Lucky last comes from Australia from Anonymous Too bad if it got lost, they never would have got it back. Oh well. so uh, here we go from Australia not Austria let's have a look. what do we got? Oh look at this, look at this.

ah Sinclair Clive Sinclair woohoo the Sinclair ZX Spectrum Brilliant! I'm sure this is bringing back a lot of memories for uh, those vintage computer. Buffs So I'm going to save this for a tear down Tuesday it will be have another vintage tear down but uh, it's got a date on there anyway. made in the UK fantastic Suli Sinclair and the Sinclair ZX Spectrum I wonder if it works I don't know but uh I've never never actually used one I don't think they were that huge here anyway. oh yeah I don't think this is working at all cuz there's no 9vt uh Power Jack in there.

but uh yeah, we got some uh cartridge expansion here, microphone, earphone and TV composite output. really bare bone stuff. but this thing you know, as with all Sinclair stuff built down to a price does the Bare Basics and uh well. it was quite popular for its day and um, probably of the largest selling computers in the UK if I'm not wrong, but there you go.

Beautiful! And you know the old rubber um keyboard? you know, not that great. no tactile, uh, feedback on those things. They've got the basic commands printed on their list being in key random in cosign tan Peak peek and poke. Oh, those were the days and uh, you can change your color.

blue, red, menta, green, cyan. fantastic true video whatever that is caps lock Graphics mode Oh a beautiful hi Dave I Noticed you have a taste for Sinclair products I do indeed, so please accept this. Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48k Oh massive for display in your Museum I Was hesitant to send it down in its extremely non-working condition, but after seeing your appreciation of the Sinclair TV and the C5 I decided to do it. I have my own Sinclair C5 now is parked down in my parking space down the bottom, but it's a fixer upper unfortunately.

H it's a bit crusty anyway. I've got one on. Proud owner of Sinair C5 now and now I Sinair ZX Spectrum As you may guess, unit is nonfunctional as is the case with the TV you received I have taken a part from this unit to get another ZX Spectrum up and running Parts Taken include the DC Barrel connector, the fan Ula oh, completely gone, two of the High Dam, some of the Um Zex transistors, and the keyboard membrane connectors. Oh man, no.

okay, well it was probably yeah. Dead Begin with he's curious to know why the Trac is on the the bottom of the main board are wrinkly. Hm. let's find out.

Initially thought that maybe the resist coding with flaking off but doesn't appear that way. Well we'll check it out. I Had the pleasure of shaking your hand at the make Affair in Sydney I do remember that and he mentioned this I believe that's the closest any kind of celebrity I've ever been. Think you need to get out more because I'm not a celebrity so thanks for taking the time to chat.

I Appreciate, No worries. thank you for uh, introducing yourself at Make Air I do like it when people come up and say hi so thank you very much Brendan let's crack it open I Expect all through hole stuff in here. of course the fan. uh the main fan chip is gone Sinclair were're obsessed with those.

They use them in the Sinclair C5 and bloody everything else you can poke a damn Crow Pro Bat and oh there we go. look at. oh man, there's no solder mask. even look at that.

we've just got 10 plated. Jeez, they saved a couple of cents there. Oh Clive saving the old dollar to to go for sort of. you know, the homemade.

uh you know it's almost like a you know, a home etcher it kind of reminds me of a home etcher kind of thing with the just a tin plating and no solda mask. Oh goodness, but that's actually neatly laid out. We got our RF modulator up here and there's our main oscillator 4.43 6 Mahz. and you know there's the main fan.

We got some memory in here and yeah, he's removed a few things and well, yeah, sucked a few things out. Really quite ugly. the regulator over here that looks a bit dodgy. We have a floater look at that.

just a S Bent 7805 just floating off the board there. They didn't even bother to solder it or screw it down. Ah, good on you. Clive And of course they didn't.

Guild the Lily on the edge connector. literally. I'm quite surprised that Clive decided to spring for silk screen on this stuff. I Mean, you know, really? Oh, pissing away money there? Clive Copyright 1983 Issue 3 But what? Wait, look at the bottom.

