Spectrum Hardware Index

[crustyasp46]

Spectrum Hardware Index - K

Name: Kappa Keyboard
Manufacturer: Kappa Keyboards
Price: £48.00
Blurb: Replaces the top of your Spectrum with a better keyboard.
Source: Your Spectrum issue 8

Name: Kappa Keyboard Interface
Manufacturer: Kappa Keyboards
Price: £14.00
Blurb: Interface that allowed any 're-wireable' keyboard to be used on the Speccy.
Source: Steve Drain - the man behind Kappa (steve.drain{AT}kappa.zetnet.co.uk)

Name: Kayde Standard Keyboard
Manufacturer: Kayde Electronic Services Ltd.
Price: £30.00
Blurb: Full travel keys.
Source: Sinclair User Aug 83

Name: Kayde Super Plug-in Keyboard
Manufacturer: Kayde Electronic Services Ltd.
Price: £49.95
Blurb: Plugs into the user port.
Source: Sinclair User Aug 83

Name: Kayde Deluxe Keyboard
Manufacturer: Kayde Electronics Services Ltd.
Price: £45.00
Blurb: Computer fits inside. Full sized space bar.
Source: Sinclair User Aug 83

Name: Kayde 32k Ram Pack
Manufacturer: Kayde Electronic Services Ltd.
Price: £35.95
Blurb: Plugs into rear port and gives full 48k.
Source: Sinclair User Aug 83

Name: Kayde Light Pen
Manufacturer: Kayde Electronic Services Ltd.
Price: £19.95
Blurb: Create pictures on your screen.
Source: Sinclair User Aug 83

Name: Kayde Sound Module
Manufacturer: Kayde Electronic Services Ltd
Price: £9.95
Blurb: Fits inside your Spectrum and outputs the sound to your TV.
Source: Sinclair User Aug 83

Name: Kelwood Backpack 1
Manufacturer: Kelwood Computer Cases
Price: £27.50
Blurb: Box that will acomodate your PSU and give you extra features. Save/Load switch and On/Off switch.
Variable sound amplifier. 3 13amp sockets with neon lights for other equipment. Other configuartions of this were available like 'no sound' or 'no sockets', at slightly cheaper prices.
Source: ZX Computing Dec/Jan 84

Name: Kelwood K-Board
Manufacturer: Kelwood Computing Cases
Price: £28.50
Blurb: Small keyboard that fits over the top of the original Spectrum case.
Source: Crash 7 (Aug 84)

Name: Kelwood Power Base
Manufacturer: Kelwood Computer Cases
Price: £13.50
Blurb: On/Off switch. Load/Save switch. Angled case.
Source: Sinclair User Oct 83

Name: Kelwood Sound Base
Manufacturer: Kelwood Computer Cases
Price: £19.95
Blurb: All features of the Kelwood Power Base but with built in variable sound amplifier.
Source: Sinclair User Oct 83


Manufacturer: Kelwood Computer CasesName: Kelwood (almost) Wireless Workstation
Price: £49.00
Blurb: Mains On/Off switch. 4x13 amp sockets inside. All wires stow away. Carry handle. Accessories include;
Powerbase (£11.00). Legs (£11.00)
Source: Sinclair User Oct 83

Name: Kempston Disc Interface
Manufacturer: Kempston
Price: £85.00
Blurb: Disc interface for the Speccy that allows 3, 3.5 or 5.25 drives to be used. (any compatible BBC drives). Software uses the Microdrive commands and also adds a few of its own, including a compressor that simply turns all numbers into there VAL equivilant.
Source: PCW - Nov 85

Name: Kempston Joystick interface
Manufacturer: Kempston Micro Electronics
Price: £15.00
Blurb: Compatible with many games including AstroBlaster, Cyber Rats Frenzy, Pssst, JetPac, Slippery Sid and others. Conversion tapes available to convert games to run with this interface.
Source: Sinclair User Oct 83

Name: Kempston Interface E
Manufacturer: Kempston Micro Electronics
Price: £55.00
Blurb: Centronics printer interface for your Spectrum. Fully supports all standard print commands. Onboard EPROM holds all opperating code.
Source: Sinclair User May 84

Name: Kempston Interface S
Manufacturer: Kempston Micro Electronics
Price: £39.99
Blurb: Same as the E version but without the on board EPROM so all controls will have to be loaded before use.
Source: Sinclair User May 84

Name: Kempston Mouse
Manufacturer: Kempston Micro Electronics Ltd
Price: £69.95
Blurb: Two button mouse and interface.
Source: Your Sinclair Jun 86

Name: Kempston PPI Port
Manufacturer: Kempston Electronics
Price: £16.50
Blurb: 24 line programmable peripheral interface. 3 x 8bit ports. Port mapped using IN and OUT. I/O via 16pin DIL socket. I/O also via 28pin edge connector. Requires 2 slot board (£16.95)
Source: Sinclair User Dec 82

Name: Kempston Pro Joystick Interface
Manufacturer: Kempston Micro Electronics Ltd
Price: £19.95
Blurb: 3 joystick ports that support Kempston, Cursor and Sinclair. Rom cartridge slot for ROM games.
Source: Your Spectrum issue 8

Name: Kempston Tri-State Joystick Interface
Manufacturer: Kempston Micro Electronics Ltd
Price: £12.95
Blurb: ?? Possibly a joystick port that supports three type of stick.
Source: Your Sinclair Feb 87

Name: Keyboard Mouse
Manufacturer: Individual Software
Price: n/a
Blurb: A device produced by Individual Software, which simulates a joystick and is plugged in a joystick interface.
Source: Beta Disk Users Club newsletter Issue 5 (1987)

Name: Keypanel Kits
Manufacturer: Softeach Limited
Price: £3.95 (+p&p) (for 10)
Blurb: Put everything you need on the keyboard with a custom Keypanel Kit. At last, an end to keyboard fumble. A must for all multikey games.
Source: Sinclair User Oct 83

Name: Konix Liberator
Manufacturer: Konix Computer Products
Price: £34.95
Blurb: 10 function interface. Oooo ! lets list em... Centronics port, RS232 port, Sound via TV, Slow motion,
Video port, Joystick port, Reset button, Through port, Save/load switch and power indicator..
Source: Your Sinclair Feb 86

Name: Konix Preditor
Manufacturer: Konix Computer Products
Price: £18.99
Blurb: Twin joystick port supporting all joystick types. Sound output to TV. Video (comp) port out.
Source: Your Sinclair Mar 86

[crustyasp46]

Spectrum Hardware Index - L

Name: Level-Vu Prism
Manufacturer: Computer Add-ons
Price: £3.99
Blurb: See your tape counter without having to lean forward ! Magnifies your counter.
Source: Sinclair User Aug 83

Name: LMT 68FX2 Keyboard
Manufacturer: LMT Computers Ltd.
Price: £39.95
Blurb: 68 full travel keyboard with numeric pad.
Source: Your Sinclair Feb 86

Name: LMT SPD1
Manufacturer: LMT Computers Ltd.
Price: £89.95
Blurb: Disk and printer interface. Includes snapshot button.
Source: Your Sinclair Feb 86

Name: Loadmaster
Manufacturer: Probemaster Ltd
Price: £11.49
Blurb: LED meter for signal strength. Fits between the cassette and the Spectrum.
Source: Your Spectrum issue 11

Name: Logitek Floppy/Printer Interface
Manufacturer: Logitek
Price: 298 DM (£107 apprx)
Blurb: Interface with built-in centronics port that also allows you to connect the Commodore 1541 floppy drive to your Speccy.
Also contains routines to support a 48K ramdisk on a 128K Spectrum.
Source: Magazine c't 1985 (supplied by Peter Sieg)

Name: Logotron Sprite Board
Manufacturer: Logotron Limited
Price: £129.95
Blurb: Hardware based sprite/graphics board. Program sprites size, shape, colour and speed, and the the board does the rest.
Source: Sinclair User Jan 85.
Note: Was this ever released ? The adverts says 'coming soon'

Name: Lo Profile Professional Keyboard
Manufacturer: Advanced Memory Systems Ltd.
Price: £49.95
Blurb: 53 full travel keys in a lo-profile case. Numeric key pad.
Source: Your Spectrum issue 8

[crustyasp46]

Spectrum Hardware Index - M

Name: Macface
Manufacturer: ??
Price: ??
Blurb: 16k Ram,Stealth MNI freezer, turbo loader (optional) mad monitor.
Source: ??

Name: Mancomp MO184 Keyboard
Manufacturer: Mancomp Ltd.
Price: £54.95
Blurb: Black angular keyboard with seperate numeric pad. 60 Full travel keys. Seperate numeric pad. Full sized space bar.
Source: Your Spectrum issue 11

Name: Marder Battery Back Up
Manufacturer: Marder Electronics
Price: £17.99
Blurb: Battery back up for the Spectrum. 40 minutes usage after power out. Automatic switchout.
Source: Sinclair User Dec 83

Name: Masterface 1B
Manufacturer: Andy Soft
Price: ??
Blurb: 8k Rom. Freeze button with turbo saver. Built-in monitor. Saves only to tape.
Source: Malyrule

Name: Masterface 2B
Manufacturer: Andy Soft
Price: ??
Blurb: Follow up to the Masterface 1. Snapshot interface with options to save to tape at three seperate speeds. (normal, high and trubo). Screen dump utility, monitor built in, Poke finder, memory search/view. Could only save programs to tape though, not disk/microdirve.
Source: Malyrule

Name: MB-02+ Disk Interface
Manufacturer: Sintech
Price: 310.00 DM (anyone know the £ conversion?)
Blurb: Supports both DD (840k) and HD (1.8m) drives. Transfer rates of 25k/sec (DD) or 50k/sec(HD). 2k Eprom and 128k SRAM. Built in clock. Supports up to 4 drives. Kempston joystick port. Parallel port. Tape emulation system. Uses WD2797A disk controller + Z80-DMA.
Source: FBI and Sintech's web page.
Notes: This is a new piece of hardware with continuing development. Planned addons include a soundcard to allow MOD files to be played, CD-Rom interface, Modem, Video digitiser and more.
Sintech's web page: http://www.sintech.onlinehome.de

Name: ME16-48 Memory Upgrade
Manufacturer: Computer Add-ons
Price: £20.50 (series B) £34.50 (Series A)
Blurb: Easy fitting.
Source: Sinclair User Oct 83

Name: Memoco Robotic Arm
Manufacturer: Memoco Electron
Price: £129.95 (£49.00 for interface)
Blurb: 12 axis of movement. 270 degrees of rotation. 90 degree elbow. 270 degree wrist rotation.
Source: Your Computer May 85

Name: Mentor
Manufacturer: Cybernetic Applications Ltd
Price: £345.00
Blurb: Semi-professional hydraulic arm. 6 degrees of movement; waist, shoulder, elbow and wrist elevation, wrist roll and gripper. Uses potentiometer type sensors.
Source: The Home Computer Advanced Course 1984

Name: MGT PLUS D
Manufacturer: MGT (Miles Gordon Technology)
Price: £52.13
Blurb: Disk interface with snapshot button. Interface 1 compliant. Up to 780k storage. Loads 48k in 3.5 secs.
Source: Sinclair User Dec 88

Name: MGT Two Face
Manufacturer: MGT
Price: £14.74
Blurb: Interface switcher box. Allows otherwise incompatible devices by connected together. (Opus/Beta/Microdrive) Also includes joystick port.
Source: Sinclair User Dec 88

Name: MGT Vidi-ZX Digitiser
Manufacturer: MGT
Price: £26.04
Blurb: Video capture device.
Source: Sinclair User Dec 88
Note: This may be the same device as the 'Rombo Vidi-ZX'

Name: Microbyte Protection Unit
Manufacturer: Microbyte
Price: £13.95
Blurb: Battery back up for your Spectrum. Protects against lost data due to power cuts.
Source: Sinclair User May 84

Name: Micro Command
Manufacturer: Orion Data
Price: £49.95
Blurb: Sensational advance in computer game technology. You speak, the computer obeys. Easy to program voice control. Sensitive to individual voices. Instant response.
Source: Sinclair User May 84

Micro Command

The following article was taken from Sinclair User Jun 84

Speech recognition is a growing area of interest and the new Micro Command from Orion Data looks set to help. It is supplied with a microphone and a demonstration tape which allows Spectrum users to teach their computers up to 15 words and then to have words recognised when repeated. Users of 48k will also be able to play Sheeptalk, a game where the dog is controlled by spoken commands. Normally, speech recognition for a computer is very expensive; a look inside Micro Command shows why. It contains a Z-80A CPU, as used in the Spectrum, ROM and RAM, buffers and audio circuitry.

The demonstration tape takes you through the process of learning to use the unit in easy stages. Starting with up and down and then adding left and right it allows you to continue if you score more than 80%. You must pronounce each word very carefully. Once past that stage you can play Sheeptalk. The game, produced originally by Virgin Games, is in BASIC and hence fairly slow. It shows the limitations of the unit, as it is difficult to keep the same tone when the dog starts driving the sheep into the river.

Included with Micro Command are comprehensive instructions for its use, plus an additional information booklet which lists the basic teaching program and a disassembly of the machine code which is used. It also gives details of the variables used by the code and shows how to include Micro Command in your programs.

Micro Command costs £49.95. That may seem expensive to Spectrum users but considering its contents, the work which must have gone into it, and the price of other similar units, it is reasonable.

Name: Microdrive
Manufacturer: Sinclair Research Ltd.
Price: £49.95
Blurb: Sinclair's mass storage device. Uses a tape loop to 'emulate' a disk drive, offers random access and fast loading. This device alone improved the Spectrum 100%, allowing 85k per cartridge. Loaded a typical 48k program in 9 seconds. (requires Interface I) Source: Sinclair User Oct 83

Sinclair Interface I + Microdrive

The following article was taken from Sinclair User - October 1983

The Microdrive with the Interface 1 module has produced the biggest improvement to the Spectrum yet. It can do eveything a disk drive can do but is much cheaper and the interface contains three modules for the price of one. The interface unit controls the Microdrive and RS232 communications/printer interface and a network which allows you to talk to another 63 Spectrum users. The unit fits underneath the Spectrum and tilts it a comfortable typing angle of 20 degrees. It is fixed in place with two screws to stop any 'wobble' that might occur. On the back of the unit are 3 sockets and a duplicate of the expansion connector, so other devices can be plugged in. The RS232 interface is a standard way of connecting printers and other devices like modems which use only one wire to pass data across. Each byte is broken into eight binary bits - see the BIN function in the Spectrum manual - and sent down one bit at a time. That method of swapping information is called serial access and is used on all the Interface 1 devices, including the Microdrive. That involves timing the length of each bit and so the speed of the RS232 can be set to match the speed of the device from which you are sending or receiving data. Speeds of up to 19,200 bits per second - the baud rate - can be set easily by POKEing a number into two new system variables listed in a new manual provided. Those system variables take up another 58 bytes after the ones listed in the original manual. Sinclair has made Basic the operating system of all the devices connected to the interface, so you will have to learn to use the channels and streams information contained in the new manual along with the various extensions to Basic provided by the new ROM.

Apart from streams, the extra commands are MOVE, ERASE, FORMAT and CAT. MOVE transfers a file of information - not a program - from one device to another. CAT provides an alphabetical list of files on a Microdrive showing their names and the amount of free space in Kilobytes. Files can be protected from CAT by including CHR$(0) as the first letter in the name. As with cassette files there is no foolproof way of protecting anything on a computer. ERASE allows you to clear out the file named on the Microdrive and FORMAT allows you to wipe a Microdrive cartridge.
The Microdrive is a very simple device. It has only two moving parts - three if you include the write-protect switch. The motor and a ratchet which stops the motor reversing are the only moving parts. The tape head is fixed and two springs either side, which bring the tape to the head and not the other way round, eliminate the need for alignment of the head. It acts like a very fast continuous loop tape recorder running past the head at 30 inches per second - 16 times as fast as a normal cassette recorder.
The tape is made of 1.9mm wide, 23 micron thick video tape, which is slightly thicker than domestic home video tape. Sinclair claims that more than 5,000 operations can be done on the tape before it wears out. The tape format is in blocks of 512k bytes called sectors and if a block is faulty it is marked so that it is not used. All cartridges have at least 85k of space but the amount varies depending on the number of sectors damaged by the manufacturing process. With up to eight Microdrives connected to one Spectrum, 860k of storage can be acheived. Cartridges are available at £4.95 each.

