The Story of a Beautiful Machine

Viva Amiga is a project by Zach Weddington which needs the support of Amiga fans everywhere to make it reality.

Planned to be a documentary film about the legendary Commodore Amiga series of computers and their colourful history. Zach has already filmed many big names including former Commodore Engineers such as Jeff Porter, Dave Haynie, Bill Herd and Andy Finkel along with computer historian Jason Scott. The soundtrack is being composed by Amiga mod-scene musician Zoe Blade.

Support for the project can be given in many ways, whether directly through loan of equipment and services or through donation.

For further details please go to www.amigafilm.com

or donate here through www.kickstarter.com

If you are of a certain age and owned a ZX Spectrum  you will remember well the playground taunts from your Commodore owning friends regarding colour clash, its rubber keyboard and feeble sound effects. Likewise if you owned a Commodore 64 you will remember the playground taunts regarding washed out colours, peeks and pokes and the relative lack of software in your local WH Smith.

If you do, then you will be interested to read Robert John Shepherd’s article over at MyReviewer.com where he tries to settle the argument once and for all. Intelligently, unlike back in the early 80′s…

Were getting all hot under our geeky collars here at RGC at the prospect of a re-released ZX Spectrum for its 30th anniversary next year. Details are sketchy at the moment but we have it on good authority that the UK game developer Elite Systems, who recently re-released some of their original titles for Apple iOS are behind it. Elite were responsible for some of the biggest arcade ports to be released on Sinclairs home computer back in the 80′s.

As far as we are aware, it will consist of a bluetooth keyboard taking the form of a ZX Spectrum (rubber keys?) which will run some form of emulation and will be able to connect to Apples iPhone and iPad – aiming the machine not only at nostalgic geeks who used it the first time round, but also a new generation of gamers that mainly use their mobile devices for their gaming.

We hope that this will be all it could be and will play all Spectrum games ROMS and not just Elite’s own offerings but maybe we are just hoping for too much.

Watch this space for developments as we hear about them…

The software in question here is none other than the very rare Sinclair branded Macmillan Education titles; MacMan In The Treasure Caves, MacMans Magic Mirror and Soundabout.

As mentioned in our earlier post on this topic, Sinclair branded educational titles can fetch surprising sums in an auction and these were no exception, with Soundabout making a whopping £156.09, MacMan In The Treasure Caves making £129.45 and MacMans Magic Mirror making a very respectable £78.00.

Thanks to Guy Bearman for the info.

Click on the images to enlarge.

Sinclair era hardware:

ZX81 (Boxed complete)

ZX81 (in polys only, complete)

ZX Spectrum 16K (rubber keys, boxed complete)

ZX Spectrum 16K (rubber keys, boxed complete)

ZX Spectrum 48K (rubber keys, boxed complete)

ZX Spectrum 48K (rubber keys, boxed complete)

ZX Spectrum + (boxed complete)

ZX Spectrum + (boxed complete)

ZX Spectrum 128

Sinclair QL (Boxed complete)

Sinclair QL (Boxed complete)

Sinclair QL (loose with PSU & Scart Lead)

Sinclair Flat Screen Pocket TV (boxed complete)

Amstrad era hardware:

ZX Spectrum +2 (grey, Dixons 128K Computer Outfit)

ZX Spectrum +2 (black, + 2 Action Pack)

ZX Spectrum +3 (Boots Action Pack)

ZX Spectrum peripherals:

ZX Spectrum Expansion System (Microdrive, Interface 1 etc. boxed)

Rotronics Wafadrive (boxed complete)

Comcon Programmable Interface (boxed)

Romantic Robot Multiprint

Romantic Robot Multiface 3

Prism VTX5000 Modem (boxed)

DK Tronics Light Pen (boxed complete)

Ferguson MA20 RGB Interface (boxed)

Trojan Cadmaster Lightpen (boxed complete for 48K, 128K, +)

Trojan Cadmaster Lightpen (boxed complete for+2)

Cheetah Defender Lightgun (boxed complete)

Cheetah SpecDrum (boxed complete)

Currah MicroSpeech (boxed complete)

Currah MicroSlot (boxed)

Genius Mouse (boxed complete)

Sinclair ZX Interface 2 (with instr.)

