Andre / Planeta Sinclair — preservation
Woot would like to acknowledge Andre Leao's / Planeta Sinclair's huge contribution to Speccy preservation. It would be fair to call him the driving force these days. The SC forum's preservation section sees at least one uMIA or MIA announced daily. There is a huge variety of software being discovered, such as The Powerbox train sims, Bell ringing software, educational titles, domestic and building software, aircraft design, morse code tutors, bird databases plus more games than there is memory in this Spectrum to list. A tank of thank Andre! Stand up and take a bow.
And more thanks to Andre for taking some time to answer a few questions:
What are your favourite MIA recovered this year?
My favorite program recovered in 2022 was "A Viagem de Vasco da Gama a India". It is probably the best Portuguese program ever and was lost for more than 30 years. It was originally designed for the FDD disk system, but we are converting it to 128K (to be released in 2023).
Where are all these MIA coming from?!
From several sources. The foreign programs, mostly from Steven Brown and Luis Rato. But I also buy a lot of cassettes that I know might have MIAs. Also, the Portuguese community is helping. Planeta Sinclair is becoming well known in my country, I appeared several times on TV, I released a book about Portuguese software and coders, so people trust me and send me their tapes to be preserved. I have more than one thousand uMIAs/MIAs to be shared...
What is your favourite POWERBOX? If you could have any POWERBOX, real or imaginary, what would it be?
Easy - it has to be Manchester Piccadilly Powerbox. I have been there loads of times, I have many friends there and I love the city. Anyway, I would like to have a station in Bombarral, close to the place I live in Portugal (I live in a very small village in the countryside - I moved from Lisboa many years ago).
Does Andre ever get a night off?!
Sure! I love to go out and have a few beers and to travel, so I don't spend all my time in front of a computer. I usually schedule the posts two months in advance, so I am able to manage my time better. I also work only three days per week, so it helps me having spare time to do everything I love...
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