The following review was taken from Your Computer 1983

Sixteen months after they were announced the first Microdrives are jut being delivered, The price is still £50 for a drive which takes 85K tape cartridges instead of the l00K originally promised, but you can find and load a program in a few seconds. You will also need the Interface 1 before you can plug in up to eight Microdrives, but this interface gives you RS-232 and local area networks.
The Microdrive is housed in a box 90 by 85 by 40mm in size with an aperture at the front for loading the cartridge, and printed circuit board edge connections on both sides towards the rear. The right hand connector plugs via a flexible cable to the interface unit, if it is Microdrive 1 or plugs directly through a double ended socket to the next Microdrive. The drives are secured to each other by a plate underneath the housings. This should prevent the dreaded wobbles.
There are two small printed circuit boards inside which are without modification. The lower board provides the two edge connections, while the central vertical board houses a ROM and the tape head, which is used for both record and erase functions.
The mechanism is uncomplicated- The drive is generated by a rubber roller mounted directly on the end of the motor spindle. Pressure is applied by a leaf spring on the opposite side of the cartridge. The spring also maintains the cartridge position relative to the head, a very simple and highly efficient setup. My only worry would be head wear due to the abrasive action of the tape.
When the Microdrive is running, an LED indicator is lit. A warning is given not to remove the cartridge while this light is on

The cartridge is claimed to be able to handle up to 50 files and have a minimum storage capacity of 85K. The two spare cartridges supplied for the review both had 90K of storage space available when formatted,
Typical access was very fast in comparison with cassettes but, human nature being what it is, you tend to notice when it is slower than usual, It can take longer to type in the load command than to find and load a short file The storage media is an endless loop of tape. The cartridge is very small 45 by 35 by 7mm., including cover and makes the opposition's 75mm. floppies seem huge in comparison. The cartridge can he write-protected in a
similar manner to cassettes by removing a plastic tab, a piece of sticky tape with re-enable write.
I assume that before long we will be able to purchase S100 and S200's - Sinclair 200K -cartridges, In some
applications it is quantity of storage rather than speed of access that is important. It will also be necessary to
store the cartridges in a holder similar to those available for cassettes. The Sinclair hardware add-on industry
is in business again.
Sinclair only supplies one blank cartridge per Microdrive, further cartridges are supplied singly with an order form for repeat purchases. Bearing in mind Sinclair's advice on the need for back up copies, it just is not sufficient.
It is possible to use strings for filenames in the Microdrive commands and variables for the Microdrive number.
Because of the initial high cost of the cartridges, it makes sense to produce the tidy facility shown in Program 1.

Program 2 was used to test the file storage capacity of 50 files. Three points emerged from the tests:
1) Each file appears to occupy a minimum block of 512 bytes.
2) As the limit of 50 files is exceeded, file names disappear from the catalogue in an apparently random fashion,
but they still occupy space on the cartridge and are still loadable.
3) The average time taken to Save a short file in this manner is 10 seconds.
An attached Microdrive has no effect on the vast majority of commercial software. Only in one case where a
program used interrupt control was a program found not to work, and I am not sure why not. If you open a stream to the Microdrive or Net then problems will arise, but if you do not try to use the Microdrive or try to Network a program then it should make no difference whatsoever. The user is warned not to remove a cartridge while the Microdrive's LED is lit and not to switch on or off with a cartridge in the drive. This I continually forgot with no apparent mishaps to the stored data.
I think the user would be wise not to leave a cartridge in the drive for long periods of storage, the pressure roller
may take a permanent set and upset the tape transport. I would have liked a protective flap over the cartridge
entrance, not all drives will be used in a clean environment.

The ZX Interface 1 was also announced in April 1982. It was simply called the RS 232/Network interface board
and was expected to sell for £20. Since then it has been expanded and now serves three functions:
>Microdrive controller
>RS232 interface
>Local-area network
This little box of goodies is something special. There are flaws but it is still a very powerful addition to the Sinclair range of computer peripherals.
Surprisingly the two printed circuit boards in the Microdrive show no signs of modification whereas the printed
circuit board in the interface has been altered. The board contains two integrated circuits, a prototype Ferranti
LSI and an EPROM.
A Sinclair spokesperson has stated that the equipment delivered to customers will, in fact, contain proper
production devices.
The interface plugs into the Spectrum rear connector and is attached through two existing screw holes to the
underside of the Spectrum, the original screws may be discarded. A duplicate rear connector port is available
on the interface as are the two 3.5mm, network sockets and the nine-pin d-shell connector for the RS-232
printer/peripheral interface.
The Microdrive plugs into the exposed printed circuit board edge connector at the side through a flexible cable.
The whole assembly is rigid and now the keyboard has been tilted, feels much easier to use.

The interface unit acting as the Microdrive controller, expands Sinclair Basic to include elementary file handling
and communications commands.
The commands are created by paging the 'new’ RQM which creates an additional set of system variables. It
looks from an cursory glance, that it is possible to re-vector the input - output routines used in both the
Microdrive and Network channels.
The commands become a bit of a chore to handle after a while and you are soon driven to looking at
producing your own simple operating systems.
The RS232 interface, which operates over a range of 5O to 19.2K baud with no parity, 8-bit character and two
stop bits, should cover just about all but split-speed operation There are two modes of operation.
The t channel is normally used for listings, the control codes are not sent except for 13 -carriage return - and
the token codes are expanded. There is no graphic capability. These characters are replaced by code 63 (?).
The b channel sends the full 8 bit code and is used to send control codes to printers etc.
I can not recall ever having said that something from Sinclair was expensive, but £15 for an interface lead is a
bit steep.
The ZX Net - local area network -promises to be a very powerful tool. The network is set up by simply joining
two Spectrum interfaces together with the 10ft. long net lead. The manual reveals a network operating at l00K
baud with handshaking between two attached devices. Up to 64 Spectrums can go on the net.

Print station facility
There is also a broadcast facility to download information to anybody listening on the net. This would permit a
teacher to broadcast a program to the whole class at once.
Other uses include the ability to set up a print station to service all the Spectrums on the net. Perhaps when
Sinclair has managed to clone a few interfaces these properties can be evaluated.
The manual falls short of the usual high Sinclair standard due, in part, to the fact that it is not a derivative of an
earlier work. Everything appears to be there but I think some of the text needs presenting in a much simpler form.
The demo tape contains a print server program, untested, and a poor-man's Horizons tape-a-data base-program
which provides the meaning of the Microdrive commands from a database at what can only be described as
slow, I was not impressed.



PROGRAM 1
10 DATA ":REM files for deletion
20 DATA ‘zxc’
30 RESTORE
40 READ a$: IF a$ = ‘zxc’ THEN GOTO 70
50 ERASE ‘m’;1;a$
60 GOTO 40
70 CAT #3;1: STOP

PROGRAM 2
10 LET a$=’Kate’
20 LET d = 49
30 LET b$ = a$: LET a$ = a$ + CHR$ (d)
40 SAVE *’m’;1;a$
50 LET a$ = b$
60 LET d = d + 1
70 IF d = 11- THEN CAT #3;1: STOP
80 GOTO 30

Name: Microframe
Manufacturer: Gordon Micro Ltd.
Price: £?? (another ad with no price !)
Blurb: A frame to hold all your exteranl bits with PSU
Source: ZX Computing August 85

Name: Microtext Keyboard
Manufacturer: Microtext UK Ltd
Price: £53.45
Blurb: Full travel keyboard with added 'joytick' keys and a fire button.
Source: ZX Computing Dec/Jan 84

Name: Micro-Console
Manufacturer: G.Chapman Ltd.
Price: £7.50
Blurb: Holds Spectrum and Microdrive/Printer.
Source: Sinclair User Oct 83

Name: Micro Myte 60
Manufacturer: Micro-Myte Communications Ltd.
Price: £48.00
Blurb: Accoustic modem. 1000 baud.
Source: ZX Computing Oct/Nov 83

Name: Micropride Trackball
Manufacturer: Micropride Ltd.
Price: £19.95 (interface £7.95)
Blurb: A trackball for your Spectrum !
Source: Your Computer March 85

Name: Micro Power Add-On
Manufacturer: Micro Power
Price: £19.95
Blurb: Bring joy to your joystick ! 1 standard joystick port. 2 potentiometer joystick ports. Amplified sound. 3 channel sound generator using the AY-3-8910 chip.
Source: Sinclair User Sep 83

Name: Micro-Tidy
Manufacturer: G.Chapmen Ltd.
Price: £22.45
Blurb: Space for your Spectrum, PSU, tape recorder & tapes.
Source: Sinclair User Oct 83

Name: Microvitec Cub Monitor (1431/MZ)
Manufacturer: Microvitec Ltd.
Price: Send for info.. (Aren't those adverts annoying !)
Blurb: 585x452 resolution. 18Mhz.
Source: Sinclair User May 84

[color=#00FF00]Name: Midwich Interface[/color]
Manufacturer: Midwich Computer Company Ltd.
Price: £22.95
Blurb: Analogue joystick interface. Uses ZN499E A/D converter. Movement of joystick results in signal from 0 to 255 allowing true analogue movement. Available in kit format at £17.20
Source: ZX Computing Apr/May 83

Name: Midwich Rampack
Manufacturer: Midwich Computer Co
Price: £29.95
Blurb: 32k external ram pack that upgrades your Spectrum's memory to 48k.
Source: Sinclair User - Jan 83

Name: Miracle WS2000 Modem
Manufacturer: Miracle Technology
Price: £154.73
Blurb: 300/300 to 1200/1200 baud. Required any standard RS232 interface.
Source: Your Spectrum issue 17

Name: Miracle WS3000 Modem
Manufacturer: Miracle Technology
Price: £??
Blurb: Not much. It was a press release ! Required any standard RS232 interface.
Source: Your Sinclair Jun 86

Name: Miracle WS4000 Modem
Manufacturer: Mircale Technology
Price: £??
Blurb: Intelligent speed buffering. Not much as this was a press release and not a full advert.
Source: Your Sinclair Oct 86

Name: Miracle ZX Printer Interface
Manufacturer: Miracle Systems Ltd.
Price: £39.95
Blurb: Plugs directly into the RS232 interface of the Interface 1. Centronics compatable.
Source: Your Computer Jan 85

Name: Mirage Microdriver
Manufacturer: Mirage Microcomputers Ltd.
Price: £39.95
Blurb: Tranfers all your programs to Microdrive at the touch of a button. Freezes any software. Poke facility.
Source: Your Spectrum issue 17

Name: Monicron
Manufacturer: Macquillan Electronics
Price: £14.95
Blurb: Load programs every time via 'Vu level meter'. Record speech with built-in microphone. Amplify the Spectrum sound. Built-in speaker.
Source: Sinclair User Oct 83

Name: Morex Interface
Manufacturer: Morex Peripherals Ltd.
Price: £39.95
Blurb: Centronics and RS232 ports. Built-in word processor. Supports all BASIC printer commands. Graphics dump. Line length limited only by printer. Full handshaking for both ports. Baud rates of 50 to 2400 bps.
Source: ZX Computing Aug/Sep 83

Name: Morex Professional Disk System
Manufacturer: Morex Peripherals Ltd.
Price: £????
Blurb: 200k storage. 250k/sec. Self loading DOS.
Source: Your Spectrum issue 2

Name: Mukbus
Manufacturer: Microtext UK
Price: Keyboard £41.95, PSU £36.95, Card frame £36.95, Case £11.50
Blurb: All-in-one keyboard & power supply unit. 40 full travel keys.
Source: Sinclair User Dec 83

Name: MulteProm
Manufacturer: Camel Products
Price: £199.95
Blurb: Economical and sophisticated gang coupler.
Source: Sinclair User Jan 85

Name: Multi Sound Generator
Manufacturer: Add.On.Its
Price: £24.50
Blurb: Sound generator. Allows a multitude of sounds such as Zaps, Lasers etc.
Source: Home Computer Weekly August 83

Name: Multiface
Manufacturer: Jelec Design Ltd.
Price: £134.50
Blurb: Multi-function interface. 16bit in or out. 8 bit byte in and out. Digital to anologue. Analogue to digital.
Source: Sinclair User June 86

Name: Multiface One
Manufacturer: Romantic Robot Ltd
Price: £39.95
Blurb: No1. multipurpose interface for the Spectrum. Internal 8k ROM and RAM. Fully automatic saving to Microdrive, Wafadrive, Beta, Opus etc.. Joystick interface. Toolkit with Peek/Poke functions.
Source: Your Sinclair Jan 87

Multiface One

The following advert was taken from Your Sinclair 1987

The No.1 Multipurpose Interface For the 48K Spectrum.

New Enhanced Version...

O- Internal 8k ROM and 8K RAM enable fully automatic saving of anything onto Microdrive, Wafadrive, Beta or Opus, Kempston or tape.
O- Extensive Multi-Toolkit to study/modify/develop/programs. Peek/Poke the entire 56k.
O- Kempston compatable joystick interface.
O- Does not use any part of the Spectrums RAM and does not require software.
O- Menu driven commands with single key commands.
O- Powerful and efficient compressing system. Saved programs use less space.
O- Options to Save Screen only
O- Option to print screen
O- Saved programs run independently without the interface.



The following review was taken from Sinclair User June 86

Since I last looked at the Multiface One from Romantic Robot, they have up-rated it - at no extra cost - and it is now probably the best back-up device around. The reason is that now it can do far more than just back-up programs, something it is remarkably good at anyway.
Externally it looks muck like the old Multiface - with a Kempston compatable joystick interface on the left hand side, a button on the top which when pressed becks up the entire contents of memory to a variety of storage medium, and a through port for other add-ons. The video socket has been replaced by a switch which can be used to make the Multiface transparant to programs.

Pressing the button brings up a menu at the bottom of the screen with five main options. Return takes you back to the program as though nothing had happened - an exit option tries to put you back in Basic if possible. Save does the obvious and saves the memory to Microdrive, Wafadrive, or either Beta or Kempston disc system - state which when ordering. Optionally you can just save the screen.
Copy copies the screen to a ZX Printer, or a full sized one if you have a Kempston 'E' or LPrint III attached, and Tool enters the Tool-Kit part of the program. This allows you to enter any part of the Spectrums memory, either an address at a time, via a window which displays 128 bytes or access the Z80's registers - all with the display in hex or decimal.

The last option, Jump, is potentially useful. The Multiface contains 8k of RAM which normally is used to hold various bits of the backed-up program. You can put your own program in this RAM and then use this option to jump into it. It might be a dissassembler, Basic tool-kit or whatever you want.

Multiface is a bargin at £39.95

Name: Multiface 128
Manufacturer: Romantic Robot Ltd.
Price: £44.95
Blurb: For the Spectrum 128. See Multiface One.
Source: Sinclair User Dec 88

Name: Multiface 3
Manufacturer: Romantic Robot Ltd.
Price: £44.95
Blurb: As Multiface one/128 but for the +3 machine. Allows comercial software to be halted and copied to disk.
Source: Sinclair User Dec 88

Name: Multiprint
Manufacturer: Romantic Robot Ltd.
Price: £39.95
Blurb: Printer interface with built-in software and freeze button. Fully compatible with all ZX commands. Compatable with all Spectrums except +2 and +2a. 8k ROM includes Multi-toolkit with tools to view frozen programs. 8k RAM to use as you like. Can be used as a printer buffer or to load in Lifeguard (infinite lives finder) or Genie (disassembler).
Source: Sinclair User Dec 88

Name: Multiron I/O Support Module 1
Manufacturer: Multiron
Price: £14.60
Blurb: 8 channel A/D converter.
Source: Sinclair Projects Jun/Jul 84

Name: Multiron ZX Spectrum User Port
Manufacturer: Multiron
Price: £13.90
Blurb: 16 line i/o port with crash reset button.
Source: Sinclair Project Jun/Jul 84

Name: Music Machine
Manufacturer: Ram Electronics Ltd.
Price: £49.95
Blurb: Transform your Spectrum into a powerful music computer. Sound sampling, eight voices, midi port, reverb, echo.
Source: Your Sinclair Jan 87

RAM Music Machine

The following advert was taken from Sinclair User July 89



The RAM MUSIC MACHINE is probably the most exciting music add-on available for any computer.

Its a full sound sampling system allowing any sound to be recorded digitally into computer RAM. Once stored, the sound can be replayed at different pitches with any varying effects.

Its an echo chamber & digital delay line. Create very interesting effects.

Various sampled sounds are provided to get you going.

The Music Machine can be used as a drum machine - eight drum sounds are provided, but you can easily produce your own.

The powerful software allows you to compose tunes from individual bars of music. You can edit on screen & Save/Load sounds, instruments & rhythm.

Its a two voice music/sound system.

Fully MIDI compatible. The Ram Music Machine supports full MIDI In, MIDI Out & MIDI Thru.

Output through your hi-fi or headphones. Comes complete with microphone.

Use a full size MIDI keyboard to play the Music Machine.

Sounds produced by the Music Machine can be mixed with a MIDI synthesiser's own sounds.

On screen sound editor can produce MIDI data from your own compositions.

No other product can offer so much in one unit - it's the total solution !

Note: Advert was 'Datel Electronics' who were selling this product.



The following review was taken from ZX Computing - Novemebr 1986

This smallish uninteresting looking black plastic box is perhaps the most powerful versatile and exciting peripheral that I have had the pleasure to review for ages!

