I have a nostalgic fondness for CV&G magazine because my local library carried a small selection of foreign magazines and this was one of them. I was amazed by the idea of a full color large format magazine that was completely filled with pure computer game reviews and previews. Magazines here in North America had gaming news but never formatted like this. I also loved the 2000AD-type comics which was another completely alien thing to see. C&VG is the reason I knew of the ZX Spectrum in a region where it was utterly unheard of.
Ah, interesting, yeah. It is funny how walled off the Spectrum was to the USA. I guess over there certain machines became embedded and the Spectrum simply had no real niche to fit into. Over here, it was the de-facto successor to the ZX-81, which in itself was the same to the ZX80. But it was a great machine, trapped in a slightly inadequate case/keyboard combo. But people loved it for that form factor, all the same. I personally found it quite charming and I visited my friends house to play his, and I liked the Speccy's games as much as I did my C64,s UNTIL I got my 1541 disc drive. It was at that point that the C64 pulled away from the Speccy, because floppy games could just try and do things that tape only games could not. Who knows what might have happened if the fabled micro drive for it had lived up to its promise.
Another fascinating episode, thanks! The TII-99/4A was my first computer and it's a really interesting (and somewhat bizarre) system that I think deserves a spot in any retro collection that has the money and space for it. You should definitely check one out at some point! (The mention of it being "reintroduced" is probably referring to the release of the 4A, which replaced the original 4 after a few years and primarily included a *much* better keyboard)
I didn't read C&VG until many years later when they were reviewing 8-bit & 16-bit games. Around 1989/90 when I was thinking of going from the Spectrum 128 to the Amiga / ST
Magazine dates were traditionally earlier than the date they were on sale. If you wanted to know about events coming up in august, then you would want to make plans the month before. It would have been printed the month before that and written the month before that.
The atom book has 184 pages compared to 120 pages for the zx81. I'm going to say that would be a big difference for the price. Without seeing the book, I can't tell for sure. But at a guess the atom can do more, so needs more pages.
The prestel viewdata terminal looks like Teletext because it's based on the same graphics chip, but it connects to your phone line and is interactive. Prestel was like an early bulitin board
The trs80 was based off a Motorola reference design, the genie is similarly based on that reference design. They arent totally compatible. The dragon was also based on the same reference design.
The zx80 kit isnt a ram expansion, it adds the extra hardware that generates the sync pulses when the cpu is busy. On the zx80 the sync was only generated by the cpu and basic didnt generate syncs when it was running your code. On the zx81 they added a circuit that could generate the syncs while the cpu was busy, so basic could go into slow mode and run code during vertical blank That is why you also needed the new basic rom. Sinclair sold it to zx80 owners to add other features, but you needed the circuit to use slow mode.
The ti99/4 came out in 1979 with a monitor the ti99/4a came out in 1981 and had an rf modulator and a proper keyboard. The review seems misleading as the two machines look broadly the same.
What doesn’t come across is the ‘nerd’ stigma of the times and that this was a tiny market in UK. These magazines were usually to be found in the ‘comics’ section, or on the top shelves next to the porn. Don’t get the impression the public had a clue. In UK, outside of business, and some more privileged children, computers were not on anyone’s radar until decades later. I started working in computing as an operator in 1978. Don’t think I met anyone who even knew what a computer was, outside work, until the next century. Everything I worked on was US or European produced. Most people in UK were still too busy banging rocks together to have time to ‘play’ computers…
Not sure I can agree about much of the above. Firstly, I don't recall these magazines being in the comic section or next to porn. They were usually associated with the hobby/interest section. More likely to be next to car mechanics, rather than porn... People did have a clue, and computers were on our radar, we initiated the industry, but it was hampered over here by post war secrecy and a smaller market. We had just the UK to sell too, as selling to Europe had a LOT of friction post WWII and selling into the USA market was tough as your up against the embedded IBM and similars. This imbalance was widened even further during the 50-60s as the USA government continually ploughed billions into computer research, to make their balistic missiles more competent than the Russians. Over time this of course morphed into the Gemini and Apollo space missions. And its for this reason that Silicon valley flowered into the computing hub of the 70s and 80s as the fertilizer for all of this was Apollo. This of course in turn lead to the techy 70s kids building the Apple II. I recall in the late 70s early 80s in the UK that computers certainly WERE a part of the public imagition, though it was initially businesses, business men and the computer techs and electronics hobbyists that REALLY wanted them. But by 1979 the government had The Computer Literacy Project conceived, which was then delivered in the form of TV shows, classes in schools and the BBC micro of course. Between 81 and 85 the micro computing hobby really took off in the UK, and of course games were the "gateway drug". But in time this lead to many thousands of teenagers who went on to careers in computing, IT and related fields. So you certainly do not have to wait until 2000+ for computing to be relevent in the UK. Was it nerdy over here, sure. You needed "special" people, with vision, those who saw the potential, ran with the limitations and fought against them. Brining us to where we are today.
