About the Spectrum keyboard

Modern personal computers have significantly more keys than the original 48K Spectrum. Even so, there are two keys on the Spectrum keyboard unique to the Spectrum: Caps shift and Symbol shift.

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By default Spectaculator uses the left shift key on the PC keyboard as the Caps shift key and the right shift key on the PC keyboard as the Symbol shift key.

As of version 6.0, you can change this so that both shift keys map to Caps shift and both Ctrl keys map to Symbol shift.

These keys along with the actual keyboard mode are used extensively to enter BASIC programs into the ZX Spectrum.

For more information, download the original ZX Spectrum BASIC programming manual, which describes the Spectrum’s keyword-based entry in greater detail.

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The Spectrum+, 128, +2 and +3 have additional keys that are mapped to the following PC keyboard keys:

Spectrum key

PC key

EDIT

INSERT

TRUE VIDEO

HOME

INV VIDEO

PAGE UP

EXTEND MODE

APPS

GRAPH

END

BREAK

ESCAPE

Tip

  • Refer to the Spectrum keyboard map for a complete listing of the keyboard tokens and how to obtain them.

Note

  • The layout of the Spectrum keyboard not the same as a PC. For example, " (quote) is obtained by holding down the Symbol shift key and pressing P. Refer to the Spectrum keyboard map for details.