[HN Gopher] ZX Spectrum: Q&A with some of the folks who worked o...
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ZX Spectrum: Q&A with some of the folks who worked on legendary PC
Author : sohkamyung
Score : 80 points
Date : 2022-04-30 13:14 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theregister.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theregister.com)
| moffkalast wrote:
| ZX Spectrum, the OG Raspberry Pi 400.
| bencollier49 wrote:
| Ouch, that one made me wince!
|
| The RaspPi is very much an heir of the Acorn machines.
| Obviously your point still stands, but...
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| The rivalry was captured well by the BBC docudrama "Micro
| Men" (aka Syntax Era):
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Men
| bencollier49 wrote:
| Yes! I've pretty much watched it to death... I was always
| an Acorn fan, but these days I also have a ZX Spectrum
| Next.
| the_af wrote:
| Ooh. The Next is a premium item, isn't it?
| bencollier49 wrote:
| It was such a great idea that I couldn't not jump on the
| Kickstarter. It was a little pricey, but the case, build,
| presentation and software were all terrific. The team did
| an amazing job.
| tragomaskhalos wrote:
| I'm glad the Spectrum's manual gets a call-out here - that thing
| really was a masterpiece of accessible technical writing.
| parenthesis wrote:
| When I gave away my Spectra I kept the manuals.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Everything about the Spectrum was insanely clever - from the
| industrial design, to the circuit, to the software, to the
| manual, to the marketing.
|
| It was for all practical purposes a toy - and also a
| masterpiece of accessible engineering.
| rhexs wrote:
| Was a thing of beauty.
| https://worldofspectrum.org/ZXBasicManual/
|
| Simple, concise, useful.
| leke wrote:
| I remember correctly, I remember learning Sinclair BASIC from
| the manual, when I was 8 years old (1983).
| stevekemp wrote:
| And it has to be said being spiral-bound made the book actually
| practical for reference while typing.
| Saint_Genet wrote:
| As a kid growing up in the 80, the spectrum were for the dorky
| and unpopular and the c64 was the fancy option with the coolest
| games and demos (this is all of course within the microcosm of
| the already nerdy)
| Joeboy wrote:
| > the dorky and unpopular
|
| AKA the kids whose parents didn't have a lot of money.
| Saint_Genet wrote:
| Yes, that's quite frankly a big part of what made kids
| unpopular when I was a kid. Don't know what it's like these
| days but I suspect it hasn't changed that much
| keeran wrote:
| That's weird.. I don't recall feeling like it was a money
| thing that I had a Spectrum, only that my parents had made
| the 'wrong' call on a 50/50 decision (though I will forever
| be grateful for that early exposure to programming!)
|
| Trying to search for local prices back then is tricky, but
| they look to have been in the same ballpark (PS180-200).
| Marazan wrote:
| The spectrum was way cheaper than a C64.
|
| The speccy had a launch price of PS125 (PS175 for the 48k
| version), the C64 launched at PS399 in the UK.
| Saint_Genet wrote:
| The c64 peripherals we're way more expensive too.
| Commodore had an official cassette player as well as a
| floppy disk drive that weren't cheap. Though I suspect I
| in the long run probably spent more money on worn out
| joysticks
| Joeboy wrote:
| This 1983 ad has the 48k Speccy at PS129.95[0] and the C64
| at PS345[1]. Admittedly I think the C64 came down in price
| not too long after.
|
| [0] https://archive.org/details/your-computer-
| magazine-1983-08/p...
|
| [1] https://archive.org/details/your-computer-
| magazine-1983-08/p...
| antirez wrote:
| I always thought that maybe they went too far with the
| compromises with the Spectrum. Yep, it was still a huge success
| (and I had one when I was 8 years old) but maybe with a few tens
| of bucks more three of the terrible limits could be removed: the
| limitations in the color attribute, the terrible sound (even
| without a chip, maybe also a sin-wave generator to be summed to
| the square wave one and driven together), a default joystick
| port. With such features the C64 could have had a much harder
| time to compete.
| kingcharles wrote:
| Those are definitely the three biggest weaknesses of the
| Spectrum. They fixed only the sound with the 128 onwards. Was
| the success of the Spectrum based on its price, though? If they
| had added those features, how much more expensive would it have
| been?
