure many others). Santa brought my house a Spectrum 48k Lo Profile when I was a kid with a cool KnightRider style key

My story is so similar to yours (and I’m sure many others). Santa brought my house a Spectrum 48k Lo Profile when I was a kid with a cool KnightRider style keyboard. Over the years I haven’t seen it talked about much if at all, so I always assumed it was a fairly niche model. After hearing about Sir Clive, I looked it up to find out how many sold and was surprised to learn that it never actually existed as a standalone device. My dad must have bought the add-on kit, and an 81, and quietly upgraded it and just never told us kids. I’m gonna call him when I’m done typing this. All I ever wanted to do on it was transcribe the programs from my magazines and try to learn how to make something of my own someday. I’m not sure what I’d be doing now if he had just brought home an Atari, but I almost certainly wouldn’t be in tech. Cheers, Clive. I hope I see you down the road when the last of my cyan and red bars have run out. For anyone interested: https://www.flickr.com/photos/anachrocomputer/2671208818 https://www.flickr.com/photos/anachrocomputer/2671208818

brulard 5y ago
I got an Atari and I'm in tech. Why should that be any different?
- tcbawo 5y ago
  I assume he meant an Atari video game system rather than an Atari personal computer.
  - headmelted 5y ago
    100% this.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    Yeah I (or rather my parents) got an Atari 800XL and it totally got me in tech. But yeah Atari was much better known for its having consoles (5200 and 7800 I think). I was never interested in those. Especially because the Atari was very unpopular in Europe. The C64 was king. That also made it more expensive which was why I got the 800XL. But it also meant much less software around which is how I started programming.
    - toyg 5y ago
      In Italy, Atari "meant" the 2600. Later there was the brief rivalry of ST with Amiga, but only musicians ever bought the ST.
    - Cosi1125 5y ago
      > the Atari was very unpopular in Europe It depends on your definition of "Europe" ;-) The 8/16-bit Atari was (and still is, in some circles) extremely popular in Germany, Poland, and former Czechoslovakia.
      - a-dub 5y ago
        speaking of the atari st, sometime in the late 80s a mail-order atari st software/accessory retailer in the us (i think it was w. brown enterprises or something like that) used to distribute their catalog monthly or quarterly in newsprint had a throwback sinclair special one year at christmas. for $40, you could get an unassembled zx-81 kit where everything had to be soldered in place by hand. as an enthusiastic eight year old, i was perhaps not as good at soldering as i would have liked. good thing i was lucky enough to have the st to start with.
      - brulard 5y ago
        100% this - Atari was quite popular in central europe.
      - GekkePrutser 5y ago
        Ok I'm from the Netherlands. The C64 was the computer and Atari was a very distant number 2 (or even 3, after the MSX). At least in my circles :) It was much more difficult to get an idea of the whole community back then. But the C64 was 600 guilders at the time and the Atari was 'dumped' on the market at one point for 200 so it was an easy choice :)
    - renaudg 5y ago
      I grew up in France and the Amstrad was king (same in Spain I believe), the C64 a very very distant second, and nobody had ever seen a Spectrum (thankfully, if I may add : the C64 was special and in spite of its terrible palette deserves all the praise it gets. The Spectrum is a mediocre and incredibly overrated machine compared to the others. It was decent and affordable in 1982, but by 1984 both the C64 and Amstrad CPC were wiping the floor with it, and there was no longer a rational reason to prefer it. A bizarre love affair the UK has had with this machine...)
- PapaSpaceDelta 5y ago
  For a lot of us Brits Sir Clive's machines were our first glimpse of the future. If that doesn’t sound like you, then just stand aside while we mourn our hero.
  - brulard 5y ago
    I respect that. Atari computers for me and Commodores for some were a first glimpse of the future as well. I didn't expect downvotes for honestly asking how would having Sinclair differ from my experience.
  - marco_craveiro 5y ago
    Actually, may I say it was the same for most eastern Europeans. Most of the programmers I know in Portugal started with a ZX Spectrum.
    - wwtrv 5y ago
      It’s funny that Portugal is an eastern European country.
- headmelted 5y ago
  EDIT: I should clarify I meant an Atari game system. I was just talking about my own experience, but since you ask (and I’m certain this will bore but you did ask): I got into tech due to having access to that computer, at that time, in an environment that otherwise wouldn’t have been amenable to learning about it at all. In my case - our family Spectrum was later replaced by a SNES and after that a PS1. After the 48k, I didn’t have access to a PC at home for another decade, and wouldn’t have seen the point of saving enough to get it if not for having the Spectrum. If I had gotten an Atari to begin with I wouldn’t have had those experiences. I guess something else inspired you along the way - for me it was this.
