Geoff Wearmouth

Break Space Issue 7 is available now, featuring all the ZX Spectrum news and reviews you can handle. We interview Denis Grachev from Retrosouls, Chris Smith, Rich Hollins and Graham Relf. Plus a report from Crash Live, and a review of some Spectrum clones breakspace.itch.io/break-space-...

ZX History - October 1973: Sinclair’s Project 80! READ: https://archive.org/details/practical_electronics-1973_11/page/1014/mode/2up?view=theater

Disgraced Indian cert issuer leaves the cert issuing business

I remember watching this and enjoying it a lot. With today’s Agents it’s finally all happened: multimedia, internet access, and AI.

Back to the fuschia! 💜

Popular Computing Weekly (30/10/1986) - Caretaker and HiSoft BASIC reviews READ: https://archive.org/stream/NH2021_Popular_Computing_Weekly_Issue861030.pdf#page/n60/mode/2up

Londoners! I've made a website that discovers everything going on in the physical world of London (talks, exhibitions, gigs, plays, etc.) and finds stuff it thinks you'll like. You teach it your interests by swiping events left or right. Decent recs after ~100 swipes. Check out realworld.events!

Just arrived - The C64 Mini - Black Edition. Forty quid off, HDMI cable and Joystick included. The rare books are mine. I have been planning this for years. Now £49.99

Popular Computing Weekly (30/10/1986) - Infiltrator, Shao-Lin's Road, Thanatos, Uridium and 180 reviews READ: https://archive.org/stream/NH2021_Popular_Computing_Weekly_Issue861030.pdf#page/n32/mode/2up

Steven Vickers was a witty guy. See the self-written note about the author of the Jupiter Ace manual.

The clamshell C64 and ZX Spectrum handhelds, which were set for release in two weeks, have been delayed by six months. Manufacturer Blaze says the "product construction was not meeting our high standards". www.videogameschronicle.com/news/the-cla...

Between 1949 and 1982, more than 200,000 barrels of low-level radioactive waste (150,000 tons) were dumped into the ocean. Now, scientists have descended to the wreckage to investigate – and found many of the barrels corroded and degraded, their contents spilling across the seafloor.

I get my first two ZX Spectrum programs published in the letters page of Popular Computing Weekly 1985

No idea how this works. #TGIF

An interesting letter reveals that on a ZX Spectrum playing Scrabble the program may use “FART” to impress its family audience. There was already a euphemism for the word in the manual. The system Variable RASP is short for RASPBERRY which is cockney for RASPBERRY TART. See the Spectrum source code

In 1980, Intel introduced the 8087 floating-point coprocessor chip. Plugging this chip into your IBM PC made math 100 times faster, good for CAD and spreadsheets. I opened up the chip to reverse-engineer exactly how it does complicated calculations. Let's take a look inside...

Popular Computing Weekly cover (9/9/1982) READ: https://archive.org/stream/NH2021_Popular_Computing_Weekly_Issue820909.pdf#page/n00/mode/2up

The ZX81's native resolution of 64x48 suits big bold graphics, like 3D Monster Maze and Mazogs. This is another good example where the developers have leaned into the limitations. Surprised I've not come across this before. As ever, great video review by @villordsutch.bsky.social

Popular Computing Weekly (16/9/1982) - The Winged Avenger review READ: https://archive.org/stream/NH2021_Popular_Computing_Weekly_Issue820916.pdf#page/n09/mode/2up

Spectrum Computing is a remarkable community project - a searchable database of over 30,000 ZX Spectrum titles built on ZXDB by Einar Saukas. Every game, utility, demo, and type-in for the Speccy, catalogued and preserved in one place.

Earlier this week screen magnifying was added to the #ZX80 / #ZX81 watchOS app. Also its watch CPU usage was dramatically reduced by 30 to 50%. apps.apple.com/gb/app/zx81/...

