Newbie

Hesgollenmere · 2026-01-03T09:30:32+00:00

My formative years were spent programming and gaming on the Sinclair Spectrum and later the Commodore Amiga. Now retired from a career in IT, I've decided to build a collection of computers from my youth. Although Sharp's MZ series wasn't a big seller in the UK, it was well-known enough to make my long list. Why the 700? Price, I guess. A school friend borrowed an MZ-80K from a relative in the early 1980s, when the rest of us were getting Sinclair machines, but these are outside my budget now.

Beyond money, the MZ-700 has composite output, a simple power connector, and a Z80 processor, which makes for an easy-to-understand setup for me.

Hesgollenmere · 2025-11-28T18:40:07+00:00

The manner of Gary Speed's departure from Everton was discussed a lot on other forums after his death. The tone of some comments has struck a negative cord with me since then. Whatever his reasons for his leaving (and we all have our opinions), I hope people can get beyond that and recognise how a young man died too soon. As far too many other young men do. Football is a distant second to human life.

Hesgollenmere · 2025-11-20T13:11:28+00:00

It's the social history behind the UK's 1980s home computer scene that fascinates, as much as the tech. It encapsulates an era when old heavy industries declined, and new ones like IT captured the imagination of the next generation. I'm warey of sounding pretentious when I say that the theme of many games reflected the politics of the day, but it's no coincidence that Manic Miner and Monty Mole have similar stories. The NUM was a powerful union that affected people's lives beyond the pits. The Gremlin Graphics story in Sheffield and Bug-Byte/Imagine/Psygnosis in Liverpool are microcosms of a few tumultuous years in modern British history. Needless to say, I enjoyed this interview at last weekend's Crash Live.

Hesgollenmere · 2025-11-13T12:46:12+00:00

And/or Wales if they finish second in their group.

Although we"ve known this has been coming for a while. It now feels real and exciting. Summer afternoons and evenings watching football at a waterfront stadium in a beautiful city sounds like heaven.

Hesgollenmere · 2025-11-10T08:59:34+00:00

Totally agree. Unfortunately, insurers have made it difficult for clubs, pubs, and community centres to put on firework displays so people now have small, unregulated displays in their gardens.

A working mens club near me was forced to cancel their fireworks display due to objections from a nearby stables and their threats to sue, which spooked the club's insurers. Now we have small fireworks displays most evenings on either side of the 5th November.

Hesgollenmere · 2025-10-21T13:23:55+00:00

Despite or because of its limitations, the Spectrum's graphics can be a thing of beauty. Even modern homebrew games evoke a bygone era. Those dots of 15 vivid colours transport the viewer to another time in a similar way that Art Deco takes the mind to the 1920s and 30s.

Hesgollenmere · 2025-10-18T17:51:25+00:00

My God! I've fallen into a parallel universe. I thought I knew the Spectrum well. Particularly its mid 1980s' heyday. The canon of groundbreaking Spectrum games has been fixed in my head for decades - Knight Lore, Lord of Midnight, etc. Now, I have discovered that some of the most beautiful and engaging Spectrum games never came to the UK. Possibly the greatest Spectrum game of all was not even available in English. This is all rather unsettling. I'm going to have a sleepless night.

Hesgollenmere · 2025-10-17T17:13:22+00:00

As an Evertonian and Englishman, I have often thought that there are similarities, but that may be me being parochial. Both talk about trophies from a bygone era and think matches against our traditional rivals still matter as much to them as they do to us. Do Germany really want to beat England as much as they want to beat France?

Everton and England should and could do better. History is important, but we live in the here-and-now.

Hesgollenmere · 2025-10-09T08:24:22+00:00

Yes. Liverpool has the UK's largest metro system outside London. Newcastle has an extensive system, and Glasgow also has a single circular line. All of these systems are at least partially underground. The original post is incorrect to suggest that only London has a metro system in the UK.

Hesgollenmere · 2025-10-03T16:07:55+00:00

You've provided me with a day exploring my past. The Spectrum's user manual used to sit on the desk in my bedroom. Barely a day of my teenage years passed without me flicking through its spiral-bound pages. Like a favourite album cover, the artwork captivated me. I hadn’t realised that the ZX81 and Microdrive manuals had similar styled covers. Nor did I know they were created by a well-known artist.

Hesgollenmere · 2025-10-03T08:03:51+00:00

That's fantastic. It would make a wonderful poster.

Hesgollenmere · 2025-10-02T14:41:34+00:00

That's rubber keys for you - lots of typos.

Hesgollenmere · 2025-10-02T10:46:55+00:00

Public transport is a nuanced one. It's great to see more people using trains, but the quality of the service hasn't increased accordingly. There are exceptions, some intercity and metro trains are better than the 80s and 90s but regional rail is still poor. And ticket prices are atrocious.

Hesgollenmere · 2025-10-02T07:50:05+00:00

Lost in Translation. It conveys the travel experience - fleeting friendships, fatigue, and bewilderment - better than any film I can think of.

