The Spectrum continued to grow, not only with new incarnations, but with an increasing selection of peripherals.
SINCLAIR ZX SPECTRUM STYLE KEYBOARD SOFTWARE
Many of today's programmers owe their careers to the Spectrum, having moved from BASIC to Z80 assembly language and top software houses such as Rare and Bullfrog cut their teeth in the home computer market by writing top-quality Spectrum games.
Because Sinclair had wisely incorporated the BASIC programming language, a legion of bedroom programmers arose almost overnight, advertising their home-grown games cheaply in magazines. This style of coding was the standard for all Spectrums prior to the 128K machine.įor more information, see History of Sinclair BASIC.Īlthough intended as a serious business and educational machine, the Spectrum quickly gained a devoted following of gamers. It was a quirky system, but easy to learn. The use of shift keys made further keywords available. Keys on the keyboard were imprinted with BASIC keywords, which meant that a single keypress (such as P) could produce an entire keyword ( PRINT). Spectrum BASIC was more or less unique, as was the method of programming.
SINCLAIR ZX SPECTRUM STYLE KEYBOARD CODE
The BEEP command was used to drive it from BASIC, but clever machine code routines could produce multi-channel effects and music, which no other computer of the time could rival without dedicated sound hardware. Sound was similarly simple and to the point: a buzzer capable of outputting one channel of beeping. This led to some "attribute clash", one of the most endured and loved features of the hardware: where two coloured objects collided, their attributes would overlap, giving the impression of coloured squares. The display was divided into 24 rows and 32 columns of "character cells", each 8 × 8 pixels and capable of containing any two of the basic eight colours (or attributes), as long as they were at the same intensity. The screen display measured 256 × 192 pixels, a high resolution for its time, and supported eight colours at two brightness levels, totalling fifteen colours (since bright and dull black were identical). This was later increased to 48 KB, which rapidly became the standard. The Spectrum was based on a combination of ULA (uncommitted logic array) and 3.5 MHz Z80 processor, and initially had 16 kilobytes of RAM (usable memory). Unlike its competitors, the Spectrum was small and black, with rubber keys and a small buzzer for making simple beeping noises - and it was amazingly successful. It loaded games from a standard cassette player and produced a display on the family television set. Released in 1982 as a direct rival to Acorn's BBC range of educational computers, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum was a true home computer at an affordable price.
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