My demon site and email are long gone but most of the ZX Spectrum site is preserved on the Wayback Machine. Download the ZX ROM Collection for the files listed. web.archive.org/web/20150602...

Kinda funny when you think how Sinclair made watches back in the day! apps.apple.com/app/id118011...

#ZX81 on an Apple Watch. To be crystal clear, no one was daft enough to request this. apps.apple.com/gb/app/zx81/...

Your Spectrum (Sep 1985) - New ROM Antics READ: https://archive.org/stream/your-spectrum-magazine-18/YourSpectrum_18_Sep_1985#page/n26/mode/2up

The prototype ZX Spectrum ROM actually has MORE bugs than the production version. Nine Tiles was busy cramming in new I/O features rather than fixing issues - a true work in progress. https://www.spectrumforeveryone.com/technical/inside-the-prototype-zx-spectrums-rom/

#ZX81 apps.apple.com/gb/app/zx81/...

Rupert Goodwins in fine form

Remembering the Zilog Z80 as it Turns Fifty Years Old

This is the Z80 source code for the ZX Spectrum 16K ROM 1982. The code was written by Steven Vickers and John Grant of Nine Tiles on the Zilog Development System. Hit the red button and enjoy a good read for a computer that is still being made today. www.timexsinclair.com/document/zx-...

Make sure to check out the amazing iOS ZX81 app! Recent updates are faster, better, stronger. apps.apple.com/us/app/zx81/...

To quote @warmtoffee.bsky.social, “An 8K ROM on a par with the 32K ROMs.” #ZX81 apps.apple.com/gb/app/zx81/...

13 years ago - how time flies!

Very sorry to learn that the magnificent David Potter died on Sunday evening. A pioneering mathematical physicist, he founded Psion, created the first hand-held organizer and oversaw Symbian, the standard mobile operating system. He was a wonderful philanthropist and supporter of @opendemocracy.net

#ZX81 With the infinite patience of Claude, the load on the host device has been slashed. Next stop will be adding the latest ROM by @warmtoffee.bsky.social.

On Page 13, John Lettice, founder of The Register magazine, reviews a modem for the ZX Spectrum. This internet malarky will never catch on.

Considering this fits in just over 41KB including game logic, UI and dictionary, it plays a jolly good game.

New blog post - Adapting Lambda 8300 BASIC to run on the Minstrel 4th. blog.tynemouthsoftware.co.uk/2026/06/lamb... Getting it running, loading and saving, making sounds, playing games and even a 10 PRINT maze. Happen to need an excessively long blog post to read? then this is the one for you.

Controversial opinion. I think World of Spectrum should be allowed to die. Yes, it was a wonderful site years ago, and I made many friends there on the forums, but it's been shit ever since Martijn stopped maintaining it, and Spectrum Computing is a more than adequate replacement these days.

Tensordyne makes a big bet on log math to beat Nvidia

New blog post - Reverse Engineering the ROM on the Lambda 8300, a sort of ZX81 clone. blog.tynemouthsoftware.co.uk/2026/06/lamb... It is sort of a ZX81, but with quite a few differences. Full disassembly on github if you are interested. github.com/tynemouthsof...

The Sparrow 48K is a modern drop-in motherboard for the original rubber-keyed Spectrum. It swaps old 74-series chips for a single CPLD, adds composite video, and fixes the overheating 7805 regulator - all inside your original case. sinclair.wiki.zxnet.co.uk/wiki/Sparrow

Intel introduced the 8087 floating-point chip in 1980 to make math faster. The chip does tangents, square roots, and so forth, but fundamentally everything is computed through additions and subtractions, performed by an adder at the heart of the chip. Let's look at the adder's circuitry... 1/N

Sinclair User Jul 1982: ZX81 and Spectrum hardware comparison. Amateur radio feature. ZX81 assembler round-up. Rainbow Computing interview, featuring two people who developed the Spectrum. Game reviews column has disappeared and slightly (1/2)

This is incredible! Can't wait to see them in August. youtube.com/watch?v=UAno...