ZX Spectrum

The ZX Spectrum was an 8-bit personal home computer released in the United Kingdom in 1982 by Sinclair Research Ltd. The ZX Spectrum software library currently consists of more than 21,000 titles. Most Spectrum software was originally distributed on audio cassettes. The software was encoded on tape as a sequence of pulses that may sound similar to the sounds of a modern day modem. The ZX Microdrive system was released in July 1983 and quickly became quite popular with the Spectrum user base due to the low cost of the drives, however, the actual media was very expensive for software publishers to use for mass market releases. Several floppy disk systems were designed for the ZX Spectrum. The most popular (excepting Eastern Europe,) were the DISCiPLE and +D systems released by Miles Gordon Technology in 1987 and 1988 respectively.