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For Sinclair Fans, The ZX81 Lives On
An anonymous reader writes "The ZX81 Museum was set-up to preserve and showcase a private collection of original Sinclair branded ZX81 hardware, software and literature. The museum has since expanded to include ZX81 software from other publishers of the time and a variety of other ZX81 peripherals and reference books. The collection dates from 1981 to 1983 and features the complete Sinclair-branded software series. The activities of the museum are regularly reported via Twitter, along with updates from the ever growing ZX81 fanbase. There is even a YouTube channel for the diehard 8-bit fans out there, of which there seems to be many!" This was one of the first computers I ever used; I suspect it's still buried in some deep stratum in my dad's basement. As is often the case, the old advertisements are great.
Wow! Four of those and I could run the Java Update Scheduler! (52K according to task manager on my office PC)
My first computer was the ZX-81 kit where you had to soldier it together.
Although in a lot of ways I know this is simply not practical for most people to do, I have to say it was a really awesome way to be introduced to a computer. It's probably just nostalgia but I feel a little sorry that almost no-one going forward will be introduced to computing in that way...
It's nice to see someone keeping the history of this very unique system alive.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"Finally you can afford to satisfy your lust for power." Well, it's about time!
i built one of those!
and it sucked moose schwanze - big time
I've still got one of these, they're indestructible! They're absolutely tiny too ...
The purpose of existence is to make money.
Wow! Four of those and I could run the Java Update Scheduler!
Given how careful you had to be with just one 16k expansion, I can imagine typing with four attached without causing a crash would take some very steady hands indeed!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I was 12 years old. I worked for a summer and made enough money to buy the unassembled version. It was essentially a bag of parts that you soldered together yourself. Add an old black and white TV, a cassette tape recorder and you were on your way. That way back when "built your own computer" meant that either you assembled it or actually designed the darn thing. Today it means you connected the major components together and hoped everybody followed spec.
The best part of the ZX81 was the fantastic instruction manual it came with that essentially taught you how to program (in BASIC). Very well written. I eventually left basic behind and started programming in Forth.
I don't have mine anymore, but I wish I did. The membrane keyboard was truly horrible to use, the RAM (1K) insufficient (I eventually purchased the 16K add-on), and the entire thing painfully slow. But it was an affordable, functional computer back when that was a rarity. I owe it and it's designers a great debt.
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
I had one of these, and you couldn't pay me to to use one again. Well you could, but it would have to be a hell of a lot. I can understand why people would be nostalgic about a C64, or even a TI994/A. I had both of those too. But I don't really remember much to like about the ZX81. Even the keyboard/tiny plastic membrane was awful. It was sold by Timex in the US and the "keys" were about the size of calculator buttons. I shelled out the $200 (IIRC) for the 16K RAM pack too. I'm probably suppressing the memory, but I seem to remember there being some issue with it, but I don't remember what it was specifically. It was a big (in relation to the system) clunky thing that plugged into the back. It probably didn't seat correctly or something. Some things should just be allowed to die and be forgotten.
http://xkcd.com/865/
It's not the most popular 8 bit computer made, and you couldn't do a whole lot with it. I'm sure there are fan sites for many different 8 bit systems, why make a big deal about the Sinclair? The Commodore 64 is the most popular 8 bit computer ever made, and I'm sure has about 100 times more fans.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
If you haven't seen the movie Micro Men about Clive Sinclair, it is very entertaining. Now playing at your nearest torrent.
My VIC-20 beat up your ZX81 and stole its lunch money.
There is even a YouTube channel for the diehard 8-bit fans out there
8-bit? 2-bit. Good grief, that thing was painfully limited except relative to its immediate competitors. Prior to my parents buying my a ZX81 for Christmas, my home computer was an Atari 2600 with a BASIC Programming cartridge. It had 62 bytes of code memory.
Let me repeat that in case you thought I misspoke: it had 62, sixty-two, 2^6-2 bytes of memory.
The ZX81 came with a whopping 16KB, which seemed mansionlike to my very inexperienced mind. But that's like having a better civil rights record than North Korea. It wasn't the worst of the worst but it wasn't far from it.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Was the ZX-81 the same as the TS-1000, or was it the same as the one that came after?
I also had the TS-1000. The ZX-81 came before, I ordered mine from England. The Timex-Sinclair was the U.S. version, already assembled for you.
