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A crapton of ZX Spectrum stuff

Areala

By Areala
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Areala Community Regular

Areala

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I rescued a whole horde of old magazines and books related to the ZX Spectrum line of computers from the dumpsters at work a couple of weeks ago...many of these items are pretty small in terms of page count, and I'd like to contribute them to the archives once I get my scanner set up. The condition of them is not the greatest, but they all seem intact and complete enough that archiving them would be a worthwhile goal. Is anybody interested in early 80s Speccy material at all? :)

As a sample, here's the cover of an issue of the Harvard Group's "Syntax ZX80" newsletter from 1982. OLD school. The entire document itself is a whole 24 pages... :)

post-8883-126033659996_thumb.jpg

*huggles*

Areala

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Kitsune Rookie

Kitsune

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I rescued a whole horde of old magazines and books related to the ZX Spectrum line of computers from the dumpsters at work a couple of weeks ago...many of these items are pretty small in terms of page count, and I'd like to contribute them to the archives once I get my scanner set up. The condition of them is not the greatest, but they all seem intact and complete enough that archiving them would be a worthwhile goal. Is anybody interested in early 80s Speccy material at all? :)

As a sample, here's the cover of an issue of the Harvard Group's "Syntax ZX80" newsletter from 1982. OLD school. The entire document itself is a whole 24 pages... :)

post-8883-126033659996_thumb.jpg

*huggles*

Areala

I would love to see them! I feel the ZX80 was under-appreciated for its day. Worthy of note. ^_^

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Areala

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I would love to see them! I feel the ZX80 was under-appreciated for its day. Worthy of note. ^_^

Very well...I hereby present Areala's very first Retromags release, the afore-mentioned Syntax ZX80 newsletter!

http://www.retromags.com/forums/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=1474

I know the quality of this isn't perfect, but I hope it's at least acceptable. Please help me make it better if it isn't, ye Gods of Internet Image Manipulation. :)

If you don't have a Retromags account, I'll be hosting it on a file-sharing service shortly and I'll report the link here when it has been uploaded so that everybody can enjoy it. :)

Edit: Non-members (or those who just want to save their bandwidth) can find it here:

http://sharebee.com/52477a71

*huggles*

Areala

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Data Contributor

Data

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The Spectrum was a cool piece of history. The 8 bit microprocessor "Z80" that runs this hardware is the most used chips of all time. The processor was first created in 1976 for CP/M (Control Program for Microcomputers). That is Intel's operating system. It has been used in countless arcade cabinets as well as the Sega Genesis and TurboGraphx 16 consoles. It has been adopted and cloned in Germany, Russia, China and Japan for use in electronics.

The world of spectrum has some poor quality scans, so fuzzy I can't make out the words on their website that may be interesting. As for me I'm going to see if I can get my Xbox emulator to load some Sinclair games.

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KiwiArcader Enthusiast

KiwiArcader

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The Amstrad CPC series of Computers were competitors to the Speccy and used the same CPU. No colour clash issues with the Amstrads although Speccy diehards loved the fact that they weren't perfect.

I purchased an Amstrad CPC464 with the money my Grandmother gave me as a wedding prezzie instead of buying a TV as it was meant for. Needless to say a week of Galaxians later it was almost "Game Over" for my marriage.

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Data

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The Amstrad CPC series of Computers were competitors to the Speccy and used the same CPU. No colour clash issues with the Amstrads although Speccy diehards loved the fact that they weren't perfect.

I purchased an Amstrad CPC464 with the money my Grandmother gave me as a wedding prezzie instead of buying a TV as it was meant for. Needless to say a week of Galaxians later it was almost "Game Over" for my marriage.

:lol:

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Areala Community Regular

Areala

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I purchased an Amstrad CPC464 with the money my Grandmother gave me as a wedding prezzie instead of buying a TV as it was meant for. Needless to say a week of Galaxians later it was almost "Game Over" for my marriage.

*laugh* THAT is a great story. :) My brother suggested to his wife that they use the money they got for their wedding to purchase either a Mortal Kombat II or a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade machine.

His wife isn't a gamer. Common decency forbids me from describing her answer to that suggestion. :)

Atik: You're more than welcome. I wish I had more of those Syntax newsletters, but the rest of the ones that were brought in were unfortunately missing pages or had some awful water damage from a basement stay. Only the top one survived (relatively) unscathed.

Other survivors include ten full issues and one "special issue" of "Sync" ("The magazine for Sinclair users and Timex/Sinclair users"), two issues of "Timex Sinclair User" ("The independant monthly magazine for users of Timex Sinclair Computers"), and two issues of "Computers & Electronics" ("formerly Popular Electronics"). As I get more comfortable with scanning, I'll work on getting these into the archive as well. Nostalgia rocks. :)

Wow...I very nearly need my own stickied "Work In Progress" thread now... :)

Coming up next: Sync Special Issue #02!

gallery_8883_9_45514.jpg

Also of note for Star Trek fans, check out the "Wrath of Khan" pics from the cover of Sync Volume 2, Number 4:

gallery_8883_9_366913.jpg

*huggles*

Areala

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KiwiArcader Enthusiast

KiwiArcader

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Hey Areala,

The newsletter is interesting. Well done on the little haul you got there. One thing .... it is only scanned it at 150dpi. We generally like 300dpi here although with this sort of doc it isn't a big deal. When you do those other mag issues though can you do them at 300dpi?

I will clean the newsletter up for you as it would be good to have it in a pristine looking PDF ... you okay with that? Scanning an 'issue 1' special for Retromags at present so might be a few days away from having it ready though.

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Areala

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Hey Areala,

The newsletter is interesting. Well done on the little haul you got there. One thing .... it is only scanned it at 150dpi. We generally like 300dpi here although with this sort of doc it isn't a big deal. When you do those other mag issues though can you do them at 300dpi?

I will clean the newsletter up for you as it would be good to have it in a pristine looking PDF ... you okay with that? Scanning an 'issue 1' special for Retromags at present so might be a few days away from having it ready though.

Sure, I can do 300dpi. I figured that was just a bit of overkill for something that was basically black and white text, but if 300dpi is what the people desire, then 300dpi they shall HAVE! *cackle*

And if you wouldn't mind cleaning it up a bit, that would be awesome. I know nothing about cleaning up images besides using the little eraser tool in Photoshop to blank out areas, so anybody else who wants to make me look better is more than welcome to do so. :)

*huggles*

Areala

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Guest s1500

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Geez ..... nothing I have released recently is one of those you mentioned. tongue.gif

You know me, I love the pre-crash stuff. We can only talk about/gleam/worship so many issues of EGM, Nintendo Power & Gamepro, etc. Heck, we still need a way to get those ColecoVision magazines.

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