The Spectrum was not the first Sinclair computer to make it big. It was, however, the first to go massive. In the months prior to launching, ‘The Computer Programme’ had aired on the BBC, legitimising the home micro computer as the must have educational item of the 1980’s. For Sinclair and the ZX Spectrum the time was right, parents were keen, and the kids were excited. Games would soon be were everywhere thanks to all the kids programming their brand new Spectrums.
A major success factor, the one that gave the Spectrum its name, is the computer’s capacity to generate a spectrum of colours. The micro is capable of generating 16 colours; 8 low intensity colours and 8 matching bright variants. It’s hard to imagine now, but in 1982 these 16 colours were enough to start a home computer revolution. Richard Altwasser, the engineer employed by Sinclair to develop the Spectrum’s graphic systems, was setting a new benchmark with some very innovative ideas.
I’ve missed the entire 8 bit home micro revolution – I simply was too young or not even born yet. It must’ve been such an exciting time.
…more like an engineering mess. The ZX Spectrum had almost no redeeming features – terrible keyboard, horrible sound, a frankly disastrous colour system and a really poor BASIC. It was such a bad machine to develop on, some hit games were actually written on other Z80 systems, particularly the TRS-80.
It’s no wonder The Computer Programme mentioned here didn’t pick the ZX Spectrum for its shows – Acorn’s machine won that battle, got the name BBC Micro and sold into many UK schools. Look up “Micro Men” for a TV drama on the whole battle.
The ZX Spectrum was very popular because it was much cheaper than the BBC Micro (though hugely inferior in almost every way) and game developers flocked to it because of the number of users, not because it was a “miracle”.
Yes, tne 8-bit micro scene in the 80’s was diverse and quite fun, providing you could afford a better machine than the dismal ZX Spectrum…
Edited 2018-10-03 04:30 UTC
BASIC on ZX Spectrum was not the best but certainly not the worst, and at least it was light years better than what the Commodore 64 had.
Depends on how you define it.
If you define it as a 8 bit computer that was under 99 pounds – then yes it was a miracle – less than half the price of a BBC micro.
If you define it as absolute quality – then you are our course right.
Their QC process was famously was to send it to the customer and take returns no quibble if it didn’t work. That’s what happened to our first one.
The predecessor could be bought as a kit – my Dad soldiered our ZX 81 from a bag of bits.
The ZX spectrum was a poor relation yes – but it was good enough and because it got the volume it got more developers – and again they squeezed miracles out of it.
I too built my ZX81 from a kit. It was my first computer and I soon enhanced it with the 16k RAM pack that used to wobble if the computer was nudged and crash the whole thing, if you were typing a program or anything at the time it was all lost. Those were the days!
I moved to the Spectrum around 1984 and was amazed by it. I also had other 8 bit systems like the Acorn Electron, Oric One and Atari 600 and 800XL, I never tried a Commodore 64.
I eventually moved to the Amiga in 86/87 and still use them now, I also still have the Atari 600XL and the 800XL with numerous addons.
Those certainly were the days, people who missed them sure missed a lot!
Yep remember the wobble pack – and the ‘bog roll’ thermal printer, where your listings faded in the sunlight.
The price was key – that’s what they have tried to recreate with the Raspberry Pi – not to make the best machine every but to make something good enough for as cheap as possible.
It’s no surprise really that new games and software are still being written and sold for the Spectrum and C64, they still have a huge following.
Even new hardware is coming out from time to time, it’s amazing!
Just to clarify the pricing – ZX Spectrum 16K launched at 125 but dropped to 99. Whereas the BBC lower model launched at 235 and went up almost immediately to 299.
So the ZX spectrum was a third of the cost at one point and while the BBC was better particularly in terms of keyboard, case etc – it wasn’t 3x better in terms of what you could do with it.
All the games that ran on the BBC could be written for the spectrum – with at best minor differences in graphics.
For example, look on youtube for videos of Defender, chuckie egg or Elite for the spectrum and BBC micro.
Yes, the Spectrum was about half the price of the BBC Micro (and less than a third of the price of the C64). Of course it wasn’t as good. However many people (my parents included) couldn’t afford the more expensive machines. I wouldn’t have had a computer at all if the Spectrum wasn’t available. The engineering marvel is what it could do for the price.
You *must* have been there. All points agreed. The ZX was cheap, but everything else about it was abysmal. I remember when they liquidated them, when the 48k memory went for $1. We had already retired ours, and had replaced it with a much discounted TI-99A, with a better keyboard. I can use basically anything, but with a bad keyboard. I am not going to type for hours…
It was an exciting time, just not for poor machines. They would have given a few more years of life if they had added an IBM DIN port for a PC Keyboard.
You’re kidding right? The Spectrum was cost-engineered so much it didn’t even include a joystick port.
Yeah, not sure if such a miracle – I particularly remember colour atribute clash thing from Spectrum games… But: what Russian demoscene did with Spectrum clones is insane; though their demos seem to be typically b&w…
Anyways, IMHO 8-bit games kinda looked better on black&white TV (or colour one with saturation turned down) – 16 shades of gray looks more refined than 16 colours.
And you had the luck of using current, not obsolete, computers, Thom – I’m only one year older and I got into computing in 1992 with an 8-bit micro, C64.
Old demos are mostly dual-color, but recent ones are pretty colorful
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trKIiUEtRM8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svrnRRQVmis
this one uses full frame without the border =)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-kkzl2foaQ
I’m 40 and wrote my first lines of code on the ZX Spectrum.
It was fun, but at the same time it was terrible (look at it crossways and it would reset and lose all the code you’d typed in over the past hour). Myself, I wish I’d had a Commodore instead.
But, there’s a certain street cred derived from the fact that you’ve once programmed on a ZX Spectrum
I was 17 and *so* wanted one… But my dad deemed it as a toy (which it was, which is why I wanted it), and it was far beyond my reach. Soon after, when I started going studying Electrical Engineering, he bought me (at great expense) what was a “proper” computer, a Commodore PC with 4.77MHz 8088 and two 360KB floppy drives. Now I had Wordstar and Word Perfect and dBase III to play with! Who wanted Manic Miner? 🙁
Thankfully my uncle was far less strict, and my cousin had a Spectrum, and we spent so many saturdays listening to its chirps and playing those wonderful games… To tell the truth, they have aged very badly, as an evening with an emulator will reveal, unlike many NES games which are still fun to play and cute to look at, but at the time they felt to me like diving into the future.
The Commodore Colt? I remember wanting to upgrade my C-64, and going to Toys R’ Us, a toy store, to look at it.
Yes, it really was exciting times (let’s not call it “Interesting Times”, that has a tendancy to come true).
There was choice! It felt like there was an endless supply of new machines coming out each month, and you could only imagine how fantastic this was going to be. In retrospect there was 2(3 if being generous) CPUs in use, and just a few gfx and sound chips being combined. That was back when performance numbers for the BASIC interpreter was important.
More saddening is that you had a matching choice of magazines, so much larger than today even if excluding machine specific ones.
Sometimes nostalgia isn’t just rosetinted.
Still have a Timex 1000 with original box somewhere on the attic
Should had been PUSHED as far. Financially. Govs are so often ignorant.
Computing wouldn’t be in the miserable state it is now.
Cool article, though I’m surprised an article on it’s graphics capabilities includes no images of said graphics…
Edited 2018-10-03 19:29 UTC
Exactly my thoughts! Without any Screenshots I have no real way of understanding how any of these modes he talks about actually look…
The Spectrum ULA has been reverse engineered and documented in a book for anyone curious about these sorts of things:
http://www.zxdesign.info/book/