| cosam.org |
Sinclair ZX SpectrumBeing the first computer I ever got my hands on, this was the one that got the ball rolling for me. My father bought one not so long after they were released in the UK and, at the grand old age of 5, I was instantly captivated. The Spectrum was an amazing commercial success, selling over 3.5 million units in its 6 years of production - pretty soon it seemed that everyone had one. You can see some pictures of my own Specturm collection here. 
Specifications
Programming
It wasn't long before I started leafing through the BASIC instruction
manual that came with the Spectrum. I probably typed in every program
in the book, working up from basic PRINTs and INPUTs through the
I remember one of my longer programs being a graphical extravaganza of lines and circles of various colours which, despite not having any delays in the code, probably took longer to draw on the screen than the program took to load from tape. You could then see that wonderful Specturm "colour bleed" effect as colours could only be defined per 8x8-pixel block. I also recall being rather upset when my father announced he'd be selling the Specturm to buy an Amstrad CPC-464. Eventhough it was a superior machine and most of my favourite games were available on it, I wasn't too happy with this as none of my programs would run on it. (I of course soon got over this when the Amstrad arrived.) GamesWe had quite a few games on this little machine, and many a happy (yet often rather frustrating) hour went by playing classics like Jet Set Willy and Manic Miner. Many of these hours were of course spent watching flashing borders accompanied by rather painful-sounding squeals during the dreadfully slow loading of the games from the tape deck. Other memorable games are Sheer Panic, Pssst, Hungry Horrace, and the infuriating Pitman Seven. The great thing is that pretty much any Specturm game you can think of can still be played today with an emulator using freely available tape images (see the links below). LinksWorld of Spectrum | Amstrad CPC-464 |
control structures and dabbling in graphics. Many of the things I
learned way back then are just as applicable today as, lets face it,
the basis high level languages hasn't changed all that much over the
years.
