ZX Spectrum character set

The ZX Spectrum character set is the variant of ASCII used in the British Sinclair Spectrum computers. It is based on ASCII-1967 (the standard ASCII on which all modern character sets are based), but with one character from ASCII-1963 (the first version of ASCII), two graphics characters nonstandardly assigned, an idiosyncratic use of the control code area and use of the 128 high-bit characters beyond the ASCII range.

In the control codes area (the C0 range), the Spectrum uses its own proprietary controls, such as INK and PAPER to control foreground and background colour. The only similarity to ASCII is having cursor-left for 0x08 (ASCII Back Space) and ENTER for 0x0D (ASCII Carriage Return), which also generates an automatic linefeed. Cursor-down 0x0A (ASCII Line Feed) can be simulated with 32 spaces printed with OVER 1 (transparent overprint) and cursor-up 0x0B (ASCII Vertical Tabulation) can be simulated with 32 backspaces. The system ROM has a fault which prevents cursor-right 0x09 (ASCII Horizontal Tabulation) from working.

Ranges 0x00-0x05, 0x07, 0x0A-0x0C, 0x0E, 0x0F and 0x17-0x1F are undefined. The graphics part of the Spectrum Character Set, 0x20-0x7F, is almost standard, except that 0x60 has the pound sign (£) instead of the grave accent (`) and 0x7F has the copyright sign (©) instead of the control code DEL. Note that the pound sign was mapped to 0x60, and not 0x23 as in the British variant of ASCII (ISO-646-GB), making both pound sign and number sign (#) available universally. Code 0x5E contains an up-arrow (↑) as in ASCII-1963 instead of the ASCII-1967 caret (^); however, 0x5F has an underscore and not a left-arrow.

Beyond 0x7F, the Spectrum character set uses the high-bit range, 0x80-0xFF, for its special purposes. 0x80-0x8F contain block graphics. 0x90-0xA4 contain the User Defined Graphics (UDGs), which the user can customise with a few lines of BASIC. 0xA5-0xFF contain tokens (BASIC keywords represented as single characters): for example, pressing P at the beginning of a line would generate the code 0xF6, which would cause the BASIC keyword PRINT to display on the screen. Codes 0xC7-0xC9 are the shortcuts for the mathematical operators <= (less-than-or-equal), >= (greater-than-or-equal) and <> (not-equal) respectively; unlike the relational operators of most other systems, these are characters in their own right and cannot be achieved by typing the two constituent symbols one after the other.

Mapping the printable Spectrum Character Set to Unicode is possible, but fonts containing some of the block graphics characters are still not commonplace.

See also

• PETSCII
• ATASCII

External links

• Sinclair Spectrum+ 48K Character Set – From Michael Zaretski's website; includes link to a Unicode mapping table