Bruce, is this your first First Post? I don't recall seeing one from you in the past.:) Oh, on the contrary. Perens is the guy behind all those "fr0sty piss" first posts. He just remembers to check the "Post Anonymously" box when he does that.:-)
...IBM might be trying to put a "serious" spin on this, but let's be honest, we all know that it's aimed at Los Alamos scientists who want to play Motorstorm and Resistance: Fall of Man during their tea break.
Ha ha.... though, seriously, at least Knuckles is a major character in the Sonic games (AFAIK, I never really played Sonic much myself). The Slime Pit is just a...... damned slime pit, and going by the article not a major feature of the cartoon series. And yet they still manage to obsess about its place in He-Man chronology(!)
If you're shocked that students are getting to college and needing to take remedial math, you fix the problem. the problem may be that your system encourages them to avoid math courses so give them an incentive to take them. A simple incentive is letting them know that any of the engineering sciences are going to be further away from their reach if they avoid the classes early on. I don't know if this is exactly what you meant, but since (apparently) the problem is being driven by university entrance requirements, and they are also the ones bearing the brunt of the problem, the solution is simple. Change the entrance requirements such that students are required to get decent passes in those subjects.
It shouldn't be the universities' job to make up for deficiencies at secondary school level, although if they're the ones driving the problem, it's obvious that they should be the ones to fix it.
Pfft.... the Dragonball fancruft had to make way for articles with much greater use to humanity, such as this one.
(Can you believe that there is such an in-depth article for that subject? It says something about Wikipedia, though whether it's good or not is unclear...:-/ )
GP is absolutely correct; one interesting question we might ask, however, is whether Moore's "Law"/Observation has actually "driven" development that wouldn't have existed otherwise. That is, has the mere existence of Moore's Law resulted in it growing legs at any stage and actually *driving* the changes it supposedly just observed?
Yep... I'd like to come out of the closet as a Linux user who doesn't like Tux at all.
What annoys me is that I've never able to satisfactorily put my finger on exactly why I don't like it. Could it be:-
1) Same pose, same expression. Never changes.
2) Glassy-eyed vacant look.
3) Use in certain contexts where it appears unprofessional?
4) Too plasticky? Looks somewhat soulless, like a toy.
5) Childish, but not really "cute".
6) "looks fat, bored, lazy and apathetic and / or immensely stupid" (see parent poster)... that's actually not a bad guess.
Thing is... I like real penguins, and yet this anthropomorphic (or is it?) mascot leaves me cold to the point of active dislike. I don't like this version either; it's just too silly. Basically, I just don't like Tux; although I use Linux, I prefer the BSD Devil mascot. It's far from my favourite cartoon character, but it seem to has some "animation" or "life" to it. Tux doesn't really seem to project any personality; he looks like he's meant to, but it just doesn't come off.
Note that the US version had 2k, not 1k. I know, I said that myself:-
they could have added more RAM to the US ZX81 (it originally came with 2K) Anyway,
I don't see why a membrane keyboard is significantly cheaper to manufacture than a "chicklet" keyboard. Maybe the printing is simpler? How much diff does it make? I'm not an expert in manufacturing, but since you ask I'll guess. Remember that dirt-cheap Chinese manufacturing wasn't around then. Most of the ZX81s- at least those meant for its original UK market- were made in the UK (actually, most of them were made at a plant in my home town, along with the early Spectrums). Although the rubber keyboard itself wouldn't have cost too much, there would also have been extra labour and Quality Control costs. My gut reaction is that it still wouldn't have cost that much more, but Atari released the Atari 400 with a touch-sensitive keyboard too, and that was a far more expensive machine. (OTOH, it could have been said that Atari were emphasising the difference between the 400 and the more expensive 800 with its real keyboard and increased expandability).
One other issue with the ZX81 is that it originally came in the choice of kit or ready-built; though I don't see that a rubber keyboard would be harder to assemble (the one in the Spectrum was really just an all-in-one rubber moulding that sat on top of a ZX81-style membrane keyboard below, and poked through holes in the case above).
Anyway, I had originally assumed that what you had wanted was a real "push button" keyboard, which certainly would have been expensive.
