The thing with computers back then was, they never did quite enough to keep you happy. Some would say the same about computers now of course but in comparison they are just being greedy. And of course there were no package deals supplying you with loads of extra gubbins in the initial purchase. So not long after we got the spectrum we were looking for bits to plug in the back.

First up for the rubber-keyed wonder was a printer. But not for us the joys of the official ZX one, with its silver scrolls. No, our sights fixed on the Alphacom 32. Not only were the thermal rolls for that white to start with, but you could have them with either blue or black "ink" to burn through. And the man with the money agreed, so pretty soon Dad had placed the order and a box came in the post. And not long after that the covers of my physics and maths exercise books were adorned with screendumps from Starion and the loading screen of Tranz-Am. Jealousy was rife.

Next to be attached didn't go into the big edge connecter at the back at all. Instead it ate the computer whole. Things were begining to be done that the rubber couldn't keep up with. And then there was the fact that serious abuse of the "P" key during frenzied sessions of Penetrator meant it was getting a bit tough to get a result from. There had been replacement keyboards on the market for a while now, but we had waited for the real thing from the man himself. OK, perhaps it wasn't quite as nice as some of the others out there, but the Spectrum+ shell did it for us nicely. In fact it still sits inside that black housing today, somewhere in a loft in Felixstowe.

There were two snags with the new keyboard though. It wasn't quite as comfortable and symbol shift no longer fell in the right place under the thumb when playing Lunar Jetman. A new games-playing option was required and sticks of joy were on their way to our lives. Not for us was the standard Kempston only option though. We needed programability. And of the options around we went for the AGF Protocol 4. That came complete with spare snap in cards, each of which could be populated with little rubber pegs to determine which direction should correspond to which key. Totally flexible and a joy for those games written before joystick options were thought of.

It also meant an end to the use of overlays. Quite where these had come from I can no longer recall, but one day we were struggling to remember how to launch our rockets in Combat Lynx, the next there was a piece of black plastic covered with little orange stickers doing the job our brains were failing at. Oh, those orange stickers. Sheets of them helpfully printed with arrows, "fire", "thrust", "brake", "pause" and other helpful reminders. And many, many more blank for adolescent handrwiting to scrawl more game-specific text.

Following on from the ability to do things with more efficiency that the new keyboard left us with, coupled with the arrival of OCP's brilliant Art Studio we wanted better output. This became even more important after the Alphacom prints started showing signs of something that would dog early fax owners - they faded away. Although they had moved location to a cosy area behind the audio demonstration room, this was not something Big & Baggy or Short & Crumpled could help us with. This quest demanded a trip to London.

The fateful day dawned, the Network Card provided us with a family's worth of Capital Cards and 25 minutes later we were on the underground. The obligatory visit to the Science Museum before lunch was followed by shops. And what wonderful shops they were too. Branson's enormous emporium delighted us with the basement CD factory and furnished me in particular with the new Human League album. Although in a move I have never been able to understand I was persuaded to go for cassette rather than my usual vinyl as "it would be easier to carry around for the rest of the day". Sage advice perhaps, but as our next stop was a few doors up Tottenham Court Road where we intended to leave with a printer in a big box not quite comprehendable.

And thus we found ourselves in Micro Anvika. A few minutes of idle browsing and general Oooohing at the merchandise brought an assistant scurrying to our collective side and the serious business could begin. This has of course also vanished from my brain space. Daisy Wheel or Dot Matrix? Graphics or text or both? Tractor or sheet feed? I can no longer recall the questions that went back and forth. Instead it skips to us leaving to shop. In one hand the Father carried a small plastic bag containing a Kempston parallel printer interface (praise be to AGF for putting a throughport on the Protocol 4) and a few spare ribbons. In the other a big grey box with a naff plastic handle (that would fall out twice before we got home) emblazoned with Citizen 120D.

It was, of course, a revolution for the time.

In quality, in size of output, in speed and in noise. By God it made a racket. But we didn't care - it was our racket.

And it lead to Tasword 2 getting some proper use, which in turn lead to Interface one and a couple of Microdrives, which then enabled Tasword 3 - the pinnacle of Spectrum Word Processors. It wasn't the first peripheral we bought, and it was not to be the last, but that good, upstanding Citizen finally made the computer the useful device the ZX81 had been intended as rather than just a plaything with more lasting appeal than a Star Wars figure or Action Man Jeep.

Simon

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