I always figured my anger biting thing was a bit weird, oh well. I blame the atari 2600 one button joysticks made out of chewable rubber. :D

and holy crepe, Peak Computers! There’s a blast from the past. My mum ended up on first name terms with that guy.

De nada on reading the blog, always fun to read and I want to make sure I’m there to see you go nuts buying CDs when you get a new job. ;)

Anyway, Speccies. Oddly, I never had that eating-joystick problem, I was literally forced to use the keyboard. After the speccy-death mentioned in that posting, the repair (by Peak Computers) disabled the interface port. Once we got it back, I connected up the joystick and Kempston interface. I remember it didn’t work. The first game I tried was “Herbert’s Dummy Run” from a compilation tape Chad had loaned me, and it didn’t work.

I’d tried a couple of other games, none of them registered the kempston input either. Never mind, I’d obviously popped the interface too. I’d grown accustomed to the cursor keyboard, and 0 to fire.

Gregg (a name I’ve not mentioned on here for at least 10 years) loaned me an Interface II, with microdrive and carts, and that was the last time the Speccy came out of the… chest of drawers… I set it all up, and it didn’t work. Suddenly, I’d remembered the problem with the joystick port, put two and two together, and can only assume that my Speccy is disabled in some way. It boots, that’s all I care about.

I gave Gregg the Interface II (IFII) back, as it was no use to me at the time, but for some reason, I still kept the microdrive, carts, and 16K ROM cart he’d given me. A couple of months passed, and I wanted to experiment. I asked if I could use the IFII. His response was devastating, he’d “thrown out” both his speccy and the IFII. Ugh, I felt physically sick.

This photo ended up in a publication a few years ago, as an illustration on how digital storage has moved on.

I can vividly remember trying to load Way Of The Exploding Fist. Sat on my chair, feet off the floor, holding my breath as much as I could, sat still like carved out of stone knowing full well that the slightest breath or movement of the chair would instantly crash the bastard.

Interesting fact about Rambo on the Spectrum, if you sat on the left hand side of the keyboard (on the menu screen I think), you got infinite lives. Sheer genius.

I think I went from C16 to 128 to Sega Master system (?) to Super Nintendo. I remember playing “Link/Zelda” after my GCSEs constantly- through the night sometimes and several days on end. One reason I am reluctant to buy a wii or whatever now, already spending way too much time in front of iPhone, PC, TV screens as it is.

All of us sat around that table in the “playroom” (ha ha, I always considered my family not so well off, but a room for playing in ffs) hoping the game wouldn’t crash as it loaded. Brilliant. You’ll have to do more of these posts to trigger dormant memories for me.

I remember playing “Rambo” on some machine constantly while drinking weird mixtures of pop.

Your cheesy tapes! Fucking hell, I’m gonna be giggling to myself during my next class thinking of that!

Glad you are back mate!

Dave: yeah, I’ll get redundancy and notice payment, though I don’t know how long I’llhave to live on it for…

Great to see you back, I’ve been a faithful reader since I left Startek in 2002 (maybe 2003!)

Appreciate it’s not a massive payment but won’t the government give you a weeks pay for each year of employment through statutory redundancy? Am assuming there is no payment from work, but some also gve enhanced redundancy.

Keep up with the blog!

Dave