FWIW, they actually did release a version of the ZX81 in a Spectrum-type case with "real" rubber keyboard, with 16K built in; it was called the TS-1500. Unfortunately, I think it flopped; which might prove my arguments against your "improved ZX81" proposal. Or- just as likely- it was because it wasn't released until 1983, at which stage it probably didn't look that attractive on the US market.
My 8k suggestion was not so much about price, but more about getting rid of the wiggle-zap problem The rampack wobble (AKA "wiggle-zap"... nice description, ha ha:-)) was down to crap design/engineering. Other companies released rampacks that didn't wobble, and there was no reason that Sinclair couldn't have.
When word spreads you are a joke, your company is forever tainted. To be fair, the ZX81s in the UK had the same problem, and they still sold like hotcakes. And then the Spectrum sold like hotcakes stuffed with £1000 notes; there were actually shortages and delays, and it went on to become the UK's best-selling 8-bit microcomputer by far. I think that the problem is that the US market had different economics and different expectations.
They might *both* fail where pooling their efforts might have succeeded, because they diluted the team, wasted time duplicating a lot of each others work and failed to get anything remotely standard... instead of finding common ground, compromising and remaining together. Just like all those silly little political factions weren't going to do anything except in-fight.
I'm not saying it always happens like that, just that forking comes with costs.
The current pope may be shifting away from the idea of original sin due to the issue of unbaptized babies and limbo. St Augustine said that unbaptized babies go to hell but later Catholics thought that a bit harsh and created limbo, a sort of heaven without God. Now there is some thinking that they go to heaven but then you have to get rid of orignal sin for that to happen. I'm sorry, but I have a problem with this. It blatantly smacks of "oh, we/people nowadays don't like that, so we'll change it". Either they were right in the first place, and personal preference won't change it, or they weren't. As for them possibly being wrong, it's all too convenient for me that it happens to suit the kind of religion that people would prefer today; especially as these changes of mind seem to simply be based on modern reinterpretation rather than obviously new evidence.
Oh no, not that half-baked misinterpretation of the second law of thermodynamics again.
The second law states that entropy overall will increase over time in a closed system. Well, guess what? The earth isn't a closed system.... in fact, the only really closed system is the entire universe (however far it goes, it's big.... *very* big).
There's nothing stopping a localised decrease in entropy; if there was, you wouldn't be able to tidy your house, would you? Overall entropy will always increase, but localised entropy doesn't have to, and the earth isn't a closed system.
Sci-fi is a bit broader than just Star Trek Of course; it's stupid to base your ideas on one TV show. I'm basing my search for extraterrestrial life on old-school Doctor Who; one of our tests detects the presence of Bubble wrap which we believe is likely to make up the skin of a large number of scary alien monsters.
On the other hand, it could be said that the continual forking and rewriting of open source projects is like the tendency of radical left-wing groups in 1970s/1980s Britain (and elsewhere) to continually split into smaller and smaller pieces along ideological grounds, something the right- like them or not- seemed less inclined to do.
I was going to use an example from Alexei Sayle to illustrate this, but I can't find it, so I'll resort to the ever popular People's Front of Judea scene from "Life of Brian" instead.:-)
I can't figure out if you're joking or not. "Squash" is the name in many countries of the (usually) concentrated cordial-type soft drink that you dilute approx 3:1 to drink. Some have lots of fruit juice in them, others are full of artificial rubbish. I don't think the term is common in the US; actually, I'm not sure that you drink the stuff at all.
I don't know if Sunny Delight counts as "squash" under that definition, but it's ultimately the same soft-drink type stuff anyway.
Here in the US, Minute Maid Light Lemonade, Mango Tropical and Raspberry Passion "juices" all contain 3% fruit juice. Okay; so I was wrong about that... it appears that in the US they *can* call any old crap "juice". Here they have to call it a "juice drink" and even then I think there are limits, as I note that they don't normally call the very low fruit-juice-content squashes and cordials by that name.
