new zx spectrum

John_P

Just seen the 80's classic is getting a new release

bbc link

I'd have been more interested if it had the full keyboard and that could be a marketing mistake but it's an interesting idea that should sell a few units.

I wasn't allowed one as a kid - I had texas instruments ti99/4a as my father insisted my coding skills would be better on a 16bit machine that had more instant access to using assembler.   Just what everty 12 year old wants to hear when your mates are playing the cool games.

thermionic

How can you write BASIC programs on that monstrosity?

thumpingrug

Its clearly just for playing games.  Apparently comes pre loaded with a ton of the classics.

I can't find a link to the sellers.

I started with a ZX81 back in 82 and progressed to a specie.  I suspect theres some rose tinted nostalgia here but some of the gameplay was highly addictive.

Axe_meister

Modern kids won't know the joy of spending hours typing in programs from a magazine, then debugging them.

lloyd

I had one of these-with the cassette player games-It got so knackered that for certain games you had to set the volume in the perfect spot then leave the room for 15 minutes, hoping that when you returned the game was loaded-invariably not! I think Commando and the Dizzy series got the most play out of us.

menamestom

Does anybody remember the programme in the C64 manual that made a hot air ballon cross the screen diagonally over and over again?

strumjoughlamps

menamestom said:

Does anybody remember the programme in the C64 manual that made a hot air ballon cross the screen diagonally over and over again?

1 REM UP, UP, AND AWAY!

5 PRINT n{CLR/HOME}n

10 '1=53248 : REM START OF DISPLAY CHIP

11 POKE '1+21,4 : REM ENABLE SPRITE 2

12 POKE 2042,13 : REM SPRITE 2 DATA FROM 13TH BLK

20 FOR N = 0 TO 62: READ Q : POKE 832+N,Q: NEXT

30 FOR X = 0 TO 200 ~ GETSITSINfO.fROMDATA"

40 POKE V+4,X: REM UPDATE X COORDINATES

50 POKE V+5,X: REM UPDATE Y COORDINATES

60 NEXT X

70 GOTO ~ INfO. READ IN fROM Q" 200 DATA 0,127,0,1,255,192,3,255,224,3,231,224

210 DATA 7,217,240,7,223,240,7,217,240,3,231,224

220 DATA 3,255,224,3,255,224,2,255,160,1,127,64

230 DATA 1,62,64,0,156,128,0,156,128,0,73,0,0,73,0

240 DATA 0,62,0,0,62,0,0,62,0,

I was only telling the kids the other day of the joys of typing in a game from a magazine, Oric Basic was by far my fave as was the Oric keyboard

Phil_aka_Pip

John_P said:

 my father insisted my coding skills would be better on a 16bit machine that had more instant access to using assembler.

He was probably right. There were a lot of people who thought these toys made them into "programmers".

Drew_TNBD

Phil_aka_Pip said:

John_P said:

 my father insisted my coding skills would be better on a 16bit machine that had more instant access to using assembler.

He was probably right. There were a lot of people who thought these toys made them into "programmers".

Eventually they did.

gusman2x

Did anyone play how to be a complete bastard? It was free with my Sinclair. Amazing.

Most of the old 8 bit games can be played through your browser here https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_games/v2

Goodbye Thursday work.

Phil_aka_Pip

Drew_fx said:

Phil_aka_Pip said:

John_P said:

 my father insisted my coding skills would be better on a 16bit machine that had more instant access to using assembler.

He was probably right. There were a lot of people who thought these toys made them into "programmers".

Eventually they did.

They might have ended up writing bloatware in C++ or Java, thus thinking they are "programmers"

FX_Munkee

Phil_aka_Pip said:

John_P said:

 my father insisted my coding skills would be better on a 16bit machine that had more instant access to using assembler.

He was probably right. There were a lot of people who thought these toys made them into "programmers".

heh, there's plenty of people I work with who cut their teeth on Spectrums, some of them aren't too shoddy in the programming dept. Some of them can even do Assembler at a push

Phil_aka_Pip

FX_Munkee said:

Phil_aka_Pip said:

John_P said:

 my father insisted my coding skills would be better on a 16bit machine that had more instant access to using assembler.

He was probably right. There were a lot of people who thought these toys made them into "programmers".

heh, there's plenty of people I work with who cut their teeth on Spectrums, some of them aren't too shoddy in the programming dept. Some of them can even do Assembler at a push

OK good. For each of them, how many are there of the other kind? Or those who failed at it and became Recruitment Consultants?

