My first computer, now I am a lead developer all thanks to starting on a zx81

What we tend to forget was the excitement this machine caused! YOU could write a useful little program that did something which would otherwise have been quite laborious or, of course, YOU could make a little game maybe like Pong! The power the ZX81 put at your command, that was the rush, that was what made me demonstrate it to friends at every opportunity. Now we have wonderful machines but we've lost control over them, they've become appliances rather than tools for the mind.

As a software engineer named Jason, I declare this the greatest computer program ever written.

What a great little computer. I had the Timex SInclair 1000 version. I was my first PC. I loved it.

I loved my ZX81. I glued my ram pack to the back of the 81 which made it permanent, but 100 percent reliable. I wish Sinclair had added a sound function like a simple beeper, and also made a version with space for 16K on the motherboard though.

I bought one of these from WH Smiths in Bletchley for £70. Who remembers the silver paper thermal printers ?

@warrenmacdonald1372

7 жыл бұрын

I had 2 of them. Here in Canada they were $99. It wasn't thermal but electrical discharge ( hence the aluminized paper) When it printed you could actually see a bright orange spark where the electrode was burning the line and smell burning paper !

@edgeeffect

6 жыл бұрын

I remember the stench from the thermal printers! ;)

@gtbfilms7472

2 жыл бұрын

@@edgeeffect the acrid smell of burning aluminium is something you never forget! Happy days!

@seraphinberktold7087

10 ай бұрын

I still have one of them but not in a working condition, it seems (might have to change that one day). The alphacom 32 thermal printer was such an improvement and not much more expensive.

My first computer. Thanks, mum.

The ZX81 was my first computer owned. Still have it somewhere. Which I could say the say about my first Speccy....

First computer was ZX81. Last job was Cisco Systems. Now retired.

Oh, the joy of owning one of these. The touch-tone nature of the keys made it difficult to type and there was no sound, but this was cutting edge..

You could actually buy a rickety key-push keyboard that fitted on top of the ZX81 over the membrane keyboard. I remember typing in machine code from a magazine that created a Space Invaders game than ran on 1K of memory! Also creating my own Donkey Kong game. Happy days.

Would love to see more longer videos from you guys demonstrating various programs on these retro computers

I started with it... and then worked for 35 years as a programmer, in a bank, in France. Nice memories ...

Among other features, syntax check in the edit process was way ahead of any other personal computer. I learn by myself how to program in a ZX81. Still have a ZX81 emulator in my mobile 42 years later! It's still a great machine to do simple calculations.

This is such a nice walk down memory lane, and the video that goes along with it, the one about RAM pack wobble ... just have classic written all over them. :)

Wow! Jason just described a part of my childhood perfectly!!

There's a Sharp MZ80K in the background! That was my second computer after the ZX81. Happy memories. :)

It was my first computer. And it all started with that advert in a magazine.

My first computer, built a keyboard out of an old surplus teletype and used it for years... good memories

This computer for me was my first graphing calculator. It wasn't marketed as such but it is very similar. With just a minor bit of BASIC, you could compute and graph functions. It was very helpful to me for math class.

The ZX 81 was my first computer too. Cut my teeth on this machine doing Z80 assembly code, thanks Rodnay Zaks :) The first full machine code program I wrote was a copy of Airstrike, a 2D scroller Ah happy days :D

My first computer. So many good memory.

My first computer. After that the Vic-20, Commodore 64 and Ataris ST40. Years later I started my own IT company and got wealthy. It all started by the ZX-81 and learning BASIC and Assembly on the Vic-20 (6502). Great times and great memories.

My father was an environmental engineer; it was on his ZX81, in the summer of 1981, on which I programmed my first video game. His machine was FANCY, it had a 64K(!!!) memory pack, which was so large that the CPU couldn't address it all! You had to use a POKE command to switch between the upper and lower 32K blocks. He used them as microcontrollers, a sort of early '80s Arduino: by attaching data acquisition and relay control cards, he made settling tank controllers for a mine in the Sierra Nevada mountains. He could buy them for $30 each in 1983, and nothing could touch that price point.

Very nice. I never owned one, but almost bought one for $50 in the '80s. I ended up grabbing a C64 which I loved.

YAAAY! MY FIRST EVER COMPUTER! Followed by Atari XLs and Amigas.

