Enter The Computer...

So being a bit of an entrepreneurial kid, I set about project computer.  I dedicated my time to money making schemes

• Selling fresh eggs from my familys chickens to neighbours and friends.
• Collecting unbroken clay pigeons from the nearby moor and selling them back to the shooting club at 2p for a black or 5p for a fluro coloured one
• Buying boxes of sweets and little white bags at the local cash & carry and selling them on the school bus in the mornings... this one actually got me in trouble with the school as kids were spending their dinner money on my wares!

I soon had a steady income coming in and persuaded my parents to let me get a ZX81.  I found a 2nd hand one in the local classifieds that a retired gentleman was selling, along with a cassette recorder and 16k RAM pack for £30 of yout finest British Pounds.  He was upgrading to "something more powerful" as he had outgrown the capabilities of the ZX81.

Within a year, I knew how the chap who sold me the ZX81 felt!  I needed more memory, I needed sounds, I needed colour... I needed a 48K ZX Spectrum!  The adverts on the TV had me convinced, a ZX Spectrum could do everything!   Pawing through ZX Computing and Sinclair User I would see adverts for all the amazing peripherals you could buy... Interface 1, Interface 2... this computer was so special it had not one, but two interface add ons!  light pens, speech synthesizers, joystick interfaces.   The manufacturers names became engrained in my brain, Kempston, Protek, Currah, DK'Tronics, Memotech, this list went on and on.

So I pleaded with my parents, extolling the benefits of the 48k Spectrum over my lowly ZX81, convincing them that this little rubber keyed wonder would change my young life for the better and I'd grow up into some computer expert and make pots of money by the time I was 16!   Eventually they agreed, but on the condition I'd sell my ZX81 to help fund the new computer.  I agreed and one weekend shortly thereafter a trip to a nearby town that was big enough to have both a Currys and a Dixons...Heaven!  

Into Currys we went, and out we came with a black box with a huge shiny photo of a Spectrum on the front.  We also got the bonus Spectrum six pack - a strange collection of software - Horace Goes Skiing, Chequered Flag, Chess, Scrabble, Make a Chip, and Survival.  Another box containing a Triumph Datasette also came home that day - no more wood veneer tape recorder for me!

So here I was, with this powerful box of magic in my eager hands.  I quickly started to study the wonderful user manual that came with the Spectrum - these were the days when a user manual actually told you interesting stuff, explaining all the BASIC keywords, explaining how graphics could be created, how sounds were made.  

I spent all my time typing in programs from magazines, trying to understand how they worked, debuggin the ones that didn't work ( a lot of them! ) and modifying them to add my own improvements.  When I couldn't use the computer because someone wanted to watch the TV I would spend my time with a book of graph paper, diligently shading in squares to design my own UDGs ( User Defined Graphics - what people typically call sprites or background tiles these days ). I also started tinkering with sound, but of course the Spectrum at that time was a little limited in that department.

I started writing simple games,  creating these blocky little graphics, and writing simple music.  I was completely hooked, I knew this is what I wanted to do for a career.  I wanted to spend all my time, sat with a computer, taking these crazy ideas from my head and creating something tangible on my amazing little 48k Speccy.

But something else was catching my eye...  I was still an avid reader of multiple computer mags,  Computer & Video games being one of my favourites at the time.  And this gave me glimpses of what else was out there... I would see adverts for all these other systems, some with more memory, some with better sound, others with more colours! VIC-20s, Dragon 32s, MSX, Amstrads, Memotech MTXs, and the one that caught my eye most,  the C64.

Enter The Commodore...