Old Age Gadgets

I was up in the loft today getting down our Christmas tree and found a few things that I thought would be fun to photograph.

Remember this?

I think I’ll print a large version of this to stick on the wall.

My first mobile phone next to my present mobile phone.

Comments

[Etienne]

Rob,
I cannot believe that the Spectrum is in that mint condition. Was it in a box, and you never opened it? :)

[Roger]

Question is which has better battery life the NEC or the Nokia?

[Andrew]

Well, if you are going to throw out such nostalgic bait, I'll bite. The ZX Spectrum to me means Z80 assembler and the Spectrum port of Elite. Two very influential things in my teenage years. Today I still play video games and work at the hardware/software boundary. And as Etienne said, that Spectrum really is in cracking shape.

[Marc Jacobi]

Ah, man that was my first computer! I made a bunch of hardware extensions on it and learned Z80 assembler language. It was my first drum computer! hahaha.
Aahh, good old times. I sank a whole lot of time into that thing. (-:

But I remember my PCB being different than this photo. I had the 48k version.

[Rob]

The Spectrum might look in good condition but I'm not sure if it still works. Couldn't find the power supply..... It did get a lot of hammer though. I remember writing an assember sound to light program that flashed the screen in time to music being played down the casette port input. One of my most treasured books is "The Complete Spectrum Rom Disassembly" from Melbourne House (remember them?) which should be compulsory reading for all Computer Scientists who think they know their stuff.

The reason it looks a bit odd is that it is a 16K version with a third party 32K memory upgrade. I've no idea what the leds do though. Next time I'm up there I'll see if I can find my BBC Model B......