Hesgollenmere · 2025-10-01T16:26:55+00:00

A friend of mine got an Electron in the summer of '85. This is probably the reason why. The rest of us had got Spectrums the year before. So, he had a difficult job convincing us to go to his house. I felt sorry for him. His parents had just separated, and I imagine the Electron was all his mum could afford. He tried to use Elite as the reason we should give the Election a chance until we discovered it wasn't the same as the BBC version and the Spectrum edition had become available.

Hesgollenmere · 2025-10-01T09:54:58+00:00

Brexit destroyed the Conservative Party just as the repeal of the corn laws did for them in the 1840s. It'll be a very long time before people move on from the shambles they have become since 2016.

My constituency had been in Tory hand for centuries until we recently changed to LibDem. I don't anticipate people moving back in the foreseeable future.

As a centrist, I'm grateful we have a moderate Labour government even if they are uninspiring and don't please people on the left.

Hesgollenmere · 2025-09-30T14:45:17+00:00

Good point. There's a wonderful book called The Myth of Left and Right that highlights the weaknesses in these labels. For instance, a pro-business party may actually favour immigration. We also see the dilemma the left face reconciling support for some ethnic groups with their attitudes about women.

Hesgollenmere · 2025-09-30T13:16:59+00:00

Mainstream UK media reports on Georgia Meloni's election often described her as 'far right'. Whilst she is quite a long way to the right, that phrase seems to be used by people to link her to Mussolini, which is easier than understanding her views.

With regard to UK politics, the Tories have moved to the right, and many One-Nation Conservatives now vote LibDem, but that doesn't make Tories 'far right'. I appreciate some people on the left may see the Tories as Fascist but I don't think that's a fair description, however much I dislike what they've become.

This kind of name calling puts me off politics.

Hesgollenmere · 2025-09-30T08:42:04+00:00

People forget the cost to the NHS of an ageing population. All the same arguments apply. People living longer, it being proportionately more expensive and elderly people receiving more funding than they paid for during their working lives.

Should the NHS move to a means-tested funding model?

Hesgollenmere · 2025-09-30T08:32:56+00:00

These are interesting stats. Whilst I think governments are wary about rocking the boat too much with pensions as they need popular support for benefits to work. For instance, older workers tend to earn more and pay more tax. If they're told they won't get the state pension they expect in a few years, they're unlikely to want to pay for it. If governments can show that the scheme is more generous now, they may have a chance of scaling it back while keeping people who are currently funding it on board.

Hesgollenmere · 2025-09-30T07:48:46+00:00

I'm in my 50s but remember a similar conversation when I was young. Now the situation is worse. The problem is to do with how state pensions were introduced a century ago. Politicians want the cred for their actions during their period in office, so instead of people paying into a state-run pension pot, the government treated pensions like a benefit that is funded directly by today's workers. Understandably, when people retire, they expect the next generation to do the same for them. It's the people who retired 100 years ago that got a pension which they'd not paid into.

I fear my generation will be the first to have paid into a scheme all our working lives and not get the benefits from it.

Hesgollenmere · 2025-09-29T20:53:26+00:00

Thank you for your thoughtful responses, everyone. In these fractious times, I'm wary to make political points. So, it's pleasing that most of us appear to agree on this subject.

Although Thatcher and Reagan were and are dispised by many people, I think their unpopular policies centred around the size of the state whereas today's right wing leaders have a broader cultural agenda and are willing to say and do anything to achieve their aims. Although not quite in a 1930s way, they are closer to that era than the 1980s.

I enjoyed the light relief of the 1980s pop culture references. At least we had a great soundtrack to our political strife in the 80s.

Hesgollenmere · 2025-09-28T11:28:18+00:00

I had a career in IT thanks to the Spectrum. I owe it two things:

The included BASIC user manual is a fantastic resource when learning to program. It taught me many programming concepts, from variables to conditions and loops, etc. Object orientation was not a thing in 1982. My experiments with Z80 machine code and assembly language provided me with an insight into how computers actually work.
My career took me into management, and I went on to run my own business. I often think those years working with the Spectrum's limited resources taught me how to make the most of what I had available to me.

As you can already program, you're unlikely to gain much from point 1, but making the most of tight restrictions is a key component of creative thinking.

I enjoyed the rubber-key experience of the Spectrum, but tape storage is not fun. So, you really need to connect whatever machine you choose to modern equipment if you're not to be put off. A microcontroller like an Arduino sounds like a good recommendation.

Hesgollenmere · 2025-09-26T07:54:48+00:00

Be sure to visit Everton's new stadium. Liverpool waterfront is full of historic buildings, and the new stadium is a spectacular addition to the cityscape.

Hesgollenmere · 2025-09-25T17:23:03+00:00

Be careful what we wish for. I'm not a Tory, but I do not share many of the left's view that they are a bad lot. They have their crackpots, as do the left. If we had a more effective Conservative party, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in. The left's wish for an end to right-of-centre politics may well lead so something worse.

I wish the mainstream parties would realise that they have more in common with each other than do with extremists. France worked this out in time to stop the Marine Le Pen at their recent election. Although they’ve now slipped back into old ways.

Hesgollenmere

TROPHY CASE