Yes, there was not a lot of software, though there was some you could buy on cassette as you say, or type in from magazines. It was however a great way to get into programming. I won my first programming contest with it, writing a crossword generator that won me a Timex-Sinclair 2048...
There are definitely emulators for both the ZX-81 and TS-1000, though I've not enough nostalgia I know where any are. I'm sure Google can find them.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I learned on a ZX81, and I still have one.
I learned Z80 machine code by reading other peoples listings and comparing to the mnemonics at the back of the ZX81 manual.
I programmed a cool morse-code decoder, and a music program that played sound out of the TV speaker (along with a load of junk).
I also beat someone elses implementation of read, data & restore.
Then I went on to a CPC6128, then BBC Micro with econet and advanced programmers guide. Then hacking MSDOS with debug and edlin. Then Windows 3.1 and Delphi; win95, then moving to winXP and Linux and sticking with Linux - for the freedom you know.
For a while I had a ZX81 emulator on my android phone, but like the other guy said, you couldn't pay me to go back to it.
It was awful. At the time it was great and helped make me, but I won't go back. You can't make me!
blog.sam.liddicott.com
I started out on a Commie but remember the ZX81 well... Nothing like 300bps! I designed my first war dialer, bbs, bruteforce hacker, and 'raw' data copier in BASIC on a 64... Back when line #s were mandatory and gotos were acceptable. Ahhh, the memories.
The ZX81 was one of the main reasons the UK had a great generation of programmers (and especially games programmers). The computers were cheap, easy to tinker with and allowed endless modifications. I know that a lot of people are very sniffy about Basic, but the BBC Basic taught in schools at the time was the gateway to self taught computer programming. This is why I think the Raspberry Pi will herald a revolution in computer programming - $25 (?£) compared to the £50 in some of the advertisements for the ZX81. With a keyboard and mouse the raspberry pi will be equivalently priced.
As an aside I never had the ZX81, only the later Spectrum +3. But those were the glory days of British computing...
The cool thing about the ZX-81 in particular (kit version) was how when you built something from scratch you really felt not a care at all about modification to it.
You didn't like the chiclet keyboard? Neither did I. That's why I replaced with with a spare TI-994A keyboard (real keys). After all, when you were the one that personally attached the keyboard connector you feel no trepidation in taking it out.
Or the wobbly 16k ram pack. The problem was the thing was as you say rather bulky, and would with some vibration work its way off the connector just enough to crash the system.
Again when you were the one assembling the case you have no issues attaching struts to the case to make the 16K expansion far more stable.
That's why there is still as much nostalgia for the ZX-81 as other more popular computers like the Atari or Commodore models that were easier to set up and use, because it was generally a more personal attachment and level of effort involved for those that really got into it.
Being mass market things I didn't keep any of the other early computers - but I did keep the ZX-81, because a lot of personal effort had gone into it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That the French version still had a QWERTY keyboard layout. I guess internationalization wasn't its strong point. I learned a lot with mine though, like how to type in endless amounts of machine language in comments.
Nullius in verba
The ZX-81 was my first computer, too.
I really liked the little Basic book and 10-line games. Unfortunately, my 16K memory expansion had this annoying feature that it would reset the machine when you knocked on the table -- not so nice when you had entered a long program and it happened before you had saved it to cassette tape. :-)
And yeah, the keyboard really sucked.
How many k? One. One k. Not two k, one k. And here it is.
Cheers,
Ian
My buddy had one when we were younger. Years later a neighbor said he had one, brought it over, and it was still unopened in the box! I have it in storage for when it's worth millions... Someday...
You mean you never had a roll of blutack between the rampack and the computer?
Solved rampack wobble in an instant!
I've still got my ZX81. The keyboard still sucks......
What Would Roger Dean Design?
Oh well. At that point I realized that I had already been screwed by this thing called a computer and I didn't even know what the heck it was yet. Not to be beaten and then kicked when down, I forced the University to 'creatively' come up with another way for me to graduate (a semester late, but graduated none the less), and then went out and I bought this Sinclair kit and built my own computer in my dorm room.
