Fun facts
True stories from the Amiga and Spectrum world, told in detail with the sources at the end of each one. Plus a few myths everyone repeats, put to the test.
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1981–2020
1981
Sinclair and Spectrum
The wobbly RAM pack
One knock on the table was enough for the ZX81 to forget everything.
The ZX81's 16 KB expansion hung on the rear edge connector alone, and a knock on the table was enough for the computer to lose everything in its memory.
- 1981
The wobbly RAM pack
The ZX81's 16 KB expansion hung on the rear edge connector alone, and a knock on the table was enough for the computer to lose everything in its memory.
- 1982Fact or myth?
Eight colours? Fifteen, and sometimes more
It's said that the Spectrum only had eight colours and that attribute clash was a flaw; there were fifteen, and the colour smudging was a choice made to save memory and money.
- 1982Fact or myth?
Amiga: ahead of Apple in the phone book?
The story goes that the name Amiga was chosen to come before Apple and Atari in listings. Alphabetical order played a part, but it is not the whole story, and the sources do not even agree on who chose it.
- 1982
Stripes, beeps and R Tape loading error
The coloured stripes in the screen border were not decoration: they were the ROM's own loading routine showing, bit by bit, the data arriving from the tape.
- 1982
Dead-flesh keys
The Spectrum's rubber keyboard, an idea of designer Rick Dickinson, saved hundreds of parts and a good deal of money, but became known for its "dead flesh" feel.
- 1983
Games that came over the radio
Since a Spectrum program on tape is just sound, radio stations in Yugoslavia, Slovenia, Poland and Portugal broadcast software for listeners to record.
- 1984
The ball that bounced before the computer
Written overnight in Las Vegas in January 1984, the Boing Ball set the heart of an Amiga beating while it was still a heap of boards and wires.
- 1984
The colour card and the cursed attic
Jet Set Willy was the best-selling game of 1984 in the UK, came with a colour card against piracy and had a bug that made it impossible to finish.
- 1984
The cheque that took the Amiga away from Atari
In 1984 a cash-strapped Amiga took $500,000 from Atari, paid it back with a Commodore cheque on the last possible day and left three years of lawsuits behind it.
- 1984
The QL and the orders into the void
The Sinclair QL was announced in January 1984 with delivery promised within 28 days; the first ones only arrived at the end of April, with part of the system on a board plugged into the back.
- 1984
Made in Portugal: Timex of Caparica
In Caparica, in Almada, the Timex factory moved from watches to Sinclair computers and created its own models, such as the TC2048, which many Portuguese took for a Spectrum.
- 1985
Signatures, a paw and a pillow
Moulded inside the lid of every Amiga 1000 are the team's signatures, the paw print of Jay Miner's dog and the name of a passenger who never existed.
- 1985
Guru Meditation: an error with a sense of humour
The Amiga's most famous error message was born from a game of keeping still on an Atari 2600 accessory, and the numbers that come with it say exactly what went wrong.
- 1985
The computer that loaded its system from a floppy
The Amiga 1000 did not have its system in ROM: it loaded it from a floppy into memory it then locked, the WOM, because in 1985 the software was not yet ready.
- 1985Fact or myth?
The Amiga wasn't the first to do two things at once
It's said that the Amiga was the first home computer with multitasking; it was not, but it had it as standard from the very first model, something the Macintosh would only get many years later.
- 1985Fact or myth?
Did the C5 sink Sinclair?
It is often said that the C5 electric tricycle drove Sinclair into bankruptcy; the real story is more complicated and involves the computers that went unsold.
- 1985
Andy Warhol paints Debbie Harry on an Amiga
On the Amiga's launch night in 1985, Andy Warhol made a digital portrait of Debbie Harry on stage, and in 2014 works nobody knew about turned up on his floppy disks.
- 1986
Five million for the Spectrum
In April 1986, Alan Sugar bought Sinclair's computers and brand for £5 million, and the Spectrum got a grey case, proper keys and a built-in tape recorder.
- 1987
Four columns that changed music
In 1987, the German Karsten Obarski wrote the first tracker on his Amiga, and the MOD format it gave rise to ended up in demos, in PC games and in a worldwide dance-floor hit.
- 1989
The Spectrum behind the Curtain
Cut off from Western computers, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union copied the Spectrum like no other machine, from state factories to boards built at home.
- 1989
The beast that sold on looks
Shadow of the Beast, from 1989, had twelve layers of parallax, a Roger Dean cover and a T-shirt in the box; its own authors admit it was mostly a graphics showcase.
- 1991
From Dundee, with Lemmings
In the Scottish city where Timex assembled Sinclair computers, a former factory apprentice bought an Amiga with his redundancy money and founded the studio that made Lemmings and Grand Theft Auto.
- 1993Fact or myth?
The dinosaurs weren't made on an Amiga (but nearly)
It's said that the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park were made on an Amiga; the ones you see in the film came from Silicon Graphics workstations, but an Amiga 2000 was there for the first steps of production.
- 1993Fact or myth?
Was Babylon 5 made on Amigas?
It's said that Babylon 5's starships came out of a room full of Amigas with Video Toasters. It is true for the pilot; for the rest of the series, the sources contradict each other.
- 1994
The day Commodore closed its doors
On 29 April 1994, Commodore handed its assets to its creditors. The Amiga then passed through a German company that also went bust, an American PC maker and a string of owners.
- 2020
The demoscene is cultural heritage
Born from the screens crackers put in front of games, the demoscene became, in Finland in 2020, the first digital culture to enter a national inventory of intangible heritage.