David Hayward get to grips with his Spectrum gaming this week
Gaming on the old rubber keyboard, 'dead flesh', 48K Spectrum was a part of our childhood and adolescence that we won't forget in a hurry. But often, the keyboard just wasn't up to the task of controlling the game the way we wanted it to.
Take Taito's Flying Shark, Operation Wolf and the hardware-destroying Daley Thompson's Decathlon, for example; these were games where the keyboard needed to take a back seat while the gamer got to grips with the latest joystick.
Most of us owned one of Spectravideo's Quickshot Joysticks, and the QuickShot II Turbo - the one that was red and black - was a firm favourite. However, the one true Spectrum joystick that formed the backbone of gaming peripherals was the Kempston range, with the Kempston Interface.
The Kempston Interface protocol was the hardware that saved the Speccy gamer from using the rather terrible Interface I, with Microdrive and networking support. The restrictive 16K programs that would only work with the Sinclair Interface 1 were ushered in at a time when the 48Kwas beginning to reign supreme, and they were exceptionally unreliable devices to attach to the rear end of the Spectrum.
The Kempston Interface, though, which came out at more of less the same time, worked exceedingly well and offered the gamer an Atari interface to plug their joysticks into. Remarkably, despite the fondly recalled screen distortion when you knocked the Kempston Interface plugged into the rear of the Spectrum's expansion port, the Kempston was a very stable peripheral and easy to program and implement into a game.
Its History
Kempston Micro Electronics was formed in the early 80s in Bedfordshire, in Kempston funnily enough.
It started off in 1982 with the Kempstonn PPI Port, a programmable interface IO for the MOS 8255 chip and various stackable connectors and expansion boards for kit electronics and very early kit form computers.
By 1983, Sir Clive had the country in the palm of his hand thanks to the Spectrum, and the company launched, for around £15, the Kempston Joystick Interface. The nine-pin Atari and Commodore standard proved exceedingly popular, so Kempston started that same year to produce and sell the Competition Pro range of joysticks, usually as an accompaniment to the Kempston Interface.
According to those who programed the Spectrum, the inputs from a Kempston Interface and Joystick were read through port 31, which in BASIC could be read with the command IN 31. There were only five states to read for the Kempston: up, down, left, right and fire, but clever programmers could also utilise diagonal states.
But as the new models of the Spectrum came out, the Kempston Interface began to develop problems, causing freguent crashes and so on. And with the likes of the more advanced Quickshot range of joysticks and others, the now aging Competition Pro, 5000 and Pro Xtra, didn't have what it took to keep up with the gamers of the time.
Eventually, though, as the 8-bit machines were shelved and despite Kempston producing a mouse in 1986, the hardware started to fade away. Sadly, Kempston Micro Electronics closed the doors of Unit 30, Singer Way, Woburn Road Industrial Estate, Kempston early in 1987.
The Good
The Kempston Competition Pro was a mighty fine joystick. The pommel topped stick and a pair of large buttons made for a stick that could take some pretty heft abuse over the years.
The Bad
The slightest knock of the Kempston Interface and the game crashed which, after taking ten minutes to load, was a pain.
Conclusion
Thank you Kempston, you served us well.
Did You Know...
• Kempston produced a serial, RS232 interface to connect to serial printers.
• The Kempston Mouse for the Spectrum came with a free copy of Art Studio and cost £50.
• The Competition Pro 5000 based Kempston joystick is available as a USB stick these days.
• There's even a homebrew kit that allows a Kempston Interface to plug into a PC via USB.