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The Recreated Sinclair Spectrum

lostmyway

I was wondering if anyone was interested in the Recreated Sinclair Spectrum computer which was launced last year and is a updated incarnation of the popular Sinclair Spectrum of the 1980's. I know it is hopelessly outclassed by today's modern computers and its BASIC laguage is no match for today's powerful computer languages such as Java, but I still find it interesting from a hobbyists' point of view. There are many online PDF books available for free download that were written for the Spectrum during its height of popularity during the 80's and I am currently working my way through a good one written by a female teacher of computer programming at that time. The thing about the Recreated Spectrum is that it is no more or less than a control unit which is really driven by apps., meaning it has no internal ROM or RAM, just the keyboard, liberating the software to develop independently.

The old fashion 8 bit games they have released for the Recreated Spectrum are of little interest to me because they look pretty primitive against today's stunning games. No, I am more into re-learning programming, something I didn't really pursue enough at the time and BASIC is, after all, a computer language written for beginners so I am enjoying discovering stuff I was too lazy to learn way back then. I have begun studying the Java programming language but that seems to me to require a lot of work and commitment - something you might normally expect a professional programmer to deal with.

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  • 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.

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  • 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.

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