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| It would have failed to compete with the BBC B, which had the
| official backing of the BBC and a much more robust and
| upmarket feel.
|
| Different goals. The Spectrum was a set of engineering
| compromises, but they were chosen carefully and the result
| was an influential best-seller. A "better" machine would have
| been more expensive and less successful.
| klelatti wrote:
| Controversial opinion, but the BBC would have been better
| with a Speccy like graphics mode. The full colour modes on
| the Beeb left too little memory (12k) - when the Speccy had
| about 40k left.
| zajio1am wrote:
| > but maybe with a few tens of bucks more three of the terrible
| limits could be removed: the limitations in the color attribute
|
| Today, i think it is an ingenious design feature, if we
| consider memory size and bandwidth as a hard constraint (which
| was, as memory was significant expense in that time). It uses
| 1.125 b/px, which is almost as efficient as an monochrome mode,
| while still offers all 16 colors on screen.
|
| In contrast, e.g., CGA has either hi-res (640x200) monochrome,
| low-res (320x200) 4 color, or super-low-res (160x100) 16 color
| mode. If it had offered a graphic mode with block colors, it
| could have almost hi-res with 16 colors, just with block color
| limitation. If for exa
| krallja wrote:
| How would you solve color clash with a few tens of dollars?
| Iirc it's a memory bandwidth limit, you don't have enough time
| to load more than a few bits per pixel, so FG/BG+ 8x(on/off) is
| usually all you can get. And you load the sprite data during
| HBLANK.
| nottorp wrote:
| Is it that? Or 256x192x4 bits per pixel would have taken ...
| 24k of the Spectrum's 48k ram?
| krallja wrote:
| Yes, and!
| jameshart wrote:
| Or, for the original model, 24K of the 16K of RAM, which I
| think gets more to the problem :)
|
| A full 4bit graphics mode that used a 24K screenbuffer
| would probably have found use, even with the heavy RAM
| cost, though. The Spectrum's lack of graphics modes was
| probably important for cost from the point of view of
| keeping the video electronics simple and cheap, though.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| Back when programming was an art and a programmer needed to know
| the underlying hardware that the software was running on
| intimately. Nowadays the nearest you get to that is with embedded
| programming. Makes you wonder why computers need to get faster so
| that we can run the latest code.
| moffkalast wrote:
| > why computers need to get faster so that we can run the
| latest code
|
| Wirth's law
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law
| jameshart wrote:
| This grossly understates the level of complexity involved in
| even the simplest things we take for granted in general purpose
| operating systems on general purpose hardware nowadays.
|
| In order for you to read this comment, your computer is
| interacting at an astonishing speed with possibly wireless
| networking hardware, transmitting, receiving and error
| correcting on the fly in order to establish a secure,
| trustworthy connection to a server, from which it can receive
| an encrypted message containing the text of this message.
|
| Having received it, together with a bunch of high level layout
| instructions, your machine has then determined how to lay out a
| visual display of hundreds of thousands of pixels, drawing at
| sub pixel resolution dynamic glyphs drawn from font data that
| it is loading on demand from a storage medium that indexes data
| using a permission-based filesystem and continually optimizes
| the arrangement of the data.
|
| Your computer may never have been called upon to draw this
| symbol in this particular typeface and size and color before:
| Xi - yet it can do so almost instantaneously when you browse
| to this comment. Isn't that kind of magical?
|
| Those glyphs are composited over a color background and sent to
| a high resolution display device with at least two orders of
| magnitude more pixels than a ZX spectrum.
|
| While all this is going on you can be running a dozen more
| equally complex operations. You might have an audio file or
| data stream playing, or even a video stream.
|
| Don't make the mistake of underestimating the vast gulf of
| capability between an '80s 8 bit micro and a modern computer.
| stevekemp wrote:
| Very much so!
|
| It was only last week I made a submission about porting a
| trivial text-adventure game (which I wrote) from CP/M to the
| ZX Spectrum.
|
| The features I have available are laughable, even basic
| things like entering text have to be done "by hand", no
| readline, no sounds, and doing everything manually is a
| recipe for confusion unless you're very careful.
|
| Still fun to play with such machines though, even now, and
| some of the games hold up pretty well even if we ignore the
| nostalgia component.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| That's a good description of the _inherent_ complexity in
| modern compute, but there 's a whole lot of accidental
| complexity as well. Which is why, e.g. many modern OS's and
| "apps" still cannot keep up with normal typing speeds without
| adding many seconds of latency. That's a significant impact
| on UX and a severe regression wrt. earlier systems. Plus lots
| of random slowdowns due to background processes doing
| whatever, etc.
| jameshart wrote:
| Okay, do me a favor.
|
| Go to https://jsspeccy.zxdemo.org/, and start up the
| spectrum emulator.
|
| Choose '48 BASIC'.
|
| Once the emulated speccy boots up (oh, yeah - notice you
| have to wait for a noticeable delay while it initializes
| all 48K of RAM there...), press and hold down the 'C' key.
| It should start typing:
|
| CONTINUE CONTINUE CONTINUE CONTINUE CONTINUE ...
|
| Within a couple of seconds, the input latency will have
| become noticeable.
|
| After about half a screen is filled up with CONTINUEs you
| can take your finger off the keyboard, and it will keep
| slowly typing CONTINUEs for a second or so more. Now try
| typing some letters. Feel that delay between your input and
| the character appearing on the screen?