In some other countries, you're not allowed to call it juice unless it's 100% juice, and not allowed to put the name of the fruit first unless it's the main ingredient. I'm not sure what the exact law is in the UK; I notice that tomato juice with citric acid is still allowed to be called "juice", but that the phrase "pure" is noticably absent from the packaging. I've only seen that on juices with no added gunk whatsoever, and assume that this is probably the law. Or something:-)
in Holland the cocoa solids percentage has to be on the wrapper. 70% cacao is pretty good and affordable. In my experience, 70% cocoa solids is pretty much the maximum desirable for eating chocolate. (I've had Lindt 85%, and whilst it was clearly high-quality, it was just too much for simply eating; maybe good as a high-quality ingredient when cooking.) Even that only applies to plain chocolate; Lindt milk chocolate contains (IIRC) 50% cocoa solids, and seems fine to me. I suspect that if you added more cacao to that, it would "push out" the stuff that makes it milk chocolate.
Yeah, some people prefer "high-quality" plain chocolate over milk, but sod 'em.:-)
Seriously, I'm damn sick of sanctimonious tossers on TV and in the papers telling us that "real", "high-quality" chocolate is actually healthy, and, blah blah.... usually in conjunction with yet another shitty story about how chocolate is actually good for us.
Look, I've nothing against chocolate; I like the stuff. But I hate the endless stories about how it's good for you if you eat the "real" high-quality stuff with like 99.9% cocoa solids, when it's just feelgood bullshit to let the masses keep stuffing their faces. (Yeah, like they're really eating one small but oh-so-high-quality square of fucking rare Bolivian Fair Trade chocolate in a week. We all know that after 5 minutes, the only bit they remember is "chocolate is good for you" and use it as an excuse to buy some overpriced mass-market stuff from Nestle). Fucking third-rate Daily Mail journalism.
You seriously think that the squash you're drinking is *that* much healthier than the carbonated soda you only drink in "moderation"?! Sheesh!:-)
Seriously, even if I didn't mind turning orange (and I don't think Robert Kilroy Silk/ Dale Winton type orangeness convinces as a tan either), my main issue would be with the amount of chemical garbage I was swallowing each day (including sweeteners, although if they used sugar instead, that would also be pretty unhealthy).
Have you seriously considered drinking water instead?
Of course, it's an interesting question as to what you do if people actually prefer the ``inferior'' product: a similar argument exists over wine, when the French claim the wildly popular and successful wines of other countries are somehow not as good, even though people like them more. Well, that just sounds like the French getting annoyed that people don't like their wine as much. Is there any reasonably objective measure by which French wine is somehow "better"?
Have some SunnyD fruit cocktail! Made with real fruit juice*!
*5% fruit juice from concentrates They might not be able to get away with calling Sunny Delight itself "fruit juice" in the UK (nor, I suspect from your phrasing, in the US either), but that didn't stop countless stupid parents buying it in the deluded belief that it was anyway, probably because it was sold in the chilled section.
There was a huge "scandal" about it when Sunny Delight was popular here in the late 1990s and all of a sudden it was all over the papers when someone realised "OMG!!!! IT'S NOT REAL JUICE, IT'S JUST SQUASH!!!!11111". Like, you don't say.
(Then there was even more scandal when there were reports of kids turning yellow through drinking the stuff. I know it's crap, but how much of the damn stuff were these parents feeding their kids?)
I hate all those crappy "juice drinks" that come in fruit-juice like packaging, but contain (at best) 25-50% fruit juice, with the rest made up from citric acid, sugar and God-knows-what. For what it is, it's fine, but I'm willing to bet that they're designed to fool countless morons into thinking they're fruit juice (and that they succeed).
I calculated the prices from the retail price index, memory and a little common sense. I knew that the RPI had approximately doubled between 1986 and 2006, and I also knew that inflation was quite high in the early 1980s (i.e. between 1982 and 1986), so my guess that £175 was approximately £400 was quite close:-) Actually, it's even higher now, because that site only goes up to 2005.
Yeah, inflation is quite low these days, and because computer prices are *apparently* in the same league as today's computers (unlike, say, a bar of chocolate for 2 1/2 pence), it's all too easy to forget to take inflation into account. (And also the fact that the base packages generally *didn't* come with a monitor or any form of backing storage more sophisticated than a cassette deck). Shocking to think that the BBC B would have been almost £1000 in today's money, but then I remember it seeming horribly expensive at the time.