Described as ‘The Complete Home Computer Music System’ I consider this claim to be a modest appraisal of the unit, it could be used In professional applications as well. So what does it do?

At Home

The great majority of purchasers will go for its superb sampled drum sounds and built in sequencer allowing complex and carefully constructed patterns to be created bar by bar and linked together to form a complete song.

A very versatile unit the quality and flexibility of which is equal to the £250+ Yamaha dedicated RX21 that I use. On the plus side is the fact that each bar can be set to Individual tempos, not feasible with the RX. But there is a real time play mode where your fingers can attempt to mimic Buddy Rich. On the minus side is there is no "real time" pattern constructing and only two Toms, the RX has three. However the Music Machine has Cowbell and the RX hasn't.

But this does not matter!

If you want another Tom then you can have it, or remove the cowbell or any of the sounds and replace them with any other you fancy because the Music Machine is also a Sampler! This means that you can record digitally any sound you like via the cheap microphone supplied, tape or line out of an amplifier.

Once a sound is in memory then you can set the start and end parameters and play as much or as little of it as you wish, even looping it for continuous sustain. You can reverse it and play it backwards, interesting, or go to the ‘piano’ screen and play it back over a 12 note one octave range rising from middle C.

Once you have exhausted the novelty of that then you can use the tune sequencer and play it over a much extended three octave range and in two ports. It is here that some of the limitations of an inexpensive unit may become audible, the sustain effect is played by a very fast staccato repeat and it can be heard as such, also the tone may become unpleasant in the extremes of the range. A £10,000 + Fairlight allows multi samples across the whole range to be taken so what can you ask of a unit such as this?

For technicrats the sampling rate is 19444KHz and this gives approx 1.1 sec, it sounds short, but in fact it gives plenty of time to say ‘Samantha Fox’ (should you so wish). A start and end of a sustain loop within the sample feature would have been useful, and the enlarged display of the waveform often resembles a burst from an airbrush and this is a pity.

The rear of the unit bristles with sockets and the three which most owners will use are the rnicrophone IN, the Phone OUT to on amplifier or stereo and a Headphone for personal listening. Only the output from either the tune sequencer or the drum sequencer can be sent to the headphone or phono socket at any one time.

Not just simply a fascinating toy as are most of the samplers I have seen, including some made by well respected companies in this field, but actually usable to create genuine musical compositions.

For anyone with musical interests this is an absolutely essential piece of equipment. I've heard ‘Rap’ records with less backing than this can produce, and the quality is good enough for studio use.

Midi

Should you be one of the growing number of serious home musicians who own a keyboard such as the Casio CZ101 or any of the other instruments fitted with MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) then you can greatly extend both units' use.

There are three MIDI sockets fitted, standard five pin DIN, for MIDI IN, OUT and THROUGII and via these you can either play your sampled sounds over the full keyboard range sync with external sequencers, play the Music Machine's sequencer out to the keyboard (at the same time as using the drums via the headphone or phono out) or any other combination you desire This is possible from the software which operates in both the common Omni and Poly modes allowing full channel assignment and internal or external clock control.

Easy use

All this in one unit and program must make it complicated to run.

Not a bit! The manual is written to suit all abilities, step by step chatty approach throughout but with full technical detail for those with deeper understanding -something many of the dedicated ‘professional’ units I've looked at do not usually give.

As for operating, the menu system has been carefuly designed with many options being consistent whether you are In the Sampler, Piano, Midi, Echo or any of the many other operating screens. You soon learn the essential commands and the others are nearly all self evident.

I am afraid this review is rather on the enthusiastic side, but then I have deliberately compared this unit with others of much higher price and it holds Its own. A simple MIDI interface by itself can cost over £100, this has much, much more to offer.

RAM ask for ideas, there is no limit when you consider MIDI, for example how about; A real time multitrack sequencer with auto correct and variable quantize, or a multitrack step time sequencer, both with high resolution printout facilitys, or a midi patchbay system (give me a unit and I'll write one of those!) or, or . . the list is vast indeed.

Yes you may say, but it'll cost the earth and be well out of my reach. I agree it is a little more than the average £10 - £3O interface but at an astounding £49.95, it offers incredible value for money, the chance for anyone with an interest in music to get into the latest hi-tec rnusical development and I have no hesitation in giving it the highest accolade possible from a hard bitten, cynical reviewer.

I will buy one.

Name: Musicom ML-10
Manufacturer: Micro Music Ltd
Price: £52.95
Blurb; Interface that allows the Spectrum to be connected to the Casio MT200/PA1 synthesiser. Supplied with editing software.
Source: Sinclair User Nov 84

Name: MW-100
Manufacturer: Mindware
Price: $139.95
Blurb: American entry into the cheap Speccy printer market. This is a small dot matrix machine that prints on 1.75inch wide paper. It boasts several print modes including 32 character line-for-line, 132 character and 16 character wrap-around. Originally produced for the American Spectrum (Timex).
Source: Sinclair User - Mar 83

[crustyasp46]

Spectrum Hardware Index - N

Name: Neptune 1
Manufacturer: Cybernetic Applications Ltd
Price: £1250.00
Blurb: Professional hydraulic arm. 6 degrees of freedom; waist, shoulder, elbow, wrist elevation, wrist roll and gripper. Uses potentiometer type sensors.
Source: The Home Computer Advanced Course 1984

Name: Neptune 2
Manufacturer: Cybernetic Applications Ltd
Price: £1725.00
Blurb: Professional hydraulic arm. 7 degrees of movement; waist, shoulder, elbow, wrist elevation, wrist roll, wrist yaw and gripper. Uses potentiometer type sensors.
Source: The Home Computer Advanced Course 1984

Name: Ness Automatic Tape Control
Manufacturer: Ness Micro Systems
Price: £19.95
Blurb: On/Off switch. Built-in beep amplifier with volume control.
Source: Sinclair User Dec 83

Name: Ness Beep Amplifier
Manufacturer: Ness Micro Systems
Price: £5.95
Blurb: Small amplifier.
Source: Sinclair User Dec 83

Name: Nidd Valley Reset
Manufacturer: Nidd Valley Micro Products
Price: £4.95
Blurb: Slim box fitted with a reset switch.
Source: ZX Computing Aug/Sep 85

Name: Nike-SP
Manufacturer: Cambridge Microelectronics
Price: £19.95
Blurb: Battery back up device. Also stops mains noise from interfering with your Speccy. Will give up to 30 minutes use.
Source: Sinclair User Dec 84

[crustyasp46]

Spectrum Hardware Index - O

Name: OEL TTX2000
Manufacturer: O.E. Ltd.
Price: £143.75
Blurb: Teletext adaptor for the Spectrum. Connects to the Ariel and receives Ceefax and Oracle. Store pages for later viewing. Original versions could not download the software available, but later versions included an updated ROM that added this cabability.
Source: Sinclair User Jan 85
Note: This may be the same unit as the Volex TTX2000S, but the boxes and manufacturers are different. Any further info ?

Name: Omega
Manufacturer: Quant Systems
Price: £?? No price but it excludes vat !
Blurb: Run CP/M on your computer via a standard RS232 port. Box contains Z80a, 64k Ram, 4k Rom, serial and parallel ports. Runs CP/M 2.2.
Source: Your Spectrum issue 11

Name: Omega SCSI/Plus adaptor
Manufacturer: Quant Systems
Price: £??
Blurb: Low cost SCSI controller that connects direct to the Omega. 4 Megabits/sec throughput.
Source: Your Spectrum issue 11

Name: Omni-Reader
Manufacturer: Metroheath Ltd.
Price: £39.99
Blurb: Optical character reader for the Spectrum. (amongst others). Flat plastic base with a rod at the right hand side, allows the reader arm to move over the document and the software converts it into text on the screen. The unit computes the letters of the text and transmits it as standard ASCII to the computer.
Source: PCW Nov 86

Name: On/Off Switch
Manufacturer: TEC Publications
Price: £4.95
Blurb: Saves wear & tear.
Source: Your Spectrum issue 17

Name: One Finger Mk.II
Manufacturer: RAMS (Regis Amatuer Micro Society)
Price: £ ??
Blurb: A one fingered typewriter for disabled people. Originally developed on the ZX81 (Mk.I), the interface and software allowed any disbaled person who could move at least one part of their body, to use a microcomputer. Programs developed for the system include a full featured word processor.
Source: Sinclair User Apr 83

Name: Opus 3 inch disk drive
Manufacturer: Opus Supplies Ltd
Price: £229.95
Blurb: 400k storage. 3ms access. Direct drive. (needs interface)
Source: Your Spectrum issue 11

Name: Opus 5.25inch disk drive
Manufacturer: Opus Supplies Ltd.
Price: £149.95 (single sided) £189.95 (double sided)
Blurb: 100k (single sided). 200k (double sided) Needs interface
Source: Your Spectrum issue 11

Name: Opus Discovery
Manufacturer: Opus Supplies Ltd.
Price: £199.95
Blurb: A true disk drive system for your Spectrum. 250k floppy drive and interface. Video output port. Joystick port. Through port. Parallel printer port.
Source: Your Spectrum issue 17

Opus Discovery

The following advert was taken from Your Spectrum Issue18

THE NEW DISC DRIVE SENSATION

At last Spectrum owners can choose a TRUE disc drive system for their computer, backed by REAL software support and available with the most comprehensive specification yet developed.
For just £199.95 Discovery offers a new level of performance and a combination of advanced features which make other fast storage systems for the Spectrum and Spectrum + look obsolete.
No wonder one leading computer magazine, Sinclair User, recommended Discovery in its latest guide to fast storage systems for the Spectrum.

Discovery has been designed to take no USER RAM from the Spectrum during the use of tape
based programs, it accepts the same commands as 'Interface 1' allowing you to use many of the
cassette programs designed for microdrive and we've provided you with the firmware to use a
super-fast RAM DISC when you choose. Random access files are fully supported and formatting
and back-up routines are included in ROM.

Add to all this a range of great software titles on the latest 3.5inch disc cartrisges commissioned
by Boots and you begin to see why we named it Discovery.

Specifications:

250k 3.5inch disc dirve.
Video monitor output.
Joystick interface.
Peripheral through connector.
Parallel printer port.

The following review was taken from Advanced Home Computer

Sinclair Research has provided the Microdrive for the Spectrum, but a need has remained for a more reliable and accommodating disk drive system. We conclude our two part series on alternatives to the Sinclair Microdrive by examining the Discovery 1 from Opus, following our look at Rotronics' Wafadrive.

In the previous Hardware article we looked at the Rotronics wafadrive. Although this device proved to be
somewhat more reliable than the Microdrive, it turned out to be slower in comparison, and still based around
the rather suspect continuous tape system. In this article we turn our attention to a more conventional approach
to mass storage: a disk-based system from Opus Supplies.

A disk drive for the Spectrum does not represent a new idea. Over the past couple of years there have been a
number of disk operating systems and interfaces available for the machine; however, none of these systems have become particularly popular. This is partly because the interfaces have been advertised solely in the specialist press, which has given the devices an air of being intended only for the devout Spectrum enthusiast and machine code programmers, and partly because they have been available only through mail order houses and have not been given the kind of mass marketing needed to push them into the public consciousness.

The Discovery 1 is encased in sheet metal, extending the front of the machine to support the Spectrum that plugs into a cartridge slot via the expansion port. Although this seems a comparatively easy operation, users may find some difficulty in attaching the Discovery to the edge connector. This is because the cassette and aerial leads tend to get in the way and prevent the cartridge slot from being attached correctly. Bearing in mind that a badly attached edge connector could severely damage the Spectrum, this is a serious problem. The difficulty is not as pronounced with the original Spectrum (for which the Discovery was originally designed), but the new Spectrum +, with its larger casing, may have users struggling for several minutes before they are satisfied that the device is correctly fined. Once the Spectrum has been fitted to Discovery 1, the machine effectively blocks off the computers own power supply input. The Discovery has therefore been designed to power both itself and the Spectrum, thus making the micro's own external power supply redundant.

DUAL DRIVE UPGRADE

Above the cartridge slot on the left is a single 3.5inch disk drive, with space on the right for a second drive. (Opus intends to launch a dual drive version of the machine called the Discovery 2.) Discovery 1 users wishing to upgrade their systems to dual drive configurations can expect an external additional disk drive called Discovery + to be launched. However, users will not be limited only to Opus drives since the company claims that standard 5.25inch disk drives can also be added in the same manner.

In common with Rotronics, Opus's philosophy in designing the machine is to provide not only a mass storage
system for the Spectrum, but also to add extra peripheral interfaces allowing users to run printers and other devices.
A composite video monitor socket on the back of Discovery I has been provided, according to an Opus
spokesman, for business users wishing to attach a monochrome monitor (although of course composite video
does produce a colour signal) for lengthy periods of word processing. However, on a machine noted for its
colourful games programs, it is a pity that Opus could not have provided an RGB interface to produce a much
clearer picture.

On the right side of the Discovery is a single Kempston-compatible, Atari-standard joystick port, next to which is a bi-directional Centronics parallel printer port. Finally, there is a peripheral through connector to enable other
Spectrum-compatible interfaces, such as an RGB monitor, to be connected.

Like the Wafadrive, the Discovery disk operating system closely follows that of the Interface 1; for example,
issuing a command requires <GOMMAND> *. When the BASIC interpreter reaches the *, it does not recognise
it as being a BASIC command and attempts to generate a syntax error. However, the DOS intercepts it and
pages its own eight Kbyte operating system into the position of the lower eight Kbytes of the Spectrum's ROM,
and then interprets the command. It should be noted that if the user has made a syntax error, even the DOS
won't recognise it and an error message will be generated, although this will still be via the DOS ROM.

In designing its DOS system, Opus has gone further than Rotronics in providing Compatibility - all of the
commands available to the Microdrive have been retained. There are several reasons for this. Because of the
Spectrum's single keyword entry system, it is obviously easier to write an operating system using inherent
commands, rather than going to the trouble of writing your own. This also means that users who are already
familiar with the Microdrive operating system will be able to use the Discovery immediately, since all the
syntax is the same. Furthermore, tinkering with an operating system can lead to all kinds of unforeseen
problems with the memory map. This means that programs compatible with Interface 1 may not necessarily
be compatible with your revamped operating system, a problem that has plagued many other third party
peripherals.

The way in which Opus has closely followed the Sinclair Microdrive command system is most noticeable when
looking at the way the streams have been organised. On the Spectrum, output channels are organised into 16
streams numbered 0 to 15. Three of these are set aside for the screen, keyboard and printer, the others are free for use by any other peripheral. In the Sinclair list of Interface 1 commands, there are a number of single
characters that open channels to specific devices; for example 'm' for Microdrive. The Discovery has adapted these to its own use, thus the command LOAD * ‘m';1;'name’ will work just as well on Discovery 1 as on a
Microdrive, although in this case 'm’ refers to the disk drive. However, for added convenience, Opus has adapted the command format so that ‘m' can be omitted, thereby shortening the somewhat long-winded Sinclair system.
Other commands have also been adapted. The character 't' in a command on the Microdrive opens a channel to
the RS232 interface, whereas on the Discovery it opens the channel to the parallel printer.

THE DISKS IN OPERATION

The disk drive supplied with the system uses the double-density Sony format 3.5inch disks that are becoming
increasingly popular on microcomputers. The disks themselves each have a total capacity of 250 Kbytes, which, when formatted, provide 180 Kbytes of available storage space. The disk operating system supports random access when searching for a file, which is considerably faster than the serial search methods used on some other disk systems. Also, there is no limit to the number of files that can be held on a disk, which can be important then one wishes to save a number of short files. If the directory is quickly filled, there may be a large amount of space on the disk that cannot be used.

When comparing the time it takes to SAVE and LOAD a file using the Discovery and Microdrive the former proved to be somewhat faster in actually finding a file but considerably slower in SAVEing and LOADing it. Finding a file is faster on the disk system because the files are organised by random access whereas the Microdrives, by their nature, are serial access devices. Why accessing a file into memory is much slower is more difficult to explain, but it is a fact that the transfer rate of the Discovery 1 is much slower than that of the Microdrives - 15 Kbaud compared to 19.2 Kbaud. The real advantage of the Discovery lies in having a mass storage system more robust than the Microdrive's, and a storage medium having a wider range of manufacturers to choose from.

Opus appears to have given some thought to the problematic aspect of software support for the Discovery.
Obviously having a large company like Boots selling the product in their chain of stores is an advantage, since
software houses will be able to offer their products alongside the machine itself. The company has also
indicated that many software houses, including Melbourne House and Legend, have already agreed to transfer
some of their existing programs onto the 3.5inch disks.