FX_Munkee

Phil_aka_Pip said:

FX_Munkee said:

Phil_aka_Pip said:

John_P said:

 my father insisted my coding skills would be better on a 16bit machine that had more instant access to using assembler.

He was probably right. There were a lot of people who thought these toys made them into "programmers".

heh, there's plenty of people I work with who cut their teeth on Spectrums, some of them aren't too shoddy in the programming dept. Some of them can even do Assembler at a push

OK good. For each of them, how many are there of the other kind? Or those who failed at it and became Recruitment Consultants?

Let me consult my Deity level 3 statistics book....
hmmm doesn't seem to have those figures?
What I do know is that (from experience) people who started coding in the 8 bit era (be it on 8 or 16 bit hardware) tend to be a whole lot better at "close to the metal" work. If you look at our Render team or Low Level Tech team there's nobody under the age of 35, most of them are 40+.
Kids (with Comp Sci degrees) today eh?

Drew_TNBD

Phil_aka_Pip said:

Drew_fx said:

Phil_aka_Pip said:

John_P said:

 my father insisted my coding skills would be better on a 16bit machine that had more instant access to using assembler.

He was probably right. There were a lot of people who thought these toys made them into "programmers".

Eventually they did.

They might have ended up writing bloatware in C++ or Java, thus thinking they are "programmers"

ohhhhh I know guys like you. "You're only a programmer if..." types. :P

VimFuego

gusman2x said:

Did anyone play how to be a complete bastard? It was free with my Sinclair. Amazing.

Most of the old 8 bit games can be played through your browser here https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_games/v2

Goodbye Thursday work.

yup, enjoyed that a lot, and Skool Daze.

Phil_aka_Pip

FX_Munkee said:

Phil_aka_Pip said:

FX_Munkee said:

Phil_aka_Pip said:

John_P said:

 my father insisted my coding skills would be better on a 16bit machine that had more instant access to using assembler.

He was probably right. There were a lot of people who thought these toys made them into "programmers".

heh, there's plenty of people I work with who cut their teeth on Spectrums, some of them aren't too shoddy in the programming dept. Some of them can even do Assembler at a push

OK good. For each of them, how many are there of the other kind? Or those who failed at it and became Recruitment Consultants?

Let me consult my Deity level 3 statistics book....
hmmm doesn't seem to have those figures?
What I do know is that (from experience) people who started coding in the 8 bit era (be it on 8 or 16 bit hardware) tend to be a whole lot better at "close to the metal" work. If you look at our Render team or Low Level Tech team there's nobody under the age of 35, most of them are 40+.
Kids (with Comp Sci degrees) today eh?

Fair comment. I'm sure those who wrote assembler ('cos there wasn't anything else) will be better at bit twiddling. The C++/Java guys here can't even visualise a bit pattern from a hex number. I guess I was commenting about the people who wrote spaghetti BASIC and couldn't design a software solution to a tricky problem without using umpteen flags each stored in a 32 bit variable and a shedload of GOTOs.

lloyd

My contribution to this thread is:

1111001010001001010011100011110010101000010101  

Phil_aka_Pip

lloyd said:

My contribution to this thread is:

1111001010001001010011100011110010101000010101  

??

 f 2 8 9 4 e 3 c a 8 5 and 2 spare bits left over (01) reading from left to right. Or if you group the bits from right to left you get

(3) c a 2 5 3 8 f 2 a 1 5 ??

49 20 74 68 69 6e 6b 20 79 6f 75 20 64 6f 6e 27
74 20 6b 6e 6f 77 20 77 68 61 74 20 79 6f 75 20
61 72 65 20 73 61 79 69 6e 67 21

lloyd

Phil_aka_Pip said:

lloyd said:

My contribution to this thread is:

1111001010001001010011100011110010101000010101  

??

 f 2 8 9 4 e 3 c a 8 5 and 2 spare bits left over (01) reading from left to right. Or if you group the bits from right to left you get

(3) c a 2 5 3 8 f 2 a 1 5 ??

49 20 74 68 69 6e 6b 20 79 6f 75 20 64 6f 6e 27
74 20 6b 6e 6f 77 20 77 68 61 74 20 79 6f 75 20
61 72 65 20 73 61 79 69 6e 67 21

1010101110001110001101001011

littlegreenman

Boxes of punch cards is where it's at if you're really hardcore!

Anything more modern is just lazy!