Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K
More vintage computing... The Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K!After ravaging auctions at QXL to get a Commodore 64 a while back, I took another trip back to to 80's and got hold of a Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K. It's 100% functional after a small keyboard hack, the parallel signal cable from the keyboard to the mainboard was folded, thus creating a short.. This was easily fixed through creative use of paper and scotch tape.. ehr..
The Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K was announced along with the 16K version in 1982 (still a damned good year). The "Speccy" had the following blazing specifications:
| CPU | Zilog Z80A Microprocessor, running at 3.5 MHz |
| Memory | 48 KB RAM |
| Graphics | 256x192 with 8(16) colours, controlled by the CPU. |
| Storage | Plain Cassette deck, connected using two cables with minijacks. |
As you can see from the picture below the Spectrum has a rather elegant and very compact design. How cool would it be if someone hooked this baby up to an small 10" LCD and a battery pack. ultra portable Sinclair BASIC... or with the Joystick/ROM interface installed, a handheld game console! The PSP could just sod off! (well, maybe not.. but it would still be cool!). Actually there is a ZX Spectrum emulator available for the Gameboy Advance.
The Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K (Photo by Bill Bertram, Creative Commons Attribution)
The ZX Spectrum BASIC prompt as seen below, is quite depressing when compared to the nice blue BASIC prompt used by the Commodore 64. The Operating System used by the Sinclair is some sort of custom BASIC intepreter, the Z80 assembler code is available here by the way... For those who are perverted enough to enjoy that sort of thing...
The Default ZX Spectrum 48K BASIC Prompt
The keyboard layout of the Spectrum is quite remarkable. Each key can have five different functions. And each BASIC keyword is available as a key combination (actually you must use these combinations, just writing the commands as text won't work as far as I have tried). Perhaps a Java keyboard could be an idea? The keys are also soft, like on a plain calculator.
ZX Spectrum 48K keyboard layout
Ah.. the games! The games come on tape (or ROM's that can be connected to the extension interface), and the tapes are transferred to the ZX Spectrum using the head phone output port on a plain cassette deck. Managed to test this earlier this week with my ancient cassette deck. After some tone and volume adjustment the flashy screen as known from the Commodore appeared. The Spectrum does it's sound processing using the CPU, and the sound comes out of a built in speaker. Compared to the legendary SID chip used on the Commodore this is crap!
Oracle's Cave and Barbarian
Finally a comparison of the graphics on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum and the Commodore 64. Quite a difference! At least on this game.
Commando on the Commodore 64
Commando on the ZX Spectrum