The launch of the Discovery series of disk drives has clearly been well planned and Opus has obviously
attempted to provide its new line with as much chance of success as it possibly could. For the company,
the major task before it is convincing Spectrum owners that the Discovery is a more worthwhile investment
for their machine than the Sinclair alternative. If the time is right and the Spectrum owner is ready for a
disk-based system, Opus and its Discovery 1 could well be a success.

Name: Opus Spectra Disc Interface
Manufacturer: Opus Supplies Ltd.
Price: £99.95
Blurb: DOS on rom. Compabible with all Opus drives. Centronics port.
Source: Your Spectrum issue 11

Name: Orat
Manufacturer: Add.On.Its
Price: £32.00
Blurb: Speech box add on.
Source: Home Computer Weekly August 83

Name: Orme EPROM Card
Manufacturer: Orme Electronics
Price: Card £21.25, EPROM £9.95
Blurb: Eprom card giving 10 extra BASIC commands. including re-numbering, editing, character manouvering and variable dumping.
Source: Sinclair User Sep 83

Name: OZ Connector
Manufacturer: J. Inceldon
Price: £18.00
Blurb: Small box that sits between the cassette and the Speccy. Connecting a small speaker will allow you to hear and monitor the tape loading. You can also speek and intro for your programs via a microphone.
Source: Sinclair User Dec 82

[crustyasp46]

Spectrum Hardware Index - P

Name: Pacer Disk Interface & Disk Drive
Manufacturer: Omnitronics Ltd
Price: £189.95
Blurb: 400k storage. Built-in DOS. Supports 3.5 inch and 5.25 inch drives. Double or single sided. 40/80 track.
Source: Your Spectrum issue 18

Name: Pacesetter
Manufacturer: Nidd Valley Micro Products
Price: £14.95
Blurb: Joystick interface with slow-down facility. Uses same hardware as the 'Slomo' but incooporates a Kempston compatable joystick interface.
Source: Crash issue 21 (Oct 85)

Name: Pacesetter Programmable
Manufacturer: Nidd Valley Micro Products.
Price: £29.95
Blurb: Same specification as the standard Pacesetter, but includes programmable joystick interface.
Source: Crash issue 21 (Oct 85)

Name: Page Programmable Joystick Interface
Manufacturer: Page Computing
Price: £26.00
Blurb: Built in rapid-fire. Compatible with all software.
Source: Sinclair User August 84

Name: PC Keyboard and Mouse Interface
Manufacturer: Scorpion & D.K.
Price: £10.00
Blurb: This interface allows you to attach a standard PC keyboard and any mouse (active or passive) to your Spectrum. The mouse will be recognised as "Kempston Mouse" add-on or Cursor, Sinclair or Kempston joystick.
CTRL+ALT+DEL resets the Spectrum.
Source: Scorpion

Name: Peker Assembler Cartridge
Manufacturer: Peker Computers Ltd.
Price: £17.95
Blurb: Built-on software. Very fast assembly. Screws up practically every other peripheral.
Source: Your Sinclair Jun 86

Name: Pellet Sound Amplifier
Manufacturer: Pellet Products
Price: £12.95
Blurb: Spectrum beep amp with volume control, Load/Save control, Reset button.
Source: Your Computer May 84

Name: Petron Trichord
Manufacturer: Petron Electronics
Price: £26.95
Blurb: Sound synthesiser box. Pre-set or custom sounds. 6134 chords (48k). Uses AY-3-8910 chip.
Source: ZX Computing Aug/Sep 85

Name: Pickard Controller
Manufacturer: Success Services
Price: £20.45
Blurb: Connect any Atari-type joystick and tell it which keys to emulate.
Source: ZX Computing Aug/Sep 83

Name: Pinnacle Sound Amplifier
Manufacturer: Pinnacle Electronics Limited
Price: £7.99
Blurb: Battery powered sound amplifire/speaker.
Source: Sinclair User Dec 83

Name: Polyprint Interface
Manufacturer: Cambridge Microelectronics
Price: £44.95
Blurb: Centronics interface.
Source: Your Spectrum issue 17

Name: Power Buffer
Manufacturer: Camel Products
Price: £17.35
Blurb: Battery back-up for your Spectrum. Uses Nickel Cadium batteries.
Source: Sinclair User Jan 85

Name: Print'N'Plotter Console
Manufacturer: Print'N'Plotter
Price: £5.25
Blurb: For the cost of a games cassette you can have a truly professional console for your Spectrum. We've cut costs (not cut quality) by designing a self-assembly method using relativley inexpensive materials like strong corrigated board.
Source: Sinclair User Oct 83

Name: Print'N'Plotter Keyboard Overlays
Manufacturer: Print'N'Plotter
Price: £2.95 (per pack of 10)
Blurb: Forgotten which keys to press when playing a game ? Just write the function of each key under the keys and keep for the next time you play again.
Source: Sinclair User Oct 83

Name: Print-SP
Manufacturer: Camel Products
Price: £31.25
Blurb: Centronics printer interface.
Source: Sinclair User Jan 85

Name: Prism VTX5000 Modem
Manufacturer: OEL
Price: £74.95
Blurb: 1200/75 baud modem with viewdata terminal software on ROM. This modem was initially for use with Micronet 800 (a section of Prestel), but due to other software, was able to access other non-viewdata (scrolling) systems. Also able to do 1200/1200 half duplex.
Source: Sinclair User Sep 83

Prism VTX 5000

The following article was taken from Home Computer Advanced Course 1984

The Prism VTX5000 modem is one of the most ingenious add-ons in the world of home computing. By linking the most successful home computer, the Sinclair Spectrum, to Prestel's Micronet and similar databases, it has opened the way for thousands of micro owners to step into the exciting field of communications.

The Prestel database struggled to find users from the day it first went 'on-line'. Prestel 'sets' were expensive, and the amount of information available on the database was too limited to offer much of an advantage over an ordinary newspaper. However, with a suitable modem and software, most home micros can access Prestel. And so, in order to exploit this possibility, Prism formed Micronet, a separate area within Prestel dedicated to news and information about micros. Modems and software that enabled access to Micronet and Prestel were soon made available by Prism, and the project proved immensely successful. The number of users and the range of information services available continues to grow.

In producing an add-on to connect the Sinclair Spectrum to Micronet, Prism came up against a big challenge, as the machine is unsuitable for this application. It has no RS232 or serial interface, which means that ordinary modems cannot be connected. It has a screen display of 32 columns by 24 lines, and Prestel requires 40 by 24 display, as well as the complicated 'teletext' graphics system. The company produced an all-in-one unit designed specifically for this single task; the Prism VTX5000 modem.

The unit contains all the interfacing needed to connect the Spectrum, a direct-connect 1200/75 baud modem and software to access Prestel. This not only provides the standard functions for logging into the system, but also uses the Spectrum's graphics screen to imitate a true 40 by 24 teletext display. As a result, for £100, Spectrum owners can buy all the hardware necessary to join Micronet.

The VTX5000 sits underneath the Spectrum and connects to its expansion connector. The ribbon cable between the two has a third socket so that other spectrum peripherals, such as a printer or Microdrives, can be connected. This unit plugs directly into the phone system rather than using an acoustic coupler (in which the telephone handset is pushed into two rubber cups on the modem). This provides much more reliable communication.

To install the unit, you must have one of the 'new-style' phone jacks. All recently fitted phones use these, but a suitable socket will have to be fitted in households with older telephones. You unplug the telephone, plug in the modem and then plug the telephone into the modem. This method avoids the need for a two-way phone jack on your wall, something that often costs an extra £10 with other modems. When connected, the telephone still works as normal.

When you switch on the Spectrum, it automatically runs the Micronet software. This is stored in ROM inside the modem so it doesn't need to be loaded before use. The Micronet package is very similar to those provided on other micros, so once you've used it, you will have no trouble using it on a different machine. The software is controlled by a series of menus and is simple to learn and use.

The first option on the menu is to 'log on', which means keying in the 10 digit identity number given to each Prestel user. This number will be remembered by the computer as long as its power is on and has only to be entered each session, even if the users calls up Prestel several times.

The next step is to telephone one of the four computers that hold the Prestel database. When it answers with a high pitched note, you press the Line switch on the modem and replace the receiver. The Spectrum is now 'talking' to Prestel. The first thing you must do is enter a four-letter password. This stops anyone else using your Prestel account and you can change it as often as you like.

If you tire of Prestel, you can always try to communicate with other Spectrum users. The VTX5000 is also designed to link two Spectrum computers via the telephone lines, so they can send messages and programs directly to each other. The speed of transmission is a healthy 1200 baud. Early versions of the modem were sold without the software to do this, but now a tape that facilitates this data transfer is included. Obviously, this software is of use only to Spectrum owners who have friends who also have Spectrums and VTX5000 modems.

Several other communication standards are in common use for modems, but the VTX5000 cannot cope with them. The most important limitation is the modems lack of the standard needed for the many free bulletin boards, which are being set up by enthusiasts around the world. These operate at a data rate of 300 baud, but the VTX5000 can't transmit as slowly as this.

Anyone who really wants to explore the whole area of computer communications with their Spectrum may find it more suitable to buy an RS232 interface (particularly Sinclair's own ZX Interface 1) and use a general purpose modem. However, this would probably entail writing your own software, wiring cables and so on. The VTX5000 is ideal for those who want to use Prestel only.

The following review was taken from Sinclair User Novemebr 1983

THE PRISM VTX 5000 modem has been designed to give Spectrum Users access to the Micronet 800 closed-user database on Prestel. It consists of a flat, black box slightly bigger than the Spectrum on which the Spectrum rests, connected to the modem via a three-plug ribbon cable. The cable connects the Spectrum and modem and provides an expansion connector for other peripherals like the printer. If you are using Interface I, connect it to the interface connector.

On the front of the modem are two switches and two LEDs. The red LED is the power-on light and the green LED indicates to the user that the modem is connected via the line switch to the telephone line. The second switch allows you to select the mode to be used - Micronet terminal, half duplex transmitting terminal with echo, or receiving terminal. The Micronet terminal works at 1,200 baud receive and 75 band transmit to Prestel. The other terminals work at 1,200 baud both ways.

The connection to the telephone line is via a new-style jack plug and socket fitted by British Telecom. At present the cost of fitting it is being included in the price of the adaptor. The telephone is fitted with a plug on the end which plugs into the back of the modem or the wall socket. The modem is approved by British Telecom but has no auto-dial facility, so the telephone must be used to dial the Prestel computer before the modem is switched in. As long as the LINE switch is in the correct position it will not effect the use of the telephone and the unit can be left connected all the time.

The unit has two printed circuit boards, one to interface to the microcomputer and one containing the modem and isolation circuitry. The modem is a Texas one-chip modem type TCX3101 controlled by a 4.4MHz PAL colour frequency crystal. It has two amplifiers between it and the line and provides various handshaking signals to the communications interface chip via a 10-wire interface cable. The board also contains an isolation transformer and a reed relay to hold a telephone call when the handset is replaced on the telephone. The Spectrum interface board contains an 8251 communications chip, 8K EPROM, baud rate oscillator and various decoding chips which allow it to switch out the 16K Sinclair Basic ROM and replace it with its own.Various speeds are available, the RS232-type interface being marked from 75 to 2,400 baud, but the board is connected to work only at 1,200 or 75 baud. The chip is operated by a 0 on bit 7 of an I/O address but checks the lower five bits to see if a Sinclair device is requested. That may affect some other devices like joysticks, which also use that method of addressing.

On powering-up the modem and Spectrum - the modem is powered from the Spectrum via a voltage regulator by turning it on at the mains plug - the modem switches in the 8K EPROM and loads a Basic and machine code program from the ROM into RAM. It also loads a new Prestel graphics set above RAM TOP. A warning is printed in the front of the manual about not powering up by plugging-in the power socket to the back of the Spectrum when using Interface I - the Microdrive interface. Do not ignore it as some damage may occur if you do.

The Basic program then RUNs and presents the user with the Micronet 800 logo, which also gives the software version number and date. Pressing a key will then get you on to the main menu, one of five used to control the system. That gives seven functions and is returned to for SAVEing and LOADing software from Prestel, saving, printing or viewing frames - each page is called a frame - entering other menus or entering or leaving Prestel. Option one lets you log-on to Prestel after inserting your identity number and password into the computer. That may be done before or after obtaining Prestel. The number is issued by Prestel via Micronet and is the one by which you are charged, so do not let anyone else have the number or they could incur large bills which you would have to pay.

To contact Prestel dial the number for the local Prestel computer - it will always be a local number to save cost to the user - and wait for the computer to answer with a high-pitched tone. Then throw the line switch on the modem and replace the handset on the telephone; that prevents noise from the telephone corrupting the data. The control of the telephone line is then with the Spectrum. You are then ready to use Micronet 800, from whose page you start, or other open Prestel facilities, Micronet and other closed databases are restricted to members who pay a subscription to join. In the case of Micronet it is £52 per year.

Micronet 800 provides facilities for exchanging messages with other users, including the Information Providers; ordering goods; downloading free programs; or buying programs which are downloaded to you over the telephone. There are also various news and information pages on BBC and Spectrum machines. The present database of free programs seems to be made up of programs seen In Sinclair User and the amount of programs for sale is limited. There are two 16K programs and about 10 48K programs and none of the famous names is among them either.
None of the major software houses for Spectrum software seem to want to use Prestel to sell their programs but that may change as more users log-on from Spectrums.

The Prestel page is 40 columns by 24 lines and so the character set has been altered to give the smaller characters required, as well as re-defining the graphics characters. Various features also allow you to specify colours and use FLASH or REVEAL functions.
The page number is always printed at the top with the price of the page and what kind of page it is in this case Micronet 800. At the bottom of the page is anything you type-in at the keyboard. Only numbers, the two SHIFT keys, and ENTER are recognised. To get out of any frame press CAPS SHIFT and ENTER, which will return you to the main menu, from which you can get back to Basic by pressing 7.

Any of the frames can be copied to the Sinclair printer, stored in RAM or on tape. The screens are stored as a single DIMensioned variable B$(600) and are SAVEd and LOADed as DATA. The terminal software uses normal 32-character Spectrum screens for the menus.

The frames for programs have the first two pages as an introduction and from page number C onwards they consist of the data stored in CET format at about 850 bytes per frame. Micronet always starts loading from page C until the last page unless it is told by the user from the downloading menu.

When LOGging OFF Prestel, a response page is printed if there are any messages in the mailbox for you. You then have a choice of reading them, erasing them or storing them on tape like any other page.

Using Prestel can become very boring, as the only facilities you have are the numbers 0-9, the SYMBOL SHIFT key - used as * - and the ENTER key - used as #. To work your way through to a particular page you can either go direct to the page, if you know it, by * Page number #, or by using one key to select from a menu the next descending menu, until you reach the page you want.

All the time you are doing that you will be charged for the price of a local telephone call. If you intend to use Prestel a good deal it is worth storing some of the index pages on tape via the Save Frame facility, as they can allow you to pick up the correct page immediately.

As the control program is written in Basic it would not be too difficult to alter it to do a search of Prestel for the information you want, or to call a certain page automatically. That would certainly speed the access to the information and save money on telephone bills. That kind of program would have to be SAVEd on tape, as the original program would be installed on switch-on.
You do not have to be connected to Prestel to view pages stored on tape and the terminal software allows you to leave Prestel and do something on the computer and then return to it where you left off. That will happen also when you download software as it over-writes the Basic program.

To return to Prestel you type RAND USER and then a number, which depends on whether you own a 16K or 48K Spectrum. The only way to leave Prestel is to LOG OFF on the main menu or by changing the LINE switch. For this a computer can be connected between 8am and 6pm from Monday to Friday and between 5am and 1pm on Saturday. An additional five pence a minute will be added to the normal local telephone charge. More details can be found on page 123 on Prestel or by telephoning Freephone 2043.

The instructions with the package are simple and easy to understand, with plenty of pages reproduced by a Sinclair printer The only facility not mentioned is the two terminal facilities; TX and RX. TX allows you to send data and programs at 1,200 baud to another user using a 1,200 baud modem. Any data sent is also echoed to the Spectrum for printing on the screen, which is a useful way of checking it is working. You can transmit only in this mode and cannot see anything sent to you.

The RX mode is the same as the TX mode, except that any characters typed are not echoed, but are lost. So to talk to another user you must move the switch constantly from TX to RX and back again. There is a software switch for it but at the moment there is no software to run it.

Micronet 800 and the Prism VTX 5000 modem allow you access to the database, at a price The cost of the modem is £74.95 plus £13.15 per quarter plus VAT.
For that you get access to Prestel and Micronet 890; a free jack socket is fitted within 72 hours by British Telecom where your telephone was sited. Also the telephone has a new cord to allow it to plug into the socket.

Those charges are made quarterly, so it would be better to keep a note of how much time you spend and when, as you go along, so you do not receive a massive bill.

The usefulness of having all this information on tap 24 horns a day, seven days a week, will depend on how much it costs to get it and what is available. On Micronet the information side is just getting started for the Spectrum and the cost is high.