|
| I can attest from personal experience that this is an
| accurate and faithful emulation of exactly how a 48K
| Spectrum behaved.
|
| There was no golden age where computers were instant and
| always responsive. Floppy disks chugging away while little
| watches and hourglasses replaced your mouse pointer were
| the norm throughout the pre-internet era. On a terminal
| connected to a minicomputer, you could watch the text come
| in character by character on your terminal.
| tomca32 wrote:
| This is correct. I grew up on a spectrum 48k and as a kid
| I remember often wasting time trying to find the longest
| keyword thinking that the lag was a function of the
| number of keywords in the buffer. I believe RANDOMIZE (T)
| was the longest keyword
| gus_massa wrote:
| You forgot real time orthography and gramar checking while
| I'm writing this comment.
|
| When I was young, you had to press a special button to make
| WinWord find the pile of errors you made. When I was younger,
| the ZX Spectrum had no spell checker.
| jameshart wrote:
| Reading back over my comment I could have used some of that
| :)
|
| But yes, I was focused on just pulling down and displaying
| a comment, not even touching on the input processing
| capabilities.
|
| And this is stuff that a computer does without even
| breaking a sweat - this is just constant background
| activity supporting the vastly more complex stuff the
| machine can do if you task it to.
|
| A ZX Spectrum reading data from a tape drive at about 1400
| bits per second required almost its entire CPU's attention.
| At that speed just loading the 1614 UTF8 bytes of my
| comment above into memory would take over 9 seconds, during
| which time the computer is doing literally nothing else.
| gus_massa wrote:
| I had a ZX81 with the extra package of 16 KB of RAM (not
| a typo, only KB). During load and save time, the screen
| was just noise because the CPU handle the TV signal and
| it can't load the data and keep updating the screen.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Your comment reminded me of The Story of Mel:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_Mel
| the_af wrote:
| Mel would disapprove of modern computers.
| erwincoumans wrote:
| Agreed 0xFCE2! Indeed, the game industry and robotics still
| care about performance, since it affects joy (we want smooth
| framerates, VR headsets can make you sick as low frames per
| second) and safety (robot control often has real-time
| requirements). My first computer was a commodore 64 (like you?)
| and I care about performance, so I enjoy working in those
| areas.
| mburee wrote:
| I really think most game devs don't reallzcare about
| performance, how many games out there use more than one
| core/thread?
|
| There's so much game engine/abstraction hell going on, I
| can't imagine they could care a lot about what's going on at
| a low level
| erwincoumans wrote:
| Indeed, I was referring to C++ or Rust game engine
| developers. For example Teardown, by Dennis Gustafsson:
| https://mobile.twitter.com/tuxedolabs?lang=en a nice game
| and well optimized c++ custom game engine.
|
| Many game developers use Unreal Engine or Unity, thise game
| engines have been optimized pretty well.
| bluedino wrote:
| Don't forget about HFT
| empressplay wrote:
| For more from Richard Altwasser:
| https://paleotronic.com/2018/10/01/an-interview-with-zx-spec...
| paines wrote:
| What baffled me most about that time, was that (some) developers
| would use PCs to develop ZX spectrum games. This was e.g.
| described in Bob Papes fantastic book "It's behind you", where he
| recalls the development of R-Type. Nowadays you would definelty
| do so, and you still can, e.g. with using C with z88dk and target
| a whole palette of Z80 targets.
| klelatti wrote:
| IIRC the ZX Spectrum's ROM included a stack based VM for floating
| point calculations with a 'bytecode' defining the operations -
| largely I think to cram more instructions into the 16k. The full
| disassembly is available at
|
| https://skoolkid.github.io/rom/maps/all.html
| antirez wrote:
| Yes, exactly, and a channels abstraction to output formatted
| text on different targets: screen, printer, ...
| midislack wrote:
| Anybody who likes this should read the book, The ZX Spectrum ULA:
| How To Design A Microcomputer, which runs you through how the
| computer actually works.
| parenthesis wrote:
| It seems anachronistic to refer to the Spectrum as a _PC_ rather
| than as a _microcomputer_.
|
| I miss the term _microcomputer_ , but now that everything
| contains microprocessors (up to and including supercomputers), I
| suppose it makes more sense to call personal computers personal
| computers.
| layer8 wrote:
| _Home computer_ would be the correct and more specific term:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_computer
| parenthesis wrote:
| Kraftwerk agree.
| donio wrote:
| Feels very weird to me too. The problem is that PC meant
| something much more specific at the time and nobody would have
| called the Spectrum or even an Amiga or Macintosh a PC.
| TuringTest wrote:
| They were called like that in other languages, at least in
| Spanish ("ordenador personal"). Probably it helped that we
| didn't see IBM compatible PCs at home until the late 80's -
| early 90's.
