A Question of Scale

[Guest]

Rumor has it that Mr. Tamiya is to blame for 1/35. He wanted a tank but at 1/32 it would not fit the boxes so he had the kit sized to 1/35.
A lot of the scales are descended from the railway scales which have been around a lot longer than plastic models.
HO =1/96 halv of which is 1/48 halved again i is 1/24 again 1/12
O gauge =1/32 is one third of 1/96...half of that is.... 1/64

You are correct, 1/32 is measuerd in inches, but 1.35 is measured in mm, so the models were produced for the oriental market originally and made to fit the box size.

[Guest]

felt like a 'proper' computer...(until you tried to program it..lol)

Try programming its main competitor, the Commodore 64 … At least Sinclair Basic had keywords for things you might actually want to do sometimes, like drawing things on the screen or having the computer make sounds. You need to write about ten lines of code just to do what a Spectrum does with [ICODE]PLOT 0,0: DRAW 255,175[/ICODE] — that is, draw a diagonal line from bottom left to top right, as I just did here in the ZX Spectrum emulator, Fuse:

[ATTACH]487826[/ATTACH]

My brother and I used to have a Spectrum+, and when that broke, a 128. That got sold on decades ago, but I later bought a Spectrum 48, and can only second the comment earlier about the keyboard … I would like a + for my collection, but haven’t put any effort into finding one.

[langy71]

Try programming its main competitor, the Commodore 64 … At least Sinclair Basic had keywords for things you might actually want to do sometimes, like drawing things on the screen or having the computer make sounds. You need to write about ten lines of code just to do what a Spectrum does with [ICODE]PLOT 0,0: DRAW 255,175[/ICODE] — that is, draw a diagonal line from bottom left to top right, as I just did here in the ZX Spectrum emulator, Fuse:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]n[/ATTACH]

My brother and I used to have a Spectrum+, and when that broke, a 128. That got sold on decades ago, but I later bought a Spectrum 48, and can only second the comment earlier about the keyboard … I would like a + for my collection, but haven’t put any effort into finding one.

I've gotta admit, I did eventually get my head around it, had loads of fun adding 'pokes' to game code for infinite lives in various games..

[Guest]

One of the main reasons to buy computer magazines back then: the cheats columns

[Guest]

Remember spending hrs with my eldest daughter putting in a programme which didn't work :loudly-crying:The following week there was an apology in the magazine saying there was an error. Didn't bother with any more.

[minitnkr]

I remember back in the day, when waiting for work to compile, writing "dead code" games (undocumented features) to stay awake.

[Dave Ward]

To convince our CEO that we needed more bandwidth on our CAD system, my boss got me to log my time when I was waiting for the model to update - these were complex models, being castings for cylinder heads & crankcases. I found that I was actually waitng for about 8 hours a week - that in a 36 hour working week! We got our upgrades & the wait dropped to about 4 hours a week. Luckily, the terminals ( IBM RISC 6000 ) had CD players & headphone sockets, so music was there to keep you awake! We moved onto stand alone machines and the down time dropped to about 20mins a day! Such was the progress, from b&w mainframe to a full colour high level PC in about 8 years!
Dave

[Andy the Sheep]

My brother and I used to have a Spectrum+, and when that broke, a 128. That got sold on decades ago, but I later bought a Spectrum 48, and can only second the comment earlier about the keyboard … I would like a + for my collection, but haven’t put any effort into finding one.

This is my old Spectrum with an homemade keyboard upgrade.

[Airborne01]

I had the updated version of the Woyuwant Mk 5 Abacus but it developed bead fatigue and no amount of coercion could get my brain to remedy the problem...!
Steve