That’s how the original spectrum looked like.

The first and the most sold version of Speccy was ZX Spectrum 48. It had 48k of RAM (6k of which is video memory) and 16k of ROM with the BASIC interpreter in. Processor - Z80 by Zilog (8bit, 1.75MHz). Machine had 40 rubber keys that were neatly fitted on the computer box.

It plugged in the monitor or normal TV set and data loaded from and saved to the normal tape recorder. 90min tape usually held about 25 standard games. Despite such a modest spec games on Spectrum had ridiculously high speed for 8bit, 1.75MHz CPU, thanks to absolutely beautiful architecture. That’s why at those times the market was absolutely flooded with games of all genres for ZX Spectrum.

In the countries of former Soviet Union ZX Spectrum is known mostly by computer funs of the 1980’s. At that time it was the most available machine with relatively good technical characteristics - real value for money. This was due to the possibility of building one at home if you were an experienced radio-amateur. Thus, Speccy was not only brought to USSR from abroad, but also has been built by private amateurs, small businesses and even large factories. Our group also had lucky moments of building and working on these wonderful things.

ZX Spectrum was designed in the late 1970’s by the British company Sinclair Research Ltd. The director of the company was talented and inventive person - Sir Clive Marles Sinclair (born 30 July 1940, Knighted 1983) . ZX Spectrum was not the only their development on the computer market, though it was the most successful one. It is mostly due to the choice of Z80 as CPU, which not only executed the commands of processors Intel 8080/85 but also had additional ones. Such turn in the architecture attracted many programmers, who didn’t have to conquer new set of commands for this CPU. Another reason for success was the way that video was arranged. With the resolution of 256x192 pixels computer could work simultaneously in text mode (32x24 symbols of 8x8 pixels) and graphic mode. Colour could be assigned to the individual pixel but rather to the 8x8 pixel set, which could hold two colours: ink and paper (or background). Such colour distribution on the screen limited graphics designers on one hand but made colour graphics very fast and compact on the other hand.

Later, Sinclair Research Ltd. produced other versions of the computer - Spectrum+, Spectrum 2+, Spectrum 3+ - which were modified with extended keyboard and fitted tape recorder or disk drive. However, at that time number of other platforms appeared competing with simple and not enough powerful computer. Nevertheless, it has been around quite a while in USSR after that time, mainly because of financial limitations of its residents. To catch up with other platforms offered on the market a number of local modifications have been offered - Scorpion (256k of RAM), Pentagon (512k of RAM), etc. - which had a sound co-processor (AY-9812) built in, disk systems such as TR-DOS and IsDOS with possibility to plug normal 5.25" or 3.5" floppy drives… Even now, despite the growth of PC market, ZX Spectrum is still alive - mainly it has transferred into "virtual reality" of Internet, emulators and, of course, our hearts… Speccy forever!!!

Some of the web-sites on ZX Spectrum:

World of Spectrum - big archive of programs and emulators.

Virtual TR-DOS - collection of programs for TR-DOS, news, demos and other interesting stuff.

Echo / ZX Spectrum - last news from fido and archives with "russified" programs.

Planet Sinclair - site with the collection of programs and magazines on ZX Spectrum.

Spectrum Webring.