…everyone should have one blog post that has a Star Wars headline

23 years ago back in 1985 I was but a teenager, 15 to be exact and I had a super-computer in my bedroom, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, my second machine after the Sinclair ZX-81 with 16K RAM pack, yeah 16K and that was difficult to fill, can you imagine, now we are all Mega, Giga and Tera and soon Zeta!

That was a time of recording programs on cassette tape, watching the lines flash like crazy on the portable TV screen (no monitors back then), lines which could easily induce a fit in any suseptible viewer. Who can identify the colour table being loaded on ZX Spectrum tape? Yeah I am that sad! LOL (For those not fortunate enough to remember it sounds like metal being ground down after a flute band has just walked past)

Programs were not downloaded they were, wait for it, typed in by hand, the best ones being in machine code, hours of keying in hex pairs (2A,3C,29,D5,FE,3C,F9,C9, etc), oh the joy of it all.

Well I made up my own program it was called, Missile Command and it was ok, bit of fun but I decided to pop it on tape and sent it off to my favourite magazine, Sinclair Programs.

Few weeks later a letter arrived in the mail and I almost dropped, my program had been accepted for publication in the magazine, fame at last! Not to mention a lovely cheque for £10 ($15 ish), this was 1985 that is like now, what?, erm, £30 ($50 ish) so not too bad.

What amazes me is that 23 years later I am still getting requests for that very same program and it has appeared on my website from time to time, well folks, its back!

This time as a downloadable PDF document to view on your PC or even better print out and key in, like back in the day!

If anyone has the time to email me a TAP or TZX of this I would be most grateful and add it to this page along with a link to your site if you want it.

Enjoy the 1980’s magazine article, and like great BBC’s Ashes to Ashes series now showing, get back to the 80’s pop on some Adam and the Ants. Now all I need is a can of Quattro or Jolt Cola to complete the picture!

Download/View the Missile Command PDF Document [1.2Mb]