Magnum Lightphaser (boxed, sealed)

DK Tronics Single Port Joystick Inteface (boxed)

Protek Switchable Joystick Interface (boxed)

Rare SPJ-1 Sinclair Analogue System Joystick (boxed)

Sinclair SJS-2 Joystick (boxed)

Spectravideo Quickshot II Joystick (boxed)

Spectravideo Quickshot I Joystick (boxed)

various loose Kempston Joystick Interfaces of various kinds, lots of misc. joystick interfaces…

ZX81 peripherals:

ZX 16K RAMPack (boxed complete)

ZX 16K RAMPack (boxed complete)

Memotech Memopak 16K (boxed)

Memotech Memopak 16K (boxed complete)

Memotech Memopak 64K (boxed complete)

Stonechip Electronics ZXPanda 16K (boxed complete)

JRS Software 16K RAM Pack

Various misc. loose RAM Packs, joystick interfaces

ZX Printer (boxed)

ZX Printer (boxed)

Alphacom 32 Line Printer (boxed, not pictured)

Other stuff:

2 x Spectrum Six Pack (software pack bundled with 48K rubber keys)

1 x Spectrum Six Pack (software pack bundled with later Spectrum+ 48K)

The aforementioned software is called Breadbox64 and amongst other things it allows you to Tweet (obviously!), access your friends feed and access individual friends timelines. You can also run this using C64 emulation on your PC, but what’s the point in that?

If you fancy Twitter ‘retro style’ head on over to his website here. Now where’s the ZX Spectrum version?

All about the Sinclair ZX81

For the uninitiated the ZX81 was a small 8-bit home microcomputer invented and produced by Sinclair Research Limited of Cambridge, England. Sinclair Computers (renamed Sinclair Research Ltd. in March 1981) was founded by Sir Clive Sinclair, inventor of the pocket television, the first pocket calculator, the famous rubber-keyed Sinclair ZX Spectrum and later the not-so-popular Sinclair C5 electric car. Fans of this small humble home microcomputer (and there are many of them) will quite rightly tell you that this machine kick-started the home computing boom of the early eighties, mainly due to its low price and user friendly attributes.

As its name might suggest, this machine entered the then fledgling home computer market in 1981 as a home-build kit priced at £49.95 and a ready built option at £69.95, following on from the already successful ZX80 (original price £99.95) released in 1979. Sinclair Research managed to keep the price of the Sinclair ZX81 so low by reducing the number of chips on the motherboard from 21 on the ZX80 to 4 on the ZX81. The computer was sold via its traditional method of mail-order (over 300,000 were sold this way by the end of January 1982) and also via the high street with the involvement of W.H. Smith, a British chain of newsagents and stationers. Sales of the ZX81 were huge and by February 1982 Sinclair was producing over 40,000 units per month and still could not keep up with demand. Over a million units were produced within two years of launch.

Sinclair Research teamed up with Timex in the US to produce the Timex Sinclair 1000, a version of the ZX81 for the North American home computer market, which sold in considerable numbers and was manufactured by Timex in Dundee, Scotland.

ZX81 Specifications

The ZX81 used a completely re-designed main board with a much reduced chip-set (from 24 chips on the ZX80 to 4 on the ZX81) mainly due to a new CPU which replaced 18 chips on the ZX80 main board. The ZX81 had no sound chip or speaker and had monochrome output to a UHF TV set via an RF Modulator. Data was transferred to/from the ZX81 via 3.5mm jacks and a normal audio cassette player. Power input was from a custom Sinclair 9V DC transformer.

