| Adding to your computer |
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| Sinclair computers could be enhanced with a variety
of add-ons. |
| The most usual of these would include those on
this page. |
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| Joystick |
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| The most common extra was a joystick
to play the huge number of games available. |
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| The Spectrum lacked a joystick port,
so an interface was required. The one
shown here is by Kempston. |
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| My Cheetah 125+ joystick (shown here)
has an additional plug for the Spectrum
+2 which did have a port but still needed
an adaptor. |
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| Interface 1 |
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| This solution allowed joysticks with
9-way Atari plugs to be used. It also
has connections for microdrives and
a printer. |
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| Attaching an Interface 1 raises the
rear of the Spectrum. |
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| To make connection more reliable,
it could be screwed onto the Spectrum. |
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| Interface 2 |
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| Interface 2 had two joystick ports
and a printer port. plus a cartridge
port. However, few cartridges were produced,
most software remained on cassettes. |
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| Interface 2 could be used with Interface
1 to provide access to microdrives. |
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| ZX Printer |
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| The original Sinclair thermal printer,
a must-have for printing out program
listings. Mine still works after all
these years. |
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| The paper has a metalic surface on
black paper. The coating is burned away
by an electrical charge leaving the
image in black. |
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| A strong smell of burning accompanies
the printing. The results are initially
good but deteriorate with handling and
can fade over time. |
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The printer is powered from the computer
but the original ZX81 power supply
was not enough and needed to be upgraded.
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| Alphacom 32 Printer |
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| An alternative to the ZX printer,
this one also prints out program listings
on a roll of thermal paper but the paper
is more normal, printing is quicker
and the print clearer. |
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| With its separate power supply, this
printer works with my ZX81s and all
of my Spectrums but paper this size
is hard to find now. |
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| Microdrive |
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| Most Spectrum software was on cassette
tape. Although disc drives were made
by other manufacturers, these were quite
expensive. |
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| Sinclair's alternative was a continuous-tape
drive using removable cartridges. Once
formatted, each cartridge held about
85KB. |
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| These tapes were unreliable, stretching
over time, and were not widely used. |
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| The QL had two built-in microdrives
but tapes formatted for one computer
were not compatible with the other. |
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| Rotronics Wafadrive |
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| A third-party offering instead of
the Sinclair Microdrive. |
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| The Wafadrive also uses a cartridge
(a Wafa) with continuous tape. The cassettes
are physically larger than those for
the Microdrive and come in a range of
nominal capacity from 16KB to 128KB.
Operation is faster than cassettes but
slower than a Microdrive. However, the
Wafadrive has two drives and connects
to the computer without an interface,
making it a cheaper option. Commands
for operating the drives are also simpler. |
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| Although regarded at the time as
more reliable than microdrive cartridges,
the tape is thin and prone to becoming
tangled. The same tapes are used in
the Entrepo Quick Data Drive (QDD) available
to users of other computers. |
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| The Centronics interface was the most commonly
used to connect printers while the RS232 interace
was used with printers and modems. The Rotronics
Wafadrive was equipped with both connections. It
also came with the Softek Spectral Writer word processor
installed. |
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