The 1980s were a golden age for professional and consumer computing, perhaps even more so for the latter. And it is that the dream of many was to bring a PC to any user as was the case for Bill Gates to do with his Windows operating system, and although many have tried, few have success. One of the successful ones is Clive Sinclair, who brought that dream to life by presenting the ZX Spectruma PC which at the time was partly revolutionary for its Material.
It was in the 1980s that this young entrepreneur created Sinclair Research LTD in the United Kingdom, where a few years later he already had his first PC to try to realize this dream. The novelties in the sector were many and for this reason they are remembered, where the material logically had much of the “blame” for the already mythical fame it obtained.
It was the ZX Spectrum, the personal computer for everyone
The features today seem laughable to us, but at that time it was a revolution in many ways where today it would be almost impossible to achieve what Sinclair achieved over 30 years ago.
The ZX Spectrum was an evolution of the ZX80 and ZX81, and after that came various improvements and versions, such as the Spectrum ZX +3 and other variants, but we will focus on the original and simple version. Its compact, time-optimized design was a game-changer and took the gaming industry to the next level, all thanks to a Zilog Z80A processor who ran to a huge 3.5MHz.
It was a processor. 8 bit able to get a 16-bit addressable bus that allowed it to have a ULA for other related functions, which left more computing power to the CPU for what really matters.
Its ROM memory had a capacity of 16 KBwhile RAM was configurable and selectable between 16 KB and 48 KB, which for the time was something incredible. Logically, 16-bit addressing gave the limit 64 KB
In addition, the storage system is now a gem that they seek to do business with, since normal cassettes were used, such as those used to record music or those sold as albums by singers. and musical comedy groups.
Color schemes, a real revolution
The keyboard was another important aspect to be able to improve in games. It was a membrane and had several layers to come into contact with each press through keys with rubber covers. As if that weren’t enough, the Spectrum ZX’s hardware had a Internal 40 ohm speaker
In the video section, truly revolutionary, it had an output with a resolution of 256 x 192 pixels with 16 colors available, even if they were really 8 basic colors converted with a complementary palette with more brightness.
Undoubtedly the most remarkable thing is that the image buffer had a 32 x 24 matrix divided into blocks, where these could represent a maximum of two colors, hence its main on-screen visual review, which is unequivocal.
Later peripherals arrived to improve the gaming experience such as the ZX Microdrive, mice or joysticks which would be connected by the ZX-Interface Interface 2. Its fame is not so much due to its hardware, but rather to its games and especially to its software capabilities, being able to support a very high variability such as Pascal, LISP or Forthas well as multiple assemblers, which created a very rich software community that left one of the best times for its development in memory.
Without a doubt, it was a shift in the paradigm of home PC, gaming PC and development from the office without having to go to the office, something that today is standardized and that we all see normal , so many of us remember the ZX Spectrum hardware as the true precursor to all of this in a user-friendly environment.
