View Single Post
  #3  
Old 29th May 2017, 08:46 AM
Susan Foreman's Avatar
Susan Foreman Susan Foreman is offline
Cult Master
 
Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: Childhood home of Billy Idol - Orpington
Default

Loading games on a ZX Spectrum was pretty tedious!



For those of you who are too young to remember the joys of Sir Clive Sinclaire's original home computer, this was pre-internet, and so games had to be loaded directly from an audio cassette. For this, obviously you needed a cassette recorder connected to your computer



You had to make sure that the volume and tone levels on the recorder were just right, otherwise the game wouldn't load.

The cassette was put into the player, the computer was turned on and the television was set to the proper channel, resulting in the 'home page' on the screen



On the keyboard, you then had to physically type in LOAD ""



and press the 'play' button on the recorder. The game would then start to load into the computer, resulting in a hideous squealing noise. Loading a game would take ages, but you could watch progress on the screen, with a picture developing, surrounded by firstly turquoise and red lines, which would then change to yellow and blue lines

At the sight of these lines, your excitement would mount.



While the game was loading, you had time to go to the toilet, get a cup of coffee, read a few chapters of 'Lord Of The Rings' and listen to an entire Genesis song

HOWEVER, more often than not, at the last moment, this happened



and you had to start all over again from the beginning

I must have lost years of my life, waiting for games to load only to have them fail at the last second!
__________________
People try to put us down
Just because we get around

Golly, Gee! it's wrong to be so guilty
Reply With Quote