I had to buy all the solder, wire, and stuff, to be able to build and assemble it, and then I went down the dorm hallway knocking on doors until I found someone that actually had taken that computer science class and dragged him down to my room and had them explain what they did. With a three line program printing out my name in a loop I allowed him to go back to his party, and it was history from there. The local electronics swap shop had numerous visits as I bought a second hand teletype keyboard, power supplies, and odds and ends, and rewired them all to interface with this little computer. It morphed over time to have more memory than it was ever designed to have and lots of relays and controls for all sorts of things. The creation kept growing in both size and complexity. Every peripheral that was ever designed for the Sinclair, and later the Timex version of it, was in there somewhere, and then many many creations of my own.
After graduating I began taking courses in microprocessors and digital electronics and was part of the manufacturing engine that built the next generation of computers. Eventually I became a Computer Scientist, now with fond memories if those simple days, when it was fairly easy to see how something worked and to find ways to improve upon it. Its nice to see that others have fond memories as well. The Sinclair was one of a kind.
The second type of microcomputer I programmed in assembler was the 6502-based Kim-1. For eight bits, it wasn't a bad instruction set, and it made me a fan of the 6502. I bought a Rockwell AIM-65 and loved it. I even bought a bare circuit board for the Motorola 6802 from Peter Stark (anybody remember StarKits?) and modified circuit traces to make the board into a 6502 system. I was very, very proud that the modified circuit board and a monitor (e.g., EPROM-based "o.s.") of my own designed worked the first time I powered it up!
So where is the 6502 museum?
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
I built mine as an electronics project in the high school. I learned programming on it including basic computer graphics programming. Later I used it program rudimentary simulations for physics class and better understand the formulas and equations. Biggest problem was reliably storing and re-loading programs from the cassette tape player.
I discovered the Mac (original 128K) when I met my freshman roommate in college and was blown away. What a ride.
price is not the only factor
for one the time had a lot to do with it, now YOU could have a computer without breaking the bank, much more impressive in 81 vs 012, next all you had to do is plug it in and your computing, PI well your going to have to choose and install a linux distro on the thing before it does more than sit there, which sad to say is still a challenge for most people today.
The year was 1981 and I knew BASIC before but armed with my trusty Timex Sinclair 1000 I learned machine code & assembly. On a TV!
http://jetcityorange.com/faq/Timex-Sinclair.jpg
I cut my teeth on the ZX81 when I was 8 years old, and I've still got it... I had a 1k ZX81 which later got upgraded to 16k with a "proper" keyboard. My dad mounted it on a wooden base and fixed the RAM pack to eliminate wobble.
By the time I was 9 I was a confident BASIC programmer, writing my own (very slow) games, and was learning Z80 machine code (note all you commodore people: the 6502 sucked in comparison).
When I was 10 I got a multi-tasking FORTH ROM. It was a replacement for the built-in Sinclair BASIC ROM and was 8k. It contained a Real Time multi-tasking threaded-compiled (as opposed to interpreted) FORTH system.
You can get a ZX81 emulator for *nix and the ROM image is out there somewhere. I downloaded a copy a year or two back. Google for "zx81 husband forth rom".
Some Sinclair staff who had worked on the ZX81 left to form their own company to make a computer called the Jupiter Ace, which was somewhere between a ZX81 and a Spectrum in terms of hardware (no colour, but high-res graphics and more RAM than the ZX81). The FORTH in that was more conventional.
Those were the days!
Stick Men
Sheridan. Never figured out why Michael O'Hare left Babylon 5 though.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
I never had one (although I wanted one). Now, after reading about the horrible hacks that Sinclair's engineers did to make it all work (did you know that they repurposed the Z80's DRAM refresh circuit as a video generator? 'strue) I suspect I'm glad I grew up with the BBC Micro instead.
But I cannot deny that the set of standard manuals had the best cover art on any computer reference book, ever. Mmm, those lovely John Harris paintings... and he sells prints!
Just wanted to make that clear for younger folks reading along. Kit assemblers our age were not of the same ilk as the hobbyists who designed their own.
True, but the brilliance was that it could get you interested in going further. Even though I did no design originally in putting it together I did have to look at pinouts to hook up a real keyboard... kits are a great way to get comfortable with putting things together at all, then you start questioning what the components do and what changes you can make.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Many of us have larger collections.. Why is this 'news' ?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Slashdotted..... 509 Bandwidth No more error
My first computer had 1024 bytes of ram
Pretty impractical for real purposes but a great learning tool. I read the Chinese bought something like 200,000 for schools and it was probably a good investment. There was at least one book published on creating sensor and control interfaces with the ZX.