Which is why, although the BBC B was a great computer it's unfair to compare it against the Spectrum. It cost over 3 times the cost of the 16K Spectrum; of course they were going to be able to build a far superior computer for that price!
As I said, if your machine was black, it was almost certainly the TS-1000/ZX81, not the ZX80. Though apparently there was a US ZX80 (don't know if it was official/legal...).
On mine, if you typed in '10 PRINT "FOO"', it would accept it, but gave a syntax error when you later ran it. The "P" didn't trigger anything special, it took it verbatim.
Are you absolutely sure you remember that correctly? I remember it *was* possible with some contrivance to type
1 0 P R I N T " F O O "
(where individual letters are shown *here* separated by spaces) instead of
1 0 PRINT " F O O "
But that required you to enter the keyword first, then "spell out" another one then delete the first. Or maybe you tried to enter more than one command on each line, which wasn't possible with the ZX81?
Maybe they altered your version to force a keyword choice (US was the beta test market?:-)
No, it came out in the UK first. Though I've never heard of the supposed difference you describe between the US and UK models either.
The problem with that is that saving took much longer with the pack installed for some odd reason. Sloppy/shortcut ROM programming I think.
I was never a technical expert on the ZX81, but I do vaguely recall that certain things were organised differently depending on whether you had 1K or 16K memory. Specifically, the screen memory was organised differently on the 1K model. Program organisation may have been different too; IIRC the ZX81 (which I learned to use with the rampack attached) saved variables along with the program. I suspect that it might not have done this in 1K mode.... or something; I'm just speculating here.
A button keyboard instead of membrane would have been nice also.
Of course... and a pony would have been nice too:-)
My point is that the keyboard was one of the ways they kept it cheap; a real keyboard would have added a significant percentage to the cost. And I'm guessing that given the choice, people would rather have had colour, hi-res graphics and sound before a "real" keyboard; adding them *and* the keyboard would have resulted in a much higher-priced product competing in a completely different market.
What they should have done is sold it with 8K RAM built in and tuned the saving system to work well with that.
And a nice car to go with the pony too, huh? (^_^)
The extra RAM would have added significantly to the cost. I believe that Sinclair made the correct commercial decision for the time.
Perhaps in the US people had enough disposable income that this wouldn't have mattered so much, but the ZX81 was designed for the UK market. And I'm still not convinced; they could have added more RAM to the US ZX81 (it originally came with 2K), but (again), those people for whom the extra cost of the RAM wasn't too significant would probably have wanted that real keyboard, nice graphics, etc, etc.... in other words, they wanted something more like the Vic 20, which would have taken the ZX81 away from its original concept and market segment.
Because of the keyword codes (and probably 2-byte integer line nums), 8K was more compact than the equiv text would be.
Actually, my non-keyword-supporting Atari stored BASIC programs in memory in tokenised form as well. I suspect many computers did this; apart from saving memory, it effectively "pre-parses" the BASIC code and saves time at execution.
It was like they rushed it.
Apart from the dubious rampack wobble, what makes you say they that? Just curious.
Perhaps I was spoiled by the TRS-80's at school.
Well, yeah. I bet they were nowhere near as cheap as the ZX81 either, though. You can criticise the ZX81 all you like, and I'll admit that it was limited, but it was always meant to be a cheap machine, and it was a price breakthrough at the time. It may have been less impressi
I was thinking of making a joke around that too, but it's simply a response to a problem with the +Funny mod. This doesn't add to karma, which sounds justifiable until you realise that negative counter-modding *does* reduce it. Thus, controversial "funnies" that get repeatedly modded +Funny and -Overrated/-Troll can *only* have a negative effect on karma, quite seriously in certain cases. So some people prefer to moderate a certain percentage of +Funnys as +Informative/+Insightful, even though they aren't, really...:-)
I owned the US version of the ZX80 Do you mean the Timex Sinclair 1000, AKA the US ZX81? AFAIK, there was no US-specific ZX80, and I always thought that the rampack wobble was a ZX81 problem. (If your machine was black, it was the US ZX81; the ZX80 was white).
at the time, and you could *not* type in letters instead of pressing the key-word buttons. No, I said you could do it when *required*. On the ZX81, the computer was in keyword mode at the start of a line (since all commands started with a keyword). Once you'd entered (e.g.) P for PRINT, you would need to enter text, symbols and variable names, so the computer automatically switched to single-letter input mode. I assume that the ZX80 worked the same way.
