Razvan Surdulescu

Sir Clive Sinclair had a dream: everyone should own a computer. In the early '80s, this was quite an ambitious, almost foolhardy thing to say, given that the cost of computing machinery was well beyond the grasp of individuals. Despite the hurdles, Sinclair Research Ltd. produced one of the most popular personal computers in Great Britain and, later on, in Europe: the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. As a child I owned one of these machines, and because of it I am, happily, a computer scientist. Although the Spectrum is no longer produced, my nostalgia for this machine never quite disappeared. Recently, I embarked on a project to write an "emulator" (in Java) that could run some favorites from the prolific library of Spectrum software. This article is about the challenges encountered and my accomplishments during this adventure. The source code can be downloaded from www.sys-... (more)