Featured articles

DevOps for the Sinclair Spectrum! A series of articles exploring a modern development environment for the classic 8-bit 1980s home computer

Back to the floppy: A musing on the passing of a once-common physical storage medium

Review of the Apollo Vampire 1200 v2 accelerator add-on card for the classic Amiga 1200 computer

Recent Posts

A Splinter In Your Mind

Earlier this year, I finally discovered as an adult that I am “on the spectrum” with what used to be called Asperger’s Syndrome. The diagnosis helped make sense of a lot things and has given me a greater insight into my “way of being in the world”. Whilst there are times I struggle with things that neuro-typical people usually find easy, or I find some situations draining, the condition has also brought me many positives which often get overlooked when talking about Autis...

DevOps for the Sinclair Spectrum - Part 4

In Part 3 I covered the backend server processes and protocols, CI/CD pipelines and unit tests I used to build the TNFS site. In this (much shorter) part, I’d like to take a step back from the hardcore geekery, and wrap up with my thoughts on the whole thing.

DevOps for the Sinclair Spectrum - Part 3

In Part 2 I discussed the server environment, as well as how I built and launched the first prototype version of the site. I hit some speedbumps along the way and quickly reached the limits of what I could do with a pure client-only 1980s BASIC codebase. In this part, I’ll look at how I moved to a backend API system and how all this is deployed and tested.

DevOps for the Sinclair Spectrum - Part 2

In Part 1, I explored the hardware and development environment. In this article, I’ll cover the server-side components as well as coding and launching the first iteration of the site along with some of the limitations I encountered when programming on such an old system.

DevOps for the Sinclair Spectrum - Part 1

Intro When I was around 8-9 years old, I received a Sinclair ZX Spectrum home computer for my birthday. One of my earliest memories I remember is sitting with my Dad, reading the manual to work out the magic commands to load the games from cassette tape. Whilst the games (Manic Miner and Starstrike II were the two I remember trying out first) were cutting-edge for a 1980s computer system and I spent many hours playing them, I was always more interested in the manual. Lik...