Date   : Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:17:35 +0100
From   : dominic@... (Dominic Beesley)
Subject: Electric Dreams last night.

-----Original Message-----
From: bbc-micro-bounces+dominic=brahms.demon.co.uk@...
[mailto:bbc-micro-bounces+dominic=brahms.demon.co.uk@...] On
Behalf Of Tim Matthews
Sent: 08 October 2009 10:06
To: BBC MailList
Subject: Re: [BBC-Micro] Electric Dreams last night.


>> fuzzy here, I only remember a gaudy coloured keyboard on a 
>> black machine, and a tendency to spit lines of coloured 
>> garbage onto the screen, which I believe is a mostly-Spectrum 
>> trait...?

> That was the loading sequence. in the border around the screen. Not
> quite sure if it was intentional but ISTR the ZX81 did something
> similar.
> I always thought perhaps it was a visiable reminder that everything was
> ok.

They had their uses - I could align tape heads by watching the border
patterns. A useful tool when you were supposed to be asleep and didn't want
to wake the parents, especially when all the tapes from the library (yes
libraries, remember them, I don't remember actually buying any games) were
all quite badly recorded and misaligned. On the Beeb/Electron using the
datacorder tape head alignment was more difficult, though I could do that by
ear too!

Dom