Most of you retro tech heads will recognise the items featured in these 2 ads from December '83. They were on sale in shops such as Dixons, John Menzies and a few others scattered around town.
Product names listed are - CASIO - COMMODORE - SINCLAIR - ORIC - SHARP - TEXAS.
Click images to enlarge.
Yup, that's the Spectrum I had right there! I even had the Sinclair tape with "14 pre-recorded programmes" on them, but most were, shall we say, a little basic. The best was a game called "Thru' The Wall", which was one of those Pong-type bat-and-ball games where you had to knock bricks out of a wall with a ball. Never mind your Halo 3 or whatever, this was a PROPER game!
ReplyDeleteA mate from a slightly more well off family had a Commodore 64.
Casio-tastic!
ReplyDeleteI begged my parents for a Casio digital watch which I think I still have (sans strap) someplace in my hoard of rubbish I can't part with!
I'm pretty sure that I still have my gold and black Texas Instruments calculator too...the posh scientific one with sine/cosine/tangent (????) stuff on it and a red digital display. Poor wee calculator never got used to it's full potential due to me not being overly gifted in the maths department.
Despite being useless at maths, I can however confidently spell out SHELL OIL (710 77345)on a calculator.
My first computer was the VIC-20, great wee machine. Some of the games that used to get programmed into 5K of memory were really good to play. Used to spend hours typing in the code for games from magazines, too. Great days. Upgraded to a ZX Spectrum later.
ReplyDeleteStill have my original 'Speccy' that was bought from the back door of Timex in the unmarked box! It was a much loved past time in the mid 80s for me. BTW, the 14 pre-recorded programmes were on a tape called Horizons.
ReplyDeleteWe later got a commodore 64 a few years later from the old Comet store around the Brook Street.
In the mid 70's, my mate got a watch made by Sinclair called a Black Watch. It was one of the first ever LED watches. It looked very futuristic at the time with it's black glass face and buttons to have the red digital numbers light up. He bought it by mail order, but ended up sending it back within a week because it didn't work after just a few days! He got his money back. The Sinclair hex!
ReplyDeleteSPECTRUM £130. In todays money, that would buy you a half decent laptop.
ReplyDeleteOh the joy of listening to that electronic noise for ten minutes while waiting on Knight lore to load, the crash again.