I've never see one before, no one has.

About

This is the home page for my TNFS Server - it’s a sort of “website” for the old 8-bit Sinclair ZX Spectrum computer.

When I was around 8-9 years old, I got my first computer - a squishy, rubber-keyed 48k Spectrum complete with cassette recorder and a bunch of old tapes. From then on, I was hooked. I realised even at that age that I loved computers and really wanted to work with them when I grew up. Well, many decades have passed and whilst I still don’t consider myself a “grown up”, I am very lucky to still work in the industry, doing what I love. Only these days it’s more Kubernetes and spinning infrastructure up through CI/CD than it is loading games from cassette tape. Today I spend my days working on large scale infrastructure projects with the kind of resources my younger self would have found unbelievable.

With so much complexity in modern systems, sometimes it’s a lot of fun to go back to simpler times. I’ve written before about how much “soul” these old computers have. My Spectrum and Amiga got me through some rough times and have given me so much enjoyment through the years. I credit those communities with feeding my curiosity and developing my interest in programming, so I thought it would be nice to give something back. It’s been a lot of fun remembering all the Sinclair BASIC hacks and tricks I used 35-odd years ago and an absolute delight to see those first users and messages popping up.

The site currently offers over 16,000 games, utilities and demos alongside other features like:

  • Message Wall
  • Hall Of Fame (most played games)
  • Lists of recent uploads

I’ve also added a few curated lists - things like my personal favourites, The Spectrum Computing Forums Official UK Top 40 and so on. I’ll keep the site updated and add new content whenever I can; My hope is that this becomes one of the more popular and useful TNFS sites for all Spectrum users.

To get started, read the Guide.

Technical background

I wrote a 4-part series of articles entitled “DevOps For The Sinclair Spectrum” on my blog, which covers everything from the hardware to the backend server processes. For anyone who has ever wondered how to unit-test Sinclair BASIC programs in CI/CD pipelines running on Kubernetes clusters, this is the set of articles for you! I’ve also added a bunch of links to other TNFS sites, lots of code samples and the odd meme or two.

Thanks

Many, many thanks to the wonderful folks over at Spectrum Computing for all your help, suggestions and general encouragement as I rejoined the Speccy scene. You all rock. 8-bit for life, yo.