Yeah me too in 1982, using the Melbourne House Z80 reference, aged a young 10 years old. Working with POKE and no macro-assembler, I wrote mnemonics then translated them to machine-code by hand. A baptism of fire that to this day that I've not forgotten.
I have my ZX-81 (with the 16KB expansion pack) and my ZX-Spectrum (with a microdrive). I think they're in working condition though they haven't been powered up like in 30+ years.
Don't just plug it in! The power supply and/or VRM can fail in ways that deliver bad voltages to components. You might want to watch some of Lee's[1] videos first on how to bring up a ZX81 safely, or ask in his discord community for more help.
Watching the retrocomputing enthusiasts, apart from obvious things like water damage, it seems that the first thing that one always has to check before attempting to power up is capacitors. A generalism true for all old electronics, rather than Sinclair-specific.
My guess is most of it? This commit message for example sounds very much like a Claude result:
Add Space Invaders game implementation in assembly language
- Implemented the core game logic including player movement, missile firing, and invader behavior.
- Added collision detection for missiles and bombs.
- Included game state management for win/lose conditions and restarting the game.
- Created functions for drawing game elements on the screen and handling keyboard input.
- Defined constants and variables for game configuration and state tracking.
That last one in particular is exactly the kind of update you get from claude, it doesn't sound very human. "Constants and variables" eh? Not just constants or variables, but constants and variables.
rule #1 of ai programming: read and approve everything before accept.
rule #2 do not let it write commit messages - i did not know notice that until many commits later. they are horrible. change 10 things - writes about the last one, too peppy too.
An interesting observation. It prompts the thought of how far away this simulator is from an actual ZX81, and how much it has been pulled away from a ZX81 by dint of training data where simulated retrocomputers of other types all boot into copyright messages. I wonder how often the spicy autocomplete engine tried to make it put up a "READY" or "OK" prompt.
One ZX81 clone actually did have a "READY" prompt, I read. Actual intelligence was doing the same in the 1980s. (-:
Almost none of the domain knowledge came from Claude. This is something I did by hand 40+ years ago (an assembler and a disassemble/debugger, which is in parts similar to the emulator)
This time it was almost as fun : 1/8 of the mental effort per line, x 8 the speed.
