The motherboard design was also refined and this is something that continued through the years with later iterations. More common are the issue 2 onwards which had blueish grey keys as opposed to light grey in the issue 1 iterations. Approximately 60k Issue 1 Spectrum’s were produced, although functional units are quite rare these days. The Commodore 64 was released at £399 in 1983, and not only was this more than double the Spectrum’s price, but the Sinclair machine had been given ample time to create a huge foothold in the personal computing market.Ī “Text Heavy” Sinclair Spectrum AdvertThis was even more the case when the prices were dropped to £99 and £129 respectively the following year, leading Commodore to make some significant price cuts pretty quickly in order to compete. Initially priced at £125 for the less popular 16kb model and £175 for the staggeringly mind blowing 48k model… these prices, as with Sinclair’s other computing products, undercut pretty much everything else in the market.
#Sinclair zx spectrum portable full#
Sure the ZX80 and 81 had made the initial impact, but with it’s full colour graphics, nicer keyboard (to an extent), better programming language and sounds to boot, it was almost comparable to the Commodore 64 which wasn’t due on the scene for at least another year, albeit for a much lower price. The Spectrum soon became the first mainstream computing device in the UK. In development the Spectrum was referred to as the ZX82 or Colour ZX81, although due to it being a massive redesign and improvement on the zx models, it was decided to give it a new, more appropriate name. The Speccy, as it’s fondly known by it’s users and fans, was launched by Sinclair Research limited (One of a number of companies Clive Sinclair held and renamed throughout this era) in April 1982, initially by mail order as with the zx80 and zx81 models that came prior to the new colour machine. The Spectrum (A shining rainbow light for the UK) Emerges!
Where do I start with this stupendous machine? The machine that introduced so many British children to the wonderful world of computing – me included! To the incredibly creative world of programming and to the never ending days spent waiting for a game to load, whilst listening to the delightful sounds of data recorded at 1300 baud?!… Well, I guess I start with the first of those points.
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