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Question for Spectrum Owners

ellafaeellafae
edited December 2013 in Sinclair Miscellaneous
Does anyone know when the covertape wars began?

Also, when was the last official ZX Microfair?

Thanks for your help!
Post edited by ellafae on

Comments

  • fogfog
    edited December 2013
    first spectrum perhaps was rasputin with a demo on speccy wise..
    on your sinclair

    http://www.worldofspectrum.org/showmag.cgi?mag=YourSinclair/Issue01/Pages/YourSinclair0100024.jpg


    there were mags on tape also eg 16/40

    c64 wise , I remember the zzap sampler.
  • Battle BunnyBattle Bunny
    edited December 2013
    The earliest Spectrum cover-mounted software was a flexi-disc on the Dec'82 Your Computer. Nothing much else happened until the odd cover item on a few other mags in 1984/5. I suppose the "war" would have to be taken from whenever Crash, Your Sinclair and Sinclair User were all publishing cover tapes together. Although YS started in Jan'86 and Crash had the Sampler tape in Oct'87, Crash and SU didn't start regular tapes until 1988. The first month in which all three mags first published tapes together was July 1988; the last month was April 1992 (the last Crash), then April 1993 (the last Sinclair User) and finally August 1993 (the penultimate Your Sinclair).

    The 28th ZX Microfair was held on 10th December 1988 at the New Horticultural Hall, London SW1. This was the last one advertised by Mike Johnston using the official ZX Microfair banner. A news item in the Feb'89 Games Machine mentioned the poor turnout and that exhibitors were switching over to 16-bit. There was a Christmas Microfair advertised in November 1989 which used the crowd cartoon from the earlier ZX Microfair adverts, but this was just a single stand at the Computer Shopper Show.
  • ellafaeellafae
    edited December 2013
    Thanks for the replies.

    And for my next question:

    Does anyone know the exact release order for the first four Ultimate 16K games? :???:
  • Battle BunnyBattle Bunny
    edited December 2013
    The release order is fairly easy to determine from the date ranges of the initial weekly magazine news & reviews (as they could report on new releases sooner than the monthly mags).

    Jet Pac (June 1983)
    Pssst (June-July 1983)
    Cookie (August 1983)
    Tranz Am (August-September 1983)

    The overall early history would indicate that Jet Pac & Pssst were released together in June 1983 and Cookie & Tranz Am together in August 1983.
  • ellafaeellafae
    edited December 2013
    Battle Bunny wrote: »
    The release order is fairly easy to determine from the date ranges of the initial weekly magazine news & reviews (as they could report on new releases sooner than the monthly mags).

    Jet Pac (June 1983)
    Pssst (June-July 1983)
    Cookie (August 1983)
    Tranz Am (August-September 1983)

    The overall early history would indicate that Jet Pac & Pssst were released together in June 1983 and Cookie & Tranz Am together in August 1983.

    Thanks!

    I've also been trying to find out what happened to dk'Tronics - I can't find any mention of them after a certain point, but there doesn't seem to be any news of them going bust or being bought out... Were they bought by Datel?
  • Battle BunnyBattle Bunny
    edited December 2013
    There was a gap of two years from mid-'85 to mid-'87 when dk'Tronics dropped off the radar. No new products, no adverts for existing products, no news. There was a short period of advertising activity in late 1987, by the end of which year it transpired that the rights to their product line had been bought by RAM Electronics. RAM published a smattering of adverts for dk'Tronics hardware during 1988 then in the summer of 1989 RAM (and dk'Tronics) product line was bought by Datel. Datel continued publishing hardware adverts in the Spectrum mags until there were no more Spectrum mags (late 1993). I don't know what happened to Datel after that as it's beyond my event horizon.
  • fogfog
    edited December 2013
    ellafae wrote: »
    I've also been trying to find out what happened to dk'Tronics - I can't find any mention of them after a certain point, but there doesn't seem to be any news of them going bust or being bought out... Were they bought by Datel?

    they were another company , them becoming dk tronics or running at the same side.. also prior that shared the same or very near address.. CCI custom cables.. to me it's the same company.. for a few reasons.. a very same business park and the type of output, both software / hardware.

    http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekpub.cgi?regexp=^Custom+Cables+International+Ltd$&loadpics=1
    http://goo.gl/rRUJg7

    I'd be more surprised if they werne't the same people..

    I guess the most famous person from there would be Don Priestly :)
  • ellafaeellafae
    edited December 2013
    I'm looking for company information on Bubble Bus Software. I've found articles on their games, but there just doesn't seem to be a lot on the company itself.

    Thanks ahead of time for any help!
  • Battle BunnyBattle Bunny
    edited December 2013
    Apart from the obvious articles/adverts listed in WoS Infoseek under the company name and the individual games, here's a few others which might be of interest (GM is Games Machine, CV is C&VG).

    Big K 1.85 page 62 (Feature - Richard Clarke (Bubble Bus)) [full page]
    Popular Computing Weekly 2.86 page 112 (Feature - Steven Crow) [full page]
    N GM 2.88 p. 10 .A Alternative gets Piranha / Audiogenic / Incentive / Bubble Bus rights
    E CV 10.85 p. 64 .H Hi-Rise (Bubble Bus)
    E CV 12.85 p. 75 .H Hi-Rise (Bubble Bus)

    The authors of 5th Quadrant (not recorded on WoS) were Nick Jones and Paul (unknown surname).
  • ellafaeellafae
    edited December 2013
    Battle Bunny wrote: »
    Apart from the obvious articles/adverts listed in WoS Infoseek under the company name and the individual games, here's a few others which might be of interest (GM is Games Machine, CV is C&VG).

    Big K 1.85 page 62 (Feature - Richard Clarke (Bubble Bus)) [full page]
    Popular Computing Weekly 2.86 page 112 (Feature - Steven Crow) [full page]
    N GM 2.88 p. 10 .A Alternative gets Piranha / Audiogenic / Incentive / Bubble Bus rights
    E CV 10.85 p. 64 .H Hi-Rise (Bubble Bus)
    E CV 12.85 p. 75 .H Hi-Rise (Bubble Bus)

    The authors of 5th Quadrant (not recorded on WoS) were Nick Jones and Paul (unknown surname).

    Thank you so much, this is a huge help.
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