Floppy Days 119 - ZX Spectrum Part 4 - Interview with Chris Smith

Floppy Days Vintage Computing Podcast

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays

Welcome to Floppy Days #119 for October, 2022. And I’m your host, Randy Kindig. I hope everyone is safe and sound...

We are currently covering the prolific year (for home computers) of 1982. This episode is the continuation of a multi-episode arc that covers the Spectrum through all the usual topics. I don’t even know yet how many episodes we’re going to end up in this arc. There’s so much to talk about and so many knowledgeable people on the subject, that the Spectrum is probably going to set the illustrious Floppy Days records for the number of episodes about a single machine. This is the fourth of those, with the first having been the interview with John Grant of Nine Tiles, and the second and third being coverage of the history of the Spectrum with Alessandro Grussu.

In this episode, I talk with the author of the wonderful book “The ZX Spectrum Ula: How to Design a Microcomputer”; Mr. Chris Smith. I don’t know of anyone who knows more about the internals of this machine than Chris, as evidenced by his book, other than maybe the original designers. In this episode, I interview Chris about him, his book, his collection and other topics.

As usual, I will talk a bit about what I have been up to, including an update on the The Great Barn Find of 2022, attendance at a computer show, as well as a few new acquisitions (beyond the barn find) that have come my way. In addition, I’ll briefly tell you about upcoming shows of which I’m aware.

Finally, while I usually abstain from talking about monetary support for this podcast, I do want to mention that I have a way for you to help if you have the inclination. I have a page set up at https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays where you can donate. Any funds will be used to defray the cost of managing the podcast as well as acquiring new hardware to talk about. Thank you so much everyone who has contributed and continues to contribute!

Links Mentioned in the Show:

New Acquisitions and What I’ve Been Up To

• Apple GS monitor connector for CoCo - Mike Rojas, Facebook - (https://www.facebook.com/commerce/listing/392874865780089/?ref=share_attachment)
• GFA BASIC - http://gfabasic.net/
• “GFA BASIC Training Reboot Camp - A Beginning Tutorial for the GFA BASIC Interpreter” - https://docs.dev-docs.org/
• “GFA BASIC Book - An intermediate programming tutorial for GFA BASIC” - https://docs.dev-docs.org/
• GFA BASIC Atari Reference Manual
• Tandy Assembly - http://www.tandyassembly.com
• Vintage is the New Old with Paulo Garcia - https://www.vintageisthenewold.com/
• Jeff Birt’s Website at Tindie - https://www.tindie.com/stores/hey_birt/

Upcoming Shows

• Chicago TI International Worlds Faire = Oct. 29, Evanston Public Library, Evanston, IL - http://chicagotiug.sdf.org/faire/
• World of Commodore = Dec. 3-4. - Mississauga, Ontario, Canada - https://www.tpug.ca/world-of-commodore/world-of-commodore-2022 - Virtual and Physical!

Interview with Chris Smith

• The ZX Spectrum Ula: How to Design a Microcomputer (ZX Design Retro Computer) Illustrated Edition
• Chris’ Web site - http://www.zxdesign.info/indexPage.shtml
• Harlequin - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ZX_Spectrum_clones#Harlequin
• ZX Spectrum 30-year Anniversary event - http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/news/23039/Celebrating-30-Years-of-the
• MicroMen:
• https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1459467/
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIcAyFVK0gE