Retro Magazine 1

couple of tape recorders together and run off a copy or two. You could buy the
latest game and within a day, have swapped it at school for dozens of other
games. Although illegal, everyone knew that you could quickly have a huge
library of programs. Buy a Spectrum and stock up on C90 tapes, and you could
end up with hundreds of the cutting edge programs for a fraction of the price
compared to BBC owners. Acorn hit back the only way they could – by
introducing add-ons such as 5.25in disk drives. Sadly these were so expensive
that third party manufacturers produced their own, adding to confusion over
single or double sided and single or double density. Spectrum users just bought
double tape players – so their parents could also copy music – and more C90s!
The early days saw a host of innovative games as each new feature of the
Spectrum was discovered. Having thousands of bedroom programmers meant
that the market was ruthless. Thousands of games were written, and as piracy
was rife, only the very best sold. For all of the features of modern computer
games with extensive graphics and dialogue, the ultimate test is playability.
Limited hardware meant that, to survive and make a million, the games had to
grab your attention and be instantly playable. The list is impressive. Early
success came to companies like Imagine, with tales of young programmers
earning thousands. After its spectacular collapse, many left to form other
companies such as Ocean. Probably the best known software house was Ashby
Computer Graphics which traded under the name of Ultimate Play The Game. It
produced classics such as Jetpac, Atic Atac and Knight Lore. As a typical game
took some six minutes to load, it soon became common for a splash screen to
be loaded before the rest of the program. Many software houses at the time
hired artists just to produce these images, which due to the limited palette and
resolutions, were in fact real works of art.
Third party hardware manufacturers flourished, and fought to out do one
another with inventive add-ons, including graphics tablets, full-sized printers,
alternative storage media and, due to the popularity of games, joysticks. Where
the rival BBC had analogue joysticks requiring expensive potentiometers, the
Spectrum made do with cheaper contact switches.
When it came to the keyboard, Sinclair had learned valuable lesssons from
the previous computers. The flat membrane keyboards had been poorly thought
of, and in an effort to reduce cost but improve features, the Spectrum used a
membrane as the contacts, but this time had rubber blocks for the keys. The
‘Dead Flesh’ keyboard gave a little response back, but many add-on keyboards
were developed and sold. With so much potential for third party fixes, the
system was as cheap as you were willing to pay. You could live with the basic
model or spend as much as your piggy bank could afford to buy yourself a
better computer.
>Super
Spectrum.
No, not the SAM Coupe, but rather the Spectrum +3e. This souped-up
Speccy is the work of Garry Lancaster. He’s basically upgraded the +3
ROMs, fixing bugs and adding new features. The improvements range from
the small (you can now change the colours in the editor) to the significant
(the introduction of user-defined text windows). Best of all, the enhanced
ROMs allow you to connect a standard IDE hard drive to your Spectrum +3
(or +2A)! Obviously you need to construct a suitable interface, but if your
soldering skills are up the scratch, the new software will do the rest. It’s
even possible to build an interface that plugs directly into the Z80 socket,
so the connector sits neatly inside the casing. Lancaster reports that he’s
connected drives as big as 8Gb, and he sees no reason why you can’t
connect even bigger drives. For more information about the Spectrum +3e,
including details on how to upgrade your ROMs with the new code, visit
Garry’s Web site at www.zxplus3e.plus.com.
Upgrade your Spectrum +3 to support
a standard IDE hard drive
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