You can now order a PC case that looks like the classic Commodore 64

sadly there's nothing from Sinclair

You can find those at https://worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/technical-docs/ –or could; as of right now, there's just a loading screen, I hope they'll be back soon. I didn't check to see whether archive.org has them, too.

Heh, I grew up with a ZX81 which didn't even have keys at all :D
But that allowed me to convert it into The World's First Portable Computer™, fit snugly inside my breakfast box with the key membrane on the outside, reducing the case size to half. It was easily powered by a 9V block battery, at least for a few minutes. Of course entirely pointless without a battery powered TV set, which back then were more expensive than gold, and just as rare :)

Heh! :) I have a very vivid memory of unplugging mine and walking around the room with it, thinking that in The Future, we'd actually be able to do that and use the machine at the same time. (One thing about the ZX81, it was light.) I'm now back in my parents' house, looking after my mum, and it's a strange experience to sit in that same room with my phone, realising that I was right.

Believe it or not, I actually liked both of these–the membrane for its literal flexibility, see post above, and the chiclet for its ergonomic improvement upon the membrane :D

What made them bearable was the way Sinclair implemented their BASIC interpreter to accept single key strokes as keyword tokens, thereby reducing the need for typing every letter in a command, and at the same time reducing the memory requirements for program code too.

Oh, that's true. I never really got along with the ZX81 keyboard (my first Christmas present after I got one for my birthday was a Memotech replacement, and I never had a rubber-key Spectrum, but yes, there's no doubt the single-key entry system made them easier to live with.

And don't get me started about MANUALS!
They were really well-written, comprehensive, educational text books, not some shoddy three "page" PDF you get these days, IF you are lucky...

I had a Spectrum +, and later a 128, which didn't come with those great manuals, and I still have the pages I photocopied out of a friend's with the memory map, system variables, character set, and so on. And if I had a kid who wanted to learn about computers, I'd still put him in front of a Spectrum emulator with Steven Vickers's manual.

*A really nice piece of kit, actually. All-metal construction, and I don't know what switches it used, but they were way better than they probably needed to be given the speed of the machine: you could easily outpace it, even though the interface module had a small buffer. The Cherry switches on my current board don't feel unfamiliar. In fact, if it wasn't for the lack of a proper spacebar, I might be looking into hacking a USB connection on to the thing.


Last edited by Dunc on 24 October 2020 at 6:38 pm UTC

sadly there's nothing from Sinclair

You can find those at https://worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/technical-docs/ –or could; as of right now, there's just a loading screen, I hope they'll be back soon. I didn't check to see whether archive.org has them, too.

There's been a bit of... controversy over at WOS recently. “Classic” World of Spectrum at worldofspectrum.net has the original archive.

(My Internet Claim to Fame is that, many years ago, I was responsible for indexing half of WOS's ZX81 collection. I think I went backwards from Z to M, but it's been a while. Maybe that was the other guy. I thought it'd be fun, but it ended up one of the most tedious things I've ever done. One thing I did get out of it, WOS being hosted in the Netherlands, is learning some Dutch. “Druk op en toet” is “Press a key”. My spelling may be a bit rusty...)


Last edited by Dunc on 25 October 2020 at 12:46 am UTC

as of right now, there's just a loading screen

“Classic” World of Spectrum at worldofspectrum.net has the original archive.

Oh, that is both sad and good to hear at the same time. I'm only a sporadic visitor to WoS, mostly for the nostalgia, and it would have been sad to see it go.

However, now that I've taken a bit of a look around the "new" site, I am thrilled to see that at least somebody seems to have a bit of a sense for what is helpful in web site design, and what is not. I'm now in the process of updating my bookmarks... thank you very much for the updated link, and a big shoutout to the new maintainers of the old traditional layout!

Regarding desktop cases, it may be a bit of a stretch... but I use a 4U 19" server case as my "desktop", with another 2U fuse-and-switch panel below; gives a nice bit of height to the monitor. Probably not going to win any design awards, but it is functional and definitely not cramped inside the case :)

I don't get why people would want to use the 64's keyboard layout, as well as its form factor which doesn't allow to rest your wrists properly? Unless they intend to use the x86 as an emulator and want it to look the part too.

Yeah, for me if I'm going to emulate, I'm going to want the original keyboard layout and such. Try to make it as accurate as possible. But then the c64 is one of those that I didn't grow up with and wondered why they only have two arrow keys with modifiers to go the opposite direction... it's terrible. I grew up with the Atari 8bit, which had proper arrow keys :P

Heh, I grew up with a ZX81 which didn't even have keys at all :D
But that allowed me to convert it into The World's First Portable Computer™, fit snugly inside my breakfast box with the key membrane on the outside, reducing the case size to half. It was easily powered by a 9V block battery, at least for a few minutes. Of course entirely pointless without a battery powered TV set, which back then were more expensive than gold, and just as rare :)
I wish I had taken pictures, but again, we had to use real photographic film, and everything around that was expensive, too, at least for a twelve-year-old. And of course I wish I had kept it, instead of trading it with a friend for some other junk...

Ah, those were the times, when we had to walk to school uphill, both ways, in the snow. Every day of the week.

Ha, it would be fun to get an old portable TV and make a battery pack for an old 8bit and play around.

Complete side note, yesterday I finally got around to playing around with an Atari 800XL + the new FujiNet device. Turn on the computer, input the Wifi info, and you can download disk / cart images directly off the internet and run them on the system! Someone even wrote a COVID graph program from it that gather live data.

for me it seems like at least 80 € to much; what are they thinking they offer?

for me it seems like at least 80 € to much; what are they thinking they offer?

A custom designed mechanical keyboard in an oversized enclosure, also custom made. I think the price itself is reasonable, if on the high end.