48k spectrum

Len · 06-01-2004, 23:00

Anyone else here ever owned a 48k zx spectrum.

I did, those where the days. I even wrote my own programs, useing basic code.
The programs I made did work, I spent hours and hours messing around with;
dim$(100,10), A$,loops, for and next, goto, gosub, if's and that's,tabs,printat. etc.
Did Anyone else waste hours of their life doing the same?
Who would of thought that pc's would end up like they are today.

Mick · 07-01-2004, 07:55

yes len i had a commerdore 64, a speccy 48k and one colled the aquarius 2k
then whent over to Amiga 500 where i spent my long nights writing a adventure games in basic took hours it had maps in and graphics and it worked but sadly ran out of memery every now and then
i did send it to a firm for genral release but never got anyware with it shame

Len · 08-01-2004, 23:30

Hi mick
.
Sorry I took so long in replying, it’s just that yesterday I spent a lot of time in the photo cropshop trying to sort things out. lol
I have never heard of an Aquarius 2k. The others I have.
The programs I did weren’t really complicated but for me they where.
I would have a menu with about four options.

Callsign
Name
Info
Location

Something like that, you could enter any of the above and it would do a search and if it was there it would print at. If not it would ask me to enter that info.
There must have been about 300 lines plus spread out over about 900 lines, may be more, just not sure.
Well it seemed like that, there was a hell of a lot of scrolling to do.
I spent hours trying to sort out errors that appeared on certain lines.
What caused it to crash, something wrong with the variable in the string A$(n)
What value was the variable, how did it get there? Allsorts of problems.
But I sorted it eventually after weeks of almost sleepless nights. lol

It was so satisfying to have the program working even though I never really used it because it was a pain to have to load it up every time I wanted to use it. lol
I think you know what I mean.
The best part for me, the bit I really enjoyed wasn’t just running it but was actually trying to sort out the problems.
I bet people must wonder how a person can get so exited about using something so simple like basic code but to me it was very complicated.
I would have never attempted to do what you did mick, far to complicated for me.

The worst thing that happens is after you have spent nearly all night modifying, making changes fixing errors, is that for no apparent reason, the all thing deletes and its all gone all that work disappears.
I know you are supposed to save from time to time which I did but because of the time it took to save and verify to a cassette recorder, I tended to leave it a bit longer. Big mistake but I always risked it.

The dc socket at the back I had glued it up with blue tack so that hopefully any movement of the keyboard wouldn’t cause it to reboot and wipe out all of my nights work.

Mick · 09-01-2004, 07:13

All this sounds very fermilar hehe
i used to be a tool grinder at bac in preston and we had cnc machines i wrote a program for this to show where the grinding wheel was in relasionship to all the axiz a,z,b,c,d,y,t,w you would enter the co-ordenets after running a measureing program and the program i wrote would show you a picture of the grinding wheel in relasionship to the axiz so if you where over center or under center you could ajust your settings as the grinding wheel had to be set right on center .
this was hard took ages but felt great when i got it to work
hehehehe

janet · 09-01-2004, 11:53

Very good len, it took a few minutes to download but was worth it.
Have to say that i needed a good intake of oxygen after that.

Len · 09-01-2004, 21:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by janet

Very good len, it took a few minutes to download but was worth it.
Have to say that i needed a good intake of oxygen after that.

Glad you liked it janet a friend sent it me and I thought I must show it here.

Len · 09-01-2004, 22:02

Ok fine on that mick.

The last short program I did was for work.
We formed a lotto syndicate when the lotto started and we had about 20 odd lines to check, well I did!
So I decided to knock up a program that would check the lines for us. I say knock up but it was a challenge.
Which I did, it was very simple. I used lines of Data i.e. Data 14,5,25,45,4,46
When the program ran I would have a screen with all the number up in 20 rows.
I would enter a number and it would run through them and if there were a match it would invert that particular number. It was ok I enjoyed watching the numbers come up, we never got six numbers, I might add
Later on I acquired a second hand printer for it. So I could get a print out and take it to work to show the lads, they were all impressed.
It was good; it did its job for quite a while.

Mick · 10-01-2004, 06:52

don't think i could write in basic now though hehe

Bigclive · 27-03-2004, 09:11

I,ve Still Got A Zx81 In The Box, Togethter With Printer.

Mick · 27-03-2004, 09:44

You keep it safe clive they make a good door stop and in the future who knows how much it could be worth hehe

jambutty · 14-04-2004, 19:01

I still have my Speccy 128, the Aquarius and Amiga 500 and 1200 and door stops they will never be. I have also been able to make my PC pretend to be a Speccy, an Aquarius and an Amiga so the originals are stored away safely. Before I was forced to go PC me and my trusty Amiga A1200 would surf quite happily for a couple of years before the PC world took a giant leap forward and my poor old machine got left behind.