“Never let anyone tell you you’re too old. Here I am at 50, still being used to run thousands of retro computing projects and computers” - Zilog Z80
Phew
I still haven’t steeled myself to watch the Black Mirror episode. Can’t do stress TV these days.
😬
Did you know Linus Torvalds wrote a software blitter for the Sinclair QL before creating Linux? 🖥️ The QL Preservation Project has a massive 4GB archive — software, all 17 volumes of QL Today magazine & even a playable Bandersnatch! sinclairql.net
And the 4K ZX80 ROM was pure magic.
New blog post - blog.tynemouthsoftware.co.uk/2026/03/tfw8...
A handy little gadget made by Rod @futurewas8bit.bsky.social that looks like someone 3D printed the moment a microwave had a brilliant idea, but it far more useful than that.
0/0
In 1K of RAM you could store approximately 1,024 characters. This post is 199 characters long. You could fit five of these posts in a ZX81. You would have 29 bytes left over. Don't waste them.
Am I the A*Hole?
I waited until the entire game loaded from tape and then I crashed when they pushed on the keyboard too hard.
crashonline.org.uk/03/sinclair....
“Q: Is the QL mainly for business use or for games?
AM: We reckon that the QL is going to be one of the first machines that really sells into the home for useful things, not just for games.”
So the new Mac Book Neo has an easily replaced keyboard. What an innovation.
Happy Pi Day!
Alternativaly, if you disconnect your Speccy printer -
10 FOR I = 64 TO 87
20 POKE 23681,I
30 LPRINT “* THANK GOODNESS IT’S SATURDAY *”
40 NEXT I
50 PAUSE 0
There was a guy in London who bought several of them so he could attach signs for his fitness company to them and then park them all over the place to circumvent billboard laws.
The Sinclair C5 was not a computer. But it had the same energy as one: ambitious, underpowered, slightly dangerous, and beloved by a very specific type of person.
You’re not wrong.
TGIF
Sinclair Research Customer Support, circa 1982:
Q: My Spectrum displays the wrong colour.
A: That's attribute clash. It's a feature.
Q: It makes my game look terrible.
A: Your game looks fine. Next caller.
A raised outline around each key sounds like a sensible idea.
Little known fact that dust in the 1980s was toxic to computers. Everyone had to cover them in special covers when they weren’t being used.
Don’t feel too bad if you don’t have one. I do, and it really highlights how the touch keyboard of the ZX81 wasn’t the bottleneck - the ZX81 itself is just SLOW at processing input and scanning for keys.
I tried that with a replacement ROM, your own code with your own video generation routines.
I suppose you would then need to page that out and page in RAM for CP/M.
Not impossible, but probably impractical.
blog.tynemouthsoftware.co.uk/2025/10/mins...
Can the ROM be paged out with /ROM_CS though?
Ok that’s pretty close but you have to admit that’s no longer a stock ZX81 ;)
Holy Grail for ZX81 users. It was a solid piece of kit.
Did you ever explain to a non-computer person why you were recording screeching noises onto a cassette tape? And did they believe you when you said it was a game?
Show me.
