Yeah me too in 1982, using the Melbourne House Z80 reference, aged a young 10 years old. Working with POKE and no macro-assembler, I wrote mnemonics then translated them to machine-code by hand. A baptism of fire that to this day that I've not forgotten.
I have my ZX-81 (with the 16KB expansion pack) and my ZX-Spectrum (with a microdrive). I think they're in working condition though they haven't been powered up like in 30+ years.
Don't just plug it in! The power supply and/or VRM can fail in ways that deliver bad voltages to components. You might want to watch some of Lee's[1] videos first on how to bring up a ZX81 safely, or ask in his discord community for more help.
Watching the retrocomputing enthusiasts, apart from obvious things like water damage, it seems that the first thing that one always has to check before attempting to power up is capacitors. A generalism true for all old electronics, rather than Sinclair-specific.
My guess is most of it? This commit message for example sounds very much like a Claude result:
Add Space Invaders game implementation in assembly language
- Implemented the core game logic including player movement, missile firing, and invader behavior.
- Added collision detection for missiles and bombs.
- Included game state management for win/lose conditions and restarting the game.
- Created functions for drawing game elements on the screen and handling keyboard input.
- Defined constants and variables for game configuration and state tracking.
That last one in particular is exactly the kind of update you get from claude, it doesn't sound very human. "Constants and variables" eh? Not just constants or variables, but constants and variables.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/spectrumnext/zx-spectru...
This book was the ignition that changed my life... https://archive.org/details/z-80-reference-guide-alan-tullya...
[1] https://www.youtube.com/@MoreFunMakingIt/videos
Better admire for what it was and use an emulator instead.
Helpful, but not. Detailed, but not.
We did something similar for the Apple II, to compile Merlin assembly into a running emulator instance:
https://paleotronic.com/merlinplus/