Hard-wired a ZX81 into a case with a real keyboard, power switch and LED, reset switch, hardwired the 16K expansion in so I could reverse the connector for a bus that ran a tone generator and the thermal printer. Had a "stringy floppy" with microcassettes that loaded programs about as "fast" as a Commodore. Adapted a Commodore joystick for the flight sim. Yes, still have the setup.
Lucky enough to be in a metro where I could pick up the Brit magazine ZX at the news stand. Had to enter the code yourself of course but some of the programs were way better than what was available on cassette.
I split the warm fuzzies about 50-50 with the Commodore because that was my first real production home computer with quality printers and modems but the ZX was a really fun learning ramp-up nonetheless.
I recall magazines selling the ZX-81 in kit form, but at that time, I had no interest in spending a whole $100 (after shipping and/or sales tax, anyway) for a bag of unassembled parts. I really wanted my own home computer though, so the assembled Timex-Sinclair 1000 version was just the thing for me.
I even owned a very rare plastic carrying case for it, that I had to order direct from Timex with a special coupon to get. As I recall, it held 4 cassette tapes in their plastic cases, the computer and AC adapter, TV converter box, and maybe a spot for that 16K RAM expansion pack (it had 2K internally).
Good times!
Be nostalgic if you want to - but that keyboard really was horrible. We're not talking Samsung proximity touch screens - this was as painful as the weird old lady who works at Burger King punching a special order into the funky membrane keyboard point-of-sale system.
It was a blessing that you only had 1K - it meant your Basic program probably wouldn't be very long.
Before I upgraded to the C64 and became more of an asshole with my-computer-is-better-than-yours flamewars with the Apple IIe and Atari 800 dudes, I had a VIC-20. Even at the time, I knew how bad the Vic was, and there was no one I could snobbishly look down upon, like the douchebag antagonist of any of a dozen early 1980s movies. No one I could look down upon, that is, except the poor TS-1000 / ZX-81 guys.
"You're running out of memory, so your display is starting to get smaller?"
"Nice keyboard you've got there! Ha ha ha ha!"
Good grief, what a piece of shit that machine was. Check this out:
That junk of junk couldn't even rhyme!
I'll say this, though: you people got that piece of shit to do what you want, are heroes. I later took a perverse pride in having stretched the capabilities in my 5K (3.5K available to BASIC) Vic, but that's nothin' like the constraints a TS-1000 programmer worked in. You had to be real bad ass to even try, and badder-ass to not give up in despair. TS-1000 programmers rule. I am not worthy to lick your boots.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Use the Archive.org link:
http://web.archive.org/web/20110724142332/http://www.zx81museum.net/adverts.html
I tried the Coral Cache link:
http://www.zx81museum.net.nyud.net/adverts.html
But it returns "500 Internal Server Error".
Dan
Never thought of that - that would have saved me no end of grief.
But I did have a Winky Board - a little circuit board to go between the ZX81 and the cassette player, presumably to improve reliability of loads and saves. For all I know it just made a couple LEDs blink.
I had both a ZX81 and a TS1000. (and the TS1500 printer.) One of the computers couldn't use the memory expansion pack, and the other one couldn't use the cassette deck. And me with a stack of tapes of games that required 16K memory...
/d'ed!
What does that get you today? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts96J7HhO28
3. Profit!
2. ???
1. On Soviet Slashdot, a Beowulf cluster of alien Natalie Portman overlords welcomes YOU!
Old ZX 80 hardware is expensive and rare from what I have seen. You can use the MESS Sinclair ZX 80 target to relive those 8-bit days of yore without the fear of electrical or mechanical breakdowns associated with running on the actual hardware. A lot of early microcomputer equipment often had power supply or other problems which means that even if you can get your hands on the real hardware now, and it works, it may not run for long before things start breaking. I do not have any old ZX 80's and don't have a ROM so I'm not sure of the exact legality were I to acquire one from say Mega Upload or such, but I almost suspect that they might be drifting close to the abandonware status in some areas at least.
There are quite a lot of neat old systems that MESS can emulate. I've been trying to get NitrOS-9 working with a Motorola 6309 myself.
Clickety Click
Great job, Slashdot. Makes me feel like a latecomer all over again.
A ZX81 was my first computer: I wasted hours playing Monster Maze, typing in programs, saving them to cassette tape, and often loosing all my work when I jingled the 16k RAM pack by accident :-(
No it's the new BBC surely.
