h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The QL never had a "dead flesh" keyboard; it had a quite respectable full-size QWERTY layout with rigid plastic keys. These had a habit of becoming detached if you were a heavy-handed typist, and thus it was nicknamed the "Scrabble set keyboard". (I used one of these machines "in anger" as a developer in 1986/1987 )

The ZX81 was known as the "Timex-Sinclair 1000" in the USA. The "Timex-Sinclair 2000" was the nearest the Americans got to the Spectrum, but because of problems implementing a stable NTSC color (sic) system in a ULA, the machine only ever supported greyscale graphics; thus it was different enough from the Spectrum to warrant a mention of its own.

There is a Spectrum-compatible computer on sale in high-street shops at the moment, in the form of the Amstrad e-mail telephone!

Finally, it would be nice to have mentioned the number of companies who sprung up selling "alternate" keyboards for the ZX series of machines - for about a decade it was a really thriving industry!

Ooh, Peet, I wish you'd mentioned all this stuff during Peer Review...

So, in order...

It's "Errata", two r's, one t.

"The QL never had a "dead flesh" keyboard"

Ach, I *knew* that. I just described it that way, because that's how it felt to me. It was exactly the same keyboard technology that was later used on the Spectrum + and the 128. It felt, to me, like the old Spec keyboard with some other keys over the top of it. "Scrabble set" is a better description of it though...

"(I used one of these machines "in anger" as a developer in 1986/1987 )"

You have my sympathy!

"The ZX81 was known as the "Timex-Sinclair 1000" in the USA."

Knew that too. I suppose this is a bit of a UK-centric article, but in the end Sinclair simply didn't "crack" the US, whereas he, or rather his machines, were monumentally important in the UK. So I don't feel too bad about not going into detail about the foreign variants.

"The "Timex-Sinclair 2000" was the nearest the Americans got to the Spectrum"

I thought it was the 2048?

"but because of problems implementing a stable NTSC color (sic) system in a ULA, the machine only ever supported greyscale graphics; thus it was different enough from the Spectrum to warrant a mention of its own."

I didn't know that. That's the kind of fascinating fact I would have worked into the text, if I'd got hold of it during Peer Review...

"There is a Spectrum-compatible computer on sale in high-street shops at the moment, in the form of the Amstrad e-mail telephone!"

And that is simply the best factoid I've heard here in MONTHS! I love that. I'm off down to Dixons this weekend to check one of those things out... (how Speccy compatible is it? Can it play Manic Miner?)

"companies who sprung up selling "alternate" keyboards"

Seemed a bit of an aside thing, really, although I do remember them. In fact, I was in a shop the other day looking at a wireless keyboard/mouse package produced by Memotech - remember them?

Thanks for reading, and commenting, although you really should be hanging round Peer Review you know - authors can use help like this, even with articles they think are finished!

H.

Sorry about the typo in the subject; I did preview, but obviously I didn't read my own subject line.

In my chequered employment history I spent a year developing educational games for the Spectrum, using a QL for all the actual text editing. I also spent the best part of a year repairing Spectrums. in the only workshop in Aberdeen which held a stock of the 6C series URL...

An addition that may be pertinent to this Guide:

Douglas Adams owned a Z88 which he took around the world when he was researching "Last Chance To See". It's mentioned in one of the chapters.

I suppose he chose it since a) it wasn't heavy like contemporary laptops, b) it had an interface to Apple Macs, and c) it was geeky

I have three Z88s and three of the "Radio Shack" (Tandy) clones that used a real "clicky" keyboard and a 25-pin RS232 connector (as opposed to Sinclair's 9-pin one). I got them all at a computer fair as a £20 job lot.

Heh! Well, I have just the 1 Z88, 2 Speccys, 2 ZX81's and 1 QL. I did have a Sinclair TV too, but I have a sneaky suspicion that my sister "borrowed" it inadvertently. Also in my cupboard that overfloweth - an Amstrad CPC6128, BBC Model B, Psion 3a, Psion Revo, AMD K6-2 PC, probably some others too, but I dare not delve too deeply, for fear of the mountains of old computer mags collapsing over me

I had the "international" version of the Sinclair Microvision when I was a student (buttons at the front for different TV standards etc.), but I got it second-hand, and there was a tiny piece of glass rolling about loose inside the tube. This knocked specks of the phosphor coating big enough that "Ceefax-in-vision" (popular at the time) would lose entire characters. Eventually, it died and resisted all attempts at repair - I have the parts in a box somewhere.