I’ve recently been working on a full HTML5 conversion of the Sinclair Spectrum +3 manual with full canvas-drawn screenshots and diagrams for smooth scaling/high res displays as well as some close font matching and layout as well as cross-reference links all over the place.

My ZX Spectrum +3 Manual conversion is now available!

A series of posts on system fonts:

My love of typography originated in the 80’s with the golden years of 8-bit home computing and their 8×8 pixel monospaced fonts on low-resolution displays.

From an earliest memory of a cream colored box emblazoned with letters, mostly black — some red, came an owl proclaiming allegiance to the BBC.

This small box sat silently, patiently even, in our classroom for the best part of a year. On the few occasions our teacher was brave enough to flip the switch the machine would chirp into life with it’s two-tone beep and would state on capital white letters on a black background that it was BASIC. At this point the teacher would key-in the mythical incantation of CHAIN ""CHAIN "" — handily jotted on a nearby note — and feed the beast a cassette tape.

I remember gazing at the screen of Acornsoft’s Elite in my childhood wondering what the code behind those 3D images looked like.

How did they rotate like that? How did it know which lines to hide? And more importantly where I can get a good price for this cargo hold of radio-actives and platinum?