The ZX81 was a bit slow-typing and with the RAM pack "ZX 16K RAM" installed, you have to wait for the BASIC program line to be registered on the external memory in the expansion cartridge.

i love it.. the zx81 was my first computer, i got it 82 or 83, i think.. payed 100 Deutsche MArk for it and got it used.. so it was assembled already.. never got any accessories for it but i managed to make it run out of memory the first day ^^ after memory was full you would simply "program into emptiness". which was actually quite cool.. it made me optimize my code so i could fit more in!!! great memories.. thanks for this video...

Blu-tak the size of a runner bean was Sir Clives official answer to the wobbly ram pack.

@squirlmy

3 жыл бұрын

Blu-tak is a school teacher's duct tape. Very underestimated. Probably not a great solution, although Apple spending millions on product design doesn't, at times at least, result in much better.

My first micro was the Timex Sinclair 1000 (essentially a ZX-81 with twice the RAM, a whole 2K). I don't recall having much trouble loading programs. The manual (the same as for the Zx-81), lots of example code, and ramped the difficulty up gradually. The keyboard was crap, but the way it let you press one or two keys rather than typing in an entire command or function name helped. I have many fond memories of laying on the carpet, bathed in the glow of my tiny black and white TV, creating games, solving homework assignments, and running out of memory all the time.

I remember editing basic programs on display in shops and legging it or even hanging around watching the puzzled faces on the salesmen while they scrambled to get their _computer expert_ to press *[break]* for them lol. Oh the 80s.

@jtveg

3 жыл бұрын

@@williamtopping Yep, even looking back on my comment now after 5 years makes me realise I too was a twisted teenager. Lol.

My first computer. My second computer was a ZX Spectrum. 😊

Great Video! Indeed the ZX81 was my first computer which I added peripherals to, to make it feel like a big boy: a 32K & 16 K memopak, a stringy floppy endless loop tape micro wafer cassette @56,000 baud! (the standard cassette interface was 250 baud) and a 40 column thermal printer, ( I rapidly went through 2 ZX printers and their aluminized expensive paper! ); all connected thru an interface attached to that lonely port at the back ( I think the brand name of that interface was AIO and it was about half as deep again as the Sinclair ) Once you got used to it, the membrane keyboard was really quick because of the way Sinclair BASIC incorporated it's use into the language

brings back memories. My 16k ram pack wobbled so regularly that I gave up and didn't even bother using it anymore.

I still have one, now with a modern SD card adaptor and 32K RAM pack that doesn't wobble. It is unfairly criticised. For the price, there was literally *nothing* else available. And it was the first computer to make it into regular shops when WH Smiths took what they saw as a gamble and agreed to stock it. Prior to that you had to find a specialist "computer hobbyist shop" or buy mail order from the back pages of electronics hobby magazines. The ZX81 went mainstream and you could toddle off to Smiths (later Boots and Dixon's) and buy one off the shelf....take it home, plug it into your existing TV and off you went. There are reasons beyond nostalgia why there is *still* new software and hardware being made for this little machine.

My very first computer, the US$99 dollar ZX80 kit (white case). Loved it. Wrote a lunar lander program in BASIC using ASCII graphics that "zoomed in" as you got closer to the surface. Worked perfectly first time. My first microprocessor programming experience was prior to that using the absolutely outstanding Heathkit ET3400 microprocessor trainer that I built that used the MC6800 with its beautifully simple architecture. The included course materials associated with the ET3400 were also brilliant.

(03:26) "So, you had a look at the manual. It was a very, very good manual, actually." Yes, in those days, computer manufacturers (and software companies) wrote GREAT documentation.

5:20 Thanks for the memories!

This was sold in the US as a Timex/Sinclair TS1000, and was the first computer I owned. I have very fond memories of it.

@DFX2KX

9 жыл бұрын

Vince O'Connor I didn't know they sold them here, huh!

@JamesNewton

9 жыл бұрын

Vince O'Connor Yep. I also had one in the USA.

@JROwensPhotos

8 жыл бұрын

+Vince O'Connor I got mine in the US, and the only naming difference was that it was a "zee ecks", not a "zed ecks". I do remember it being a Timex/Sinclair, though.

@russelldunning1584

6 жыл бұрын

After Atari went under, computer gaming was basically dying in the US. The Sinclair ZX81 and Spectrum created an environment outside the US for the mass market video gaming industry to survive. This industry then went back into the US and became huge... so goes my interpretation of what I've heard. This little computer is, thus, a significant part of both computing and gaming history.

