catmeows wrote: ↑Fri Oct 11, 2019 12:37 pm
Congratulations
My story is little different:
It was early 89 in then communist Czechoslovakia when our math teacher came in class room with a news: school got some computers. It turned out they are czech Ondra computers. Aaaaand... they were terrible: Small ROM kept just monitor and Basic has to be loaded from tape. It had 2Mhz U880 (east germany clone od Z80) and video circuity was incredibly primitive using lot of CPU of power therefore making Basic a slow thing. Anyway it was love on first sight. Soon I was visiting local young technicians club with only one goal: spend as much time as possible with a computer. By then, club had 10 or so PMD-85 computer. They had BASIC in ROM so it was improvement but they had no color. Luckily enough, within months they were replaced by Didaktik Gama computer. Gama is clone od ZX 48. Finally I had access to "good" computer. I mean - it has colours, reasonable BASIC and ton of games. Of course, all of them were pirated. You know, behind Iron Courtain, sometime in 1989, a boy was starring silently on amazing technology of... Knight Lore.
Few more months passed (eastern block collapsed meanwhile) and ať some moment in 1990 my parents finaly gave up and bought me - Didaktik M (another ZX48K) . My first own computer!
I mean ZX has many many faults but it offered so much value for little money. And it was even possible to clone it behind Iron Courtain. Sinclair should got not only knighthood bud also Order of hero of socialistic labour ( https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hrdina_so ... pr%C3%A1ce ).
This puts our stories of trips to the local shop to buy a genuine Spectrum to shame
1024MAK wrote: ↑Fri Oct 11, 2019 8:40 am
In appropriately 74 days, it will be the 36th anniversary of me and my sister getting our hands on a brand new 48K rubber key
I too took delivery of my 48k on xmas day 1983. I'm not sure where it came from exactly, but my Dad says he was lucky to get one from 'one of his customers in the east end'. Dad sold flooring..
First game was Ocean's Kong, my first disappointment in a long line of shitty coin op clones to come!
catmeows wrote: ↑Fri Oct 11, 2019 12:37 pm
Congratulations
My story is little different: It was early 89 in then communist Czechoslovakia when our math teacher came in class room with a news: school got some computers.
Great post. Apart from the PMD-85, I really like the look of the "iron curtain" computers. In fact I think the Gama is almost as sexy as the rubber keyed 48K. In researching this topic I found this book that I might have to get (elsewhere and cheaper!).
It was a saturday evening when I got my brand new Spectrum Plus and Match Day & Raid Over Moscow. They were days reading the manual, learning how to work with the keyboard with the introduction manual & tape, playing Maze Chase, that came with this tape (very cool BASIC game, you could change the characters with the UDG utility also included in the tape), trying to score a goal in Match Day and also trying to take out the plane out of the space station (first attempts were an absolute massacre of pilots! ).
).