I was browsing the archive of the ZX Spectrum site World of Spectrum the other day, looking for a contribution I knew I'd made to Your Sinclair magazine many years ago. Eventually I found it, and it's a heartwarming piece of nostalgia:

If you read that article, halfway down the third column you'll find a contribution by one Micronet poster, "Del". Guess who? Yes indeed, this was late 1986, so I was about 18 and working for Wordmongers in Aylesbury.

When I found this, I racked my brains trying to remember what Micronet might have been. The Wikipedia entry is here, but I honestly can't say I remember it. That's a bit sad because back then, while I was waiting for the Internet to be invented, I spent a lot of time on those sorts of sites and services. I guess what I currently remember as Prestel was in fact Micronet800. Sigh.

Anyway, back to the piece. I remember the joystick interface detection code quite clearly, since I found it in the Manic Miner source code. This was back in the days when a Z80 disassembly listing was my idea of fun. I seem to have passed it off as my own. Ahem. Well, these transgressions come back to bite us eventually don't they? Apologies to Matthew Smith, who must have originally wrote it. :o}

The other bit I only vaguely recall. I had to find a Spectrum emulator and run it to remember what it does. I wonder how long it's been since someone last typed that piece of code into a Spectrum? Actually, it took me ages to type it in - however did we manage with that keyboard? Anyway, here's what it does:

How pointless.