@squirlmy

3 жыл бұрын

There was a fundamentally different gaming cultures in the UK and US. The UK was using their own machine, the Zed X, Acorn, BBC, etc. From the view of the present-day retrogamer, gaming "went" to the UK: but for the developers, the companies and by any other measure, there was no "back and forth", no interchange, or only on a very limited basis. The Japanese were also active all this time. Your perspective seems a bit odd to me.

Sweet...my first computer. I spent a lot of time writing BASIC programs on that.

I actually learned Basic from that excellent manual, using that machine, some 32 years ago. I'd even started to learn Z80 machine language to try and get the most out of it. I also had the very noisy, but really inexpensive, ZX Thermal Printer. Actually, they should have called it Scratching Printer, as it had two electric needles rubbing on a metallic coated paper, and were burning dots to form letters on it. After listing a long program, the air would smell like after a thunderstorm in summer, from the ionization generated by all that electric arcing inside the printer ! lol ! Aaah, the memories. I still have a fully working Timex1000 (US version of the ZX81) with the 16K Rampack, as vintage nostalgia, and to show the kids what we had, and could afford, back then...

Very good and succinct summary of the purpose and abilities. The absence of colour and sound (save the tape screech) might have been mentioned but the BASIC of the ZX81 is quite good given the limitations of the machine. And the manual is a terrific introduction into simple programming. The ZX 81 at its core was ZX80 with a ROM upgrade (and simplified circuitry, of course). IIRC you could even turn a ZX80 into a ZX81 by plugging in the new ZX81 ROM.

A classic. I've got to get myself one again.

Type that in... press run... and leg it! Aaaah! Fond memories. I moved on to "free jazz" on the BBC Micro: 10 SOUND RND(3),-15,RND(255),1 .... 20 GOTO 10 ... and leg it!

I loved the zx81 It was my first computer and I used it all the time trying to make a simple calculator game

I did so many type-in programs on my ZX81 that I wore the membrane keyboard out until it failed to register keypresses.

Its predecessor, the ZX80 was also quite innovative. My first computer was a ZX81 and despite its limitations and dreadful membrane keyboard I learned so much from owning one. Z80 assembly language programming was what really got me hooked and, even today, I still enjoy it but using more powerful, faster, and more versatile microcontrollers. My latest project actually involves putting a TinyBASIC onto one to make coding the routines for a robot that much simpler. I owe everything I know to Sir Clive and his little box of wonders. :)

I loved Basic. I had an MSX-2 computer and I turned it into a Engima Code machine. I had to figure out a way to turn the rotors of the Enigma into a string of random numbers so instead of a random electrical circuit you got random numbers changing at each key stroke. Ah I spent days figuring that out. It was really good fun :)

I had the Sinclair Microace, the predecessor to this machine. I loved that thing! Taught myself Z-80 machine code (not Assembler, that was too easy) with it.

I had one of those as a kid! That's where I first learned assembly language for the Z80 processor. But how did we manage without google ?!?

I had one, but eventually got bored with it. Eventually it all stopped working. My RAM pack also would wobble. My solution was, after I plugged it in, to tape around it with electrical tape to fasten it the computer, to try and keep it in place. It did help.

I had the US version Timex/Sinclair 1000. I also experimented with assembly code at the time as well as played with the Basic programming. The flashing screen while scrolling down through code gave quite a headache. A high school friend of mine had a TS1000 also with the ram pack and the thermal printer. Oh the dreams we had! :)

Wonderful computer, my first love since 1983 yr. Still working... for fun.

ZX81 was my very first computer. I got it when I was 10 years old and have great memories of it

Timex Sinclair 1000 was my very first computer and I loved it. The wiggly 16kB memory was a bit of a pain but I used double-backed tape and rubber food and problem solved. Mine cost $100 in US dollars from Payless (now known as CVS) which had just opened down the street from me, and it was nice being able to walk there to look at the newest software (available on cassette tape in dramatic black & wine red cases). If I recall, graphics were limited to character generation but there were all permutation of 2x2 pixel blocks which were used for some games including a flight simulator to generate a 3D cockpit runway view. I still have my original TS-1000 and carts as well as another TS-1000 and 16kb memory pack in respective unopened boxes, still with Payless sticker on them.

Fascinating to actually see one operating. All I've really known about them is Holly's famous line, "I was in love once. A Sinclair ZX81. People said, no, Holly, she's not for you. She's cheap, she's stupid and she wouldn't load, well, not for me anyway."

