Expedition Loft

Roll forward the best part of 34 years!

Now I knew my Lynx was in the loft, it wasn't even a case of where was it, it was just the case of getting to it! I'm sure I'm not the only one who has moved boxes from house to house without even opening them, but the case in point was that I knew I wasn't going to open this particular one so it got stashed in the deepest darkest place in the loft behind a lot of other stuff.

"Don't come looking for me - I might be some time" was an appropriate turn of phrase as I climbed the loft ladder.

About 45 mins later, and after questions of "What the hell are you doing up there?" at the half way point, I had it! Boxes were put back, but a neat pile of the goods was placed just inside the hatch ready to be brought down.

After getting them down into the lounge, of course the first box to be opened was the Lynx itself - which was still in the original Datapost box it was delivered in.

The original packaging looked pretty good - just a slight tear on the right hand side. Taking the outer packaging off and removing the top polystyrene cover revealed the Lynx. Pretty good so far - not too much yellowing apart from the sticker. However, the leads seemed to have melted into the polystyrene. I figured this was the copper in the cables getting hot over all those years in the loft. Careful extraction revealed worm like tracks, and the cables whilst a bit sticky were all sound. It was a fairly easy job to clean them up. I had a  very strange 4-way power block and the connectors looked less that serviceable in this day and age. I dispatched with those and rewired the main power cord with a 3A fused plug.

Now I wasn't going to go for a power up straight away, I wanted to let the machine acclimatise for a little while and besides I wanted to look inside to check for spiders etc!

Having taken the machine out of the box, underneath it revealed the manual and the original demo tape with instructions, but better than that my original warranty card, receipt and compliments slip from Camputers was also there.

Then in other box I found the first two (the only two) Lynx User newsletters, Ian Sinclairs Lynx Computing book and a small collection of commercial games from GEM, Level 9 and Camsoft.

Little would I have cared in 1983-84, that GEM were based in Sawbridgeworth in Hertfordshire about 25 miles south of Cambridge. Maybe it was fate that in 1992 that I moved to Sawbridgeworth and have lived here ever since.

However, it was these that I was really looking for. The games that I wrote for the machine.

Super Air Raid was the first - it was an evolution of the Air Raid demo that came on the tape supplied with the Lynx.

The Jewelled Dagger was again a version of another game - I think it was Sultans Maze that I adapted. What I remember of it, I worked more on the splash screen of the game than the gameplay! I'll try and resurrect this one in the fullness of time, but it was Super Air Raid that I really wanted to see again - both in action and in terms of the code.

My last Lynx find was this pin badge - I doubt there are many of those around these days. One for a custom T-shirt maybe!

By now it was getting late, but I had to take a look inside the case - it would have been rude not to. It was a simple job, just 4 screws, one in each corner, none of the modern day faff. Everything looked pretty sound, no spiders only a couple of stray polystyrene balls that were blown out easily.