I have a nostalgic fondness for CV&G magazine because my local library carried a small selection of foreign magazines and this was one of them. I was amazed by the idea of a full color large format magazine that was completely filled with pure computer game reviews and previews. Magazines here in North America had gaming news but never formatted like this. I also loved the 2000AD-type comics which was another completely alien thing to see. C&VG is the reason I knew of the ZX Spectrum in a region where it was utterly unheard of.
Ah, interesting, yeah. It is funny how walled off the Spectrum was to the USA. I guess over there certain machines became embedded and the Spectrum simply had no real niche to fit into. Over here, it was the de-facto successor to the ZX-81, which in itself was the same to the ZX80. But it was a great machine, trapped in a slightly inadequate case/keyboard combo. But people loved it for that form factor, all the same. I personally found it quite charming and I visited my friends house to play his, and I liked the Speccy's games as much as I did my C64,s UNTIL I got my 1541 disc drive. It was at that point that the C64 pulled away from the Speccy, because floppy games could just try and do things that tape only games could not. Who knows what might have happened if the fabled micro drive for it had lived up to its promise.
Another fascinating episode, thanks! The TII-99/4A was my first computer and it's a really interesting (and somewhat bizarre) system that I think deserves a spot in any retro collection that has the money and space for it. You should definitely check one out at some point! (The mention of it being "reintroduced" is probably referring to the release of the 4A, which replaced the original 4 after a few years and primarily included a *much* better keyboard)
I didn't read C&VG until many years later when they were reviewing 8-bit & 16-bit games. Around 1989/90 when I was thinking of going from the Spectrum 128 to the Amiga / ST
Magazine dates were traditionally earlier than the date they were on sale. If you wanted to know about events coming up in august, then you would want to make plans the month before. It would have been printed the month before that and written the month before that.
The atom book has 184 pages compared to 120 pages for the zx81. I'm going to say that would be a big difference for the price. Without seeing the book, I can't tell for sure. But at a guess the atom can do more, so needs more pages.
The prestel viewdata terminal looks like Teletext because it's based on the same graphics chip, but it connects to your phone line and is interactive. Prestel was like an early bulitin board
The trs80 was based off a Motorola reference design, the genie is similarly based on that reference design. They arent totally compatible. The dragon was also based on the same reference design.
The zx80 kit isnt a ram expansion, it adds the extra hardware that generates the sync pulses when the cpu is busy. On the zx80 the sync was only generated by the cpu and basic didnt generate syncs when it was running your code. On the zx81 they added a circuit that could generate the syncs while the cpu was busy, so basic could go into slow mode and run code during vertical blank
That is why you also needed the new basic rom. Sinclair sold it to zx80 owners to add other features, but you needed the circuit to use slow mode.
Type in games will have worked, but then the typesetters got their hands on them
The ti99/4 came out in 1979 with a monitor the ti99/4a came out in 1981 and had an rf modulator and a proper keyboard. The review seems misleading as the two machines look broadly the same.
What doesn’t come across is the ‘nerd’ stigma of the times and that this was a tiny market in UK. These magazines were usually to be found in the ‘comics’ section, or on the top shelves next to the porn. Don’t get the impression the public had a clue. In UK, outside of business, and some more privileged children, computers were not on anyone’s radar until decades later. I started working in computing as an operator in 1978. Don’t think I met anyone who even knew what a computer was, outside work, until the next century. Everything I worked on was US or European produced. Most people in UK were still too busy banging rocks together to have time to ‘play’ computers…
Not sure I can agree about much of the above. Firstly, I don't recall these magazines being in the comic section or next to porn. They were usually associated with the hobby/interest section. More likely to be next to car mechanics, rather than porn... People did have a clue, and computers were on our radar, we initiated the industry, but it was hampered over here by post war secrecy and a smaller market. We had just the UK to sell too, as selling to Europe had a LOT of friction post WWII and selling into the USA market was tough as your up against the embedded IBM and similars.
This imbalance was widened even further during the 50-60s as the USA government continually ploughed billions into computer research, to make their balistic missiles more competent than the Russians. Over time this of course morphed into the Gemini and Apollo space missions. And its for this reason that Silicon valley flowered into the computing hub of the 70s and 80s as the fertilizer for all of this was Apollo. This of course in turn lead to the techy 70s kids building the Apple II.
I recall in the late 70s early 80s in the UK that computers certainly WERE a part of the public imagition, though it was initially businesses, business men and the computer techs and electronics hobbyists that REALLY wanted them. But by 1979 the government had The Computer Literacy Project conceived, which was then delivered in the form of TV shows, classes in schools and the BBC micro of course.
Between 81 and 85 the micro computing hobby really took off in the UK, and of course games were the "gateway drug". But in time this lead to many thousands of teenagers who went on to careers in computing, IT and related fields. So you certainly do not have to wait until 2000+ for computing to be relevent in the UK.
Was it nerdy over here, sure. You needed "special" people, with vision, those who saw the potential, ran with the limitations and fought against them. Brining us to where we are today.