  - brulard 5y ago
    Thank you for clarification, as other commenter pointed out, Atari computers (like 800 XE/XL) were quite popular in central europe and I haven't seen a game system (like 2600) around, even didn't know until much later that something like that existed.
meelford 5y ago
The top keys have 7 (incl colours) functions per key. So cool!!
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
becurious 5y ago
There were many 3rd party add-on keyboards for the 16K/48K Spectrum. I got the Saga 1 Emperor keyboard the Christmas after I got my 48K. You opened the case of the Spectrum, removed the ribbon connectors from the board and then attached the new keyboard and screwed the bottom plus board to it. There was some magical feeling back then that I think is hard to capture now. The manuals were really good for teaching you - I learned sine and cosine from the diagrams in the manual years before we covered them in maths. The memory layout and system variables were documented, as were all the Z80 opcodes. The first time I used LDIR to transfer data to screen from off screen memory was magical. You really could master the whole machine and I feel that the limitations actually helped. I would spend summers writing large assembly language programs. Before I had an assembler (HiSoft DevPac) I would hand assemble programs by writing them out on paper and then figuring out the opcodes and calculate the jump relative offsets.
- antod 5y ago
  > I learned sine and cosine from the diagrams in the manual years before we covered them in maths. You too? I didn't fully understand them, and thought they had more to do with circles than triangles, but yeah that circle drawing code in the Spectrum manual was my first exposure to sin and cos.
  - raffraffraff 5y ago
    Same! I had the Spectrum +2A model, which had a bunch of issues running older software. The OCP Art Package didn't work at all, so I ended up writing a really awful drawing program in BASIC. Figured out how to poll the mouse, detect button presses etc. I drew a toolbar on the left of the screen depicting squares, circles etc. If the mouse button was pressed within one of those, the drawing mode was changed. That would let me draw the objects on screen. That was also where I learned what sin and cos "really" did. Never got the bucket fill to work 'properly' - didn't know if BASIC 'gosub' supported recursion, and I can't even remember if I tried.
    - bennysomething 5y ago
rbanffy 5y ago
There's a huge difference between these 8-bit computers and PCs that came later, or even the CP/M machines contemporary to them. When you booted a ZX-80, 81, Spectrum, a VIC-20, a PET, or an Apple II+, you went straight into a BASIC interpreter (or REPL, for the initiated). You could enter a program, or issue commands at will. We rarely think about this, but the first UI you see in those machines is a programming language. And we did program a lot with those machines. With a CP/M machine or a DOS PC (there were about 2 people in the world with PCs without floppies ;-) ), you boot into an OS. It's not a programming environment, but one designed for starting applications someone else wrote. While most had a BASIC interpreter you could run, it was a standalone program and not THE language of the machine. And experimenting COULD harm the computer - you could delete files from your DOS boot disk, as many of us discovered the hard way.
- loudmax 5y ago
  The first IBM PCs I was exposed to as a kid in the early/mid 1980's booted into BASIC if you didn't insert a disk into the 5.25" floppy drive. I think if you booted in this mode, BASIC had no access to the floppy drive at all so you couldn't save your work (or we kids didn't know how). Better to boot from a floppy, then after it finished booting, swap the floppy for another one to save the silly BASIC games we were writing. Later on, we saw models with two floppy drives, so you could leave the floppy containing DOS and BASIC in drive A: and save your work onto the disk in drive B: Eventually, PCs began to come with hard drives and these naturally became drive C: So if you've ever wondered why Windows typically refers to the hard drive containing the OS as drive C: it's because drives A: and B: were the floppy drives.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    > booted into BASIC if you didn't insert a disk into the 5.25" floppy drive. That's true. The PCs had a BASIC in ROM and a cassette port. That was dropped starting with the XT, which gave the puzzling "NO ROM BASIC" message in 80-column text when the hard disk was not bootable.

