25th Anniversary of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum

Alioth writes "Twenty five years ago today, Sinclair Research launched Britain's most popular home computer of the 1980s — the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Costing about one third of the price of its rivals such as the Commodore 64 while having a faster CPU and a better BASIC interpreter, the machine sold well in many guises throughout the 1980s and had more than a staggering 9,000 software titles. The machine may well have done well in the US too, had Timex — the company building the machine under license in the US — not already been in financial trouble and about to fold. The machine was also extremely successful in Russia, although not for Sinclair Research — because the Russians made dozens of different clones of the machine, and did so right into the mid 1990s. The machine still has a healthy retro scene, including the development of new commercial software by Cronosoft, and new hardware such as the DivIDE, which allows a standard PC hard disc or compact flash card to be connected to the machine."

Comments

Nice little Speccy tribute in flash

[Rob T Firefly]

Hey Hey 16k

THATS NOTHING

[rapiddescent]

I got my spec
trum 48k to c
onnect to the
internet and
work with sla
shdot.

REM disconnec
t

I'm a woman with blunt, square-tipped fingers...

[Anonymous Coward]

And I blame it all on my using a ZX81's membrane keyboard when puberty hit. Instead of developing sleek, feminine fingertips I have hands that resemble welding gloves.

Thanks a lot, you bastards. :P

Sinclair story

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

My dad told me a story about a friend of his that purchased a Sinclair. He was so excited to have a computer. He hooked it up, turned it on, and thought he'd ask it a simple question. "Who was the first president of the United States?" "SYNTAX ERROR" What?! My dad explained to him that he had to write a program to tell the computer how to answer that question. "Well if I have to tell it what I already know, what's the point?"!

Yeah, he didn't get it. Actually, I imagine he's a lot more into computers these days. Finally got what he wanted, twenty years later.

Re:And, as we all know...

[iainl]

I'd have said the Speccy was too small and light to make a decent doorstop. You'd be much better off with the C64 for that. Mind you, a PET would do the job even better.