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Expensive Speccy

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Matt Rudge

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Mar 1, 2010, 4:53:30 AM3/1/10
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Much to my wife's delight, I often browse eBay to see if I can add to my
collection or rubber-keyed monsters. Generally, I don't pay more than €30
- and often buy faulty ones in an attempt to resurrect them.

I know that this one is in very good condition, but this price seems
excessive - even to me:

http://bit.ly/bIgb7v

--
Matt

Tim Fardell

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Mar 1, 2010, 7:42:56 AM3/1/10
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Perhaps it's an Issue One? Difficult to tell from the photo. But it would
still be expensive, I agree.

eBay is mad sometimes. I recently bought an item for some spares, took the
spares off, and then resold the incomplete item for three pounds more than
I paid for it (including postage). So not only did I effectivly get my
parts for nothing, I got some free money as well.


OwenBot

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Mar 1, 2010, 10:38:31 AM3/1/10
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It does look like an issue 1 (grey rubber keys) in good condition.
Probably worth that to a collector, but I wouldn't want to actually
use one. Issue 3Bs are a lot less likely to go wrong. Even if it's
been well looked after the membrane may well be shot by now, and
removing the faceplate to fix it is likely to damage it.

Brian Gaff

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Mar 1, 2010, 2:19:07 PM3/1/10
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I used to get a bit narked with Sinclair, as they never sent you the same
board back as you sent to them. I've had iss 2s in my old iss 3 and vice
versa. Of course they were very unrelable, and of course someone no doubt
made a lot of money out of that fact!

I am not up with the minutui of the different issues of case parts though. I
know some had slightly different coloured keys, and some plates were held on
with little lugs and some glued, but thats about it.

Brian

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OwenBot

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Mar 2, 2010, 3:27:23 AM3/2/10
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Agreed, I don't think there's any way to be sure that a serial number
on a Speccy relates to the board inside it unless there's been one
owner who can vouch that it was never sent in for repairs. The issue
ones had grey key mats. I've seen quite a bit of variation in the
screen printing process on just three 48s I have. The faceplate of the
3B I recently took apart was just glued on and the serial number on
the base was in red. The issue 2s I have use green for their serial
numbers.

On Mar 1, 7:19 pm, "Brian Gaff" <bria...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
> I used to get a bit narked with Sinclair, as they never sent you the same
> board back as you sent to them. I've had iss 2s in my old iss 3 and vice
> versa. Of course they were very  unrelable, and of course someone no doubt
> made a lot of money out of that fact!
>
> I am not up with the minutui of the different issues of case parts though. I
> know some had slightly different coloured keys, and some plates were held on
> with little lugs and some glued, but thats about it.
>
> Brian
>
> --

> Brian Gaff - bria...@blueyonder.co.uk


> Note:- In order to reduce spam, any email without 'Brian Gaff'
> in the display name may be lost.

> Blind user, so no pictures please!"OwenBot" <cheve...@gmail.com> wrote in message

Matt Rudge

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Mar 2, 2010, 4:43:04 AM3/2/10
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On Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:27:23 -0800, OwenBot wibbled:

> Agreed, I don't think there's any way to be sure that a serial number on
> a Speccy relates to the board inside it unless there's been one owner
> who can vouch that it was never sent in for repairs. The issue ones had
> grey key mats. I've seen quite a bit of variation in the screen printing
> process on just three 48s I have.

I seem to remember on a poster of a Spectrum 48 that Sinclair Research
sent me (school project...long story), that the cursor symbols were
triangles, rather than the usual squashed arrows.

Was this just a marketing mock-up, or were the symbols on some faceplates
different?

--
Matt

Guesser

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Mar 2, 2010, 6:24:18 AM3/2/10
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On 02/03/2010 09:43, Matt Rudge wrote:
> I seem to remember on a poster of a Spectrum 48 that Sinclair Research
> sent me (school project...long story), that the cursor symbols were
> triangles, rather than the usual squashed arrows.
>
> Was this just a marketing mock-up, or were the symbols on some faceplates
> different?
>

I believe this was one of the models/pre-production speccies.

the only place I have ever seen those triangles is on packaging and
promotional material. (and on Rick Dickinson's Flickr iirc)

Guesser

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Mar 2, 2010, 6:26:49 AM3/2/10
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/9574086@N02/697781842/in/set-72157600607571866/

there ya go,

"Final model, made by professional modelmakers, for all the marketing,
advertising and packaging images - production would not exist this early
on but the design would be in the tooling phase "

Matt Rudge

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Mar 2, 2010, 9:37:48 AM3/2/10
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On Tue, 02 Mar 2010 11:26:49 +0000, Guesser wibbled:

> On 02/03/2010 11:24, Guesser wrote:
>> On 02/03/2010 09:43, Matt Rudge wrote:
>>> I seem to remember on a poster of a Spectrum 48 that Sinclair Research
>>> sent me (school project...long story), that the cursor symbols were
>>> triangles, rather than the usual squashed arrows.
>>>
>>> Was this just a marketing mock-up, or were the symbols on some
>>> faceplates different?
>>>
>>>
>> I believe this was one of the models/pre-production speccies.
>>
>> the only place I have ever seen those triangles is on packaging and
>> promotional material. (and on Rick Dickinson's Flickr iirc)
>
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/9574086@N02/697781842/in/
set-72157600607571866/
>
> there ya go,

Thanks - that's it exactly! It reminded me that I had noticed on the
poster that the "Space" key was only labelled "Space" and not "Break
Space".

--
Matt

Paul E Collins

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Mar 4, 2010, 3:03:01 PM3/4/10
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"Matt Rudge" <mru...@googleswebmailservice.com> wrote:

> Thanks - that's it exactly! It reminded me that I had noticed on the
> poster that the "Space" key was only labelled "Space" and not "Break
> Space".

It was a non-breaking space.

IGMC,

Eq.

Matt Rudge

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Mar 4, 2010, 6:54:28 PM3/4/10
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On Thu, 04 Mar 2010 20:03:01 +0000, Paul E Collins wibbled:

Oh dear :)

>
> IGMC,
>

It's ok...just leave now...I'll post it to you!

--
Matt

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