This Brought A Nostalgic Tear To My Eye :)

molerat

Still got one !! Gets an outing once a year to the school.

patanne

Those magazine programs ALWAYS needed some re-writing! But, hey, it was real fun sorting them so that they would work. I always thought they put errors in on purpose. Was I wrong?

patanne

So should I have taken the Amstrad to the tip last year or hung onto it? And what about the Amiga? How quickly we forget!

societys_child

patanne wrote: »

Those magazine programs ALWAYS needed some re-writing! But, hey, it was real fun sorting them so that they would work. I always thought they put errors in on purpose. Was I wrong?

No you're quite right . ahh my first attempts at programming ... goto 1030 ... what the ??? .... erm, oh I get it:j

ellay864

We never got a computer but we felt spoilt when we had Pong in COLOUR!!! And it had football and squash variants as well as tennis. Ohh the memories, someone pass me the Parma Violets

molerat

Learnt a bit of BASIC on one of this type of machine http://www.hpmuseum.net/images/9820A-35.jpg, I feel old now

Richie-from-the-Boro

ellay864 wrote: »

We never got a computer but we felt spoilt when we had Pong in COLOUR!!! And it had football and squash variants as well as tennis. Ohh the memories, someone pass me the Parma Violets

- still available all over - or bulk purchase

Hammyman

societys_child wrote: »

Yeah, ZX81:cool: .. spend hours typing a prog in from a magazine ... then the ram pack falls out aggghhh
Finished up with a yard of insulating tape wrapped round the whole thing ... the ram pack stayed put but the prog was c**p:(

I was lucky - the next door neighbour worked for British Aerospace as an electronics engineer so he built me one that was far better.

Only thing that this article did though was depress me by reminding me how long I've been doing flamin computers. Mind you, it was way more fun in the early pioneering days of home computing..

A.Penny.Saved

societys_child wrote: »

Yeah, ZX81:cool: .. spend hours typing a prog in from a magazine ... then the ram pack falls out aggghhh
Finished up with a yard of insulating tape wrapped round the whole thing ... the ram pack stayed put but the prog was c**p:(

I always thought that was a misconception, it wasn't the rampack which was the problem that many people blamed it on, it was the 3.5mm jack plug power lead that broke the connection as the metal spring connector became weakened over time, about the time when people purchased their rampacks. I never had a problem with the rampack I had which was in a fairly large case so should of been more of a problem. The jack plug frequently caused the ZX81 to restart when the keyboard was pressed too hard or the ZX81 was moved causing the power lead to move and the connection to be broken.

I cut my 3.5mm jack off and soldered it to the circuit board which stopped all problems with it restarting.:T

patanne wrote: »

Those magazine programs ALWAYS needed some re-writing! But, hey, it was real fun sorting them so that they would work. I always thought they put errors in on purpose. Was I wrong?

It was to make sure people purchased the next issue of the magazine so they could get the corrections to make the Basic programs work!

The machine code programs were the worst, all those numbers that needed to be entered correctly and the ideas that had to be created to get it done such as rulers etc to mark the lines.

patanne wrote: »

So should I have taken the Amstrad to the tip last year or hung onto it? And what about the Amiga? How quickly we forget!

I still have my Amiga 500 and it's guru meditations now that was a computer! I also have an Enterprise 128....built with obsolescence built out, but built by a financially unstable company so they went bust!:rotfl:

Hammyman wrote: »

Only thing that this article did though was depress me by reminding me how long I've been doing flamin computers. Mind you, it was way more fun in the early pioneering days of home computing..

Certainly does for me too.

It was a lot more fun with how they were and getting the best out of them. I remember making an assembly language program to record audio through the MIC input and then playing it back on my Speccy....."Excellent" 1 bit sound "loud"speaker on and off which was all the 48KB Spectrum could handle. Demonstrating it to my neighbour and the look of not too impressed on his face because he was a bit of an audio buff.......the Memories........

Mr_Oink

For those that want to relive it, there are a few emulators out there:

http://www.zx81.nl/