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Comment by lovelearning | Hacker News Reader

My 34-year old ZX Spectrum still looks and runs like new!

Only after reading this news did I remember how much its external design and looks excited me and helped develop a deep interest in computers at a young age. I remember how its compact black form factor and silent keys made me want to switch it on three or four times every day and just type something or play something. Back then, to my young mind, it wasn't a mere tool to do something; it was much more - it was itself a source of satisfaction.

Although we had more powerful, more functional Apple IIcs and IBM PCs, their beige bulky looks never really had the same effect on me.

I had never heard of Rick Dickinson before but thank you very much for the beautiful ZX Spectrum.

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I'm not being funny but exactly what kind of deal did you cut with the devil in order to keep a Spectrum running reliably for 34 years?

Mine used to go wrong about every two months on average, and then would disappear for the next 6 weeks being repaired. Granted it was pretty heavily used, but still. I loved the machine but it's the most unreliable computer I've ever owned. Although, thinking about it, the +2A it was eventually replaced with was no better. My Commodore 64 and Amiga never gave me a hint of trouble and in fact, 29 years later, the only other computer I've had fail on me was an ageing and much abused 13-inch Macbook Pro (hard disk controller died; disk itself was fine).

Still, as you say, a beautiful machine.

Genuinely surprised to read that.

Ours was used heavily by three of us for programming, word processing and games from '84 to around '92, and after that just for daily games till the late 90s. Since the late 90s, I just switch it on fortnightly, play an old game for a couple of hours just for the feels, and pack it back. In all this time, I have never had any problem whatsoever. I expected at the very least a few blown caps but nope - starts right up like it's still '84. It has never undergone any repair. The original cassette player and CRT TV went bad but the Spectrum itself is fine. I had assumed from my personal experience that its reliability was a common experience, but just got lucky I guess.

Sad to say, but I think you did... although I'm pleased that it still works and you still get enjoyment out of it.

They were notoriously unreliable. My mum had a full-on meltdown in Currys over it in 1988, and she's not a meltdown kind of person. My best friend also had one, which also used to go wrong regularly.

This is all anecdata, of course. Still, both the manager of the local Currys (Dorchester), and the owner of the nearest proper computer store - Compute-A-Tape[1] in Weymouth - both said at the time they had nothing but trouble with the Spectrum..

Maybe something to do with the Dorset air but as much as I loved my Spectrum it caused me endless grief.

[1] A trip here was a rare treat, although sadly the place closed down sometime in the 90s.

Did you have a joystick or RAM expansion on the back by any chance?

Basically the edge connector was not sufficiently protected and a loose connection could fry the ULA or other components quite easily.

Yeah: Kempston joystick port plugged into the back. I also had a light pen that had a separate adapter so there was some swapping around from time to time. Always with the computer switched off, mind. Loose connections on one of the adapters might explain it.

Not sure what the problem with the +2A would have been though, because it had proper joystick ports, and I'd stopped using the light pen by then.

We had a few problems with our C64, but fortunately Dad was a genius. The 1541 floppy drive eventually started hanging when you tried to load anything; Dad figured out that there was some kind of little metal latch inside it that had come un-latched, and just needed to be clicked back into place. When it kept unlatching once or twice a week, he cut a little hole in the back of the drive that I could poke an eraser through and click it. I learned to recognize the subtle change in the drive's operating whirr and know it needed fixing, instead of waiting 10 minutes before deciding a game wasn't going to finish loading.

Did you by any chance keep it stored near the TV?

It was not that rare for insufficient shielding to cause machines to start misbehaving from static electricity from the TV. Which would tend to cause lengthy repair shop stays as they didn't find anything wrong, eventually put it aside, tried it again later and found the problem had vanished.

I had that happen with a C64. The C64 was reasonably well shielded, but that one was stored right underneath a 26" TV and it wasn't shielded well enough for that, and after a while it started having weird lockups, and now and again it'd start "typing" on its own. Took us several annoying repairs before we realized what the problem was.

Yes, underneath the large-ish TV in the lounge, and then latterly next to a small 12 inch black and white TV in my room. The +2A lived on my desk in my room next to the new 14inch colour TV bought specially for it. The same TV was used for my C64 and, after than, Amiga. If they were better shielded, and sat next to a smaller TV, that might explain why they suffered no ill-effects.

Man, if that's the reason... I feel irritated with myself even now. Thanks for possibly solving the mystery.

The fun thing is that especially for the early C64's the reason they were better shielded was that Commodore had problems meeting emissions standards for them, and so if you open them up, you'll find RF shields like this [1] (from [2]).

Some earlier models had a foil-covered cardboard wrapping it instead.

I think later models reduced the shield to cover just a small set of components instead.

So they survived better because Commodore failed to figure out how to make them produce less interference.

[1] https://images.pcworld.com/images/article/2012/07/c64_shield... [2] https://www.pcworld.com/article/260232/tweet_from_a_commodor...

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