brulard 5y ago

I got an Atari and I'm in tech. Why should that be any different?

tcbawo 5y ago
I assume he meant an Atari video game system rather than an Atari personal computer.
- headmelted 5y ago
  100% this.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  Yeah I (or rather my parents) got an Atari 800XL and it totally got me in tech. But yeah Atari was much better known for its having consoles (5200 and 7800 I think). I was never interested in those. Especially because the Atari was very unpopular in Europe. The C64 was king. That also made it more expensive which was why I got the 800XL. But it also meant much less software around which is how I started programming.
  - toyg 5y ago
    In Italy, Atari "meant" the 2600. Later there was the brief rivalry of ST with Amiga, but only musicians ever bought the ST.
  - Cosi1125 5y ago
    > the Atari was very unpopular in Europe It depends on your definition of "Europe" ;-) The 8/16-bit Atari was (and still is, in some circles) extremely popular in Germany, Poland, and former Czechoslovakia.
    - a-dub 5y ago
      speaking of the atari st, sometime in the late 80s a mail-order atari st software/accessory retailer in the us (i think it was w. brown enterprises or something like that) used to distribute their catalog monthly or quarterly in newsprint had a throwback sinclair special one year at christmas. for $40, you could get an unassembled zx-81 kit where everything had to be soldered in place by hand. as an enthusiastic eight year old, i was perhaps not as good at soldering as i would have liked. good thing i was lucky enough to have the st to start with.
    - brulard 5y ago
      100% this - Atari was quite popular in central europe.
    - GekkePrutser 5y ago
      Ok I'm from the Netherlands. The C64 was the computer and Atari was a very distant number 2 (or even 3, after the MSX). At least in my circles :) It was much more difficult to get an idea of the whole community back then. But the C64 was 600 guilders at the time and the Atari was 'dumped' on the market at one point for 200 so it was an easy choice :)
  - renaudg 5y ago
    I grew up in France and the Amstrad was king (same in Spain I believe), the C64 a very very distant second, and nobody had ever seen a Spectrum (thankfully, if I may add : the C64 was special and in spite of its terrible palette deserves all the praise it gets. The Spectrum is a mediocre and incredibly overrated machine compared to the others. It was decent and affordable in 1982, but by 1984 both the C64 and Amstrad CPC were wiping the floor with it, and there was no longer a rational reason to prefer it. A bizarre love affair the UK has had with this machine...)
PapaSpaceDelta 5y ago
For a lot of us Brits Sir Clive's machines were our first glimpse of the future. If that doesn’t sound like you, then just stand aside while we mourn our hero.
- brulard 5y ago
  I respect that. Atari computers for me and Commodores for some were a first glimpse of the future as well. I didn't expect downvotes for honestly asking how would having Sinclair differ from my experience.
- marco_craveiro 5y ago
  Actually, may I say it was the same for most eastern Europeans. Most of the programmers I know in Portugal started with a ZX Spectrum.
  - wwtrv 5y ago
    It’s funny that Portugal is an eastern European country.
headmelted 5y ago
EDIT: I should clarify I meant an Atari game system. I was just talking about my own experience, but since you ask (and I’m certain this will bore but you did ask): I got into tech due to having access to that computer, at that time, in an environment that otherwise wouldn’t have been amenable to learning about it at all. In my case - our family Spectrum was later replaced by a SNES and after that a PS1. After the 48k, I didn’t have access to a PC at home for another decade, and wouldn’t have seen the point of saving enough to get it if not for having the Spectrum. If I had gotten an Atari to begin with I wouldn’t have had those experiences. I guess something else inspired you along the way - for me it was this.
- brulard 5y ago
  Thank you for clarification, as other commenter pointed out, Atari computers (like 800 XE/XL) were quite popular in central europe and I haven't seen a game system (like 2600) around, even didn't know until much later that something like that existed.

meelford 5y ago

The top keys have 7 (incl colours) functions per key. So cool!!