Prestel has more information in it, as it has been operating longer, and information on airlines, railways, jobs, clubs, theatres in any area of the country could be very useful if you want to make a reservation.

The more people who use the system, of course, the better the system becomes and possibly the cheaper it becomes.

The VTX modem provides the key to the door and I had no problems using it which were attributable to the modem. It is for users of the system to explore this new world like an adventure game, publishing the interesting pieces - and the annoying ones - for everyone else to see.

Using the mailbox facility, messages could arrive by Micronet and not by post in the near future, taking seconds instead of days. It could also solve the commuting problem by you doing your work from home via a Prestel terminal.

Name: Proface
Manufacturer: Sintech
Price: 100.00 DM
Blrub: Interface that allows you to connect a standard PC AT keyboard to your Speccy. Special features include warm-reboot key conbination, F-key assignments for words like FORMAT and Useage of arrow keys and numeric pad. Internal and extarnal versions. (internal 90.00 DM)
Source: FBI & Sintech's web site.
Notes: Sintech are one of the very few, if not the only manufacturer still making hardware for the Speccy.
They also make the MB02+ addon.

Name: Promer-SP
Manufacturer: Camel Products
Price: £29.95
Blurb: EPROM programmer.
Source: Sinclair User May 84

Name: Protek 1200 Modem
Manufacturer: Protek Computing Ltd.
Price: £59.95
Blurb: A modem four times as fast and half the price of the modem you've been looking for. 1200/1200 or 1200/75 baud rates. Accoustic coupling.
Source: Sinclair User May 84

Name: Protek Switchable Joystick Interface
Manufacturer: Protek Computing Ltd.
Price: £19.95
Blurb: No programming required. No additional software. Switchable between Protek (cursor keys), Kempston
and Sinclair.
Source: Sinclair User May 84

Name: PR-Adaptor
Manufacturer: PR Electronics
Price: £8.95
Blurb: Overheating? Noisy? Problems solved with PR Adaptor. No soldering or dismantling. Regulates PSU.
Source: ZX Computing Feb/Mar 84

Name: PowerBase
Manufacturer: Computer Add-ons
Price: £13.50
Blurb: Raised stand for your Spectrum includes Load/Save switch and On/Off switch. Saves wear&tear on connectors.
Source: Sinclair User Oct 83

[crustyasp46]

Spectrum Hardware Index - Q

None listed

Spectrum Hardware Index - R

Name: Rainbow Joystick & Sound interface
Manufacturer: Rainbow Electronics
Price: £24.00
Blurb: Programmable joystick interface with sound. Sound amplifier to boost your output.
Source: Sinclair User May 84

Name: Ramlok
Manufacturer: Adapt Electronics
Price: £8.00
Blurb: Device to stop the dreaded Ram-Pack wobble. Replaces the standard user port with a gold plated edge connector, complete with mechanical fastenings to hold interfaces tight.
Source: Sinclair User Feb 83

Name: Ramlok II
Manufacturer: Adapt Electronics
Price: £6.00
Blurb: Stop the dreaded 'wobble' with interfaces. Includes improved edge connector.
Source: ZX Computing Dec/Jan 84

Name: RamMusic Machine
Manufacturer: Ram Electronics Ltd.
Price: £49.95
Blurb: Transform your SPectrum into a powerful music computer. Sound sampling, eight voices, midi port, reverb, echo.
Source: Your Sinclair Jan 87

Name: RamPrint
Manufacturer: Ram Electronics Ltd.
Price: £34.95
Blurb: Printer interface. Centronics compatible. Built-in word processor (RamWrite). Joystick port.
Source: Your Sinclair Jan 87

RAMprint


The following article was taken from Sinclair User- Jan 1987

Ram Electronics, no doubt flushed with success alter its Music Machine, has produced the RamPrint parallel printer interface. Why splash out for this one rather than others available?

Ram has tried to make it more than just another port. For starters, there's the joystick port for those who play, as well as write, classics. The built-in printer driver software and Centronics cable are fairly standard, I suppose, but the ace is RamWrite.

RamWrite is a word processor. It's built into the interface on Rom in much the same way as Basic is built into your Spectrum, so it's available as soon as it's turned on.

Typing Lprint "© word" gets things going. RamWrite revolves around two windows, the biggest of which is used for editing. This takes up the top 21 lines of the screen and displays the document being worked on.

The bottom three lines make up the command and status window. Loading and Saving files, finding, replacing and deleting bits of text all take place here. Typing E in the command window starts you editing in the big screen. Break gets you back to command level.

The commands are all fairly simple, single-key, and the repertoire is fairly limited. As well as the main commands above, there's a `display text before printing' option. This shows your opus on screen pretty much as it will appear on paper. The display can be in either 32 or 64 column text, but unlike Tasword you can only edit in 32 column mode. The software can use tape or Microdrive without problem.

Editing is simple enough. Word-wrap and justification aren't shown on screen whilst editing is in progress (that's what the display text option is for), but end of paragraphs are.

As this is all happening in a printer interface, you might reasonably expect printer options aplenty. There are. There's the usual condensed, double-width, bold and underlining available, but there are also facilities to send any sequence of codes to your printer. So, no matter how peculiar and non-standard your facilities are (and some people's are right weird), RamWrite should be able to get at them.

That's about it for the word processor. It's a fairly simple beast, more suited to letter writing, invoice printing and similar small jobs than thousand-page theses, but none the worse for that. It took me about ten minutes to get everything going for the first time with my trusty Taxan Epson compatible-printer. Not bad.

Then there's the printer interface side of things. Using LPrinr from Basic does the business with little or no problems, and you have the choice of expanding tokens or just sending the codes straight through.

There are two kinds of Copy, One does a conventional if squashed, pixel by pixel copy of the screen onto the printer; the other is much faster, and just copies characters from the

screen. This is the mode that the Ramprint starts up In.

The documentation leaves a lot to be desired. It's eight pages of paperback size, photocopied dot-matrix output. It's fairly incomprehensible at times and with more than a couple of spelling mistakes. Common sense is usually enough to drive the product, but there's nothing in the handbook about running the interface from machine code, or any of the common word processors. Which is a shame.

Niggles notwithstanding, Ram has produced another little cracker. It's a good idea, and quite nicely implemented. Not as exciting as the Music Machine, but, in it's own way, just as worthy of success.

Name: RamTurbo Interface
Manufacturer: Ram Electronics Ltd.
Price: £22.95
Blurb: Turbo Charge Your Spectrum ! so the advert said...
Rom cartridge slot that took the Sinclair cartridge games such as Jetpack, Cookie and Horace. The twin joystick ports could support Kempston, Cursor or Sinclair. A small reset button on the side was held down on boot to select Kempston/Cursor.
Source: Sinclair User May 84

Name: RD Adaptor
Manufacturer: RD LAbs
Price: £9.50
Blurb: Adaptor board to allow you to connect the Digital I/O, Analogue and Clock interface.
Source: Sinclair User Jan 83

Name: RD Anologue I/O
Manufacturer: RD Labs
Price: ?
Blurb: Anologue I/O port. Requires RD Adaptor.
Source: Sinclair User Jan 83

Name: RD Clock
Manufacturer: RD Labs
Price: £51.24
Blurb: Real time clock/calendar. Battery backed. Requires RD Adaptor.
Source: Sinclair User Jan 83

Name: RD Digital I/O
Manufacturer: RD Labs
Price: £33.93
Blurb: Digital I/O interface. Requires RD Adaptor.
Source: Sinclair User Jan 83

Name: RD Digital Tracer
Manufacturer: RD Labs
Price: £55.00
Blurb: Tracer arm allows you to trace images direct to screen.
"Convert your Spectrum into your very own digital paintbox. without complicated programming you can paint anything quickly onto your TV screen. You can draw lines of varying thickness, blocks of colour or shading at a stroke and print text anywhere. Then you can englarge or reduce your picture, turn it upside down or even make a mirror image."
Source: Sinclair User Aug 83

RD Digital Tracer

The following review was taken from Crash 6 July 84

CONSTRUCTION:
The tracer consists of a double jointed arm with a cross hair sight at its end. The knee joints contain potentiometers which detect in combination with the supplied software, the exact location of the hair cross in reference to the tracers base. The tracer interface unit does not inspire confidence, in fact the enclosure is constructed out of a standard cassette box and certainly doesn't reflect the high cost of the unit. Nevertheless the tracer performed immaculately throughout the test and proved reliable.

INSTALLATION:
The tracer can reach a maximum tracing area of 300 x 300mm using automatic scaling, but the normal area is 256 x 176mm for normal draw mode. The base is fitted in position with a clamp or with the double-sided adhesive strip supplied. A template is provided for positioning the tracing sheet grid in the correct location. The interface of the tracer is plugged into the back of the Spectrum (with the power supply disconnected !). The software cassette DT2 is loaded and the system is ready.

SOFTWARE:
The cassette contains five program:
DRAW. All general purpose draw features including outline paint and copy.
SCALE. The drawing is transferred to screen scaled up or down, reversed left to right and upside down.
RETRACE. Stores a string of drawing commands and co-ordinates for later retracing. In practical terms this means that it stores an outline drawing which can be recalled repetitively.
GRAPHICS. Sets up an array of user defined graphics.
COMP. Comp 48 includes all four above programs. Comp 16 includes Draw, Scale and Retrace.

CONCLUSION:
The RD DIGITAL TRACER runs rings around the usual drawing utilities with and without light pens. The tracing arm is definitely more easy and accurate to use than a light pen. However its application lies not in sketching and freehand drawing, but is limited to copying or tracing of existing drawings. The extra features of Scale, Retrace and Graphics increase the efficiency of the system and makes it the most versatile tracing utensil on the market. The only drawback is the price of £55.50, which makes it a rather expensive Spectrum add-on, and limits its application to the serious or well off Spectrum owner.

Name: Red Box Starter Pack
Manufacturer: Red Boxes
Price: £129.00
Blurb: Consists of three units, Red Leader, Red 1 and Red 2. Red Leader is the microcomputer that uses the Spectrum as a terminal, from which it can be programmed. Once done, it can be left alone to do its task.
Red 1 is a slave unit that plugs into a standard wall power socket, Red 2 is an infra-red sensor. Both units connect to Red Leader, and can be controlled by it. Each unit can be 'read' and operated individually, and more units can be added. A built-in clock adds further uses, as each unit can be programmed to switch on or off at a given time. Ideal for home security.
Source: ZX Computing Dec 86

Name: Redditch I/O Port
Manufacturer: Redditch Electronics
Price: £18.95
Blurb: 24 line I/O port
Source: Sinclair Projects Oct/Nov 83

Name: REL4 (Analogue relay switch)
Manufacturer: Harley Systems Ltd.
Price: £55.00
Blurb: Max const. current 5A. Max voltage 250V. 1KW per channel. 4 channels.
Source: Sinclair User Oct 83

Name: REL 4.2 (Analogue relay switch)
Manufacturer: Harley System Ltd.
Price: £58.00
Blurb: As above.
Source: Sinclair User Dec 83

Name: Reset Switch Box
Manufacturer: Computerworld
Price: £4.49
Blurb: On/Off switch.
Source: Your Spectrum issue 11

Name: Reset Switch
Manufacturer: Central Electronics
Price: £3.49
Blurb: Saves wear & tear.
Source: Your Sinclair Jan 87

Name: Ricoll Action Replay
Manufacturer: Ricoll Electronics
Price: (just under £100)
Blurb: Sound sampler that allow record/playback and storing of samples. Glitch free loops and playback at any pitch.
Source: Your Spectrum No.3

Name: Ricoll Buffered Motherboard
Manufacturer: Ricoll Electronics
Price: £???
Blurb: Allows up to 8 interfaces to be attached to the Spectrum.
Source: Your Computer Jan 84

Name: Ricoll RIKB1 Keyboard
Manufacturer: Ricoll Electronics
Price: £37.95
Blurb: Full travel 41-key keyboard plus full sized spacebar. Shift keys on both sides. Metal case.
Source: Your Computer Jan 84

Name: Ricoll RIFG Sound Generator
Manufacturer: Ricoll Electronics
Price: £39.95
Blurb: Same unit as the RISG but has a programmable filters and two 8bit I/O ports.
Source: Your Computer Jan 84

Name: Ricoll RISG Sound Generator
Manufacturer: Ricoll Electronics
Price: £29.95
Blurb: 3 channel sound synthesiser. Built-in amplifier and speaker. Built-in sweep filter, low pass, band pass and high pass filter. 3 Programmable oscillators (0.01Hz to 62KHz). Envelope shaper.
Uses the AY3-8910 chip.
Source: Sinclair User Jan 85

Name: Rombo Vidi-ZX
Manufacturer: Rombo Productions
Price: £29.95
Blurb: Video digitiser for all Spectrums. Grabs at 10 fps.
Source: Your Sinclair Aug 88

Name: RomJoy
Manufacturer: Rom Digital Ltd. (Greece)
Price: 12.900 Greek Drachmas
Blurb: A programmable joystick i/f which plugged into the expansion port and with wires (later revision with switches)emulated various keypresses.
Source: Phoebus R. Dokos

Name: RomSound
Manufacturer: Rom Digital Ltd. (Greece)
Price: 9.900 Greek Drachmas
Blurb: Internal circuit that could output sound from the RF port.
Source: Phoebus R. Dokos

Name: ROM SP
Manufacturer: Camel Products
Price: £29.95
Blurb: EPROM reader. Up to 16k.
Source: Sinclair User May 84

Name: Rotronics Portable Case
Manufacturer: SMT
Price: £34.49
Blurb: The best accessory for your micro. Here is an ideal portable workstation. Contains places for your Spectrum, tape recorder, power supply, printer and tapes.
Source: Sinclair User Oct 83

Name: Rotronics Wafadrive
Manufacturer: SMT
Price: £99.95
Blurb: Mass data storage unit. Dual 128k drives. Centronics & RS232 ports.
Source: ZX Computing Aug/Sep 85

Rotronics Wafadrive


The following article was taken from Your Sinclair Issue 5 - May 1986

What does a Wafadrive offer me that I can't get from my cassette ?
Speed's the obvious answer - it takes just 40 seconds to load Spectral Writer, the free word processor that comes with the Wafadrive from a 16k wafer. But the really big advantage is that you can store programs as files on a wafer. It's a real chore finding where you've put a particular program on a cassette, especially if you've got loads and loads of them on there.

So just how fast is a Wafadrive ?
Well, it all depends on the position of the tape in the wafer and it depends on the size of the wafer. But as an average, Sherlock on a 64k wafer takes 43 seconds to load. You can uaually reckon on 2k of bytes going in every second plus the access time.

So it's not as fast as a microdrive ?
That depends as well. You're right, its not as fast at loading in the data. But, if you take into account the Wafadrives more friendly operating system and its easier command syntax, you'll probably find it takes you no longer to load in a program. All that "m";1; stuff goes straight out the window. It's just LOAD * "filename" and your away.

Yes, but what about reiability ? The reason i've been put off microdrives are all the stories about
how unreliable the cartridges are.
Microdrive cartridges do have a finite life but there's no way you're going to wear out a wafer cartridge. There's more tape in a wafer than in a microdrive cartridge so it's under less stress. And the protective cover that slides across when the tape's not in use stops people putting their grubby fingers all over your tape.

What other advantages are there over microdrives ?
Other than performance, you mean ? Well now there's price. £45.95's what you'd pay for a microdrive without the interface 1 - the Wafadrive plugs directly into the back of your Speccy, of course. And remember, you get two drives on a Wafadrive just like on a professional system.

[Note: This article was published when the Wafadrive was selling at £49.95]

Why are there three different sizes of wafer cartridge ?
That's so you can choose the most appropriate size for the job you want it to do. The larger the memory, the more tape in the cartridge and the longer it'll take to access the files. So, there's no point in choosing a 128k wafer to store programs that you're loading frequently. Much better to develop your programs on a small wafer and then transfer them onto a 64k one that has planty of storage and medium access times. The 128k wafer is really only useful for archiving because of the longer access times. but when you do want an old program, you can quickly find it by CATing the wafer - try that with all your old cassettes.

Is the capacity of the wafers exactly 16, 64 and 128k ?
No, that's just for convenience. On average you could expect to get about 75k on a 64k wafer and anywhere up to 140 odd k on a 128k.

Can I connect any full size printer via the Centronics and RS232 interfaces ?
Yes - with the one exception of the MCP 40.

[color=#BFFF80]I'm used to word-processing with Tasword II and i'd like to continue with it - is it possible to
transfer it to Wafadrive ?[/color]
Yes. You can get an information sheet that shows you how to do it directly from Rotronics. For anyone who hasn't used a word processor before, Spectral Writer will fulfil all your requirements.

