Remembering ZX spectrum
🖥️ Released in 1982, this computer is quite something!
Looking back during my childhood years, I’ve always been fascinated by anything technical, from typewriter, pocket radio, vinyl player, Casio digital watch, to mini gamepads. It wasn’t until I received my first computer as a present from my Dad, that sparked my real love for computers and the science behind it.
💡 But I wanted a Commodore 64 !
My Dad took me to a computer show, one of the first in Thailand, and I was hooked ! There were a couple of them that caught my eyes, Atari and Commodore 64. With proper keyboard and a wide range of game collections, this is the one I told my Dad I wanted!
Next day, to my surprised, he got me a Sinclair ZX spectrum! I knew absolutely nothing about it and set out to learn whatever I can from the manual. I was 11 yearsold at the time, so everything was a steep learning curve for me! From hooking it up to a TV and tuning the signal, then connecting it to a cassette player and loading the programs from cassette tapes. Everything was trial-and-error as there is no one to ask and no Google or Internet back then!
🚀 What a tiny gaming platform!
With its rubber keys and tinny sound, you might not think of it as a proper gaming platform, but, oh boy! Started with games like Horace Goes Skiing to Psion Chess, from Space Invaders to Asteroids, from Pong to Breakout, I had absolute blast playing those games! The graphic may not look like much on screen, but my imaginations helps bring it to life!
Space Invaders
Asteroids
Breakout
⌨️ Programming in ZX80 BASIC
- Typing codes from Computer magazine! At my school’s library, they sometimes received donations of old computer magazine, like PC Magazines PC/Computing, etc. from nearby bookstores. Imagine my delight when I found computer magazine for me to borrow! Copying BASIC codes from magazine into my ZX spectrum, debugging it, running it and making changes to it really helped me learned the logic and basic building blocks of programming, and this has stuck with me over the years!
- ZX Basic allows you to ‘poke’ directly into the memory address, resulting in many ‘experiments’ that I did to ‘break’ the program. Commands like ‘GOTO’ or ‘GOSUB’ allows the program to basically flows to any line of codes! Learning the concepts of IF/ELSEIF/THEN, FOR/WHILE loops, OR/XOR, INT/STR/ABS functions and many more during my primary school years really helped me during my engineering years, and later on in my professional life.
💡 What I learned …
- There is no shortcut, even with AI, you need to learn the basic, and understand the ‘Why?’ behind what you do. I used to spend hours, usually into late night, just typing away on my ZX Spectrum. With limited 48k memory on it, you have to get creative, even with ‘go to’ command and spaghetti code!
- Later on in my professional life, I had to learn programming in various languages, from Basic, Fortran, Pascal, Visual Basic, C, Python, database, and web programming. No matter the language, the logic hasn’t changed.
- And follow your passion! If you like what you do, it won’t feel like work!
🧭 The gift…
Eventually, I retired the ZX Spectrum to the corner when I got a hand-me-down IBM PC/AT from my aunt’s ceramic manufacturing company, equipped with CP/M-80 card, EGA color video card, but with green monochrome monitor! Why?!? Well, that’s worth another story in itself!
And that’s it! Quite a nostalgia trip down memory lane. Looking back, it was these small moments that forever changed our lives !
Thank you, Dad, for getting me the most awesome gift of all, which was knowledge!
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