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

becurious 5y ago

There were many 3rd party add-on keyboards for the 16K/48K Spectrum. I got the Saga 1 Emperor keyboard the Christmas after I got my 48K. You opened the case of the Spectrum, removed the ribbon connectors from the board and then attached the new keyboard and screwed the bottom plus board to it. There was some magical feeling back then that I think is hard to capture now. The manuals were really good for teaching you - I learned sine and cosine from the diagrams in the manual years before we covered them in maths. The memory layout and system variables were documented, as were all the Z80 opcodes. The first time I used LDIR to transfer data to screen from off screen memory was magical. You really could master the whole machine and I feel that the limitations actually helped. I would spend summers writing large assembly language programs. Before I had an assembler (HiSoft DevPac) I would hand assemble programs by writing them out on paper and then figuring out the opcodes and calculate the jump relative offsets.

antod 5y ago
> I learned sine and cosine from the diagrams in the manual years before we covered them in maths. You too? I didn't fully understand them, and thought they had more to do with circles than triangles, but yeah that circle drawing code in the Spectrum manual was my first exposure to sin and cos.
- raffraffraff 5y ago
  Same! I had the Spectrum +2A model, which had a bunch of issues running older software. The OCP Art Package didn't work at all, so I ended up writing a really awful drawing program in BASIC. Figured out how to poll the mouse, detect button presses etc. I drew a toolbar on the left of the screen depicting squares, circles etc. If the mouse button was pressed within one of those, the drawing mode was changed. That would let me draw the objects on screen. That was also where I learned what sin and cos "really" did. Never got the bucket fill to work 'properly' - didn't know if BASIC 'gosub' supported recursion, and I can't even remember if I tried.
  - bennysomething 5y ago

rbanffy 5y ago

There's a huge difference between these 8-bit computers and PCs that came later, or even the CP/M machines contemporary to them. When you booted a ZX-80, 81, Spectrum, a VIC-20, a PET, or an Apple II+, you went straight into a BASIC interpreter (or REPL, for the initiated). You could enter a program, or issue commands at will. We rarely think about this, but the first UI you see in those machines is a programming language. And we did program a lot with those machines. With a CP/M machine or a DOS PC (there were about 2 people in the world with PCs without floppies ;-) ), you boot into an OS. It's not a programming environment, but one designed for starting applications someone else wrote. While most had a BASIC interpreter you could run, it was a standalone program and not THE language of the machine. And experimenting COULD harm the computer - you could delete files from your DOS boot disk, as many of us discovered the hard way.

loudmax 5y ago
The first IBM PCs I was exposed to as a kid in the early/mid 1980's booted into BASIC if you didn't insert a disk into the 5.25" floppy drive. I think if you booted in this mode, BASIC had no access to the floppy drive at all so you couldn't save your work (or we kids didn't know how). Better to boot from a floppy, then after it finished booting, swap the floppy for another one to save the silly BASIC games we were writing. Later on, we saw models with two floppy drives, so you could leave the floppy containing DOS and BASIC in drive A: and save your work onto the disk in drive B: Eventually, PCs began to come with hard drives and these naturally became drive C: So if you've ever wondered why Windows typically refers to the hard drive containing the OS as drive C: it's because drives A: and B: were the floppy drives.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  > booted into BASIC if you didn't insert a disk into the 5.25" floppy drive. That's true. The PCs had a BASIC in ROM and a cassette port. That was dropped starting with the XT, which gave the puzzling "NO ROM BASIC" message in 80-column text when the hard disk was not bootable.