The Recreated Sinclair Spectrum

Amstrad, I have tried emulators and the 'Spectaculator' one is excellent but the problem I have with these things is the fact that they have had to adapt the keyboard mapping to modern PC's which means it's very awkward to use the keyboard. You have to look up what keys do what, instead of being able to use an original Spectrum keyboard. Maybe it's just me but I find it a bit impractical.

I do, though, agree with your last point about collecting old stuff relating to the Spectrum. I don't really know why but it gives me a kind of 'buzz' to hold an old magazine or book or whatever in my hand and the artwork also is exciting, maybe because it has all disappeared and has become antique.

random, yes, The Recreated Spectrum probably is an overpriced controller but the reason I bought one was not for the silly and primitive games they have come out with (and I can understand the nostalgia factor) but for the wealth of free online PDF books that were written during the height of the Spectrum's popularity. I'm working my way through one at the moment on beginning Sinclair BASIC written by a very competent teacher and am discovering things I never bothered with at the time.

I think you are right, rbs, because I have found that if I settle down and just focus on each step at a time, it is much easier to engage myself as I am cutting off other stuff that can be too much to deal with. It does make feel a bit thick though because I feel I may be a bit too simple to take in too much info at once. However, I now realize that people on the autism spectrum have problems with sensory overload so I'll settle for that explanation (even if it isn't true). But I do like to pay attention to detail and if there's some small bit of info I have overlooked or not really grasped, it winds me up terribly and I get obsessed about it. In fact, it is this kind of thing that has put me off pursuing studying things in the past because I get so easily upset when I can't understand something. I think other people probably accept they can't grasp everything straight away, which is the sensible position to take, but it irritates me so much I can't seem to control it.

I have looked at some text books about Visual Basic but to be honest with you, there are so many kinds of computer languages about nowadays that it's hard to know what to study. This could be why (partly at least) why I have returned to the simple environment of Sinclair BASIC - it seems less intimidating!

Personally, I dont think much of the recreated sinclair spectrum, just seems like an overpriced controller. Serveral years ago I got in to retro computers while building an interest in electonics. The real backbone to the recreated sinclair spectrum is the emulation. That has been strong and generally free to access. For the sinclair specturm, there is an excellent emulator called spectaculator, very slick. Even emulates the way the tape loading used to mash up the screen. 

I haven't really done anything with this interest for a long while, I moved on from emulators to hardware. Have a few noteable sinclair items, including an issue 1 spectrum with the "cockroach" memory bug fix. A spectrum which was personally handed over to a software development company by Clive Sinclair to start development on the machine. I have got most of the expaasion bits, including a micro drive setup.

LMY, I think you might be surprised by what you can do if you take things one step at a time and acknowledge ones limits on multi-tasking. It is common for parents/teachers/other people to think that we can't achieve because we have an appearance of disorder and haven't managed to settle and learn something before. A strength of people with autism is an ability to focus on the detail of something. If it is an activity with little value (or you keep doing something beyond reasonable limits) then this is called an obsession but if it is an activity that someone values then you call it persistence and determination.

Back to the issue of prgramming etc, I started programming in the mid seventies when school obtained a teleprinter that was connected to the local town hall's ICL mainframe computer and we could start programming in BASIC. I moved on to a Sinclair QL and now work with databases and reporting systems. A lot has changed in 40 years of computing but Visual Basic is still a very recognisable derivative of that first BASIC dialect that I started with, the computer architectures are fundamentally the same with CPU, ALU, RAM, disk etc but we now have stuff that works on massive amounts of data at massive speed.

Atypical, you learnt basic HTML, which is more than I have! You have probably inherited a talent from your dad.

Hi Amstrad. Well, the thing about the Recreated Spectrum is that it is not designed as a conventional computer but is really just a control unit which looks identical to the original Spectrum but does not contain the internal architecture of the old version. This means (as far as I know) there is no operating system present because all the software is produced by apps. which are written to be used via a PC or tablet. So what they have done is to enable the operating systems of modern devices to be used instead of the very limiting operating system of the old Spectrum. The Recreated Spectrum is simply controlling the app. rather than its own internal software/hardware thereby enabling the developers to update and improve the software.

I haven't seen a great deal to get excited about so far, most of the apps. produced being rather primitive and silly arcade games, but I live in hope that something more beneficial will be forthcoming at some time in the future. It would be interesting to actually use an original Spectrum but I'm not sure it would be worth buying one because there might well be some problem with it after all these years.

I too, owned an Amiga at the time, but the reason I bought one was because it was promoted as a cutting edge home computer and I had hoped there would be great software released, however, the software that was available did not come anywhere near the huge amount that was wrtten for the Spectrum.

Hi, my dad was a computer programmer in the early days, back in the 70s (possibly 60's?  Don't know when he started!).  We didn't have a computer at home much of the time, but I remember him showing us one of the 1st silicon chips, and one time when he brought home a work computer he taught me to write a simple program in BASIC.  Later on I learnt one of the first word processing programs; Wordstar, which uses tags for formatting.  Very useful more recently when I learnt basic HTML which uses a lot of similar tags!

So not really into it now myself, but I agree it's probably a great way to learn about programing.