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Those of you out there who have glanced, even casually,
at my writeup list may have noticed a larger than average
fixation with the humble ZX Spectrum. Indeed, I've owned
many a spectrum in my time. The first, I got in 1983, when
I was but five years old. It was a rubber-keyed 48k number
and one of my closest friends for a few years; then it
stopped working. The bloke at the shop informed me that
the "Z80 chip has blown." In retrospect, of course, this
was almost certainly bollocks, but it did lead to my Mum
& Dad getting me a new one. The best speccy ever made: the
ZX Spectrum 128+.
Anyway, I don't want to bore you with the details of the
other ones. I'll gloss over by saying that car boot
sales and friends' clearing out of lofts provided many
of them. Now, however, only one of them still works -- a
ZX Spectrum +2A -- and the reason for this is a
combination of my own utter stupidity and
absent-mindedness, and the afforementioned
Multiface of Death.
A multiface, you see, is a cool box of tricks that can
be attached to the back of a speccy and enables you to do
cool stuff like save the current state of the machine, mess
about with the memory and the Z80's registers and...
well, go and read the node if you're
interested. Needless to say, I wanted one. But, being a
poor sap I could never afford one. My days went
multifaceless until one fatefull day, I stumbled into one
at a car boot sale. Maybe I was too eager. Maybe the
sudden thunderclap as I picked up the box i n my shaking
hand should have been a sign, but undaunted I offered the
bloke behind the trestle table a couple of pounds
squid and skipped home
full of glee.
I hurriedly slotted the demonic device into the edge
connector on the back of one of my speccies and expectantly
flicked the power switch....
Boooooooooooooooooooop!
Now that is not, for those not aquainted with the ways of
Sinclair computers, the noise a speccy makes when sparked
into life. Nor is the solid black screen I was presented
with a normal sort of display for a spectrum warming itself
up. Of course, this wasn't altogether unexpected; it
wouldn't be the first time I'd bought something from a car
boot sale that didn't work. With a somewhat heavy heart, I
unplugged my, seemingly useless, new purchase and turned on
my rubbery friend anew....
Boooooooooooooooooooop!
Shit. That's right. The evil multiface of death had
reduced my spectrum to a simple machine that goes
boop.
Of course, you'd expect the story to end more-or-less
here; possibly with some sort of a punchline involving my
tossing the offending peripheral into the dustbin, or
possible jumping on it or destroying it in some suitable
violent manner. Alas, my only action was to chuck it into
the 'box-with-all-my-speccy-gear-in-it' and, slowly, its
existance slipped from my memory.
Later on I managed to get myself a working multiface; a
recently-aquired friend noticed my sinclair fetish and,
rather generously, gave me all the spectrum-related
equipment he'd had in the back of his cupboard under the
stairs for years. I had happy times with it; saving games
to microdrive, poking around in code and so on. As time
went by, however, my spectrum use dwindled as linux
became it replacement and the 'box-of-speccy-stuff' slowly
got burried farther under other boxes of stuff.
The evil multiface of death however, had
not given up its quest. Whilst in the box, it had managed
to make itself identical in every way to its
perfectly-functional twin and worked its way to the top of
the box ready for the next time I decided to dig it all out
for a game of Lords of Chaos. Out comes the box, the
speccy's plugged in, turned on and...
Boooooooooooooooooooop!
And a second spectrum had become useful only for propping
up a wonky table leg. So, of course, I burned the
disgusting device this time, yes? No. Why? I have no
idea.
At this point in the story my memory fails my slightly,
but I am almost completely certain that there is one more
time in which the evil multiface of death
had had its wicked way on a happy 8-bit. Possibly
regressive hypnotherapy would uncover the details, but I'm
sure, if it did happen, it would be the same ritual of
plugging it in, the same expectation and the same...
Boooooooooooooooooooop!
So, I sit here now, having once more set up a speccy (the
sole-working +2A). I'm played Lords of Chaos, I've
played Chaos, I've played Jet Set Willy and am
considering a quick go on Manic Miner; but staring at me,
at the bottom of the box, are a pair of completely
identical multifaces ready for me to tinker with. One, who knows which, is the
multiface from the dark side. There is no way of knowing
without plugging one in at random. Now, which one shall I
pick....
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