Old Computer Challenge - TC 2048 (1984) (ZX Spectrum 48K clone) - 0x00

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2024-11-28 14:30:27

I recently read about Old Computer Challenge (OCC), I thought It’d be a fun challenge to take. Here is a little description from their about page:

Old Computer Challenge community is a smol group of enthusiasts, who like to use old computer hardware and every year come together to challenge themselves in spending a single week in July exclusively with machines many would consider outdated.

In this years challenge it was a DIY, you could create your own OCC challenge. This was perfect for me because a few weeks ago my dad and I were able to power on his really old computer, a Timex Computer 2048 (1984) and I had the idea of writing modern software in Sinclair BASIC for this old hardware.

As I previously mentioned, my idea was to write modern software for the Timex Computer 2048, which is a home computer from 1984. Mind you this computer has 48kB of memory, a Zilog Z80A @ 3.50 MHz CPU and no storage. If you wanted to store/load programs you’d need a cassette player and cassette tapes otherwise if you reset the computer you lose the program that you were writing. My dad also had the cassette player he used to load and save programs but sadly it wasn’t working, so there was no way for me to store or load the programs I wrote.

So as you might see from the image above, although it’s a QWERTY keyboard it has several missing keys from the usual modern keyboard, such as the backspace, tab, caps lock, ctrl and alt keys. Also the key themselves on top of having the letter/number, they have 2 rows of words and symbols (one with black background) and outside of each key, above and below they have words and symbols too. Well, all of this wording HAS TO be accessed by the modifier keys, “SYMBL SHIFT” (black key) and “CAPS SHIFT”.