Date   : Thu, 08 Oct 2009 22:51:53 +0200
From   : rick@... (Rick Murray)
Subject: Electric Dreams last night.

Tim Fardell wrote:

> That's a bit unfair.

I believe Acorn tried a similar idea with the Electron, only it was a 
shortcut and you could enter code sanely if you wanted...


 > Easier than the BBC in fact, because it's a much simpler machine
 > to get your head around.

Well, yes. There's how much going on inside the box? It's a much simpler 
machine! :-)


> Since you personally didn't meet anyone who programmed a Spectrum
 > for fun, I presume you didn't know anyone who owned a Spectrum!

I think at school, the Beebs and Speccys were par for par; only the 
Beebs were in the computer lab and the assorted Spectums were in the 
dormitories hijacking the telly for Jet Set Willy and other 
copies-of-copies-of-copies of tapes...

There were a good few of them around. NOBODY bothered with doing any 
programming. I tried. Found the experience painful. If I want to PRINT 
(or whatever), why can't I just type in the keyword? God, even the Oric 
managed to parse BASIC, what's Sinclair's excuse?


> Sir Clive was a bit obsessed with making things small.

:-) You could argue he was ahead of his time.

I'll give him credit for one thing. I don't remember which Speccy it 
was, but one did some horrible (ab)using of quirks of the system to 
great effect. Something dimly remembered about a 'feature' of the Z80 
chip used to refresh the memory. Kinda cool...


> I agree the keyboard on the early Spectrums was terrible.

Oddly enough before I went to boarding school, at my junior in Yateley, 
saw 1981-1982 maybe? there was something of a cult thing in owning a 
Spectrum rubber keypad. Just the rubber bit. No idea where a job lot of 
those might have come from, and no idea why it was "cool". Probably the 
same sort of mentality that used to nick MG badges off the front of cars.


 > But the Spectrum was one of the few machines that gave you both visual
 > and audible feedback during cassette tape loading. I really don't know
 > how BBC and Commodore users lived without this (those that didn't have
 > disk drives, that is).

God almighty it is hard to do prep ("homework") when somebody is 
preloading a game. The noise. Ugh! It was just fugly. Did they use some 
weird pitches or something? It irritated me a lot more than when playing 
Beeb tapes in the tape player by accident, and several of us could tell 
them apart just by listening (we had competitions), and this included 
bursts in the middle so we didn't cheat with the Beeb's lead-in tone. :-)


> but you have to remember that it was also substantially cheaper.

I nearly died when they quoted the Spectrum at about ?300 and the Beeb 
three times that. Ironic given today's 20 euro DTT box could probably 
run a perfectly decent emulation of either machine if it was suitably 
hacked. In fact, I know of a Spectrum emulator for the Psion 3a/3c 
organisers (!) and wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't a J2ME one 
around for mobile devices...


Best wishes,

Rick.

-- 
Rick Murray, eeePC901 & ADSL WiFI'd into it, all ETLAs!
BBC B: DNFS, 2 x 5.25" floppies, EPROM prog, Acorn TTX
E01S FileStore, A3000/A5000/RiscPC/various PCs/blahblah...