It is interesting that the ZX81 evokes so many memories, and a yearning for nostalgia helps keep it alive I guess. That and people still see programming for 1K (or 16K) as a challenge - especially when trying to write high quality games (there is even now a series of hi-resolution games in 1K!)
Hardware design for the machine is also relatively easy, so it continues to find a niche in teaching youngsters about the basics of computing, electronics and machine code programming.
I admit to having started up a few projects to keep the ZX81 interest going, which started off with replacement keyboard membranes (nearly 1000 sold in the past 3 1/2 years) and over the past couple of years, the burgeoning ZX80/ZX81 Forums (http://www.rwapservices.co.uk/ZX80_ZX81/forums/) has thrived and led to new hardware and software being released, including classics such as Miner Man, Nanako in Classic Japanese Monster Castle '81, Virus and even a port of the Quill Adventure Writer.
From the hardware point of view, the ZXpand and AY add-ons (MrX Sound card and ZXpand-AY) have breathed even more new life into these 30 year old machines, and the latest ZX-ULA2 even allows a turbo mode!
...
Maybe it was drugs?
One really unfortunate thing, if you can believe it, is that when doing cast commentary for the Season 1 DVDs, they supposely couldn't find him? WTF? Not saying there's anything wrong with someone dropping out, but it's not what you expect from a performer. That raises the question: is the guy still an actor? What does he do for money?
It's this kind of thinking that makes me want to make up a tabloidish answer. I can see why some people went with drugs.
Well, it will come with BBC Basic...
I went from a ZX81 to a Beeb. Both wonderfully innovative machines, in their own ways.
The ZX81 did an amazing amount with very little resources, for very little cash. Even ZX Spectrum-resolution graphics:
http://www.pictureviewerpro.com/hosting/zx81/softwarefarm.htm
The Beeb was just a fantastic bit of kit all round (warning: dodgy car analogy ahead) - probably the Rolls Royce of the British 8-bit era? Beautiful engineering and detailing, but pricey...
Paired with a school friend for Comp Sci A-level, we developed a micromouse (maze following autonomous self-contained robot - as per the competition that was around in the UK then - none of this remote controlled stuff ;-) ). It was based around a Z80 with on-board memory. Code was developed on and donwloaded via a ZX81. Keeping it cool and making sure it didn't crash while working was an art form (more than once something we failed to perfect). The days when one coded in 1 or 2k and used up all the internal registers of the Z80 for additional storage as cache for things like a partial maze wall map and how one learned how to squeeze bits by using self-modifying code that updated as scenarios were solved.
Over 3 decades years later... still in the business. I groan that we "need" 8G of memory and 3GHz CPUs.... As for external storage, - cut my teeth on paper tape on ASR33 terminals; those cassettes for the ZX81 - almost as "bad" , but, at least you could easily find the bit error on a punch tape and correct it with a splicer ;-)
Ah the fond memories. Clive - we salute your genius!
ya and it will boot in room with 32k free...
Actually, it is good to see that a mention of the 30+ year old computer that is the Sinclair ZX81 gets such a good reaction. Recent years have seen an upsurge in interest in the computer, and it still remains a good tool for teaching good programming practices (lots of people like the challenge of squeezing good software into 1K or 16K) and even basic electronics as the Z80A processor is good for linking in your own devices. I am amazed that having started selling replacement keyboard membranes in late 2008, I have sold nearly 1000 membranes for the ZX81 ! I also launched the ZX80/ZX81 forums http://www.rwapservices.co.uk/ZX80_ZX81/forums/ a couple of years ago and this has helped inspire new software and hardware. From a software point of view, 2011 saw plenty of launches of classic games, such as Virus, Miner Man and even Nanako in Classic Japanese Monster Castle '81 by the Mojon Twins. Even the Quill Adventure Writer has been adapted to run on the machine. Hardware development also increased during 2011 with the launch of the ZXpand (32K + SD Card interface), two AY sound interfaces (ZXpand-AY and the MrX Sound Board) and even the ZX-ULA2, a replacement ULA which offers a turbo mode for the machine - available through http://www.sellmyretro.com/
The ram pack was prone to wiggling a bit and you'd lose the entire contents of memory. You had to prop it on a book or tape it in place. Kind of a nightmare really.
There was a ribbon cable you could get that went between the ram pack and the connector on the ZX81.