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Cover image for Happy 40th Birthday to the ZX Spectrum 48K!
Jon Randy 🎖️
Jon Randy 🎖️

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Happy 40th Birthday to the ZX Spectrum 48K!

Without this little rubber keyed wonder, I would not be the programmer I am today...
ZX Spectrum 48K desk setup

Who else got their start as a developer with this classic machine?

Top comments (10)

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Mike Talbot ⭐

ZX81 for me. But the Spectrum is where it really took off and it made my career. My finest hour: a 99% review for Shadow Warriors.

Shadow Warriors Screenshot

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garyk2015

I think all of the 80s home machines contributed to a whole generation going into development but I guess the Spectrum and C64 being at the forefront of this. I did some 6502 and then left school doing 6800 assembler as it was similar, but on busines software not games so not really that fun!

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Manuel Odendahl • Edited

I had a 8086 for years (2 floppies, no graphics card, all I could do was write my own games in Basic), and we have a Thompson MO-5 at school, where we could program in Logo. Such fond memories.

Thompson Mo5

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Manuel Odendahl

In fact, I'm just gonna go ahead and embrace my midlife crisis, and buy one off ebay. BASIC here I come!

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Thomas Hansen

Who else got their start as a developer with this classic machine?

Almost, I started out with an Oric 1. It only had 48K of RAM though ... ;)

And if possible, even less comfortable keyboard :D

Which I contribute to my coding skills today, since simply pressing a single key, would arguably hurt, hence I ended up writing "super DRY code" as a consequence :D

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Ayman Henry

Yes, I've a working machine zx+

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Jon Randy 🎖️ • Edited

I have an original 48K, and a toastrack 128K back at my parents' house in the UK. I have no idea if they still work. I regularly use emulators though :)

I'm also a backer on the current ZX Spectrum Next Kickstarter campaign

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Koas

LOAD “” 🙂

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Jon Randy 🎖️

R Tape Loading Error, 0:1

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Areskul

I don't but this looks cool