In the days of servers with gigabytes of memory, terabytes of storage, and gigabit transfer rates being common it is sometimes hard to imagine computing with limited resources.

Did you know a 1K Z80 computer could play chess?

Can you imagine 1K storing a simple computer font, a handful of lines of text message, and 68000 code to scroll these smoothly up the screen like credits?

Would you believe a stock ZX Spectrum could be coaxed into producing 3-channel sound from a simple 1-bit beeper?

Do you know why Sinclair ZX BASIC programmers referred to PI so much in their code?

This blog remembers and explores some of these ideas.