Video game designer and programming genius, David Jones, has donated his Tandy TRS-80 Model III computer to the Centre for Computing History.
David’s computer was welcomed into the collection because this was the machine that he used to create his classic games featuring ‘Magic Knight’, Finders Keepers and its sequels: Spellbound, Knight Tyme, and Stormbringer.
David Jones said “I posted on Facebook that my computer was available, but there were so many comments saying that it should go to the Centre for Computing History, that I contacted them and was really pleased to find that they would preserve it for future generations to see.”
The Magic Knight games were released on cassette for numerous home computers including the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad, and Commodore 64. Many of these games were published by Mastertronic, who were known for publishing high-quality games at budget prices. David said “I received royalties of 10p per cassette sold, which doesn’t sound a lot today – but when you sold 300,000 copies of a game, that’s quite a lot of money.”
Adrian Page-Mitchell, Collections Officer at the Centre for Computing History, said “These were some of the most highly-regarded games, certainly for the Spectrum. For instance, Spellbound scored 95 out of 100 in Crash Magazine, one of the highest scores they ever awarded to a budget title. Knight Tyme was also the first game written specifically for the 128k Spectrum.”
David’s TRS-80 computer also came with many floppy disks, and a 15 megabyte hard disk that contains the original source code and assets for many of his games. Museum volunteers will endeavour to image the disks, and make sure that the data is preserved as part of the museum’s collection for future reference.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
Python for Microcontrollers — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: Pi Day, GitHub 2FA and much more! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi
