This really was a blast from the past. Great review! Mine had the 16K RAM expansion pack. Did a lot of programming on that thing. Tape drive for storage was pretty much evil. Randomly save or not save items, and randomly recover or not recover items. Good times!
@billschlafly4107
8 жыл бұрын
My mom bought some furniture and got this computer for free. I had so much fun with it. If I recall correctly the RNG from 1-100 would pick something below 50 2 times in a row and then something above 50 on the 3rd attempt. And then it would repeat. I started betting a friend 25 cents on the outcome. After about $5 he thought I was supernatural.
@bblod4896
6 жыл бұрын
That was my first computer in Electronics school. Had the 16k expansion pack and printer. Eventually purchased an aftermarket regular keyboard kit. You installed the main CPU board into the keyboard's case. Also built a device that allowed me to input machine language directly into RAM. Increased the operating speed, but writing the code was tedious. Eventually, I gave the computer to my old electronics professor years later. Thanks for bringing back old memories.
@raccoonnyc
9 жыл бұрын
I always enjoy your romps through geek history. My first was an Atari 800.
@deepblue69uk
6 жыл бұрын
I love the old fashioned delivery. Interesting stuff! :-)
@pcuser80
9 жыл бұрын
My first contact with computers early 1982 So magic......
@Livinghighandwise
7 жыл бұрын
Yea mine too (I was 12). My parents bought it for me at a "going out of business" sale at the big Lots in my home town. It was the start of a pretty lucrative career working with computers. If all goes well I'll be retiring in 4 years when I turn 50. In some ways I feel I owe it to this slow, cheaply built, little computer. Magic indeed.
@rogerjette5498
8 жыл бұрын
I learned how to program in Basic on a Timex Sinclair 1000. I no longer have the computer but I do have some software cassettes that are as follows. 5 cassettes that are original programs for the Timex Sinclair 1000 with 16K ram. These include: The Coupon Manager, VU-Calc, Chess, The flight Simulator, Inventory Control. I also have The Starter which is a Timex Sinclair 1000 with 2K ram program. I can’t remember much about it other than it was a lot of fun.
@MrHarveyluke
9 жыл бұрын
Wow, this was a blast from the past! This was my first computer in the early 80's. Bought it off of my friend, Ken, KC4UG (SK). I also got the 16K RAM module. Ken developed an add on board that attached on the expansion port to run RTTY. I don't remember making any contacts with it, but it was fun. Then I "upgraded" to a C64, which I still have. 73, Harvey, KM4JA
@DE-iv8if
5 жыл бұрын
As far as I know, the Succesor to the ZX81, the ZX Spectrum had no internal Tape Deck.. Just two 3.5mm TS Connectors one called "EAR" and one called "MIC" to transfer Data from or to external Tape Recorders. They were located next to the RF Modulator.
@carltalbot9212
6 жыл бұрын
This was my second computer and I hated the membrane keyboard. I went to this surplus store and purchased a IBM magnetic membrane keyboard from some IBM mainframe of the 60,s or 50's. I took this mega cable and connected all the k. Bill gates purchased the right's to CP/Meyboard input's the Sinclair would take. I had this POP POP keyboard that worked flawlessly. My Dad was watching me and he drug out his Tektronics oscilloscope and help me find composite video and that was pretty easy. I cut out my video connector and just put this epoxy glob out the back of the computer. I broke the code of the back plane and connected a basic ASCII IBM dot matrix printer and it worked with some glitches. Basic programs took so long to download to audio tape I gave up on that action. i started looking into IBM High speed tape backup. By the time i was looking at high speed IBM tape backups, the Commodore 64 hit the market and I never looked back. My first computer was a build it your self computer with an operating system of CP/M. Bill Gates purchased the rights to CP/M and made DOS 1.0
@sistemasgpo.davilatextil4469
9 ай бұрын
My very first computer was a Timex Sinclair 1000.
@paulownia1260
9 жыл бұрын
Like MrHarveyluke, this was my first computer in 1983, followed by a C-64 a couple of years later. I had a lot of fun learning to program in Basic. The keyboard left a little to be desired, but it was a great low cost introduction to the world of computers.
@quincy451
6 жыл бұрын
awesome details as usual this time on my first computer...that was mine and not one used in a class. I took mine to 48k added video hardware only to find the power supply would NOT drive all that. So I wired up a new one and I got the dc and ac lines reversed...yea a pop and smoke was the result and my zx81 was done.
@ian_b
6 жыл бұрын
I don't know where you heard that the BASIC interpreter was itself interpreted. It's hand crafted assembler and a rather fine example of it at that. The slowness of the machine is almost entirely due to the CPU spending most of its time generating the video display.
