wickensonline.co.uk -> Retrochallenge 2010 Winter Warmup Entry -> Spectrum


      Retrochallenge 2010
      Winter Warmup
      Mark Wickens
      5-Jan-2010

                                      Spectrum Brochure

      Well, I was meant to be 'walking the walk' with wgoodf on the Doom Server and I
      actually ended up using Windows as I got no joy with ubuntu, but it would appear
      I was on my own at half nine. I would take the mick, but given the weather we're
      currently having on this side of the pond I better hang fire till I know he's
      not stuck in a snow drift or anything.

      In the meantime, my scanning session yesterday included a Spectrum Brochure
      which my friend Andrew Sharp has also thoughtfully kept. As an aside, I
      mentioned yesterday that of the three authors of the Comp-tronics magazine Nigel
      Rainer could not be found. Well, I got an email off Andrew this morning saying
      that they were going out for a drink, some 28 years after last seeing each
      other. It almost brings a tear to my eye. My two recollections of Nigels house
      were having to be very quiet when his brother was on University finals and
      someone crying at a party whilst 'It's my party and I'll cry if I want to' was
      playing - although I might have made that bit up.

      Spectrum Brochure Pages

      In other news, I got a couple of emails off Stephen regarding his dodgems game
      that I documented in my first entry, so there is a few clues as to why the
      screen is corrupt - probably something to do either with buffering or using
      asynchronous IO calls. The program is written in Fortran, which I sort of read,
      but I've never really programmed in it. Step in amazon.co.uk and more
      importantly betterworldbooks [1] who buy up ex-library books in America and are
      happy to ship to the UK for GBP 2.75 per book, and help third-world literacy to
      boot. I bought two Fortran books for 60p and 90p respectively, plus postage.
      Mind, they'll arrive way after retrochallenge finishes.

      Other purchases that should be arriving at some point is a book about the
      history of DEC which looks to have lots of lovely pictures in, and a brand new,
      never used DEC puck mouse suitable for the VAXstations. Lovely jubbly.

      Without further ado, therefore, I present what I think is a pretty top-class
      brochure from Sinclair about the Spectrum. The image of the Spectrum on the
      front is fullsize. I sold my original Spectrum a long time ago, have a + for a
      while (which I never really used) and more recently had bought a nice but
      non-functional example which is now donning a fellow colleagues wall.

      Spectrum Brochure, PDF Format

      My friend Andrew Sharp was the first to have a Spetrum, a 16k model and I
      remember playing his first game - a Scramble clone - over, and over, and over
      again until my fingers can take no more. Happy, happy memories...

      
      ENDNOTES

      1. Betterworld Books