I had one of these, complete with the ring-bound book shown in the video. Membrane keyboard was horrible, but it DID work. The keyword idea was nice(where it would 'Type' the whole keyword for you). I also had a 16K RAM pack, and had ALL the problems mentioned in this video. The pack was so unreliable if you breathed near it while powered on, I never used it. Saving and loading programs back never worked for me - ever. Might have been the recorder I was using at the time perhaps. I move up to an Atari 800XL after about two weeks of this thing. ;) But for the price of the thing at the time, you are right - no-one else could touch it on that, and it WAS a full BASIC home computer. It's just it was very limited in what it could do.

Wow.... I did my first programming on one of these in my early teens! My older brother bought it but he also let me have go with it.

How did you know what I did? Yes, i remember a classic morning at WHSmiths in East Grinsted typing in the inappropriate message and doing a runner! Those were the days!!

My first memory in Dixoxns was Rand 1000 - Press a key!

After my stepdad handed me the Atari 130, this was his personal computer. I found it really hard to use and very limiting, but he liked it because of its small size, small power signature, and covered keyboard. Anyways even though we lived in the U.S., this was the model we had -- the Sinclair ZX81.

Christmas, 1983, "Santa," gave me a ZX81. Today, I'm programming a test-engine for 5G telecomms. Most important machine in my life.

Rest in Peace, Sir Clive SInclair!

i got a spectrum plus that i really enjoyed using with the crash & Sinclair use mag, did a lot of game listing, some of them had errors in them which you had to find and fix, the games then where £5, games came in Cassettes, my spectrum plus came with a few free game, one of them was Pole Position.

I taught my self BASIC, or well a very similar offshoot of it TI-BASIC, with my Ti- 84 plus C silver edition. Man I would love to play around with a sinclair ZX81

The ZX80 was the kit you assembled. The ZX81 required no assembly.

lol, i can remember being sooo excited to get my huge 16k RAM upgrade. Those were the days!

I bought one of the kit ones and kept it for a long time. I learnt so much with it. They only had 4 o 5 ICs (chips). The Zilog Z80 processor after which the machine's name is based, a ROM chip which included the machine code routines for the Z80, 1 or 2 RAM chips depending on the chip type and the ULA (unified logic array) which was a huge set of logic gates on a chip with customisable connectivity. Despite what some people think, none of the chips were made by Sinclair, but Sinclair's cleverness was in the use of the ULA, the machine code routines and the overall design. The earlier ZX80 did not use the ULA and had to use a larger number (about 15 I think) of hard wired logic chips.

@johnr6168

8 жыл бұрын

John R Sorry, ULA means Uncommitted Logic Array, not Unified Logic Array!

We had a TV similar to that as well. I do now realise though that I was a bit dim back then as a kid. And instead of trying to read up on why the code didn't work I'd just give up. My poor excuse was that it was the 80s and access to information was poor. The local library never had any decent computer books so learning any programming was difficult. We did have the manual back then I believe, but again, I was never a bright kid so never understood most of it. I also never realised that you could record programs to the tape. I blame my high school because although we had computer classes in the 1st and 2nd year, we used BBCs and this was in the late 80s. But it was one BBC to 2 kids and me being shy back then would never get a chance to have a go.

I had the ZX80 and then the Speccy a few years later, never did have this one. Really wanted one.

my first ever machine, dreadful keyboard but hey back then we had not better alternative so just go on with it! In fact it was exciting time in computing history, there was real innovation and ground breaking stuff. Not like now where its just faster, cheaper, lighter, thinner but the same shit over and over.

@BillAnt

5 жыл бұрын

Oh gosh that keyboard was horrendous, but hey it was cheap and that's all that mattered back in those days. :)

My first computer was a Timex Sinclair 1000. Got it from Service Merchandise! :D

Great stuff. Cheers.

I bought the Timex Sinclair 1000 (US version) for 99$ at Kmart. I bought a mechanical keyboard a third party made for it that made it much easier to type on.

makes me wish I was back in the 80s with my Vic20 all over again

@mickles1975

9 жыл бұрын

justice4germans.com Same. Except with my ZX 48k

@rdoetjes

9 жыл бұрын

justice4germans.com Yay! Commodore! VC20 yeah my first computer and later the C64 (still love that machine so much). Then came the PCs and computing started to become a rut for me. Computers will never be as exciting as those early home computers.

