In praise of - the ZX Spectrum.

The sound of the 1980s isn't Johnny Marr's guitar, or the starter motor of a Mini Metro, or the theme tune to Dallas.

The sound of the 1980s is sqee-sqee-kkaa-sqee which is the noise a ZX Spectrum game used to make while it was loading.

This year the Spectrum is 30 years old, which is a good opportunity to remember just how exciting it was at the time. Many of us already had the predecessor, the ZX81, but that was black and white and all you could do was make your name scroll down the screen. Even so, we thought: wow, in the future, we will all be able to make our names scroll down screens in black and white.

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