3 ms·

This is a lovely ode to the period in which I developed my love for computers. Although like many growing up east of the Atlantic Ocean, my computer of choice w

This is a lovely ode to the period in which I developed my love for computers. Although like many growing up east of the Atlantic Ocean, my computer of choice was the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Without the budget to afford to buy much in the way of cassette-based professional software, like most I resorted to manually entering programs from magazines like Sinclair User[1] and Personal Computer World[2], which got me into the habit of reading others' code. When they were inevitably incorrectly entered, I was introduced to debugging techniques for the first time. After a while, I figured that I could write a computer program of my own; and not long after that, I realized I could submit my own program to a magazine and even earn money from it[3]! I don't think I would be working at Google now if it were not for this first-hand, somewhat unforgiving education I got in the 1980s. That said, those who missed out on this era also missed out on quite how limited the available sources of information were. Without online services to consult, the primary source of information being trial and error, and one incorrect machine code instruction leading to loss of all data entered, progress was very slow going. A committed learner could certainly make far faster progress with a more modern environment. For today's generation, I'm grateful for books like Charles Petzold's Code [4], which constructs a computer architecture from first principles. The joy is still there waiting to be found! [1]: https://archive.org/details/sinclair-user-magazine-033/page/n113/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/sinclair-user-magazine-033/page/... [2]: https://archive.org/details/PersonalComputerWorld1984-01/page/262/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/PersonalComputerWorld1984-01/pag... [3]: https://archive.org/details/sinclair-user-magazine-044/page/n87/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/sinclair-user-magazine-044/page/... [4]: https://www.microsoftpressstore.com/store/code-the-hidden-language-of-computer-hardware-and-software-9780137909100 https://www.microsoftpressstore.com/store/code-the-hidden-la...

ilaksh 4y ago
Hmm.. I wonder if it would be possible to train Alpaca or Llama or something on all of the available ZX Spectrum BASIC code.. if possible along with descriptions and manuals where available. I guess you would run into output window issues. But in X months or a few years that could be solved. You might be able to ask a really advanced model to just write a fully custom ZX Spectrum game. Just remember to start with "think step-by-step" or something like that. Actually this is probably something you could try right away with GPT-4. Even 8k could be interesting. But especially the 32k model. If you couldn't find something like Spectrum BASIC that it was accurate enough on, you could define a BASIC at the beginning and give it a few key memory locations or something. Although there are probably already enough ZX Spectrum programs in a way. Here is my demo I made of my vintage simulator thing running hundreds of ZX Spectrum instances at a time on a PC: https://youtu.be/BjeVzEQW4C8 https://youtu.be/BjeVzEQW4C8
stevekemp 4y ago
Fellow Spectrum user here, I bought Your Sinclair and Sinclair User. I started with BASIC, from the orange manual, moved onto Z80 assembly, and also made submissions to the magazines - in my case POKEs for infinite lives/energy/time, for games. I didn't really write any new software, but I did hack a lot of games. That was almost more fun than playing them. But you're not wrong about information being hard to acquire. I had a couple of books from the local library about assembly programming, but they were very basic (pun intended!) I'm trying to collect more of the older books anew, but it's hard to find them and get hold of them these days. So if there's anybody reading who has any books on Z80/Sinclair coding, or documentation please feel free to get in touch. (PDFs are nice, but physical books are best.)
- timsneath 4y ago
  If you haven’t seen them, Acorn Books in the UK have put out a lovely set of hardback reprints of some of the classic Melbourne House titles. Well worth a look: https://acornbooks.uk/retro-reprints/ https://acornbooks.uk/retro-reprints/ Like many others before me, my occasional weekend hobby has revolved around writing a ZX Spectrum emulator as a way to better understand these primitive but fascinating machines: https://github.com/timsneath/cambridge https://github.com/timsneath/cambridge. Nothing special, but a fun project nevertheless.
  - stevekemp 4y ago
    Thank-you, I hadn't seen those. I'll be taking a look properly shortly :)

ilaksh 4y ago

Hmm.. I wonder if it would be possible to train Alpaca or Llama or something on all of the available ZX Spectrum BASIC code.. if possible along with descriptions and manuals where available. I guess you would run into output window issues. But in X months or a few years that could be solved. You might be able to ask a really advanced model to just write a fully custom ZX Spectrum game. Just remember to start with "think step-by-step" or something like that. Actually this is probably something you could try right away with GPT-4. Even 8k could be interesting. But especially the 32k model. If you couldn't find something like Spectrum BASIC that it was accurate enough on, you could define a BASIC at the beginning and give it a few key memory locations or something. Although there are probably already enough ZX Spectrum programs in a way. Here is my demo I made of my vintage simulator thing running hundreds of ZX Spectrum instances at a time on a PC: https://youtu.be/BjeVzEQW4C8 https://youtu.be/BjeVzEQW4C8

stevekemp 4y ago

Fellow Spectrum user here, I bought Your Sinclair and Sinclair User. I started with BASIC, from the orange manual, moved onto Z80 assembly, and also made submissions to the magazines - in my case POKEs for infinite lives/energy/time, for games. I didn't really write any new software, but I did hack a lot of games. That was almost more fun than playing them. But you're not wrong about information being hard to acquire. I had a couple of books from the local library about assembly programming, but they were very basic (pun intended!) I'm trying to collect more of the older books anew, but it's hard to find them and get hold of them these days. So if there's anybody reading who has any books on Z80/Sinclair coding, or documentation please feel free to get in touch. (PDFs are nice, but physical books are best.)

timsneath 4y ago
If you haven’t seen them, Acorn Books in the UK have put out a lovely set of hardback reprints of some of the classic Melbourne House titles. Well worth a look: https://acornbooks.uk/retro-reprints/ https://acornbooks.uk/retro-reprints/ Like many others before me, my occasional weekend hobby has revolved around writing a ZX Spectrum emulator as a way to better understand these primitive but fascinating machines: https://github.com/timsneath/cambridge https://github.com/timsneath/cambridge. Nothing special, but a fun project nevertheless.
- stevekemp 4y ago
  Thank-you, I hadn't seen those. I'll be taking a look properly shortly :)