Brand: Sinclair Research Ltd.
Model: ZX Spectrum
Made in: United Kingdom
Manufacturer: Timex Corp. (Dundee, Scotland)
Launch date: 23 April 1982
Price in UK: £175
Price in NL: ƒ 898 (03-’83) ƒ 699 (10-’83)
Price in Fr: 1965 F (2325 F with Peritel interface)
Board design: Richard Altwasser
Software: Steve Vickers (at Nine Tiles Ltd.)
Case design: Rick Dickinson
Dimensions: 233 × 144 × 30 mm (feet adds 2 mm)
Weight: 557-591 g (Issue 3B, “Portugal”)
Box dimensions: 359 × 198 × 110 mm
The Z80 CPU could only address 64 Kb of memory. 16 Kb was occupied by the ROM, leaving the remaining 48 Kb of memory to RAM on a maxed out ‘Speccy’.
(Text continues below the gallery)
To save on cost, Sinclair used rejected RAM chips for its 32 kb memory extension. These chips had either a functioning lower or the upper parts of the original 64 kb. A jumper wire on the motherboard would select which part of the chips had to be used (‘3’ or ‘4’ for TI, ‘H’ or ‘L’ for OKI as indicated by the part number of the chip).
Another jumper wire marked ‘TI’ and ‘OKI’ would select between Texas Instruments and OKI memory chips since the bit cell geometries differ between these brands.