@jefftranter
6 жыл бұрын
I couldn't find a reference to this - I might have been thinking of Tiny BASIC which ran on some other machines of the era and was often implemented as an interpreter for a virtual machine.
@ian_b
6 жыл бұрын
Ah, okay. I had a ZX81 (the British version) and knew that ROM inside out and back to front. You couldn't do much on these machines without assembler! One thing BTW that did slow the machine for the user was that every time you typed something in the primitive BASIC editor, it redraws the whole screen, and each time it does that, it has to move large areas of memory because the display RAM expanded or contracted (to save memory on the 1K/2K machine). So when it was displaying the program listing, it was doing that for every single character it prints to the screen. Which is very, very slow... :)
@georgebalzer5490
6 жыл бұрын
The Timex Sinclair 1000 was my first computer. As a boy of 13, I felt computers were the future and saved my money to buy one against my mothers wishes. I could not afford to purchase any of the games that were available so I self taught myself Basic language and proceeded to code games that I could not buy. On my own, I programmed a game called "Air Wolf", a copy of the popular "Frogger" game and a text only game very similar to Dungeons and Dragons that I called "Monsters and Mazes". I still have the code and even cassette jackets as I had planned to sell these games but at 13 years old... I had no business sense.
@K1OIK
9 жыл бұрын
My favorite computer
@BertGrink
6 жыл бұрын
+Jeff Tranter Dear Sir, allow me to point out one small factual error in your otherwise excellent presentation: The first model of the ZX Spectrum which came out in 1982 did *NOT* have an integrated tape deck, that honour belonged to the Spectrum +2 which was the first model produced by Amstrad after the takeover. The original Speccy as it's often called, had rubber keys pressing on a membrane, and was about the size of a sheet of DIN A4 paper. A later incarnation from 1984 - still by Sinclair Research - upgraded the case and keyboard with slightly better keys.
@MrMac5150
9 жыл бұрын
I had one needed a tape recorder to work.
@kcinplatinumgaming2598
6 жыл бұрын
why does it show above the command input line a repeat of multiple character of the last letter?? I am from the UK I never seen that before, I have two original ZX81 somewhere at my mums and I wrote many pieces of code but I never seen that on the ZX81 Basic ???? or was that just a glitch on the Timex version??? or multiple "K" which was the prompt for OK??? ... LOL I watched later and you answered :D excellent video
@jefftranter
6 жыл бұрын
This is a problem with this particular unit. It looks like the ULA chip is starting to fail and it shows repeating characters.
@pleasecho2
6 жыл бұрын
I had the ribbon cable problem up until I cut it back to the point that it wouldn't reach the connector anymore. What was equally annoying was the poor connection the 16K expansion pack had with the edge connector because it just hung there with no strain relief, so after painstakingly typing commands in for 15 minutes if you'd shift position the slightest bit you'd lose everything. I used it for a doorstop for a while then tossed it recently in the hopes that it might be reincarnated into part of a VW
@BertGrink
6 жыл бұрын
Ahh yes, the dreaded RAM Pack wobble, which was the bane of many a newbie programmer. The keyboard didn't help either, from that point of view. Luckily, many 3rd party developers soon made alternative solutions to both problems, eg Memotech who had a wide range of periperal interfaces at the height of the ZX81's lifespan.
@CoreDreamStudios
9 жыл бұрын
I had this when I was 4, I kept it most of my life until some idiot threw it out on me. I wish I could afford another atm.
@thepumpkingking8339
9 жыл бұрын
0:44 .. The MK14.. in 1978.
@soviet9922
7 жыл бұрын
what is the random garbage that show at the bottom of the screen when you input commands dont remember that from the zx81
@jefftranter
7 жыл бұрын
The ULA chip on my system has partially failed and seems to be causing some glitches oin the display.
@soviet9922
7 жыл бұрын
that explain it, never seen it glitch this way
@pcuser80
9 жыл бұрын
Is your computer defect? its not normal to display a repeated first character.
@TheChipmunk2008
9 жыл бұрын
pcuser80 Yes, I'd say that's a defect, doesn't look normal at all to me
@chadcastagana9181
6 жыл бұрын
This 'toy' here has so many bugs with it, combined with a miserable 8KB of 'Interpreter' ROM - - all you have is a tedious gadget to work with. No wonder the Comodore VIC-20 beat its socks off in sales around the world. Eat your hearts out Brits!
@JohnRineyIII
9 жыл бұрын
A charmingly awful little machine. I like to say it's the only computer that can finish an infinite loop - thanks to that manual scrolling "feature", the typical 10 PRINT "HELLO" 20 GOTO 10 program stops once the screen is full...
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