Nostalgia!
This article almost brought me to tears remembering my childhood. Like many others I attribute my playing on z80 based systems, to a successful career in tech.
I started with a second hand zx81, we didn't have much money, so anything like a BBC was completely out of the question. I was only about 8 but enjoyed writing software rather than playing. I think learning basic helped me academically, for example I think I grokked algebra faster then my peers by the time we covered it in maths. Later I got crazy into coding in z80 assembly after I'd saved up for a spectrum, I eventually got an assembler but was adept coding direct in hex, often via the multiface (shout out to romantic robot!). I payed with interrupt handling and opcode timing tricks to push the speccy to its limits.
GCSE computer studies was hilariously trivial for those of us already into computers. For my project I massively over did it, I wrote a z80 disassembler in speccy basic, a friend of mine from a richer family, had a BBC, he wrote a circuit board designer in 6502 assembly for his project. He now works at Intel. The only other person to get an A in the class wrote a calculator in BBC basic, so we had a baseline of all that was needed :)
On the PCs school I wrote a z80 emulator in 8086 assembly during my A-levels. It was years later during my degree did I finally cease using a z80 based system at my primary machine, getting a £20 80186 RM nimbus 2nd hand from my uni (I bypassed the 16-bit gaming machines). I finally saved up enough to get a 386 to run Linux (another reason for career success). Of course I played with all the x11 speccy emulators.
As I now approach retirement (I may have mentioned my career was quite successful in computing), I honestly plan to go back to coding for the speccy on unfinished projects from my teens!
Long live the z80 even if they stop manufacturing.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
