Sinclair ZX Spectrum iPod Hacks

What do you get when you mix early 80s tech with modern apple chic, Linux and a geeky penchant for hackerdom? ZX Spectrum iPod Madness!. For those that don’t know, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum was one of the most popular UK home computers around in the 80s. Speccys (as they were lovingly referred to), were crap, in a funky sort of skill sort of way. They weren’t popular for their outstanding graphics (in fact, most spectrum games looked like original gameboy games or had vibrating lego bricks from hell splattered across the screen), or their musical capabilities (although later spectrums had a decent sound chip, the first ones only had a piezo buzzer to play with). Spectrums were popular because they were cheap.

Earlier this year, Matt Westcott developed a plugin for podzilla, the open source iPod interface for the iPod Linux port. His first plugin allows iPod owners to use their iPod as a tape recorder, allowing them to play .TZX files through the iPod and load them on a spectrum emulator via a sound card, or even on a real spectrum. But Matt didn’t stop there.

Whilst the fact that the iPod could now be used as the holy cassette player in a spectrum environment (One iPod could store the entire World of Spectrum archive with plenty of room to spare), with speccy owners no longer living in fear of tapes chewing up, degrading or a build-up of chuntey. Meanwhile emulator fans could bask in the retro glory of being able to once again type the famous commands before going off to make a nice cup of tea:

LOAD ""

In fact, not only could they now do this, but they could do so without living in fear of the dreaded R: Tape Loading Error 0:1 message.

But Matt didn’t stop there.

Matt ported a Spectrum Emulator to the iPod. Because of the iPods limited input functions, some tweaking needs to be done for each game, so Matt started with the classic Manic Miner. ‘Porting’ other games involves using a perl script and a recompile, but its good to see the iPod Linux port maturing. Matt has a video of Manic Miner running on his site, a grab of which is shown above.

If you’ve never seen or used a spectrum before, they’re usually available on ebay for about 75p and a packet of rolos. If you don’t want to go to the trouble of acquiring one, head on over to World of Spectrum, grab yourself an emulator and check out the freely available games from the archive.