Is it easy to transfer programs from cassette onto Wafadrive ?
If the programs are in Basic, you've got no problems. Just load them in, then save them onto the Wafadrive. Machine code programs can present more of a problem, especially if they're very large and don't leave around 2k for the Wafadrive Operating System. You'll find the transfer utility on the Rotronics Toolkit wafer very useful. It also includes routines to COPY to Epson printer, print graphics from Basic, a printer channel driver, a de-initialise routine and a file utility.

The following review was taken from Home Computer Course 1985

The initial lack of a reliable, fast storage medium has meant that the Sinclair Spectrum has generally been overlooked as a machine for serious applications. The introduction of Sinclair's own Microdrive system, however, did not deter independent companies from producing storage systems such as the Rotronics Wafadrive.

Although the Sinclair Spectrum has become one of the most popular home microcomputers, it has been criticised in many quarters as being unsuitable for the 'serious' user. This has led to the Spectrum being dismissed as merely a games machine. Part of the problem has centred around the keyboard, which has not allowed the user to seriously consider using the machine for applications such as word processing and database management. Recently, Sinclair Research has attempted to defuse some of this criticism by launching the Spectrum +, which is fitted with a QL-style keyboard.
However, this is only part of the problem. Other difficulties hounding the supporters of the Spectrum as a serious machine are the computer's lack of standard interfaces and, more importantly, a fast and reliable mass storage system vital to any business or serious application for the hobbyist. Of course, with the introduction of Interface 1 and the Microdrive, the Spectrum could at least claim to have these facilities available. But the suspicion remained that the Microdrive was slow and unreliable. Furthermore, although the software base on cassette for the Spectrum is enormous, very little software has made the transition to the medium used by the Microdrive. In a situation like this, third party suppliers tend to step into the gap and produce alternatives. Here we look at the first of two contenders in the race to dominate the Spectrum mass storage market - the Wafadrive from Rotronics.
Unlike Interface 1 and the accompanying Microdrive units, the Rotronics Wafadrive is an 'al-in-one' unit. That is to say that both the peripheral interfaces and the mass storage units are enclosed in a single box. The advantage of this system is that the units do not have the trailing leads necessary for the Sinclair system, but it does mean that they lack something of the flexibility of the Microdrives, which can be daisy-chained together to expand storage space.

THE LOOK OF THE MACHINE
The Wafadrive is encased in black plastic with a 35-way ribbon cable ending in a cartridge slot fitted onto the Spectrum's expansion bus. On the front of the unit there is a pair of wafer cartridge drive slots. Between the slots are three light emitting diodes (LEDs). The central light is the power-on indicator, while the other two indicate drive activity.
On the rear of the drive unit are three edge connectors. On the left is a parallel expansion bus to allow Interface 2 to be connected. The centre edge connector is a Centronics-compatible interface to allow the drive to be attached to a parallel printer. The third is an RS232 serial port that enables the device to be interfaced with modems and other serial devices. These interfaces are an improvement over those provided on the Sinclair Interface 1, where, for example, one still has to connect a second Centronics interface to the units edge connector in order for it to run parallel printers. Unfortunately, however, users will still have to shop around for Centronics printers or modems with Wafadrive-compatible cartridge connectors.
The stringy floppy wafers specifically designed for the Wafadrive are in many ways similar to those used on the Sinclair equivalents. Inside each wafer is a continuous loop of video-type cassette tape with a width of 1.8mm. This tape is used instead of the more conventional audio tape because of its improved endurance and information storage capabilities. Once formatted, this tape can contain approximately 128 Kbytes of data, although Rotronics has also made 64 and 16 Kbyte cartridges available.
The cartridges themselves are approximately twice the width of the Sinclair waters, although they are of similar length and breadth in their protective boxes. This gives the Rotronics cartridges an appearance of miniature cassettes. The Wafadrive cartridges do not need protective casings, as the delicate tape is protected by an automatic sliding cover, similar in design to that on the Sony 3 inch microfloppy disks, although the Rotronics protection is made out of plastic instead of metal. On the left side of the wafer is a write protect tab, which can be snapped off. Of course, this tab cannot be replaced once it is broken off and users will have to find some other method of re-enabling their cartridges.
The commands used by the Wafadrive are more or less identical to those used on the Sinclair Microdrives. In both systems the command is followed by a , indicating that the external storage device is to be accessed. Examples of this usage are SAVE * , LOAD * and VERIFY *. However, the Wafadrive system does have slight differences because there are always two wafadrives present, as opposed to the numerous Microdrives that could be in the system. For example, when formatting a Sinclair wafer one uses the command FORMAT 'm' ;0; "name", where m;0 refers to the number of the Microdrive being used. When using the Wafadrive, the command is altered to FORMAT * 'a:name', with the a: referring to the name of the drive in use. Note that with the Wafadrive, there can only be a section a: or b:, whereas on Microdrive the number can be from zero to seven.

THE 'STREAM' SYSTEM
The Wafadrive also takes advantage of the 'stream' system used on the Spectrum, in which there are 16 streams set aside for input/output management. Some of these are reserved for use by the screen and printer. However, channels four to 15 are available to other peripheral devices, and output streams to the Wafadrive are accessed by use of the OPEN # command. The Wafadrive also adds two extra streams to the system. Channels r and c (these letters can also be capitalised) are reserved for the RS232 and Centronics interfaces, respectively, and their usages are similar to the t and b channels - used when accessing the RS232 port on Interface 1.
There is an eight Kbyte ROM on board containing the extended BASIC commands used in controlling the system. This Wafadrive Operating System (WOS) is able to function by 'paging out' the lower eight Kbytes from the Spectrum's ROM, in much the same way that Interface 1 does. For example, the command LOAD * actually generates an error on the Spectrum: thus, when the BASIC interpreter encounters this command on the screen, it will call the error-handling routine. However, this call command will be intercepted by the WOS, which will then page in the Wafadrive ROM. This in turn will take over the error handling and interpret LOAD * as a command.
Compared with the Microdrives, the Rotronics Wafadrive is somewhat slower. For example, a 100 Kbyte Microdrive requires an average of 3.5 seconds to locate a piece of information, which is then transferred to the computer at a rate of up-to 19.2 Kbaud. The Wafadrive, on the other hand, can only manage a maximum transfer rate of 18 Kbaud, with a maximum access time of 45 seconds on a 128 Kbyte wafer. This is significantly slower, although this relative sluggishness is partially compensated for by its increased reliability. However, it must be noted that the Sinclair Microdrives were consistently faster than the Wafadrive in benchtest timings.
Although these access times are much faster than could possibly be achieved on cassette, they are still slower than comparable disk drive times. However, the Wafadrive, like the Microdrives incorporates a handy procedure when accessing the tapes catalogue. The catalogue is held on the first sector of the cartridge after the splice joining both ends of the tape together. Thus, to CATalogue a wafer, the drive has to wind the tape until it discovers the splice and can read the next suitable sector, After several seconds, the tape head will be past the catalogue sector. However, should the CAT command be entered again, instead of winding the whole of the tape round again, the drive will move for only a fraction of a second before displaying the catalogue again -it will be held in RAM once it has been called. Thereafter, the WOS merely checks to see whether the same wafer is inserted by looking at the next sector. If it is, the WOS will display the catalogue it already holds in RAM.
In keeping with the idea of implementing a mass storage system allowing the Spectrum to be used for more serious applications, Rotronics has included the Spectral Writer word processing program in the package. This is a relatively comprehensive system making full use of the Wafadrive. Functions such as reform paragraph, insert words and delete lines are called by using the Spectrum's Symbol Shift key in conjunction with 5 other keys. Other functions that access files held on wafer can be obtained by means of the options command: these include SAVE and LOAD text files from cassette or from Wafadrive. Spectral Writer is a fine word processor, although it does not enable you to set the line length on the screen. It is perhaps unfortunate that even when using a Spectrum+, the quality of the keyboard somewhat diminishes the Spectral Writer's efficiency.
Of course what makes or breaks any storage medium on a computer is the willingness of software houses to support it. At the moment this seems to be a serious drawback to the Wafadrive's success, since none of the major software houses are producing their programs on Wafadrive cartridges (this is also a problem that has been encountered by Sinclair itself). However, all is not lost for the Wafadrive user. At least one company is now producing a program that enables you to dump commercial software onto Wafadrive cartridges. This means that users will be forced to buy both the commercial cassette and a wafer to transfer it to, but a small price to pay for the vastly improved access times that are produced.
Another minor difficulty of the Wafadrive is the edge connectors on the back of the machine. Because they are non-standard, users must be willing to convert the interfaces themselves, or else they will have to look hard for peripherals with suitable connectors. But, although the Wafadrive does have its drawbacks, it is a finely made machine, and certainly a viable alternative to the Interface 1 and Microdrive provided by Sinclair Research.

Name: RZ1
Manufacturer: Stephen Adams
Price: £20.00
Blurb: Allows you to control the tape motor and input/output select.
Source: ZX Computing Aug/Sep 83

[crustyasp46]

Spectrum Hardware Index - S



Name: S-Pack
Manufacturer: DCP Microdevelopments Ltd.
Price: £49.95
Blurb: Speech synthesiser. Formaly known as the Digitalker. Has a vocabulary of 71 words which can be upgraded by purchasing extra voice packs in the form of ROMs.
Source: ZX Computing Apr/May 83
Note: Also known as the DCP Speach Unit.

Name: S-Print
Manufacturer: Technology Research Ltd.
Price: £19.95
Blurb: Standard centronics printer interface.
Source: Your Sinclair Jan 87

Name: Saga 1 Emperor Keyboard
Manufacturer: Saga Systems Ltd.
Price: £54.95
Blurb: 67 full travel keys. Stylish white case.
Source: Your Spectrum issue 11

Name: Saga Compliment
Manufacturer: Saga Systems Ltd.
Price: £299.00
Blurb: Everything you ever wanted in one box. Box contains...Saga 2 keyboard, 3.5" disk drive (256k), Parallel printer port, Joystick port, Video out port, PSU. Supplied with 'Last Word' word processor, 'Masterfile' database and 'Omnicalc' spreadsheet. {the black box is a thinly disguised Opus Discovery}
Source: Your Sinclair Jan 87

Name: Saga 2+ Keyboard
Manufacturer: Saga Systems Ltd.
Price: £54.95
Blurb: ???
Source: Your Sinclair Jan 87

Name: Saga 2001 Keyboard
Manufacturer: Saga Systems Ltd.
Price: £119.95
Blurb: Infra red keyboard. No wires. 101 full travel keys.
Source: Your Sinclair Jan 87

Name: Saga 2 Crusader Keyboard
Manufacturer: Saga Systems Ltd.
Price: £59.95
Blurb: Full travel keyboard with full sized space bar.
Source: Your Spectrum issue 4

Name: Saga 3 Elite Keyboard
Manufacturer: Saga Systems Ltd.
Price: £69.95
Blurb: 87 full travel keys.
Source: Your Sinclair Jan 87

Name: Saga Disk Interface
Manufacturer: Saga Systems Ltd.
Price: £69.95
Blurb: Controls 3, 3.5 or 5.25 inch drives, single or double sided, single or double density. Snapshot button to grab and save your programs to disk.
Source: Your Sinclair Nov 86

Name: Saga Disk Interface II
Manufacturer: Saga Systems Ltd.
Price: £89.95
Blurb: Features as Saga Disk Interface 1 but includes printer port.
Source: Your Sinclair Nov 86

Name: Saga GP Graphics Tablet
Manufacturer: Saga Systems Ltd.
Price: £79.95
Blurb: Graphics table for your Spectrum.
Source: Your Spectrum issue 17

Name: Saga Lo Profile Keyboard.
Manufacturer: Saga/Advanced Memory Systems
Price: £39.95
Blurb: Basically its the same as, or even exactley as, the Lo Profile Pro. seen elsewhere in this index. Later they changed the colour of the case from black to beige.
Source: Your Sinclair Oct 86

Name: Saga Soundboost
Manufacturer: Saga Systems Ltd.
Price: £9.50
Blurb: Internal sound amplifier.
Source: Your Spectrum issue 11

Name: Saga Flexicable
Manufacturer: Saga Systems Ltd.
Price: £12.45
Blurb: Extend your expansion bus with this flexible cable.
Source: Your Spectrum issue 11

Name: Saga Turbo Interface
Manufacturer: Saga Systems Ltd.
Price: £21.95
Blurb: Twin joystick ports. Rom cartridge slot.
Source: Your Sinclair Feb 86

Name: Scorpion Controller
Manufacturer: Scorpion ??
Price: £249.00
Blurb: External controller unit. CMOS battery backed so once programmed it can operate without the host Spectrum. 24k onboard Ram. Four digital outputs. Onboard processor. Uses Logo language.
Source: Sinclair User Dec 86

Name: Screenex Spectrum Doctor
Manufacturer: Screens Microcomputer Distribution
Price: £57.43
Blurb: A diagnostic and test unit for Spectrums. Plugging into the rear port, it will run tests and diagnose faults on the motherboard. 15 LED's convey the info about such things as address lines, data lines, CPU and ULA integrity. ROM and RAM checks are also done.
Source: Sinclair User Aug 86

Name: Seil/JMS Interface.
Manufacturer: Seil
Price: £99.00
Blurb: Midi interface. 1 input, 3 output. Supplied with Live Sequencer software. Originaly imported from
Germany, but now available in the UK.
Source: Your Sinclair July 86

Name: Sinclair Official Spectrum + Upgrade
Manufacturer: Sinclair Research Ltd.
Price: £20.00
Blurb: Keyboard and casing upgrade to make your old rubbery Spectrum into a Spectrum Plus.
Source: Your Computer March 85

Name: Sizzle Killer
Manufacturer: Spectral Products
Price: £5.99
Blurb: Prevents buzz and overheating problems.
Source: ZX Computing Oct/Nov 83

Name: Skywave FORTH
Manufacturer: Skywave Software
Price: £49.95
Blurb: FORTH on ROM complete with a RS232 and Parallel interface.
Source: ZX Computing Oct/Nov 83

Name: Slowmo
Manufacturer: Cambridge Computing Research
Price: £14.95
Blurb: Slow down or freeze your games.
Source: Your Spectrum issue 11

Name: Soft-Rom
Manufacturer: Expandor Systems
Price: £44.95
Blurb: The ultimate tool for machine code programmers. 16k add-on board allows you to page out the Spectrum Rom and use your own. Gives 64k of usable Ram. Extensive use of NMI. Non-destructive reset.
Source: Your Sinclair Jan 86

Name: Softest Interface
Manufacturer: Softest
Price: £35.00
Blurb: Printer interface for all the Tandy printer/plotters.
Source: ZX Computing Dec/Jan 84

Name: Solidisk Programmable Joystick Interface
Manufacturer: Solidisk Technology
Price: £8.50
Blurb: Programmable interface with little information !
Source: Sinclair User Aug 84

Name: Soundrive
Manufacturer: Flash Inc.
Price: £10.00
Blurb: Easy to use 4 channels of 8-bit sound board. There are some digital music trackers and demos with Soundrive support. The device was released as circuit diagram. The Soundrive family has some different models, like "Soundrive" and "Soundrive Baby".
Source: Flash Inc.

Name: SP48 (32k upgrade for 16k Spectrums)
Manufacturer: East London Robotics
Price: £23.00
Blurb: Easy installation without soldering. Upgrades your Spectrum to the full 48k.
Source: Sinclair User Oct 83

Name: SP80 (64k paged memory upgrade)
Manufacturer: East London Robotics
Price: £46.00
Blurb: 48k + a switched extra 32k.
Source: Sinclair User Oct 83

Name: Spec-Mate
Manufacturer: A.T.& Y. Computing Ltd
Price: £29.95
Blurb: Back-up interface. Snapshot any program to tape, Microdrive, Opus or Beta drives. Poke facility.
Source: Your Sinclair Aug 86

Name: SpeccyDOS
Manufacturer: unknown
Price: cca. 8.000.- HUF in the currency exchange rate of the 80's
Blurb: Disk interface for any 360 or 720KB FDD's
Source: Jozsef "Sam. Joe" Samu

Name: Specspansion
Manufacturer: F B Tronics
Price: £18.50
Blurb: 4 slot motherboard and 24-line bi-directional programmable portboard. On board +5 volts regulator. Built in address decoding available for 3 of the slots. Provision for 4 additional cards. (coming soon RS232, A-D converter, relay and joystick cards).
Source: Sinclair User Oct 83

Name: Spectel
Manufacturer: Jaytronics
Price: £29.95 (£9.95 for software)
Blurb: Allows you to auto-dial and re-dial telephones numbers stored via the software program.
Source: ZX Computing Apr/May 84

Name: Spectre Comms Pack
Manufacturer: Spectre Communications
Price: £94.00
Blurb: Twin pack consisting of the Q-Mod, a V23 modem originally designed for the QL, and a ROM based interface to make it work with the Spectrum. The modem supports 1200/75 and 1200/1200 and 300/300. The ROM based software allows both viewdata and scrolling BBS's to be used. The 300/300 option did include a bitof wire cutting though !
Source: PCW July 86

Spectre Comms Pack

The following article was taken from PCW- July 1986

It's an ill wind that blows nobody good, and the conspicuous lack of QL owners beating a path to Tandata's door to buy the QMod V23 modem has created an entrepreneurial opportunity for Spectre Communications. Take one Qmod, attach a Rom-based Spectre Comms pack for the Spectrum and you've got a neat setup that will operate at 1200/1200/15 and 300/300 (sort of) for under £100. Spectrum owners are of course liable to be a bit perplexed when they unpack the kit and find the packaging's got ''QL'' written all over it, but no matter.

