3 ms·

Neither Bathgate nor IBM made inexpensive home computers that could be picked out of the reject pile, sneaked out under a jacket, repaired, and sold down the pu

Neither Bathgate nor IBM made inexpensive home computers that could be picked out of the reject pile, sneaked out under a jacket, repaired, and sold down the pub for 100 quid. The thing is that while a lot of people throughout the UK, by Christmas '83 literally everyone in Dundee had a ZX Spectrum. Probably half the reason they had difficulty fulfilling orders is that so many "minor faults" ones on the lines ended up getting sold in pubs under the table, that would otherwise have been reworked and packaged for retail. And I mean, literally *everyone*. If you wrote a game and you gave copies to your mates at school, by the end of the week everyone would be playing it, particularly if it was good but even if it wasn't, because it was *new* and you hadn't played it a million times.

amiga386 4y ago
I don't know if this is specifically your childhood experience, but you're describing also my childhood too, and I didn't grow up in Dundee. There were plenty of first- and second-hand ZX Spectrums to go around, VIC-20s, C16s, C64s, Amstrad CPCs, and the schools had BBCs. The UK went home-computer mad. Remember when there were type-in listings in C+VG? The Usbourne computer books? [1] INPUT magazine? [3] Kids were swapping tapes like crazy, and writing their own demos and games, all over the country. While Timex may have played a part and the density of Speccies may have been higher in Dundee, I still think Timex's main contribution to Dundee's games industry was to make David Jones redundant, giving him the money to buy an Amiga 1000 [3] [1] https://usborne.com/gb/books/computer-and-coding-books https://usborne.com/gb/books/computer-and-coding-books [2] https://archive.org/details/inputmagazine https://archive.org/details/inputmagazine [3] http://www.javalemmings.com/DMA/DMA1_2.htm http://www.javalemmings.com/DMA/DMA1_2.htm
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  > I still think Timex's main contribution to Dundee's games industry was to make David Jones redundant, giving him the money to buy an Amiga 1000 Valid.

amiga386 4y ago

I don't know if this is specifically your childhood experience, but you're describing also my childhood too, and I didn't grow up in Dundee. There were plenty of first- and second-hand ZX Spectrums to go around, VIC-20s, C16s, C64s, Amstrad CPCs, and the schools had BBCs. The UK went home-computer mad. Remember when there were type-in listings in C+VG? The Usbourne computer books? [1] INPUT magazine? [3] Kids were swapping tapes like crazy, and writing their own demos and games, all over the country. While Timex may have played a part and the density of Speccies may have been higher in Dundee, I still think Timex's main contribution to Dundee's games industry was to make David Jones redundant, giving him the money to buy an Amiga 1000 [3] [1] https://usborne.com/gb/books/computer-and-coding-books https://usborne.com/gb/books/computer-and-coding-books [2] https://archive.org/details/inputmagazine https://archive.org/details/inputmagazine [3] http://www.javalemmings.com/DMA/DMA1_2.htm http://www.javalemmings.com/DMA/DMA1_2.htm

Gordonjcp 4y ago
> I still think Timex's main contribution to Dundee's games industry was to make David Jones redundant, giving him the money to buy an Amiga 1000 Valid.