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Indo Speccy

2 September 2026

MemoirHardware

I have been living in Indonesia for ten years now. About three years ago, I saw a post on Facebook about the ZX Spectrum and promptly joined the group to satisfy a nostalgia hunger I didn’t even know I had.

I then watched the excellent BBC drama Micro Men, which dramatises the rivalry between Sir Clive Sinclair and Chris Curry. More details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Men

This was a mistake.

After feasting on nostalgia, I really wanted to play Jetpac and Manic Miner again. Not on an emulator, though. I wanted to play them on a real ZX Spectrum.

I checked the local online marketplace, Tokopedia, but could only find a ZX Spectrum Vega, which is essentially a modern plug-and-play console. That wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted the real thing: rubber keys, horrible joystick controls and all.

A few weeks passed and I took another look.

To my surprise, an old rubber-keyed wonder was listed for sale in East Java.

It was advertised as “untested”.

Now, I have bought enough second-hand electronics to know that “untested” can mean one of two things:

1. Nobody has actually tested it.
2. We have tested it, it doesn’t work, but we cannot officially advertise it as “broken” because that would mean admitting we are selling broken electronics.

It was listed for 200,000 IDR, about £10.

It was the unit only. No power supply, no cables, no box, no manual, no accessories. Just the rubber-keyed block.

Obviously, I bought it.

When it arrived, I was as excited as Christmas Day 1984.

There was just one small problem.

I didn’t have an old TV with an analogue RF input.

I used Google to see how other people were connecting their old Speccys to modern flatscreen HD televisions. I discovered something called the “Comp Mod”, which allows you to get a more usable video signal from the Spectrum.

I headed over to YouTube and found a huge selection of videos showing how to perform the modification. Whilst I was there, I also found a frightening number of videos about repairing old Speccys.

It was a very good job I watched them.

I could have done a lot of damage if I had simply plugged it in.

The Spectrum has an unusual power connector arrangement, with the centre pin being negative and the outer barrel positive. This is the exact opposite of what you would expect from a modern power supply. If I had connected a regular 12V adapter, I could have caused some serious damage.

The original power circuitry also contains a 7805 voltage regulator which is notorious for generating a considerable amount of heat. After more than forty years, I wasn’t particularly keen on subjecting my newly acquired treasure to any more heat than absolutely necessary.

I also discovered that the electrolytic capacitors on the motherboard are now getting rather old. Some people recommend replacing them as part of a refurbishment, particularly on a machine that has spent more than four decades sitting around waiting for somebody like me to come along.

My Speccy was over 40 years old.

I think it had earned some new capacitors.

The Speccy used axial capacitors, which were quite normal for the period, whereas Tokopedia only stocked radial capacitors. Electrically, they are effectively the same thing; the difference is that the wires come out of opposite ends of an axial capacitor and from the same end of a radial one.

I could have made the radial capacitors work, but it would have been unsightly and, frankly, a bit of a bodge.

I looked on AliExpress and was delighted to see that they stocked the axial capacitors.

However...

The Indonesian government had recently banned imports from AliExpress.

If I wanted those axial capacitors, I was going to have to be patient.

There were other things I could check before I even considered connecting power to the Speccy. The following site has an excellent write-up of things to check before you plug one in: https://www.lostretrotapes.com/zx-spectrum-repair-before-you-plug-in/

It turned out that I needed a replacement voltage regulator, a new transistor (TR3), and I had also identified some potential issues with the RAM chips.

This £10 bargain was becoming very expensive indeed.

The voltage regulator itself was quite common and easy to buy, even in Indonesia.

But there is always a but.

The original regulator generates an awful lot of heat. It has a massive heatsink attached to it and is probably one of the reasons heat-related damage is such a concern with these old machines.

There are modern switching voltage regulators that generate almost no heat at all and would certainly help prolong the life of the Speccy once refurbished. The downside is that you are moving away from the original specification.

The unit was now 45 years old.

I wanted my son to inherit it one day and not have to worry about replacing parts, so I opted for the modern switching regulator.

Unfortunately, like the capacitors, it wasn’t available in Indonesia.

The RAM chips were, well, cheap as chips.

I contacted several vendors on Tokopedia who had advertised the chips. However, they told me they couldn’t honour the advertised price and that there was a two-month lead time.

The revised price was extortionate.

I figured they wanted to charge me for the airfare to visit a distant relative who lived in a territory that AliExpress actually did ship to.

As luck would have it, my sister was visiting me from the UK during Easter that year, so I placed all my orders with AliExpress and a local component store in Birmingham.

I also had to order a replacement keyboard membrane. The old one disintegrated almost as soon as I opened the Speccy up.

Easter came.

I got my spare parts.

I got to work.

I really had no idea how much I hated desoldering, especially the old RAM chips. There is something particularly satisfying about finally removing a component that has been soldered into a circuit board since the early 1980s.

There is also something particularly satisfying about never having to desolder it again.

Eventually, all the faulty parts had been replaced.

I performed the Comp Mod to bypass the RF video output, and I was finally ready to power her on.

I plugged in the power.

The screen came to life.

I saw the familiar:

“© 1982 Sinclair Research Ltd”

I nearly punched the air.

Then I noticed something.

The text was slightly ghosting a few lines down the screen.

So close.

But not quite there.

More Googling followed.

I worked out that one of the most important chips in the entire machine, the ULA, was probably the culprit.

The ULA is a custom chip designed specifically for the ZX Spectrum and performs a huge amount of the machine’s work. Unfortunately, the original manufacturing process disappeared decades ago, so finding an original replacement is becoming increasingly difficult.

Fortunately, modern reverse-engineered replacement ULAs are now available.

I found one advertised for around £36.

£36 for a chip.

For a computer that had cost me £10.

At this point, I had crossed the line between “repairing an old computer” and “financially rescuing a member of the family”.

The replacement ULAs are essentially modern recreations of the original functionality, produced in relatively small quantities. I found a seller in the UK and placed an order.

A friend was coming to visit in the autumn and kindly brought it over with him.

The moment of truth arrived.

I plugged in the new ULA.

The ghosting was gone.

I loaded Jetpac.

And suddenly, it was Christmas 1984 again.

Only this time, I was playing it in Indonesia, on a 45-year-old computer that had cost me £10, crossed half a world, survived an assortment of replacement components, a government import ban, several hundred solder joints and a £36 modern recreation of a chip that hasn’t been manufactured for decades.

Was it worth it?

Absolutely.

Would it have been cheaper to buy a working Spectrum?

Almost certainly.

Would I have learned anything?

Probably.

Would I do it again?

Ask me after I’ve recovered from the desoldering.

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