| klelatti wrote:
| I thought that too but on reflection not so sure. The leading
| computer magazine in the U.K. was 'Personal Computer World' and
| although microcomputer was probably more commonly used I think
| PC was also used too.
|
| Of course the use of PC to denote IBM PC compatibles really
| only became common in the mid 1980s although - perhaps
| surprisingly - the IBM PC launched before the Spectrum.
| dcminter wrote:
| I don't _think_ the speccy was ever commonly referred to as a
| "PC" - "home computer" was the pervasive term. PCW was much
| more business focused from what I recall.
| klelatti wrote:
| Just Googled early ads for the Spectrum and the first one
| on Google calls it a personal computer.
|
| https://imgur.com/gallery/58TeAKT
|
| There might have been a degree of 'upselling' on Sinclair's
| part though!
|
| Also agreed that the 'PC' abbreviation would have been
| relatively uncommon.
|
| PCW covered everything! They had all the Sinclairs on the
| cover as well as heavyweight business machines. Even had a
| regular assembly language column.
| msh wrote:
| Well given that mini computers don't exist anymore and
| mainframes barely it don't think microcomputer makes sense.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| That's like saying that a calling a steamengine a steamengine
| doesn't make sense anymore, because they don't really exist
| anymore.
| renaudg wrote:
| As somebody who grew up with the Amstrad CPC in France (it was
| the best selling 8-bit micro there), I've always found the cult
| status of the ZX Spectrum in the UK difficult to rationalise.
| IMO, it's the biggest f***ing rose-tinted reality distortion
| field in all of retrocomputing.
|
| I appreciate that the Spectrum was an affordable entry point into
| the fascinating world of computing, and that it had a bit of a
| first mover advantage in the UK market. But the vastly superior
| C64 was released only a few months later, and the also-British
| Amstrad CPC two years after that. How could the Speccy remain so
| popular ?
|
| Let me try to explain :
|
| The Amstrad had a built-in colour monitor + tape drive for the
| same price as the C64 (with also a cheaper green screen option),
| a fully RGB video signal (unlike the C64), a faster clocked Z80
| CPU than the Spectrum, the best graphics capability of the three
| by far (16 colours 160x200 with a great palette, 4 colours
| 320x200, monochrome 640x200, no colour clash), the same AY sound
| chip found later in the 128K Spectrum, standard Atari-style
| joystick ports, a decent keyboard, and the easiest and most
| capable BASIC flavour too.
|
| The C64 had a weird palette (no red !), but also hardware sprites
| which allowed smooth arcade-like gameplay, and the undisputed
| king of sound chips : the SID.
|
| I can't think of a _single_ hardware advantage for the Spectrum.
|
| Contrary to popular belief in the UK, the Amstrad's worldwide
| unit sales (3 million in 6 years) were not far from the Amiga (4
| million in 7 years) or even the Spectrum (5 million in 10 years).
| They're all dwarfed by the C64's ~15 million, though.
|
| Software availability was similar : most games were released on
| all 3 platforms. The Amstrad did suffer from some disappointing
| (but easy to avoid) lazy Spectrum game ports from smaller UK
| publishers, but the larger ones (e.g. Ocean) also produced some
| of its finest games (the Amstrad ports of Gryzor, Chase HQ,
| Operation Wolf, Rainbow Islands, Dragon Ninja... are all the best
| 8-bit conversions of the arcade). This was also balanced by
| French & Spanish publishers that were all Amstrad-first.
|
| In short : IMHO the most interesting and relevant 8-bit match is
| "C64 vs Amstrad CPC". These two were actually playing in the same
| league.
|
| Yet, the dominant conversation online today still seems to be all
| about "C64 vs Spectrum" and I find that puzzling, as if people
| were still seriously arguing today that the Atari ST was a more
| capable and legendary computer than the Amiga.
|
| Bitmap Books released a series of "visual commpedium" art books
| featuring the Amiga (of course), the C64 (fair enough), the
| Spectrum (lol for a gfx book), but still not the Amstrad CPC to
| this day.
|
| Some of this may be down to ignorance : I came across people who
| were simply unaware of the CPC's graphics prowess compared to the
| Spectrum, as they had only ever seen "green screen" Amstrads, if
| any. Others had lazy Speccy ports in mind when they argued the
| CPC was slower and couldn't do smooth scrolling (I show them
| Pinball Dreams : https://youtu.be/yl_MSCpGC0M?t=1377)
|
| But I wonder if besides the nostalgia goggles & ignorance,
| there's maybe a different taste for pixel art aesthetics at play
| ?
|
| I was stunned to hear that some people preferred the Spectrum in
| this games graphics comparison I've put together :
| https://imgur.com/a/D7Ocd
|
| What ?! I'm curious to know what unbiased younger people think
| about that one...
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