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In your mid to late thirties, remember ZX Spectrum & bor
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carl_the_cobbler
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 23, 2008 10:24 am    Post subject: In your mid to late thirties, remember ZX Spectrum & bor Reply with quote

Have a look at this

http://www.jorin.com/shed/zx-spectrum-48k-games/

A friend sent me the link, and it took me back to those wonderful squishy keyed Computers and the screens that used to flash when you loaded a game from the Tape Player.

Hope some people find it of interest!!

Cheers

Carl
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Snudge
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 23, 2008 1:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've still got mine up in the loft somewhere complete with manic miner, chuckie egg and the rest.
I did learn to program in Sinclair's version of Basic so it was educational as well.
I kept it, thinking that one day it would be worth something as a collectors item ............. but it isn't!
Thanks for reminding me how old I am anyway! Laughing
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MaFt
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 23, 2008 1:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

awwwwww sweet!!! squishy keys Smile oh yes!!

i loved the speccy! i think the main reason they were so good is that because the graphics were rubbish a game HAD to be good for anyone to buy it! you wouldn't buy a speccy for the graphics and cpu ability ;)

cheers for the link, and as Snudge said, for reminding me that i'm not so young anymore...

MaFt
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carl_the_cobbler
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 23, 2008 1:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

That is the worst part of it, the age thing!!!!!

How far Home Computers have come in just 20 years is astounding. My mate had a Speccy, I had a BBC B, that had 32k of memory and that was in 1984 and I used to play Football Manager for hours and hours and all it was, was a ball moving from left to right and back again, also anyone remember the game called ELITE that was just amazing!!!!

So some 24 years has passed and look what you can get these days. I also remember the BBC cost my mum £400 which was a king's ransom to her in those days. I'm glad you liked the link, I'm sorry it made you feel old Very Happy

Cheers

Carl
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Mullet
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 23, 2008 2:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I had the 16k version, about the same memory capacity as one of those chiming greeting cards that are now readily available.

My memories.

Spending an entire weekend programming in a game from a book. Only for the game to get stuck in a endless loop due to my keying errors.

Expectantly trying to load a game from a cassette player, only to error out after ten minutes.

The "Horace" range of games, why I would remember those? Must be the bad graphics.

Addons I always yearned for but could not afford were the Currah Speech Chip. It was perhaps the first programmable consumer text to speech generator? and the cig packet sized roll printer.

The BASIC programming itself. The layout in my opinion was nothing short of a masterpiece.
Unlike the expensive alternatives, an entire command would be input from a single key (several commands marked on each shiftable key). This meant all BASIC commands were visible on the keys, typos were eliminated and learning to program simplified.

This is the principle on which the now familiar internet html links are based.

Sadly I swapped it some years later with a guy for some much needed car repairs.
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GPS_fan
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 23, 2008 2:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

We had a BBC B, which my parents donated to a museum a few years ago. I had a Canon 35mm SLR camera, which is also now in a museum.

I've just had another birthday and was beginning to feel old until I double checked that you definitely said "In your mid to late thirties"
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Mullet
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 23, 2008 3:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

GPS_fan wrote:
Canon 35mm SLR camera
A1? Always wanted one of those when I had an Olympus OM 10.
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GPS_fan
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 23, 2008 3:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Mullet wrote:
A1?

Sadly not, it was an EF, but I still have my T90
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Mullet
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 23, 2008 3:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Nice, I still have the 650 and dedicated flash somewhere. A months wages now converted to peanuts Crying or Very sad
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Anita
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 23, 2008 3:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

MaFt wrote:
awwwwww sweet!!! squishy keys Smile oh yes!!

i loved the speccy! i think the main reason they were so good is that because the graphics were rubbish a game HAD to be good for anyone to buy it! you wouldn't buy a speccy for the graphics and cpu ability ;)

cheers for the link, and as Snudge said, for reminding me that i'm not so young anymore...

MaFt

What an advanced baby you must have been, MaFt! Laughing
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MaFt
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 23, 2008 4:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

i learnt 'BASIC' on a Tandy TRS-80 (16kb ram, 8 colours!) - we had no tape deck so every week me and my brothers would make a new game from scratch!

10 cls
20 print "my brother smells"
30 goto 20

ooh, i still remember it all :D

my eldest brother had a zx81 and made a speech synthesisor from a maplin (?) kit! it was great!

i was born in 1980 by the way and this must have been around 1987/8 when we had the tandy - it was given to us by a family friend. as were the zx81 and speccy 48k!

MaFt
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DennisN
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 23, 2008 4:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

You were all very forward little horrors!

I was nearly fifty when I got my first computer in 1986 - at work, a proper one, Qubie with 12" orange screen, 640K RAM, two 360Kb 5.25" floppy drives and a 20Mb hard disk. It was the best one in the office and that hard disk lasted me two whole years before it began to look full. I wrote a Lotus 123 Macro which sent Esc[P] characters to the Epson dot matrix printer to print my signature - I never used it except to show I had done it - there were no documents I could fit in the printer to sign for me!
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Anita
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 23, 2008 4:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

All this nostalgia got me thinking about the first computer I programmed for in 1969 - an NCR Elliott 4100. 64k and needed a large, air-conditioned, temperature-controlled room.

15 years later my son progressed from a Spectrum to a Commodore 64 which lived in a drawer!

Mind, that drawer could have done with air-conditioning when I think of the other things he kept in it! Shocked
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carl_the_cobbler
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 23, 2008 5:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

You shouldn't be looking in there!!! Very Happy

Another thing I remember the first "console" we had was a Binatone, with Squash (single player), Tennis(which was Pong really), Football (which I can't remember what the hell happened) and also Doubles Tennis I think. Used to select what you wanted with a series of switches and the controllers were rotating dials, absolutely superb!!!

Do you reckon you are born a techno geek, or is it something that grows?
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Anita
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 23, 2008 5:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

carl_the_cobbler wrote:
You shouldn't be looking in there!!! Very Happy

At times I wished I hadn't!
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