Once upon a time, you had a ZX Spectrum. You knew exactly how to set it up, how to use it and most importantly, how to have fun with it. Then one day

The beginner’s guide to owning a ZX Spectrum again

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2023-03-16 02:30:13

Once upon a time, you had a ZX Spectrum. You knew exactly how to set it up, how to use it and most importantly, how to have fun with it. Then one day you either put it away for the last time or perhaps sold it. There are even dark tales of parents throwing our beloved Speccies away! 

Now, many, many (and for some, many) years later you have a ZX Spectrum again and you can’t wait to use it, but things have changed. It’s difficult to find cassette players, Modern TV’s don’t like the signal the ZX Spectrum gives out and perhaps you’ve powered on your New Old ZX Spectrum and the keyboard doesn’t work or it shows a garbled screen?

The article will hopefully walk you through getting back up and running and most importantly, enjoying the ZX Spectrum once again. It will cover what can go wrong, how to connect to modern televisions and modern methods of loading programs.

Due to their age, and particularly for those Spectrums that haven’t been used for a long time, it is not unknown for them to become faulty when powered on for the first time or shortly after. This is due to the design of the Spectrum and the type of memory chip it uses. The capacitors on the voltage supply lines don’t work effectively due to age and this can cause memory chips to fail, in a cascade type effect. It should be noted that this generally affects the original rubber key and Plus 16k and 48k ZX Spectrum, but it should be noted they don’t always fail!

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