The Feature: Our Humble Cousins
Once you've collected the Sinclair range (and every program that was ever written for them!) you could expand your horizons to the Z80/A based family of home computers. You will find them lurking in your local papers small ads going for a song (and owners very happy to sell!) The COLOUR GENIE is a sturdy but cheap looking computer boasting probably the worst joysticks ever designed. In a drunken haze you could attempt to ring your mother on one or even worse, try to play a game with it. Despite its name you wouldn't have been blinded with vibrant hues but it does have a very useful built-in tape meter. Mattel are good at making toys and with THE AQUARIUS, had a good stab at making computers too. It was certainly cheap at 50, boasting colour and a Spec-equalling 3.5 Mhz clock speed but expanders were needed to make it actually do anything half useful. The printer is pretty cute though. Looks do matter y'know. If our Speccy had looked like that lard arsed C64 I might never have bought one. But if I were a computer I'd like to look like the MEMOTECH MTX 512 -sleek, dark and a trifle sexy. Well that's me anyway and all girls with glasses and short hair can write to me now...
Running at a monster 4 Mhz and with a user language that called itself NODDY, how could you not fall for its charms? A built-in Dis/assembler puts the cherry on top really. Moving onto the slightly faster Z80a's we have the Japanese SORD M5, a speccy look-a-like in a delicious two tone grey livery. It has single keyword entry and a Centronics port (everyone go Woooo!) but a 4K standard RAM lets it down. Different languages can be plugged in with carts and some of the earliest joypads were standard. An interesting beast this but pretty rare.
The SHARP MZ 711 is probably the most pro-looking kit of the bunch; a snazzy layout and bolt on tape and printer gave it an officious style. Languages have to be loaded in from boot-up which could either be seen as a hindrance or a boon. Not very sexy this one but it has its fans. I've yet to have a go at the AMSTRAD CPC 464 but it's obvious where the +2 gained its handsome looks. I'm sure we'll deal with Amstrad more fully in a future issue...
And I've left the best till last. The most collectable computer by the Sinclair junkies is the JUPITER ACE. Amanda swoons and Claire dribbles, the Ace is truely ace! Designed by the Speccy team to be more of a hobbiest device, the Ace had Forth instead of Basic and a B/W video output. It looks like a white ZX81 with rubber keys that don't work properly and yes it has that charm & eccentric indiviuality that we (hopefully) all love from our chosen breed.
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