ZX-Spectrum with 16K RAM cost £100. With 48K RAM it cost £130. The keyboard was bad. Basic commands were assigned to combinations of keys, not typed letter by letter. The cpu was Z80A at almost 4MHz!
Most popular, as it was very compact. Could be smuggled across customs hidden under the coat.
Usually from West Germany. :-) My then country (YU) had banned importing a computer more expensive than 50 DEM (25 Eur). Knew of many kids that had ZX-Spectrum.
Commodore-64 had 64K RAM (not all addresable at once), much better keyboard. It cost £200. Basic programs could be typed normally. Learned Basic and 6502 assembler on it. The cpu was 6510 at almost 1MHz, had few memory mapped io ports too.
My parents relented after 2 years of pestering and bought me one from an authorized dealer. They were not rebelious enough to risk smuggling of ZX-Spectrum clandestine op. :-) The excise and duty paid were astronomical. It cost them £470 or sth like that. Eternally grateful to my parents for that. It changed my life. Knew couple of kids with C64 in addition to 2 of my closest friends.
BBC Micro B was £400. It was exclusive, like royalty, I knew of only one kid that had it.
With Commodore-64 you also had to buy their tape recorder (same thing as with Atari 800XL), while Spectrum worked with any existing recorder, which every house already had at the time.
The advantage of the C64 tape recorder was it reliability and the motor being pilot by the computer. With personal tape recorders there was a lot of problems due to heads miss aligned.
As I remember from that time, all C64 users also had tiny screwdriver for adjusting head azimuth. Could be related to pirated tapes in ex Yugoslavia, copied on who knows what kind of equipment.
ZX-Spectrum with 16K RAM cost £100. With 48K RAM it cost £130. The keyboard was bad. Basic commands were assigned to combinations of keys, not typed letter by letter. The cpu was Z80A at almost 4MHz!
Most popular, as it was very compact. Could be smuggled across customs hidden under the coat. Usually from West Germany. :-) My then country (YU) had banned importing a computer more expensive than 50 DEM (25 Eur). Knew of many kids that had ZX-Spectrum.
Commodore-64 had 64K RAM (not all addresable at once), much better keyboard. It cost £200. Basic programs could be typed normally. Learned Basic and 6502 assembler on it. The cpu was 6510 at almost 1MHz, had few memory mapped io ports too.
My parents relented after 2 years of pestering and bought me one from an authorized dealer. They were not rebelious enough to risk smuggling of ZX-Spectrum clandestine op. :-) The excise and duty paid were astronomical. It cost them £470 or sth like that. Eternally grateful to my parents for that. It changed my life. Knew couple of kids with C64 in addition to 2 of my closest friends.
BBC Micro B was £400. It was exclusive, like royalty, I knew of only one kid that had it.
Trip down the memory lane. :-)