The comms package is available separately, but is designed to match the QMod, the complete kit consisting of two black boxes that stack together at the rear of the machine. Plug in the comms pack, fit the QMod onto the expansion bus on top of it, switch on and you're ready to roll. The Rom software cuts in immediately on power up, and presents you with an options menu allowing you to log on or off, go into viewdata terminal mode, save, view or print frames (on a ZX Printer), download software, edit messages and frames or go into scrolling bulletin board mode.

The main options menu will either exe-cute the function directly, or will move into a sub-menu presenting other options, log on/off, for example, being split into auto log on, manual log on and log off. If you choose either of the first two you part company with the user friendly menu sys-tem, at this point, as the procedures are the same, and you're simply presented with the query ''Identity?'' Reference to the manual, however, reveals that auto log on is for use with Prestel systems, where identity and password can be entered prior to logging on. This stores the identity and password string in memory, while manual log on is the same, except that doesn't

This is one instance where the menus, although nearly user-friendly enough for you to be able to do without a manual, fall down. There's also a problem here with the comms pack itself, which has two switches; a line switch and a mode switch, but as neither is labelled, and the manual fails to tell you which is which, it's possible some users will be confused.

Even new users should be able to work out with a bit of thought, but a couple of sticky labels wouldn't go amiss here, and a couple of extra lines in the software indict-ing which switch is which would also be helpful. For the record, the line switch is the one on the right, while the left hand one, the mode switch, takes you between 1200/1200 and 1200/75. The latter is accessed by pushing the mode switch in, and the former by 'out'. Actually getting onto a system is easy, though again it could be a little more obvious. The Spectre doesn't support auto-dial, so with the line switch out you phone the system then push it in when you get a carrier. You're then effectively into the system.

The Spectre seemed to log onto Prestel easily enough, and although I initially had trouble with Telecom Gold at 1200/75 and 1200/1200 this seemed to be related to the speed with which the software reacted to a carrier (Gold drops you very quickly if it thinks you're wasting its time) and - possi-bly - to line noise, the local phone system not being all it might be.

Storage and printing of frames are among the bells and whistles. Frames can be stored on tape or Microdrive, or can be placed in memory, while although printing is normally on a ZX Printer the manual does tell you which line to modify if you want to use a different printer. In addition to this there's a downloading menu, and offline editing for messages. Bulletin board access is catered for at 1200/75 and 1200/1200, but 300/300 can be produced by a simply wiring job on a cable to Spectre's built-in R5232 port (Sinclair Interface I standard), and by using an external V21 or V23 modem. The scrolling terminal menu controls bulletin board protocols, and can be used to alter word length, parity, stop bits, echo and line feed.

From the Spectrum owner's point of view I'd say the Spectre package is decid-edly A Good Thing. It's got a certain amount of flexibility to it in that you aren't tied to owning a dedicated Prestel ma-chine, yet it's simple enough to use for it to be attractive to people new to communica-tions. It would have been nice to have 300/300 built in, and nice to have just a shade more nursemaiding from the software, but overall I'd say it was a good buy.

Name: Spectrum Amplifier
Manufacturer: CP Software
Price: £5.95
Blurb: Boost the Spectrums sound. Includes volume control, amplifier and speaker. Plugs into the EAR socket. Doubles as a radio when not connected.
Source: Sinclair User Apr 83

Name: Spectrum Beep Booster
Manufacturer: B.A. Reader
Price: £6.95
Blurb: Boost your beeps !
Source: ZX Computing Apr/May 83

Name: Spectrum Computer Desk
Manufacturer: PH Scientific Products
Price: £16.00
Blurb: At last a Spectrum computer desk that has everything. Made from tough black ABS. Holds TV, Spectrum, PSU, Printer or tapes.
Source: Sinclair User Aug 83

Name: Spectrum Interface
Manufacturer: Ram Electronics Ltd.
Price: £9.95
Blurb: Joystick interface. Kempston compatible.
Source: ZX Computing Aug/Sep 85

Name: Spectrum KC
Manufacturer: Nidd Valley Micro Products Ltd
Price: £8.95
Blurb: Standard Kempston Compatable joystick interface.
Source: Crash issue 21 (Oct 85)

Name: Spectrum RGB Output Module
Manufacturer: Adapt Electronics
Price: £36.95
Blurb: Allows you to use your Spectrum on a proper RGB monitor. True TTL/Anologue outputs.
Source: Your Spectrum issue 18

Name: Spectrum Speaker
Manufacturer: J. Hunter
Price: £5.50
Blurb: Boxed booster with speaker and volume control.
Source: Sinclair User Oct 82

Name: Spectrum Speech Synthesiser
Manufacturer: Spirit Instruments
Price: £39.50
Blurb: Speech synthesiser using the allophone system. Includes built-in speaker.
Source: ZX Computing Aug/Sep 83

Name: Spectrum Stand (no official name in advert)
Manufacturer: E.R. Cameron & Sons Ltd
Price: £23.50
Blurb: Wooden stand to hold your computer, cassette, printer and tapes.
Source: ZX Computing Feb/Mar 84

Name: Spectrum-Stick
Manufacturer: Grant Design Ltd.
Price: £9.95
Blurb: Fits over the cursor keys and provides cursor emulation.
Source: ZX Computing Feb/Mar 84

Name: Spirit Steering Wheel
Manufacturer: Spirit Software
Price: £8.95 (inc game)
Blurb: Controller produced for Spirit Software's Fomrula One game. advert reads:
"Naturally you cannot steer a racing car effectivley by pushing buttons or wiggling a joystick, so we have
developed a steering wheel that fits to the Spectrum."
Source: Your Computer March 84

Name: SS1 Speech Synthesiser
Manufacturer: Computer Add-ons
Price: £39.00
Blurb: Make amazing speech effetcs on your Spectrum. Plugs into rear port. Includes Volume control.
Own speaker.
Source: Sinclair User Oct 83

Name: Stack Light Rifle
Manufacturer: Stack Computer Services
Price: £29.95
Blurb: Now you can shoot at the screen ! Plastic light gun allowing you to aim at targets on screen. Splits into smaller pistol stlye gun. Supplied with 3 games.
Source: Sinclair User May 84

Stack Light Rifle

The following article was taken from Sinclair User - May 1984

In the dim dark past when video games consisted of black and white tennis with that distinctive 'boing' , there
was then a new idea of having a seperate gun to fire at the TV screen. The Stack Light Rifle takes the idea a
stage further with a four-part sniper's rifle and high resolution colour.
The rifle is supplied with three games on tape, High Noon, Shooting Gallery and Grouse Shoot for the 48k
Spectrum.
The main pistol is attached to 12ft of cable which ends in a dead-ended ZX81-size connector whcih plugs into
the Spectrums user port. To the pistol you can attach a barrel, stock and telescopic sight.
Of the three games, High Noon requires the greatest skill. In it a cartoon-style gun fighter will walk across the
screen and you six shots with which to kill him. Of the other games, Grouse Shoot entails shooting at rising
birds while in Shooting Gallery you have to shoot a bouncing ball.
The rifle is well-made and suprisingly accurate. It is perhaps regrettable that the present trend towards death
and destruction games should result in the appearance of such a device. If, however, that is what you want,
then it is, arguably, the best of its type.

The following review was taken from Home Computer Advanced Course 1984

The Stack Light Rifle (SLR) is designed to bring added realism to 'shoot-em-up' games on home computers. Combining the appearance of a gun with a camera-style optical system, the SLR is hardly a precision instrument, but its use of light pen technology allows the user to dispense with joystick or keyboard control.

The main component of the Stack Light Rifle System is the electronic target pistol that is connected to the
computer by a generous length of lead. At the computer end, depending on the version, there is a connector for
the appropriate socket or edge connector. On the ZX Spectrum version the connector contains two chips and a
couple of simple components to interface the main electronics inside the gun to the computer. To make the pistol more accurate and to turn it into a rifle - it is supplied with a shoulder stock that clips and secures to the rear of the pistol, a barrel and a make-believe telescopic sight.
The electronics inside the pistol consist of a light detector or photo-diode and a small amplifier and buffer. Light
coming down the barrel is focused by a small plastic lens onto the photo-diode, and the device is sensitive
enough to detect the changes in intensity of the picture. Once boosted by the amplifier, the signal is clipped to
provide a digital pulse rather than an analogue waveform and is then fed to the computer via the switch. The
screen position that is being scanned at that moment is the position the rifle is pointing at. As the computer
receives the pulse from the Light Rifle it compares the value of its scan registers with the screen position of the
target and, if a match is found, the played has scored a direct hit.

Variants of the Light Rifle are currently available for the ZX Spectrum, Commodore Vic20 and Comrnodore 64 and all perform the same function. Stack provides three games on cassette with the Light rifle but that's about the limit of the support provided. Although various independent software houses produce games that would appear to be eminently suited to this type of user control, very few have actually produced or converted programs to work with it; Micrornania is an exception. Possibly even more damaging to potential sales of the Light rifle is the fact that Stack doesn't provide any driver routines to allow users to write their own programs. This omission, together with the lack of any technical details on how it works, means that the Light Rifle is not a good alternative to a joystick.

The Light Rifle is based on the same principle of operation as a light pen, but is much bigger and is designed to
be held up to about three metres (10 feet) from the television set rather than in contact with the screen. To help
filter out any ambient light, the Light Rifle is provided with both a long dark tube (the barrel) and a lens. These
combine to provide a reasonable - if not perfect - degree of accuracy, and allow the user to shoot-em-up from the comfort of an armchair. The games that are supplied are rather poor examples of what should be possible; both the use of graphics and the 'playability' are hardly outstanding.

One of the major problems in programming light pens, or even giant versions such as the Light Rifle, is that the
program needs to be very efficiently written. In all the examples supplied by Stack, the games come to a halt
when the trigger is pulled. This is because the requirement of continuously scanning the screen, as is usually
done for a light pen, would slow the games down too much. So when the trigger is pulled on the Light Rifle, the
software must freeze the action and establish whether the target on the screen is aligned with the position of
the gun. Once the software has determined whether or not the player has hit the target, the game can continue.
In theory when the trigger has been pulled, the amount of code necessary to establish the screen position of
the next scan detected by the gun should be very small indeed, but observing the software in action indicates
that this isn't always the case.

On a computer such as the BBC, for which there is as yet no version of the Light Rifle, the provision of a light
pen facility within the video chip would make the task of the software much simpler. The Commodore 64 offers
such a system, but the ZX Spectrum, on which the Light Rifle was tested, lacks the facility and the deficiency
shows up in the time taken to calculate the position of the rifle when the trigger is pulled.

Name: Stack 100 Light Pen
Manufacturer: Stack Computer Services
Price: £28.75
Blurb: None ?
Source: Your Spectrum issue 4

Name: Star Mouse
Manufacturer: Saga Systems
Price: £49.95
Blurb: Mouse ! Single button mouse with software.
Source: Sinclair User Dec 86

Name: Stavi 128 Upgrade
Manufacturer: Stavi
Price: unknown
Blurb: Upgrade your 48k machine to a full 128k +2. (no midi,rs or joystick) Originally for the Timex machines it later became available for the standard 48k.
Source: Bajtek Magazine (Polish) 1990

Name: Stonechip Programmable Joystick Interface
Manufacturer: Stonechip Electronics
Price: £24.95
Blurb: Enables any software to be used with a joystick.
Source: Sinclair User Dec 83

Name: Stonechip Echo Amplifier
Manufacturer: Stonechip Electronics
Price: £19.95
Blurb: Attractive box with controls, amplifier and speaker.
Source: Sinclair User Dec 83

Name: Stonechip Keyboard
Manufacturer: Stonechip
Price: £39.95
Blurb: 44 key, full travel keyboard. Built-in amplifier with volume and tone control. Reset button. Single key
Delete and Extended mode.
Source: Sinclair User Jan 85

Name: Stop-Reveal -(unable to assertain if this is h/w or s/w)
Manufacturer: Kerr
Price: £5.95
Blurb: Stop virtually any programs, even machine code. Reveals listing in programs. (even m/code)
Source: Your Spectrum issue 11

Name: Straight Adaptor
Manufacturer: Stephen Adams
Price: £9.00
Blurb: Converts the Spectrum expansion bus to the same as the ZX81.
Source: ZX Computing Aug/Sep 83

Name: Suncom Joy-Sensor
Manufacturer: Consumer Electronics Ltd.
Price: £29.95
Blurb: Joystick with a difference. Touch senitive controls.
Source: Computer & Video Games Sep 83

Name: Sunset Video Digitiser
Manufacturer: Sunset
Price: £126.50
Blurb: 625 line digitiser. 256x192 x 4bit video digitising.
Source: Your Sinclair Jun 86

Name: Super Amplifier
Manufacturer: Magenta Electronics Ltd.
Price: £17.98
Blurb: 250mW output. Variable attack, sustain and delay. Echo feature.
Source: Sinclair User Sep 83

Name: Super-Interface FL1
Manufacturer: Kobrahsoft
Price: £24.95
Blurb: An interface that allows you to convert normal tapes into fast-loaders. Save the tape back at one of four speeds.
Source: Your Computer May 1986

Name: Super-Interace MDI
Manufacturer: Kobrahsoft
Price: £24.95
Blurb: Back-up interface to allow programs to be stopped and saved to microdrive/wafa or disk drive. Code is
compressed during save. Saved programs can be loaded without the interface.
Source: Your Sinclair Jan 87
Note: The same device was later sold by Suredata (YS Jan 87)

Name: Super Sound Spec-amp
Manufacturer: Kelwood Computer Cases
Price: £7.00
Blurb: Fully adjustable Spectrum sound amplifier. Plugs into mic socket.
Source: Sinclair User Oct 83

Name: Swift Disk
Manufacturer: Sixword
Price: £149.99
Blurb: Disk drive, interface and PSU. 3.5 or 5.25 inch drives holding 640k (formatted). Up to four drives can be attached. Transfer is about 7k/sec. Includes joystick port and snapshot button for transfering files. Also has complete hardware Microdrive emulation to support MD comapt. programs.
Source: Crash Issue 44 Sep 87

Name: System 7 Reset Switch
Manufacturer: System 7
Price: £5.00
Blurb: On/off and reset switch. Saves wear & tear.
Source: Your Sinclair Jun 86

[crustyasp46]

Spectrum Hardware Index - T

Name: Tactile Keyboard
Manufacturer: Tactile
Price: £9.95 - (price correction in SU Sep 83)
Blurb: Box that fits over your Spectrum and allows pictures or words to placed on various enlarged pads. This can be used as a teaching aid.
Source: Sinclair User Aug 83

Name: Tandy TRS-80 Colour Printer
Manufacturer: Tandy
Price: £149.00
Blurb: Includes interface. Red, blue, green and black print.
Source: Sinclair User May 84

Name: Tape Head De-magnetiser
Manufacturer: Fulcrum Products
Price: £4.75
Blurb: Removes build-ups of magnetism on your tape heads.
Source: ZX Computing Aug/Sep 83

Name: Tasman Parallel Printer Interface
Manufacturer: Tasman Software
Price: £29.90
Blurb: Centronics standard interface.
Source: Your Sinclair Jan 87

Name: Tasman RS232 Printer Interface
Manufacturer: Tasman Software
Price: £29.90
Blurb: Standard RS232 printer interface.
Source: Your Spectrum issue 8

Name: Telesound 84
Manufacturer: Compusound
Price: £9.95
Blurb: The smallest modulator ever. Fits inside your Spectrum and outputs sound and video to your tv. Volume control. Keyboard click option. Hear programs as they load.
Source: Sinclair User Dec 83
Note: There was a Telesound 82 (Sinclair User Oct 82) and I presume therefore, a Telesound 83 as well.