That machine was a peice of [bleep]. The ZX81 was a damn good machine for its price and time, but Sinclair really should have done something about the notorious "rampack wobble". I think that my Dad worked out some solution and left it permanently attached. I might have felt somewhat less generously inclined towards the machine if I'd had to live with my programmes vanishing into thin air. The cassette problem was (I guess) in part due to the ZX81's use of a standard cassette deck, but it probably saved people having to buy a dedicated "datasette" unit.
Slashdot Mirror
...IBM might be trying to put a "serious" spin on this, but let's be honest, we all know that it's aimed at Los Alamos scientists who want to play Motorstorm and Resistance: Fall of Man during their tea break.
Ha ha.... though, seriously, at least Knuckles is a major character in the Sonic games (AFAIK, I never really played Sonic much myself). The Slime Pit is just a...... damned slime pit, and going by the article not a major feature of the cartoon series. And yet they still manage to obsess about its place in He-Man chronology(!)
It shouldn't be the universities' job to make up for deficiencies at secondary school level, although if they're the ones driving the problem, it's obvious that they should be the ones to fix it.
Pfft.... the Dragonball fancruft had to make way for articles with much greater use to humanity, such as this one.
:-/ )
(Can you believe that there is such an in-depth article for that subject? It says something about Wikipedia, though whether it's good or not is unclear...
GP is absolutely correct; one interesting question we might ask, however, is whether Moore's "Law"/Observation has actually "driven" development that wouldn't have existed otherwise. That is, has the mere existence of Moore's Law resulted in it growing legs at any stage and actually *driving* the changes it supposedly just observed?
Yep... I'd like to come out of the closet as a Linux user who doesn't like Tux at all.
What annoys me is that I've never able to satisfactorily put my finger on exactly why I don't like it. Could it be:-
1) Same pose, same expression. Never changes.
2) Glassy-eyed vacant look.
3) Use in certain contexts where it appears unprofessional?
4) Too plasticky? Looks somewhat soulless, like a toy.
5) Childish, but not really "cute".
6) "looks fat, bored, lazy and apathetic and / or immensely stupid" (see parent poster)... that's actually not a bad guess.
Thing is... I like real penguins, and yet this anthropomorphic (or is it?) mascot leaves me cold to the point of active dislike. I don't like this version either; it's just too silly. Basically, I just don't like Tux; although I use Linux, I prefer the BSD Devil mascot. It's far from my favourite cartoon character, but it seem to has some "animation" or "life" to it. Tux doesn't really seem to project any personality; he looks like he's meant to, but it just doesn't come off.
One other issue with the ZX81 is that it originally came in the choice of kit or ready-built; though I don't see that a rubber keyboard would be harder to assemble (the one in the Spectrum was really just an all-in-one rubber moulding that sat on top of a ZX81-style membrane keyboard below, and poked through holes in the case above).
Anyway, I had originally assumed that what you had wanted was a real "push button" keyboard, which certainly would have been expensive.
FWIW, they actually did release a version of the ZX81 in a Spectrum-type case with "real" rubber keyboard, with 16K built in; it was called the TS-1500. Unfortunately, I think it flopped; which might prove my arguments against your "improved ZX81" proposal. Or- just as likely- it was because it wasn't released until 1983, at which stage it probably didn't look that attractive on the US market. My 8k suggestion was not so much about price, but more about getting rid of the wiggle-zap problem The rampack wobble (AKA "wiggle-zap"... nice description, ha ha
They might *both* fail where pooling their efforts might have succeeded, because they diluted the team, wasted time duplicating a lot of each others work and failed to get anything remotely standard... instead of finding common ground, compromising and remaining together. Just like all those silly little political factions weren't going to do anything except in-fight.
I'm not saying it always happens like that, just that forking comes with costs.
