I never owned one 1st time around but have been keeping my eye out on ebay for the last 12 months. Finally bagged a bargain local pickup. She is a beauty.

Play this instead, it’s much more fun

Here’s one for the album…

He is survived by his wife, Eileen, whom he married in 1967, and their three daughters Kerry, Emma and Casey. Cause of death is yet to be announced.

The 1st book I read of his was “Once” and it is an excellent story of life, love and the supernatural – and of course a splash of horror. Magic Cottage, Portent, 48 and Sepulchre are all excellent reads. But ‘Nobody True’ probably stands out as one of his most memorable.

James Herbert was a much better writer than Stephen King and deserved higher accolades than he achieved, in my opinion.

It’s a shame that I will not get to read any more of his excellent books.

May he rest in peace…

<sigh> Guess I’ll have to put it all away somewhere neat and tidy. But of course the disadvantage is that I keep stopping to play something… so this could take a while

Whilst quick-loading a TZX in to my Speccy+2 tonight I saw this error, for the 1st time ever I must say. It really sums up my programming prowess and perhaps would make a good epitaph on my headstone

Straight to the point… no messing around…

I love my Spectrums, the original rubber key version is just beautiful. The Spectrum+ professional keyboard is very ‘modern’ and sounds like a proper computer

However, what both of the above machines lack is decent picture quality. RF is so… well… 80′s! and although it might be ‘authentic’ it is a bit of a strain on the eyes.

Old Clive and his band of merry Men and Women fixed this issue with the +2 models onwards, by giving us the wonderful clarity of RGB out. A modern scart cable on a Spectrum gives such a beautiful picture. Whilst it still isn’t HDMI 1080p, it’s a million times better than RF.

So I prefer to use my +2 for this reason. Games are a joy to play.  I do own a lot of original cassette based games and if I really want a game then I am happy to pay ebay prices for them; however, I don’t own every game. So if I want to play something that isn’t in my official library then I download the TZX file and convert it to WAV.

Her lies the biggest problem with +2 Spectrums: they do NOT have ‘audio-in’ capabilities. What a shocking oversight by Mr. Clive. Tape deck breaks and you are knackered, tales of woe can be found all over the net, quite a little industry sprang up in the repair market.

So, where is this leading? Well, in order to get the best of both worlds you have to upgrade to a +3 for full audio options and RGB out. they cost about £60-£90 on ebay at the moment.

With a bit of digging around I came to a simple, quick and above all very very cheap solution. For a mere £1.70 from Amazon I spotted one of the old car audio cassette adapters, the type with a 3.5mm input jack. Blimey I thought, that might just work!! and it does! it works bloody well!

Proper chuffed I am 

The beautiful lady in question can sell upwards of £400 for a very nice machine. A dented and bashed around version normally fetches at least £80-£100.

Well this one was definitely bashed around, but it was still at £40. Well it would be rude not to, wouldn’t it?

So in I jumped with £60, and promptly the auction ended with me winning this fantastic little machine for £48. I… just… couldn’t believe it!

I had it… I owned it… I squealed like a girl! 

I’ve wanted one for so long. My regular reader will tell the other not-so-regular reader that I am a big fan of old Sinclair machines, in particular the Zx81. But this was one better…

This is the holy grail of Sinclair machines… this… was… a… a… a… ZX80

And here she is…

It is just a thing of beauty. Now the joint-2nd favourite piece in my entire collection.

Now, all I need is a Research Machines 380Z to become available for less than £100 and my life will  be complete.

Happy days for me!

The 2nd year of #GEEK – Game Expo East Kent – opened it’s doors to a throng of both young and old. The Exhibition is mainly focused on the retrogaming scene (perfect!) but it did cater for modern gamers too; with Halo tournaments along side Super Mario Kart tournaments, hosted by world champion record holders of the game.  It was a really great weekend and I just couldn’t tear myself away from such greats as Jetpac, Dropzone, Stunt Car Racer, Elite, Thrust and many many more.

Also met the 2 folks behind ‘Bedrooms to Billions’ and a couple of very nice people they are too! they gave a talk about the making of the forthcoming docufilm. We got a sneaky peek at what it has to offer and I’m really looking forward to the whole thing.

Here are some pics of the fun on offer. If Replay Events are hosting anything near you then I suggest you merrily skip along and have some bloody good fun.