Name: The Messenger
Manufacturer: Sam Computers Ltd.
Price: £22.00
Blurb: Device allowing data to be transfered from the Speccy to the Sam. It plugged into the expansion port on the Speccy and into the midi port of the Sam. It contained an NMI button that halted the system and transfered either the screen$ or the contents of Ram.
Source: Ruggiero Antonio

Name: The Remote
Manufacturer: Blue Alpha Electronics
Price: £34.99
Blurb: Two boxes that allow you to play games at a distance from the TV. Basically its an ultrasound joystick adaptor that uses standard joysticks. You plug one box into the Speccy and the other into your joystick. It has a usable distance of up to 8 metres at a 30 degree single angle.
Source: Your Sinclair Iss 92 August 93

Name: Thurnall Disk System
Manufacturer: Thurnall
Price: £199.00
Blurb: 3inch drive. 150k storage. Built-in DOS. (RS232 port optional extra)
Source: Your Spectrum issue 8

Name: Time Controller
Manufacturer: Glanmire Electronics
Price: £38.50
Blurb: Real time clock and input/ouput port. Battery backed up.
Source: ZX Computing Oct/Nov 83

Name: Transform Keyboard
Manufacturer: Transform Ltd.
Price: £69.95
Blurb: 59 full travle keys. Key pad.
Source: ZX Computing Aug/Sep 85

Name: Trickstick
Manufacturer: East London Robotics
Price: £28.00
Blurb: The Tricksick - A revolution that runs rings around ordinary joysticks. Its revolutionary light sensitive controls will let you go where you want, when you want and at the speed you want. Fully compatible with the Kempston format.
Source: Sinclair User Oct 83

Trickstick


The following advert was taken from Sinclair User - October 1983

You know what it's like when there's something closing in fast and your joystick won't do what
your brain wants it to.

It won't let you loop or curve the way you'd like, or arc and spin at the speed you want.

You can't get away quick enough, so what happens? ZAP !

For just £28.00 (+ postage), the Trickstick responds at the speed of light.

With it's revolutionary light sensitive controls and its own interface, the Trickstick lets you go where you want, at the speed you want. Not just up and down or side to side, but round and round in any sized curve or loop you need to build up really big scores. And the Trickstick is easy to use. All you do is pass you thumb or fingers over the controls and your craft responds immediately.
And because the only moving parts are the firing buttons, the new Trickstick will last far longer than old fashioned joysticks.

Best of all, for £28.00 (+ postage), you get a Trickstick, a special training program and a chance to enter the National Trickstick Championships.

Up to eight players can play simultaneously.
For the very first time, you can now play with up to seven of your mates.
With our specially written game, you can either play against the computer, against one friend, inteams of two or three or however you want. Just by plugging in extra interfaces to each other, up to eight of you can loop the loop and battle it out. All at the same time.

So if you thought computer games were already exciting, wait until you get your hands on a Trickstick.

Revolutionary new software.
Developed especially for use with the Sinclair ZX Spectrum and fully compatible with standard Kempston software, the Trickstick makes your existing software even more fun. But because its so revolutionary, it's actually made possible a whole new generation of software. The first of this new generation is Attaktics, a brand new game which really brings out the full potential of the Trickstick and is available for only £7.50 when you buy your Trickstick.

Review from Sinclair User May 1984

The long-awaited Trickstick from East London Robotics has been released. It is a 7" long black plastic cylinder with six touch-sensitive pads which simulate the four usual joystick movements plus two fire buttons. It is complete with an interface which plugs into the back of the Spectrum. Up to eight can be plugged in at any time
and there is an option to give proportional movement on specially-written games. Normally it simulates the Kempston joystick, so there are many games readily available on which it can be used.
The touch pads are drawing pins which use you body as an aerial to pick up mains hum. That is converted by electronics to simulate the keypress. As some people are better 'aerials' than others, the sensitivity of the stick
can be altered by a small screw near the top.
The stick was tried on a number of games including the trainer tape supplied, and worked well. It takes some time to get used to it, unlike a joystick but, once mastered, was just as useful. The only difficulty is that you need two hands to use it, so for games where you have to use the keyboard as well as a joystick, you have to keep removing your hands.
If you are looking for a joystick, the Trickstick is worth considering. As it has no moving parts it should withstand a good deal of use and, provided you can spend time getting used to it, it is quicker than most joysticks.

Name: Triga Command Joystick
Manufacturer: Datel Electronics
Price: £19.99
Blurb: The top American joystick is here. Includes interface.
Source: Sinclair User May 84

Name: Triton QD
Manufacturer: Triton
Price: £119.00
Blurb: 2.8inch disk drive. Stores 100k per disk. Trasfer rate of 101 kbits per sec.
Source: Crash 21 (Oct85)

Triton QD

The following review was taken from Crash 21 Oct 85

HARDWARE:
Large cream coloured disk drive unit with integrated power supply and mains lead to black coloured interface box which connects to the Spectrum system edge connector. Interface provides an expansion port for printer or other add-on. A slide switch is provided for drive selection. Interface 1 may not be connected to the system, as it uses the same ROM configuration.

SYSTEM DESCRIPTION:
Although the TRITON QUICK DISK uses hardjacketed floppy disk media, it falls under the category of the stringy floppy systems, as the access is not random but sequential. Unlike the standard disk drives where individual tracks may be accessed by positioning the read/write head with the step motor, the TRITON QD combines the floppy disk rotation with a continuous linear tracking of the head and thus creates a single spiral track along the disk similar to a record groove.
The spiral is completes within eight seconds whereupon the linear motion disengages and returns to the start position. This means that consecutive access time is restricted to eight seconds. In general, this works out faster than the Microdrive and similar to the Wafadrive. Formatting requires only one go and this means an extremely fast formatting time. The interface caters only for one drive and should a second drive be required, a second interface will have to be installed.

OPERATING SYSTEM:
Extended Basic residing in shadow ROM.
FORMAT <drive number>, CAT * <drive number>, SAVE * <drive number> "filename",
LOAD * <drive number> "filename", ERASE * <drive number> "filename"

CRITICISM:
Slow access due to loop time. Fairly expensive for stringy floppy type drive without serial or parallel ports.

MEDIA:
2.8inch jacketed floppy disks with write protect tab.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS:
Max number of drives per system: 2
Storage capacity (formatted): 100k (2 sides)
Number of sectors: 20 per side
Sector size: 2.5Kbytes.
Data transfer rate: 101.6 Kbits per sec.
Recording density: 4410 BPI

TIMING:
Formatting: 8 sec.
Cataloguing: 2.5 - 8 sec.
Loading screen: 2.5 - 8 sec.

Name: Trojan Light Pen
Manufacturer: Trojan Products
Price: £17.25
Blurb: Create exciting graphics on screen.
Source: ZX Computing Aug/Sep 85

Name: Touchmaster Graphics Tablet
Manufacturer: Touchmaster Ltd.
Price: £149.95
Blurb: A4 sized graphics tablet.
Source: Your Spectrum issue 11

Touchmaster Graphics Tablet

The following review was taken from Your Spectrum issue 11

We've seen a few digitisers around for the ZX Spectrum, but only one that's been promoted heavily as a replacement for the keyboard! The Touchmaster graphics tablet also claims to operate (with a suitable interface, of course) with almost all the current home computers.

Based on an A4-sized pressure sensitive membrane, the Touchmaster comes in a neat grey case measuring some 350mm by 330mm by 35mm. The back of the case is raised slightly so that it tilts the tablet to form a convenient drawing surface. All connections to the tablet are at the rear, and it's here that one of the differences between the Touchmaster and it's rivals becomes obvious.
Power is supplied from a plug-in transformer and a single red LED shows that the power in on. . . . but there's no power switch fitted. Presumably, to allow the tablet to be used with as many home computers as possible, there are both parallel and serial interface sockets on the rear panel, together with an unexplained socket for a 'foot switch' - should you want to play 'footsie' with the device !
Whatever it's for, its not mentioned in the accompanying hardware manual.

Using the same sort of membrane technology as ZX81/Spectrum keyboards, the tablet provides a 256 by 236 point resolution. The upper, carbon firbre layer is held away from a lower resistive film by an insulating mesh. Thus, if you apply pressure to any point on the upper layer, the two layers are forced into contact; the actual pressure point is determined as a co-ordinate by a microprocessor built into the tablet that scans the top film in one direction while scanning the lower resistive film in the other. Once a point of contact has been established, the co-ordinate is relayed to the Spectrum via the parallel interface. (on a point of interest, it's worth noting that the Touchmaster's resolution is well below the hi-res screen displays on several home computers it's available for; for example it'll be impossible to resolve the Touchmaster's output to a single dot on the BBC Micro Mode 0).

A plug-in interface is provided as part of the Touchmaster package to connect it to the Spectrum. Along with a generous length of ribbon cable, the 'black box' interface unit contains a standard Z80 PIA chip; an extension connector is provided out the back of the unit for additional peripherals.

As a piece of hardware, the Touchmaster tablet would seem to have a lot going for it - especially when compared with its rivals like the Grafpad. Its built robustly and offers a full A4-sized drawing area that can be used for both drawings and touch selection of menus. Its a shame that the documentation should be so poor compared with the standard of the tablet itself.
The Touchmaster graphic tablet does provide users with the means to copy drawings and diagrams from paper to the Spectrum's screen, although the serious artist will probably be forced to re-load the picture under control of something like Melbourne Draw to make the final version worth close inspection.

The following review was taken from Home Computer Advanced 1984

Many different devices have been marketed as aids in the construction of graphics displays. The Touchmaster graphics tablet is unique in that it may be used with most of today's popular home computers and, so the manufacturer claims, can also be used as a simplified replacement keyboard.

Today's best-selling computers all support high resolution graphics displays. However, unless ready written graphics software is available, much time and effort is required to create such displays and many features are not fully utilised. A 'sketch' program is not sufficient because the user will often wish to copy an existing image into the computer instead of simply drawing freehand.

Several digitisers have been marketed for this purpose, but these have mostly been designed for use with specific machines, such as the BBC Micro or ZX Spectrum. The Touchmaster graphics tablet is designed to work with a wide range of home machines (some of which will require a suitable interface or cable). This device is also being promoted as a replacement keyboard, but the simplicity of its design means that such use is restricted to selection between a number of menu options or for simple games control. A computer keyboard is still required for data entry, as well as for loading the Touchmaster software itself.

The Touchmaster is fitted in a neat grey case measuring 350 by 330 by 35mm. The back of this is slightly raised, forming a convenient angle for drawing. A plug-in transformer is supplied, with a single red LED indicating when power is on; however, no on/off switch is fitted. To allow the tablet to be used with a wide range of home machines, both serial and parallel interface sockets are fitted to the rear panel, together with a socket - not mentioned in the manuals - for a foot switch. In fact, the manuals are barely adequate: the hardware manual
gives instructions on the connection of the tablet and provides a number of simple BASIC programs for reading Co-ordinates, but is insufficiently detailed.

The tablet relies on the membrane technology that was developed on the ZX81 and Spectrum keyboards, and provides a 256 by 256 pixel resolution. The upper layer is separated from the lower resistive film by an insulating mesh, and pressure on the upper layer forces it to make contact with the film. The tablet contains a microprocessor that scans the top film in one direction while scanning the lower layer in another, and the co-ordinate of the 'contact point' is then sent over both serial and parallel interfaces. The serial interface is used to connect the tablet to the BBC Micro, while the parallel interface is required for use with the Commodore 64, Vic-20, Spectrum and Dragon. The Touchmaster's resolution is less than that provided by many hi-res screen displays, so BEC Micro owners, for example, will be unable to resolve to a single pixel in Mode 0.

MULTIPAINT PROGRAM

A drawing program called Multipaint is supplied with the Touchmaster. This provides a demonstration of the facilities provided, but is hardly a comprehensive graphics aid. A plastic template gives a menu of the facilities available, with the selected option displayed in a 'status' window at the bottom of the screen Five different brush types may be used; each of these can be any width from two to 32 pixels, in steps of two pixels. The window also shows the current drawing mode - Dots, Points or Freehand - and the selected foreground and background colours. Colours may be changed by pressing the required option on the menu until the desired choice appears in the status window.

Once the correct colours and brush types have been selected, further options are available for the creation of boxes, circles, polygons and 'rubber-handed' lines. A stylus is supplied with the package, but finger pressure may be used instead. The Touchmaster, with its larger tablet area, does not suffer from the same restrictions as the Koala-pad: pressure from a finger may be translated into a precise co-ordinate rather than a mere approximation, so electronic finger-painting is a real possibility!

Unfortunately Multipaint offers no more than rudimentary features A FILL option is marked on the template and documented in the manuals, but - on the Spectrum version at least this does not appear to operate in the expected manner. Neither is there any facility for magnification or editing, which means that colours may not be changed. On the Spectrum, where it is often easier to draw in black and white before adding colour, this is a decided disadvantage.

As a piece of hardware the Touchmaster tablet appears to have a lot going for it compared with rivals like the Grafpad and the Koala-pad. It is robustly built and offers a full A4-sized drawing area that can be connected to most of the more popular home computers. One significant advantage is that if you decide to upgrade or change your machine in the future, all that is required is a new interface - plus the appropriate software, of course.

It is a disappointment that the documentation and software supplied should be so poor compared with the standard of the tablet itself. Touchmaster is bringing out a range of software designed specifically for use with this tablet; although the real proof of success will come if independent software houses decide to support it.

[crustyasp46]

Spectrum Hardware Index - U

Name: Unicom Modem
Manufacturer: Unicom
Price: £49.95
Blurb: Auto baud rate sensing, Auto dial and redial. Full and half duplex. Baud rates 300/300, 1200/1200, 1200/75, 75/1200.
Source: Crash 13 (Feb 85)

Name: Unisonic Amplifer/radio
Manufacturer: Buttercroft Software
Price: £4.99
Blurb: Sound amplifier that doubles as a mini radio.
Source: Your Sinclair Feb 83

Name: University Analogue Port
Manufacturer: University Computers
Price: £49.00
Blurb: 24 channel control, 8 channels digital voltage input, 8 channels digital voltage output, 8 channels anologue voltage input
Source: Sinclair User Feb 83

Name: Upstream Midi Interface
Manufacturer: Upstream Computer Systems ltd.
Price: £179.00 (inc software)
Blurb: Midi interface with trigger output, midi in,out & through. Software is six track 3500 note real time or step sequencer.
Source: Your Computer Sep 84

Name: USP-ADAP
Manufacturer: U-Microcomputers Ltd.
Price: £6.90
Blurb: Back to back adaptor needed when you buy your first card.
Source: Sinclair User Oct 83

USP Spectrum Expansion System

The following article was taken from Sinclair User - October 1983

ZX Spectrum Expansion. . . . Starts with one card . . . . . Extend up to seven cards !


The price/computer power ratio of the Spectrum is tremendous but up to now it's lacked one major thing compared with other Z80, 48k computers costing many times more - expandability.
U-Microcomputers have been the UK leaders in Apple Expansion cards, but with the Spectrum we've had to provide the means to expansion (3 and 4 slot backplanes) as well as the initial range:


USP-ADAP - £6.90
A back to back adaptor needed when you buy your first card and later for the backplane.

USP-BBP3 - £35.65
A buffered 3 slot back plane, meaning it won't interfere with the Spectrums operation. It will generally require an auxilary power supply either home built or the USP-Power supply unit (available later). A side connector allows use of the ZX Printer and Microdrives.

USP-BPE4 - £25.30
Provides a further four slots after you have the USP-BBP3

USP-PROT - £18.30
Prototyping card - use to design and test your own circuits.

USP-232D - £34.50
Dual channel serial RS232 interface using the sophisticated and very powerful Z80DART chip. Includes LPRINT and LLIST patches and a terminal emulator program. Baud rate 75-9600, full handshaking available.

USP-I/O - £29.90
General purpose parallel interface using versatile Z80PIO chip. Use to connect to parallel printers, music synthesisers, plotters, D-to-A and A-to-D converters, relays, LED's. . . It provides two 8 bit input or output ports with 4 handshaking lines.

USP-CENT - £3.45
A kit for use with the USP-I/O for centronics compatible printers.

Name: USP-BBP3
Manufacturer: U-Microcomputers Ltd.
Price: £35.65
Blurb: Buffered, 3 slot back plane for other USP boards.
Source: Sinclair User Oct 83

Name: USP-BPE4
Manufacturer: U-Microcomputers Ltd.
Price: £25.30
Blurb: 4 slot back plane extension.
Source: Sinclair User Oct 83

Name: USP-PROT
Manufacturer: U-Microcomputers Ltd.
Price: £13.80
Blurb: Prototyping card used to design your own circuits.
Source: Sinclair User Oct 83

Name: USP-232D
Manufacturer: U-Microcomputers Ltd.
Price: £34.50
Blurb: Dual channel serial RS232 interface card using the powerful Z80DART chip. Baud rate of 75 - 9600.
Source: Sinclair User Oct 83

Name: USP-I/O
Manufacturer: U-Microcomputers Ltd.
Price: £29.90
Blurb: General purpose parallel interface using the Z80PIO chip. 2 8bit input or output ports.
Source: Sinclair User Oct 83

Name: USP-CENT
Manufacturer: U-Microcomputers Ltd.
Price: £3.45
Blurb: Kit for use with the USP-CENT for centronics compatible printers.
Source: Sinclair User Oct 83