Oh no, not that half-baked misinterpretation of the second law of thermodynamics again.
The second law states that entropy overall will increase over time in a closed system. Well, guess what? The earth isn't a closed system.... in fact, the only really closed system is the entire universe (however far it goes, it's big.... *very* big).
There's nothing stopping a localised decrease in entropy; if there was, you wouldn't be able to tidy your house, would you? Overall entropy will always increase, but localised entropy doesn't have to, and the earth isn't a closed system.
On the other hand, it could be said that the continual forking and rewriting of open source projects is like the tendency of radical left-wing groups in 1970s/1980s Britain (and elsewhere) to continually split into smaller and smaller pieces along ideological grounds, something the right- like them or not- seemed less inclined to do.
:-)
I was going to use an example from Alexei Sayle to illustrate this, but I can't find it, so I'll resort to the ever popular People's Front of Judea scene from "Life of Brian" instead.
I can't figure out if you're joking or not. "Squash" is the name in many countries of the (usually) concentrated cordial-type soft drink that you dilute approx 3:1 to drink. Some have lots of fruit juice in them, others are full of artificial rubbish. I don't think the term is common in the US; actually, I'm not sure that you drink the stuff at all.
I don't know if Sunny Delight counts as "squash" under that definition, but it's ultimately the same soft-drink type stuff anyway.
The term has nothing to do with the veg AFAIK.
Yeah, some people prefer "high-quality" plain chocolate over milk, but sod 'em.
Seriously, I'm damn sick of sanctimonious tossers on TV and in the papers telling us that "real", "high-quality" chocolate is actually healthy, and, blah blah.... usually in conjunction with yet another shitty story about how chocolate is actually good for us.
Look, I've nothing against chocolate; I like the stuff. But I hate the endless stories about how it's good for you if you eat the "real" high-quality stuff with like 99.9% cocoa solids, when it's just feelgood bullshit to let the masses keep stuffing their faces. (Yeah, like they're really eating one small but oh-so-high-quality square of fucking rare Bolivian Fair Trade chocolate in a week. We all know that after 5 minutes, the only bit they remember is "chocolate is good for you" and use it as an excuse to buy some overpriced mass-market stuff from Nestle). Fucking third-rate Daily Mail journalism.
You seriously think that the squash you're drinking is *that* much healthier than the carbonated soda you only drink in "moderation"?! Sheesh! :-)
Seriously, even if I didn't mind turning orange (and I don't think Robert Kilroy Silk/ Dale Winton type orangeness convinces as a tan either), my main issue would be with the amount of chemical garbage I was swallowing each day (including sweeteners, although if they used sugar instead, that would also be pretty unhealthy).
Have you seriously considered drinking water instead?
There was a huge "scandal" about it when Sunny Delight was popular here in the late 1990s and all of a sudden it was all over the papers when someone realised "OMG!!!! IT'S NOT REAL JUICE, IT'S JUST SQUASH!!!!11111". Like, you don't say.
(Then there was even more scandal when there were reports of kids turning yellow through drinking the stuff. I know it's crap, but how much of the damn stuff were these parents feeding their kids?)
I hate all those crappy "juice drinks" that come in fruit-juice like packaging, but contain (at best) 25-50% fruit juice, with the rest made up from citric acid, sugar and God-knows-what. For what it is, it's fine, but I'm willing to bet that they're designed to fool countless morons into thinking they're fruit juice (and that they succeed).
scroll?
I calculated the prices from the retail price index, memory and a little common sense. I knew that the RPI had approximately doubled between 1986 and 2006, and I also knew that inflation was quite high in the early 1980s (i.e. between 1982 and 1986), so my guess that £175 was approximately £400 was quite close :-) Actually, it's even higher now, because that site only goes up to 2005.
Yeah, inflation is quite low these days, and because computer prices are *apparently* in the same league as today's computers (unlike, say, a bar of chocolate for 2 1/2 pence), it's all too easy to forget to take inflation into account. (And also the fact that the base packages generally *didn't* come with a monitor or any form of backing storage more sophisticated than a cassette deck). Shocking to think that the BBC B would have been almost £1000 in today's money, but then I remember it seeming horribly expensive at the time.
