Who remembers the winter of 1985? In the UK, it was one of the coldest for many years, although east-west tension was beginning to thaw as US president Ronald Reagan met with Mikhail Gorbachev in ...

In the U.K., the iconic 8-bit home computer of the 1980s was the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Few keyboards have surely been pounded as hard as the Spectrum’s rubberised complement of grey rectangles.

Looking back from a world of smartphones and Xboxes, it’s astonishing that such a commercially successful product could have happened with this unglamorous and flawed piece of equipment. Yes, I’m a ...

First published in the Daily Maverick 168 weekly newspaper. Pride of place in my technology archive is a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, one of the earliest and most impactful computers. It was created by that ...

Retrocomputer enthusiasts will quite often be found pondering the great what ifs of their hobby. What if Commodore had had a half-way decent marketing division is a popular one, but the notoriously ...

If you weren’t a kid in the 1980s, retro TV shows might have you believe we spent all our time slaying demogorgons or waxing the classic cars of old Okinawan men. But we also played computer games, ...

The Joy of Specs - in memory of our long lost rubber-keyed friend... This article was first published in January 2002 as part of our 'Technologies That Time Forgot' series of articles. We are running ...