- Zilog Z80A CPU, 3.5 Mhz.
- Semi-custom graphics chip (off-the-shelf logic array with custom functionality).
- Spectrum 128 and Amstrad models: General Instruments AY-3-8912 sound chip.
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=== Clones & Emulators === |
=== Clones & Emulators === |
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The demise of the Speccy in the early 1990s isn't the end of the story. Because it's so simple, it's easy to clone. The first Speccy clone was an authorized version by Timex |
The demise of the Speccy in the early 1990s isn't the end of the story. Because it's so simple, it's easy to clone. The first Speccy clone was an authorized version by Timex<ref>Yes, the wristwatch company - they also did Sinclair's UK manufacturing</ref> for the United States, Portugal and Poland. Unauthorized Speccy clones started appearing in the Soviet Union in the mid-1980s, followed by several countries in eastern Europe, along with India, Brazil and Argentina. |
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Then came the retro scene: Of the numerous [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ZX_Spectrum_clones#Unofficial Speccy clones] listed on [[The Other Wiki]], at least half a dozen were released in the '10s or '20s. |
Then came the retro scene: Of the numerous [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ZX_Spectrum_clones#Unofficial Speccy clones] listed on [[The Other Wiki]], at least half a dozen were released in the '10s or '20s. |
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Processors= |
Processors= |
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* Zilog |
* Zilog Z80A CPU, 3.5 Mhz. |
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* Semi-custom graphics chip (off-the-shelf logic array with custom functionality). |
* Semi-custom graphics chip (off-the-shelf logic array with custom functionality). |
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* Spectrum 128 and Amstrad models: General Instruments AY-3-8912 sound chip. |
* Spectrum 128 and Amstrad models: General Instruments AY-3-8912 sound chip. |
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* Spectrum+: 48K. |
* Spectrum+: 48K. |
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* Spectrum 128 and Amstrad models: 128K. |
* Spectrum 128 and Amstrad models: 128K. |
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* The [[Operating System|OS]] is stored in [[Read Only Memory|ROM]] - 16K for the 16 or 48K Spectrum, more for later models. Some add-ons could swap in |
* The [[Operating System|OS]] is stored in [[Read Only Memory|ROM]] - 16K for the 16 or 48K Spectrum, more for later models. Some add-ons could swap in some RAM in its place. |
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Display= |
Display= |
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Sound= |
Sound= |
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Examples can be found on the [[ZX Spectrum/Music|music]] subpage. |
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* Spectrum and Spectrum+: Beeper |
* Spectrum and Spectrum+: Beeper, controlled by toggling a single output bit to make it vibrate. Can cover 10 octaves but takes CPU time. |
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* Spectrum 128 and Amstrad models: Three channels, square or noise waveforms, 10 octaves, programmable ADSR, 8-bit sample playback. |
* Spectrum 128 and Amstrad models: Three channels, square or noise waveforms, 10 octaves, programmable ADSR, 8-bit sample playback. |
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* ''[[Turrican]]'' |
* ''[[Turrican]]'' |
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* ''Amaurote'' |
* ''Amaurote'' |
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* ''Fairlight'' |
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==== [[Adventure Game]] ==== |
==== [[Adventure Game]] ==== |
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** ''Herbert's Dummy Run'' |
** ''Herbert's Dummy Run'' |
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** ''Three Weeks in Paradise'' |
** ''Three Weeks in Paradise'' |
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* ''Rasterscan'' |
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==== [[First Person Shooter]] ==== |
==== [[First Person Shooter]] ==== |
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* ''[[Video Game/Technician Ted|Technician Ted]]'' |
* ''[[Video Game/Technician Ted|Technician Ted]]'' |
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* ''Automania'' |
* ''Automania'' |
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* ''[[Bubble Bobble]]'' |
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==== [[Puzzle Game]] ==== |
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* ''Magic Tokens'' |
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==== [[Simulation Game]] ==== |
==== [[Simulation Game]] ==== |
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* ''Trantor: The Last Stormtrooper'' |
* ''Trantor: The Last Stormtrooper'' |
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* ''[[Zub]]'' |
* ''[[Zub]]'' |
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* ''Stardust'' |
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==== [[Wide Open Sandbox]] ==== |
==== [[Wide Open Sandbox]] ==== |
Britain's equivalent to the Apple II and Commodore 64.
And the polar opposite of the X68000 as well (in hardware specs).
The Sinclair ZX Spectrum, or "Speccy" to its fans, is a masterpiece of early 1980s computing Minimalism. Everything is as simple and cheap as possible. Because of this, it became famous in Britain and Spain in the 1980s, and eastern Europe and Russia in the 1990s, as a game-friendly home computer for people who otherwise couldn't afford one.
