The Sinclair ZX Spectrum, with the distinctive rubber buttons, this week 30 years. The by Sir Clive Sinclair developed homecomputer sold in the eighties, particularly in the United Kingdom very well by the relatively low price.
Sir Clive Sinclair, who had the ZX80 and ZX81 on the market brought, sought, together with his development team there to to with the ZX Spectrum with relatively cheap hardware in order to compete with the more expensive but also more powerful Commodore 64. So opted for the 3.5 MHz running Z80 which is a low price tag. The first model of the ZX Spectrum had 16KB of ram, while there is also a model came on the market with 48KB.
Because the home computer, extra components included, the software functions like sound and graphics. The design made for the necessary limitations of the ZX Spectrum: the sound capabilities were not in the vicinity of the sid-chip, a complete professional in the Commodore 64 was present. Also the graphics were slow and the color palette limited.
The ZX Spectrum sold in particular in the United Kingdom very well. In an interview with the BBC show, Richard Altwasser and Rick Dickinson, together with Clive Sinclair closely involved in the development of the ZX Spectrum, know that the availability of a large number of games for the home computer market has contributed to the sales success. The distinctive rubber keys on the ZX Spectrum, where the keystroke by a critic was described as ‘dead meat’, according to the designers, however, the result of the cost-effective choices that should be made.
In addition to the fact that the ZX Spectrum was a good gamemachine was, knew the computer novice and expert programmers to operate properly. The standard programming language was Sinclair Basic which is a part of the commands via shortcuts on the keyboard entered could, while it was possible to make with machine language programming.
Sinclair knew eventually over a period of approximately ten years and with a few new models over five million Spectrums to sell. The British company was, however, around 1985, financial problems, and was later acquired by rival Amstrad.
