HOW MUCH? Did a ZX Spectrum really cost that much money?

Just found an old receipt for the 48k (RAM) ZX spectrum that my parents bought for me as a youth with a view to me learning about computing. (I did learn a great deal in fact)

With some accessory (probably a lead or some software) it was £140 in 1983.

That's equivalent to £330 today.

I still have it, boxed with programmes and in working order.

Do your own calculations here:
http://www.moneysorter.co.uk/calculator_inflation.html

 

Yeh I remember getting one around that time and it was £130.
It was pretty much state of the art then too, how things change eh

 

Think thats expensive, the ZX81 was still up at over £100 when the speccie first came out !

Ah the days of [aherm cough ] 'backing-up' games using two cassette decks set on full volume ...

 

I still have mine up stairs in it's box in mint condition. Shame I don't have a tape recorder anymore or I'd bang Elite on and while away a few hours.

 

I took a job at one of Sinclair's factories when I was student. I used to turn up the worse for wear most mornings. One particularly hung over day I ripped my hand open on a packing tool. I stood staring at the hole whilst blood p issed all over the insides of many ZX boxes as they shot down the line.

Have a look and see if there are stains on the polystyrene.

 

Oh the joy of spending 3 hours copying a programme from a magazine using the quality keyboard, only to find (once all the errors had been rectified) a stick man walk across the screen..........mine didnt last long

 

At least with my CPC464 I could just save it . . . .

 

I have mine in my desk drawer at work. Speccy emulators are available with all the games for £0

 

I smashed a 48K up playing that game. I'd spent fek'n months running jobs all over the 'verse so I could soup my ship up. Got jumped by the police whilst carrying some ..errr... suspect cargo. So did an un-scheduled hyper jump to a system by Brandards Star run by isolationist Monks - the tw@t's took my ship off me and the Speccy proceeded on a fast flat trajectory into my bedroom wall followed by bellows of "ya cheating bastard!!!!"

I have fond memories of my old Commie ViC20, 16 and 64 also - still think they have the best keyboards ever. Was quite struck by how similar the Commodore 64 looked to the keyboard of the old PAMPAS database terminals the pay and leave clerks used to use when I joined the regiment!!!

 

I had a Sega Megadrive when they first came out (89 or 90 I believe but could be wrong) it cost £180 and the games were around £50 each!

 

heh - a Vic 20 was my first computer back in the day - with it's whopping 3 1/2k of memory.
I got an Amiga in 91 though - that was the mutts nuts. In fact, just this last week my younger brother pointed me in the direction of an emulator and I've been quite happily bombing the sh1t out of the commies again in F-19 Stealth Fighter (which as the plane geeks will tell you, was *the* sim at the time - that and Falcon.)
it's crazy to think just how much progress has been made mind- my first PC almost ten years ago was a custom made PIII (one of the very early ones where the processor was sat on a honking big cartridge) and that had over a hundred times as much ram as the A500 - then last year I bought a Quad Core with 4gb ram and a terabyte of hard drive - at this rate, I expect to have Hal 9000 sat on my desk in another few years.

 

If you miss Elite you can download Oolite, a free, and excellent PC remake.

http://oolite.org/gallery
I've wasted many hours on this. It is authentic in every way, just with better 3d etc, and masses of add-ons. All free of course. A great game to take on tour as it plays on even the lowest spec laptop reasonably well.

 

My old man paid over £100 for a ZX80, in the late seventies I think.

And you had to build the feckin thing to start with!

 

It was 1980, the clues in the name. Rushed into production, and really more of a prototype. The ZX81 a year later was much improved, and had the advantage that its tapered wedge shape made it very useful as a door stop. About its only use once the Spectrum and things like the BBC Model B came along. To think that in real terms you can get a decent laptop for the same amount of cash these days.

 

The ZX80 and 81 still fetch high prices on eBay with ZXX80s going for silly amounts and ZX81s for about £50+ depending on the kit with it. These two machine (as well as the spectrum) were almost single handedly responsible for kick starting the UK software and gaming industry, regardless of the spec of the hardware. One of the reasons for the prices they now fetch is that many collectors see them for the landmark machines they once were and they have started to be collected for their historical value as well as sentimental.
I was 11 in 1981 and was given one as a Christmas present. Seeing as I now work in IT, they've had a hell of an influence over the years!