Luigi Ruffolo's Feed

The sad but engaging story of John Kennedy (no, not that John Kennedy)

https://www.jupiter-ace.co.uk/SWHouse_JKennedy.html

«When I bought my Jupiter Ace, I was still in my first years in Secondary School and my friends and I were all frothing at the mouth for the newly announced ZX Spectrum. [...]

As it turned out, there were delays in shipping the Spectrum, and several of us grew impatient. I give in and bought an Ace [...]

The Ace was certainly designed to be budget-conscious, to put it nicely. It was really an order of magnitude cheaper in materials and design than the Spectrum, and initially I was very disappointed. If only I had waited, I could have had a computer with colour and some metal in its casing rather than yoghurt-pot plastic.. My friends definitely took the mickey when they saw it. However, despite this - or probably because of it - I persevered. Also, the Ace had used up all my savings, so I couldn't get a Spectrum even if I wanted to. So, after learning ZX Basic and Z80 assembler, I was introduced to FORTH. [...]

After constant use, the keyboard started to stop working. This was irritating. I followed all the home remedies - cleaned the circuit board, glued little disks of metal foils underneath the keys, but it got worse and worse. I eventually wrote to Jupiter Cantab and received a personal letter back from the founders, and a new keyboard. I don't know which I was more delighted to see: the letter or the keyboard».