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Before I and I'm sure many of you, were tapping away at keyboards and gaming away on CRT screens with roller ball mice, people like our fearless leader Zardon had a different take on computing altogether. Yes way back in the 80s, while the Commodore 64 was tearing it up in the US, ZX Sinclair launched the Spectrum in the UK and was so successful, it's often credited with kickstarting the British IT industry. Although you can pick up an original on Ebay for not too much these days, if you want the authentic experience but in a medium that you can actually use day to day, there's a replica Spectrum bluetooth keyboard coming soon.
Called the Recreated Sinclair ZX Spectrum, the little bluetooth device looks like the real deal. It has the same rubberised keys and rainbow stripe and comes with a bunch of original ZX Spectrum games that can be played on Android or iOS platforms using the device. There's also a free web portal with access to even more titles if you want to get really nostalgic.
It even received an endorsement from Rick Dickinson, industrial designer of the original Sinclair ZX Spectrum. [yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLFxnG91vZE']
Of course being a bluetooth keyboard, it can also be used for any number of modern tasks too, so don't feel you need to limit yourself to '80s nostalgia. Other supported features include Apple AirPlay and Google Chromecast, making it easier to control content that's streamed from your phone or tablet to your TV.
Unfortunately there's not even an option to pre-order this yet so it's not clear when it will be made available. Presumably though, since Mr Dickinson got to have a play with a finished one, it won't be long. For those wanting an update of when they are available, you can register your interest here.
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KitGuru Says: While I never tried out one of these, I did rock a BBC Micro back in the day.
It’s one of those cool but not too useful nostalgia devices. Far as I remember from the day, people didn’t really like that keyboard.
I preferred the +2 keyboard myself, still have a couple of units.
I don’t keep old computers and never was a real Spectrum fan (although I played on it quite a bit at a friend’s). I did once get two broken Spectrums, a 48K and a plus, and managed to make them into one working Spectrum+, which I gave to a friend who was a Spectrum fan (in an age when nobody used them any more, late 80’s).
As a previous Commodore 64 owner, I can only say “nice, but needs more beige”.
Personally I never had a problem with the keyboard and never met anyone in person who had used one and had any real issues with it. The only keyboard criticisms I ever saw were in magazines.
Of course you had the people who said “I’m going to buy a C64 because it has more memory and a proper keyboard” who had never actually tried using a spectrum keyboard and didn’t realise that both machines actually had the same amount of memory (16k ROM and 48k RAM – Sinclair advertised the machine based upon RAM, whereas Commodore advertised the total).
One thing that the early micros (Whether Spectrum, C64, BBC Model B etc.) did teach was programming efficiency – because you didn’t have much memory to play with you had to be tight with your code unlike the sloppy bloatware that modern coders produce where the answer to insufficient RAM is to modify advertised specs rather than improve the code.
The C64 did have 64K of RAM, don’t make the mistake that it didn’t. Normally part of it was hidden by the ROM, but it was possible to make use of all RAM by disabling the ROM. The C64 generally had a better hardware spec than the Spectrum.
Regarding “programming efficiency”, the way I see it those old home computers taught you to optimise code, but that’s the opposite of programming efficiency. Programming efficiency is using pre-build engines and libraries, using scripting languages, anything which makes you produce working code in an efficient way. Software these days is an order of magnitude more complex than in those years, and so is the hardware. There’s always still some optimisation, but trying to drill every last cycle these days is impractical and wasteful.