Which is why, although the BBC B was a great computer it's unfair to compare it against the Spectrum. It cost over 3 times the cost of the 16K Spectrum; of course they were going to be able to build a far superior computer for that price!
On mine, if you typed in '10 PRINT "FOO"', it would accept it, but gave a syntax error when you later ran it. The "P" didn't trigger anything special, it took it verbatim.
Are you absolutely sure you remember that correctly? I remember it *was* possible with some contrivance to type
1 0 P R I N T " F O O "
(where individual letters are shown *here* separated by spaces) instead of
1 0 PRINT " F O O "
But that required you to enter the keyword first, then "spell out" another one then delete the first. Or maybe you tried to enter more than one command on each line, which wasn't possible with the ZX81?
Maybe they altered your version to force a keyword choice (US was the beta test market? :-)
No, it came out in the UK first. Though I've never heard of the supposed difference you describe between the US and UK models either.
The problem with that is that saving took much longer with the pack installed for some odd reason. Sloppy/shortcut ROM programming I think.
I was never a technical expert on the ZX81, but I do vaguely recall that certain things were organised differently depending on whether you had 1K or 16K memory. Specifically, the screen memory was organised differently on the 1K model. Program organisation may have been different too; IIRC the ZX81 (which I learned to use with the rampack attached) saved variables along with the program. I suspect that it might not have done this in 1K mode.... or something; I'm just speculating here.
A button keyboard instead of membrane would have been nice also.
Of course... and a pony would have been nice too :-)
My point is that the keyboard was one of the ways they kept it cheap; a real keyboard would have added a significant percentage to the cost. And I'm guessing that given the choice, people would rather have had colour, hi-res graphics and sound before a "real" keyboard; adding them *and* the keyboard would have resulted in a much higher-priced product competing in a completely different market.
What they should have done is sold it with 8K RAM built in and tuned the saving system to work well with that.
And a nice car to go with the pony too, huh? (^_^)
The extra RAM would have added significantly to the cost. I believe that Sinclair made the correct commercial decision for the time.
Perhaps in the US people had enough disposable income that this wouldn't have mattered so much, but the ZX81 was designed for the UK market. And I'm still not convinced; they could have added more RAM to the US ZX81 (it originally came with 2K), but (again), those people for whom the extra cost of the RAM wasn't too significant would probably have wanted that real keyboard, nice graphics, etc, etc.... in other words, they wanted something more like the Vic 20, which would have taken the ZX81 away from its original concept and market segment.
Because of the keyword codes (and probably 2-byte integer line nums), 8K was more compact than the equiv text would be.
Actually, my non-keyword-supporting Atari stored BASIC programs in memory in tokenised form as well. I suspect many computers did this; apart from saving memory, it effectively "pre-parses" the BASIC code and saves time at execution.
It was like they rushed it.
Apart from the dubious rampack wobble, what makes you say they that? Just curious.
Perhaps I was spoiled by the TRS-80's at school.
Well, yeah. I bet they were nowhere near as cheap as the ZX81 either, though. You can criticise the ZX81 all you like, and I'll admit that it was limited, but it was always meant to be a cheap machine, and it was a price breakthrough at the time. It may have been less impressi
I was thinking of making a joke around that too, but it's simply a response to a problem with the +Funny mod. This doesn't add to karma, which sounds justifiable until you realise that negative counter-modding *does* reduce it. Thus, controversial "funnies" that get repeatedly modded +Funny and -Overrated/-Troll can *only* have a negative effect on karma, quite seriously in certain cases. So some people prefer to moderate a certain percentage of +Funnys as +Informative/+Insightful, even though they aren't, really... :-)
That machine was a peice of [bleep]. The ZX81 was a damn good machine for its price and time, but Sinclair really should have done something about the notorious "rampack wobble". I think that my Dad worked out some solution and left it permanently attached. I might have felt somewhat less generously inclined towards the machine if I'd had to live with my programmes vanishing into thin air. The cassette problem was (I guess) in part due to the ZX81's use of a standard cassette deck, but it probably saved people having to buy a dedicated "datasette" unit.