Nice video!😉

Where's the SPACE bar?

​@@PeterMaddison2483that would've been a REALLY good improvement. I'm only aware of companies such as Fuller and Protek developing such keyboards however, which is a shame.

Yes should of been Black to look like a Real ZX Spectrum. Very good job though.

Thanks 👍

Funny isn't it that Rick Dickinson's design for the ZX Spectrum is now viewed as iconic! The BBC Micro not so much. I was (still am!) an owner of many Spectrums, never a BEEB but used them at school. Both great machines, but have to say the Acorn produced BBC was probably the better choice for the harshness of a school environment.

Thanks a lot 😊

Thank you! Cheers!

Thanks, and glad you’re enjoying the channel :)

Thanks! Added the link in the description :)

@@TheRetroShack Thank you. 👍

I was thinking that as well: a Jupiter Ace with a proper keyboard, albeit without a space bar. Why do none of these Spectrum remakes (seen also recently on RMC) give the machine a proper space bar?

The original BBC tender didn't call for any of those things. The BBC Micro was to have been the 'Grundy Newbrain', but that fell through, leaving them with a big problem. The BBC saw the Acorn and having been wowed by their spiel, theycwent with it, drawing up a new set of requirements along the way. Companies like Sinclair and Tangerine were of course a bit miffed at the BBC for moving the goal posts.

I thought that was one of the reasons why the Newbrain one fell through because they would/could not meet the full spec.@@another3997

@@another3997 You should have this discussion with a few of the people involved. I can think of one person who would vigourously disagree with some of these assertions. They would say that the BBC knew what they wanted and made sure they got it. I think that even people working at Acorn would agree that they got a hard time from the BBC over such matters. In any case, before Grundy got involved, it was the Newbury Laboratories' NewBrain, and industrial politics tailored the initial specification to that. Acorn were certainly opportunists, however, and managed to squeeze the Proton into the gap left by the NewBrain, not least by promising a future CP/M capability that was eventually delivered in the form of the Z80 Second Processor. It is actually rather likely that the specification evolved from merely exposing people to computers, which appeals to those who marvel at technology, to providing something that had a degree of versatility, which potentially appeals to a much wider audience. Along the way, features like Teletext and Viewdata capabilities will also have found their way onboard due to the trends of the era and the technological interests of the BBC, and I would accept that some of those capabilities could have been left out. As for Sinclair's eligibility, it seemed pretty clear that he wasn't willing to compromise on his vision and the BBC weren't really willing to compromise on theirs, or at least not to the extent that they considered Sinclair's vision and often peculiar choices to be worth adopting instead. For example, Sinclair went on to release a business machine with another substandard keyboard and an underperforming, proprietary storage technology. Of course, all this would have played out differently had the IBM PC showed up slightly earlier and been more affordable, or if ACT (later Apricot) had been able to bring their own products downmarket, or if the initiative had been postponed and resumed a couple of years later.

Thanks! Added the link in the description :)

The downside to the Acorn was of course, price. At between 3 and 4 times the cost of a Speccy, but with less memory, the Beeb was always going to struggle as a 'home' computer. Even some schools and colleges struggled to afford them. Yes, the Acorn was a better quality product, and technically advanced... but a revised, better equipped Spectrum could still have made a lot of sense for a lot less money.

@@another3997 What you say makes perfect sense, assuming Clive Sinclair could have risen to the challenge and created something robust enough to withstand the abuse from students. Sadly we’ll never know.

The ZX Spectrum is the first home computer, i.e. affordabe machine with sufficient RAM to do complex stuff. It started a (game) coding industry. The simplicity of the hardware and its big software library spawned a wagonload of clones, especially in Spanish speaking countries and in Eastern Europe and Russia. There are some 100 clones listed on several websites, even a Wikipedia site lists more than 80 clones. The ZX Spectrum left a huge footprint around the whole World, especially in countries which did not have access to expensive hardware gimmicks. And come on, let's face it, custom chips to help a limping CPU are just boring.