About the RS-232 serial port

The ZX Interface 1 features an RS-232 serial port which allows the Spectrum to be connected to other computers and peripherals, such as a serial printer.

Spectaculator can either redirect serial input and output to/from files or use a real serial (COM) port on your computer. This can be useful as it allows Spectaculator to be connected to a real Spectrum by attaching a suitable cable between the real Spectrum's Interface 1 and a free serial (COM) port on your computer.

For further information, see the ZX Interface 1 and ZX Microdrive manual, available here.

Tip

• Normally, you want to configure the same COM port for both input and output. However, sometimes it can be useful to say, configure serial input to a COM port and serial output to a file. This way it's possible to receive data from a real Spectrum and write it to a local file on your computer.

• Details on building your own RS-232 cable to connect to a real Spectrum can be found here.