We have spared no expense. We've got solder mask. Look at that. Why you do it on the top and not the bottom? I Don't really know.

I Don't get it. but there's the crinkly he's talking about. Let's check it out. And there it is.

Yes, the famous, uh, crinkled ground planes. Very common for the day and the reason for that is because, well, this is all 10 plated tracers. This is not SM OBC or uh, that's the acronym for solder mask over bare copper which they do these days. Back in the old days like this, they used to just, uh, tin a plate all of the part of the manufacturing process.

They just tin plate everything. uh, all the tracers and everything including these ground planes here. And of course, if you've seen the solder cating that you get how they increase, uh, the current handling capacity of solder tracers. by wave flowing, you'll notice that you'll um, you've seen this in previous videos that it you know comes up in like Globs and all sorts of stuff.

So there's obviously tin that builds up and it's not a really nice even surface. And it's not hot air leveled either. which is another uh process so they didn't even bother with that. So what they do is they, uh, tin all of tin the copper on here.

and then they apply the solder mask over the top and the tin. The tinning underneath that is actually so it's not. A lot of people think it's the solder mask crinkling, but it's not. It's actually the tin built up under there which I' scraped that off.

we'll be able to see it. So there you go. You can see that the tin is. You know, that's how the tin was actually laid down on the board cuz they didn't bother to level that out.

That happens on large, um, solder masses like this. Large thermal masses like this. That's why you generally won't see. You'll see tiny amounts on the traces there.

You can see little tiny pits there, but generally the smaller traces like that are going to be pretty smooth and you'll get parts of the ground plane that are smooth. But then the process of actually laying the tin on top of the copper just you know, forms all of these you know, Globs and traces and things like that. and then they just coat the solda mask on top. so that's why it's crinkly And the hardware designed for this was done by a guy called Richard Altwasser who worked at Sinclair for a couple of years and then went on to a a computer company.

found a computer company of no note and went bankrupt apparently. So I wonder what he's doing these days? I wonder what he's working on? If anyone knows, hey, maybe he's even watching good on you Richard Anyway, Um, here's the Um NEC D 780c. It's a Z80 uh, equivalent Z80 compatible uh processor of the time. So yes, this is a classic Z80 machine.

And then we've got a Sinclair branded Um Hitari mask ROM here. And yeah, that contains a ROM They didn't even bother sock it in the thing once again, saved a couple of cents on the socket there. So yeah, can't upgrade the bloody firmware in the thing. And of course, most of the Magic's done inside the fan uh Ula or uncommitted logic array in this thing.

And the graphics were simply stunning for the day. Um. text was uh, 32 columns by 24 characters. absolutely hopeless um and uh, 256 by 192 Graphics in like half a dozen colors.

It was yeah, pretty crusty, but hey, you know it was extremely popular for the day. And as with all Sinclair stuff, it was affordable. And the much loathed uh rubberized membrane keyboard here um, there was a chicklet model I think as well, but uh yeah, I I Kind of always liked the look of this. you know I liked just the color of the keys, but I L it coped a lot of flak for it apparently.

and to get it out, you've got a prize off the front bezel like that and that's just all glued down. and uh, Tada we're in like Flynn and there's our complete rubber membrane. Aha right! So they're using just a a two part sandwiched membrane in there. so then they haven't got like the carbon backing on the keys.

the keys are just, uh, just Rubber and that pushes down. ah, we can't even, uh, separate that really? I think that's yet that's molded together as one sheet. So there we go. there's the individual keys I'm not sure how reliable that sucker was though, so that is a quick look inside the Sinclair ZX Spectrum another Clive Sinclair classic and well, yeah, pretty crusty built down to a price, but hey, it was very popular in the UK so you know credit where credits due good on your Clive And thank you very much Brandan for sending in this bit of vintage retro computer technology.

We love this stuff here on the Euv. Look.