Changes
/* CPU, RAM and basic Harware */
* The Spectrum 48 didn't come with a joystick port, you had to buy one. There was two variants, Sinclair and Kempston, thankfully the hardware was cheap and easy to obtain, and both were well supported by software. The Amstrad came with a joystick port built in.
* The Spectrum didn't come with a tape player, you had to buy one. The Amstrad CPC464 had a tape player built in, however neither the CPC664 or CPC6128 had a tape player built in, you had to buy one if you wanted to use tape based software with them. But having the right cable enable to actually run some tape software from any audio out port available... Just make sure the tape game had not specific anti-piracy mechanism...
* Both the Spectrum and Amstrad had to use the CPU for loading or saving on cassette. The Spectrum ROM loader used the border colours to indicate loading (especially the use of striped bars in the border to indicate each data bit) a small block for a header, and then loaded the program with one larger block. The checksum/error detection was done using XOR. The Amstrad's ROM loader used many smaller blocks (so you could rewind if there was an error), it indicated loading progress with text that updated on the display, and used the better CRC for error detection. However, if the loading messages were turned off, you didn't have any indication of loading progress.