Depth – 167 mm (6.32 in)

Height - 40 mm (1.57 in)

Weight - 350 grams (12.15 oz)

CPU – Z80z at 3.25 MHz

Display – 24 lines x 32 characters (text), 64 x 44 pixels graphics mode

ROM – 8K with BASIC interpreter

RAM – 1K internal, externally expandable to 16K

Power – 420ma at 7-11V DC

Software for the ZX81

A large amount of software was produced for the Sinclair ZX81, ranging from home business software to the games we wasted our youth on! It was the time of the bedroom-coder, a new breed of computer programmer who produced software from home and either marketed and produced the finished article themselves in small scale operations, or sold the code to a larger software publishing house for a one-off payment or royalties. It would be impossible (at least too time consuming) to list all of the software ever produced by every individual and software house here on this site, instead I have elected to choose some of the biggest software houses of the time and list their most popular titles. There are obviously other big names such as Artic that have been omitted for now and may be added at a later date.

Sinclair Research teamed up with several software houses to produce their own-brand software for the Sinclair ZX81. The most prolific of these was to be Psion and ICL (International Computers Limited), with a small range of business, educational and entertainments titles following. Also worth mentioning is the Sinclair Learning Lab (a set of 12 training software cassettes in a ring binder) and a small range of multi-title software cassettes released by Sinclair with black and red inlays matching the packaging style of the Sinclair ZX81 itself.

J.K. Greye were responsible for possibly the most famous Sinclair ZX81 game of all time – 3D Monster Maze, one of the first games on a home micro to be in first person perspective. This title followed on from the successes of their previous multi-title releases and Catacombs, a multi level graphical adventure. They later became New Generation Software and sported a new full colour look to their inlay graphics.

Some of the best looking inlays were to be found on Quicksilva games, and luckily the games themselves were some of the greatest arcade game ports you could find on the Sinclair ZX81. QS Asteroids, QS Defenda, Galaxians, and QS Invaders were amongst these titles some of which were supplied unusually with a set of memory addresses that you could ‘POKE’ so that the game could be modified to your liking! Unlimited lives anyone?

OK, so not necessarily a big software house but regarded by many as one of the best for finally producing what all Sinclair ZX81 fans had dreamed of – high resolution software. The end result was Sinclair ZX81 software that ran at the same resolution as its replacement, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum albeit without colour or sound.

Micro Prolog (L 2/S) – by Logic Programming Associates
Which? Tax Calculator 1983-84 (4332) – by Consumer’s Association

Weathermaster (4325) – by Macmillan
MacMan’s Magic Mirror (4335) – by Macmillan

Disease Dodgers (4327) – by Macmillan
Planet Patrol (4326) – by Macmillan

Oil Strike (4324) – by Macmillan

Now of all the titles above the ones that I was particularly interested in were the Macmillan educational titles and the Which? Tax Calculator. Educational titles were not very popular for the ZX Spectrum, no matter how many times we told Mom and Dad that we needed the Speccy for our education, everyone really knew (including Mom and Dad I suspect) that we only wanted to play JetPac. So it follows that educational titles were not sold in huge numbers and are therefore rarer finds. Add to that, the above titles were not produced in any great numbers anyway and you end up with a set of very rare titles indeed.

It seems that on that night Sinclair collectors with much deeper pockets were ready to spring into action. I didn’t leave empty handed, I managed to bag Micro Prolog, the title I least wanted. The other titles all pushed the boundaries and exceeded the amounts I had ever seen paid for ZX Spectrum titles of this nature with the following winning bids:

As you can see with the one I won, I was way off the mark and as keen as I am, could never afford to (or want to) spend that much on one ZX Spectrum software title let alone six. It would end in divorce. Or castration in my sleep.

There are certain items that remain the holy grail of any collector’s wishlist and whilst these titles are definitely on my list, I won’t be spending this sort of money to acquire them. I’ll just wait until I see them in a box amongst some other stuff at a car boot sale going for a song. In my dreams…

Do you know of any auctions worth mentioning (past or present)? Let us know about them if you think they would be of interest – admin@retrogamescollector.com