The Speccy is based on a couple of earlier computers, the ZX80 and ZX81. These were little more than a Z80 processor, an incomplete 4K version of BASIC, 1K of RAM, and a membrane keyboard — the first releases were sold as kits. The Z80 drew the text-only screen (when it wasn't busy), video output was to a TV set, and programs were stored on audio cassettes. The primitiveness was deliberate — the ZX80 was designed to be the cheapest computer on the market, and the ZX81 made the original design even cheaper. The ZX81 was only £70 (or $100) in 1981, and sold over a million units. The Speccy, designed to be the cheapest color computer on the market, improved on the ZX81 with a 16K almost-complete BASIC, 16K or 48K of RAM, a video chip, a beeper, and a rubber keyboard.
The Speccy was released in April 1982 at £125 for the 16K model and £175 for 48K, dropping as time went on. Sinclair was swamped with orders. It held its own against the Commodore 64, and British competitors such as the BBC Micro and Amstrad CPC. Sales figures went into the millions, mostly of the 48K model, and it brought Britain into the home computer age (and earned its inventor, Clive Sinclair, a knighthood [1]).
The Spectrum+, introduced in 1984, replaced the rubber keyboard with a plastic one, modeled after the failed Sinclair QL (an abortive attempt to create a business machine to compete with the IBM PC), and fixed some graphics bugs. The third and final Sinclair Spectrum was the 128, in 1986. This had 128K of RAM, an even better BASIC, MIDI, a monitor port, and three-channel sound.
Amstrad bought Sinclair in 1986 and continued improving the Speccy with a full-travel keyboard, an internal cassette drive, and finally with a disk drive in 1987. But these later models have backward-compatibility problems.
Speaking of backward-compatibility problems, the SAM Coupé was released in 1989 as a next-generation Speccy. Inspired by a terminated project at Sinclair Research and designed by former Sinclair employees at Miles Gordon Technology (MGT), the SAM had better specs than any Spectrum - but without the intellectual property that now belonged to Amstrad there was a limit to how compatible MGT could make it.
The SAM could be made to run most 48K software with a bit of hacking, and its games got regular slots in the big Spectrum magazines. However, despite having as much RAM as an Amiga 1000, it was still an 8-bit machine in an increasingly 16-bit market, and never made it commercially.
The demise of the Speccy in the early 1990s isn't the end of the story. Because it's so simple, it's easy to clone. The first Speccy clone was an authorized version by Timex[2] for the United States, Portugal and Poland. Unauthorized Speccy clones started appearing in the Soviet Union in the mid-1980s, followed by several countries in eastern Europe, along with India, Brazil and Argentina.
Then came the retro scene: Of the numerous Speccy clones listed on The Other Wiki, at least half a dozen were released in the '10s or '20s.
The fansite World of Spectrum, which is officially endorsed by Amstrad, offers various emulators for the system and most of the original games for free as memory dumps or tape images. [3] The site has gone all out to ask the original producers of the games for permission to distribute them freely (permission which has been granted in the majority of cases, the exceptions mostly being games published by companies that still exist who fear that they compromise the integrity of their current catalogs by allowing free download of something that ceased to be profitable to them in 1993). The site has about 90% of the computer's software library up for free legal download.
Not very expandable, except kits were sold to convert the 16K model to 48K.
Output is to a TV set via a built-in UHF modulator. A composite signal is also available from the edge connector.
Examples can be found on the music subpage.
Connectors were kept to a minimum to control costs and speed up the initial launch. Other ports became available via add-ons.
Thousands upon thousands; conservative estimates hover around the 11,000 mark [6], while the World Of Spectrum library contains around 9,000 of them.
The infamous colour system meant a lot of games on this rainbow-badged computer were rendered in monochrome to prevent "colour clash". This is especially true of 3D games, but a lot of cross-platform titles became monochrome on the Speccy just to make the conversion easier (and cheaper). Some games, like Trantor, are remembered for bucking this trend with big, colourful animation.
On the plus side, the shortage of video optimisations was partly compensated by the relatively fast processor, and gave developers a clean graphical slate. The result was a plethora of different visual styles. Isometric Projection became something of a staple, to the annoyance of joystick owners[7], and there are some impressive first-person 3D titles. At least one isometric game, Amaurote, was switched to a top-down view on the C64, presumably to make use of the latter's hardware sprites.
Sinclair released several add-ons to extend the Spectrum's functionality, and numerous other companies got in on the action. The ZX printer, already released for use with the ZX81, could plug straight in, and the burgeoning games market allowed several competing joystick adaptors to thrive.
All Spectrum add-ons are plugged in to the "edge connector" or "expansion bus". Some devices include a duplicated edge connector for daisy-chaining, and for the rest, "expansion doublers" could be bought.
Attachments included:
Some of the earlier joystick interfaces included ROM cartridge slots, but the cartridges never caught on. Sinclair tried to start the ball rolling with 10 official cartridges[9] but they were all discontinued within months. Later interfaces sometimes shipped with empty spaces on their circuit boards for the cartridge slot.