Sinclair Research
@sinclairresearch.bsky.social
Customer support for your ZX80, ZX81 and other classic hardware. We’re sorry to tell you that your warranty has expired.
New ZX Spectrum 48K homebrew just dropped - Nightshift Skedaddle ZX is an arcade-style ladder maze game where you dodge frenzied rats in a biscuit factory. Solo-coded with MPAGD and designed as a fictional 80s arcade port. Love it. indieretronews.com/2026/08/nightshi...
The Sinclair ZX Spectrum had no sprite hardware and single channel sound. And yet: 24,000+ games were made for it.
Want to learn Z80 assembly for your Speccy but find tutorials dry? ChibiAkumas teaches multiplatform Z80 programming - including ZX Spectrum - with a vampire theme and YouTube videos for every lesson. Seriously fun way to get into machine code. https://www.chibiakumas.com/z80/
The ZX80 could only display while it wasn't computing. Every keypress made the screen vanish. The computer literally couldn't think and see at the same time. But it was 80 quid.
The ZX Spectrum could use its entire user memory 41K for a GOSUB stack whereas other 8bits like Commodore, Apple, TRS80 and Microsoft had a 256 byte stack which was shared with FOR/NEXTs and expression space. They were faster but don’t try anything complex like recursion or strings longer than 256.🙂
The Timex Sinclair Enthusiasts Newsletter August 2026 Edition mailchi.mp/timexsinclai...
Timex Sinclair Enthusiasts Newsletter August 2026
mailchi.mp
Tweaked the repo for Speculation - the emulator page has been moved to the repo, so I can deploy it quicker. I'll be adding more features, such as being able to select emulator files, in the near future. The new link is here: breakintoprogram.github.io/emulator-z80/
GitHub - breakintoprogram/emulator-z80: Speculation is my Sinclair Spectrum Z80 emulator written mostly as an exercise in C/C++
Speculation is my Sinclair Spectrum Z80 emulator written mostly as an exercise in C/C++ - breakintoprogram/emulator-z80
github.com
Rozsoft just released Astronaut Jet Pac for the Amiga - a love letter to Ultimate Play the Game's original Jet Pac on the ZX Spectrum. Dodge aliens, grab fuel, and pack your rocket across 5 looping levels. Source code is on GitHub and it was tested on a real A600. The Speccy's influence lives on!
Ultimate Play the Game went from Jetpac to Knight Lore in 18 months. From flat sprites to isometric 3D. What was more playable?
z88dk is probably the largest repository of Z80 assembler source code online - over 250k lines across 15000+ files. Started in 1998 to build a TCP stack for the Cambridge Z88, it now targets over 100 z80-family machines. One command gets you a ZX Spectrum .TAP file. https://z88dk.org/
The Interface 1 added RS-232, a local network, and Microdrive support. It also made your Spectrum look like it was on a car jack.
New blog post - Speeding Up a Timebomb blog.tynemouthsoftware.co.uk/2026/08/time... Timebomb is a nice little VIC20 BASIC game, but the maze generation at the start was very slow, so I rewrote it in 6502 assembler. This one contains lots of hints and tips for VIC20 BASIC and 6502 assembler coding.
Did you know there are only 50 white ZX Spectrum Nexts in existence? Half went to the developers who built the machine - each with their name etched on the motherboard. The story of how they came to be is a lovely read: specnext.dev/blog/2024/11/29/the-white-next/
Crash magazine rating system: Smashes were 90+. Anything below 50 got absolutely savaged in the review text. No mercy. No PR-friendly language. Suck it, losers.
Now in stock on Lectronz: TMSEMU3 graphics card designed for RC2014 https://lectronz.com/products/tmsemu3-graphics-card-designed-for-rc2014 #Platform #Displays #Retrocomputing
TMSEMU3 graphics card designed for RC2014
Graphics card for the RC2014 with TMS emulator AND 80-col colour terminal, HDMI output, USB keyboard input. Assembled and tested
lectronz.com
The SAM Coupe - the Spectrum-compatible successor - is still getting new hardware in 2023. The Trinity Ethernet Interface v1.2 doubles SD card speed, and Quazar is remastering classic games with surround sound support. The 8-bit scene never stops. https://www.samcoupe.com/
Jet Set Willy's impossible room - The Attic - was a genuine bug that stopped thousands of players from completing the game. Pokes were the original cheat codes.
Some of you may remember Sir Clive Sinclair, who invented both the ZX81 computer and the C5 tricycle. Today would have been his 86th birthday, had he not died in 2021. We will have our C5 out and running about this weekend for our Retro Wheels days!
To confuse further, SYMBOL SHIFT has BASIC keywords and EXTENDED MODE had symbols 🙂
The prototype ZX Spectrum ROM actually has MORE bugs than the production version. Nine Tiles was busy cramming in new I/O features rather than fixing issues - a true work in progress. https://www.spectrumforeveryone.com/technical/inside-the-prototype-zx-spectrums-rom/
The ZX Spectrum keyboard had 40 keys doing the work of about 200 functions. Every key was a puzzle of BASIC commands, symbols, and extended mode chaos.
Someone built a homebrew ZX Spectrum with a real Z80 but replaced the ULA entirely with an RP2350 running glue logic in software. Hand-wired keyboard on stripboard with Spectrum decals. Runs all the games thrown at it. hackaday.com/2026/07/13/its-a-spectrum-with-an-rp2350-ula/
I used to write that 10 OVER 1 20 CIRCLE 120, 60, 50 30 GOTO 20