@rdoetjes

8 жыл бұрын

Peter Walker Thanks Peter. Yeah, I played with a few of them in 2000-2001 it was awesome but I did not develop some stuff. Perhaps if I have some time write one more demo =) The thing now is that with for example After Effects you create more beautiful things in a matter of hours than you can ever do on a C64 :) So I don't know if I can keep the motivation :) But for a weekend it will be great fun i guess, so I will look into it thanks!

I had the American version of this which came out a few years later, The Timex-Sinclair 1000. It was exactly the same, but it had 2K RAM on board, rather than just 1K. I6K RAM pack too. It was my first computer, and I loved it to death. It taught me how to code, and how computers work at their most basic level. It would be wonderful if you could do a video about the follow-up machine, which in America was the TS 2068. Can't remember what it was called in the UK, but again they were the same. The 2068 had moving keys, color, sound, and on board 48K. It was pretty amazing (again, for the price) but support for it just died months after it was released.

@kumbah2006

8 жыл бұрын

+Patrick Melody - if you check out my channel, I have done some videos of the TS-2068. You might even catch some info on emulators and so on. Feel free to view and/or comment. Take care!

That's the beauty of early programming and basic machines. They come with a manual, so your already ahead of others who might want to get into computers, but just dont yet know that. And once they do, they dont have a clue. At that stage pointers are the most important thing. Also, modern computers are a all in one box, theres no pressure to know anything about it. And once you get in, not much was going on, so was not that hard to catch up to others. Now - it's so dizzying from all the languages and technologies. Those simpler times...

Timex rebranded the later versions of the Sinclair in the US and I know several people who owned Timex Sinclairs (I was a Commodore guy myself and my school was a Radio Shack bunch)

Ooh! I see a Sharp MZ-80 next to him!

i got Elite with the lens-lock, it did work right, there got the distance wrong on how to put it up to the tv, you got 3 try's and the screen go's blank, so i went to the market and got a copy of Elite without the dam lens-lock and I enjoyed it very much.

@ 3:88 Even though also my 1st computer was a ZX81 then I went on to a Spectrum +, I never knew until now that the word BASIC stood for Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.

@Einyen

8 жыл бұрын

+Jimyjames73 I think the concept he was looking for regarding BASIC is a "contrived acronym".

@Jimyjames73

8 жыл бұрын

ok

I had aTimex Sinclair 1000 back in 1982!

went to a computer museum in sacramento and saw the original PET and other 80's computers...behind glass cases. At least I got to see Charles Babbage's difference engine (the worlds FIRST computer btw) but strangely, no zx81

I lusted after these when I was a little kid. I wanted to build the kit so bad.

zx81 was my first comp. Rich kids had other machines, us poorer ones had sinclairs. They were great as they were very transparent hardware wise. Call me mad, but I actually loved the keyword system. I know that the 81 cost my parents greatly xmass 81 but I enjoyed dabling in basic and later machine code. Great machines IMHO

My fist computer followed by a career in IT. Thanks Dad!

You got the same Ferguson Portable TV I used, only mine was in black.

My first computer. It lead me in to a career in computing and programming.

I have a ZX81 but I really want a TV like that!

I never had that many problems with mine growing up! Just waiting time haha. If it failed would do it in first 30 seconds else would load the tape.

I don't think that the ZX81 is unfairly treated, even when this video was made, there was a very active community for this monochrome monolith. It endured the 1980s and became an icon. It's only misunderstood sometimes from a perspective outside of the UK and other parts of Europe, but even some American commentators today are catching on to how its price point and simplification was important. One has to remember though that for North America, the home computer market started around 1977, so by 1981 the ZX81 looked obsolete already. But not so in the UK.

I got a lot more done programming my HP-15c calculator than I ever did with the Sinclair ZX81. It had everything I needed for college Math like complex numbers and matrix math and fit in my pocket. I learned to program better as well. For years NASA flew several HP-41c's on Space Shuttles for backup landing calculations and finding ground stations.

Good video. In the USA we had something very similar called the "Timex Sinclair 1000". Was this the same thing, just a change in name? Also, how are your feelings towards the Commodore 64 amongst the other computers of that time? Can you do a video on the C 64? What about a video on Interactive Fiction (the Infocom text adventures). I work with kids, and they like them a lot. Thanks

@BertGrink

8 жыл бұрын

+2112dorf Yes, it was the same machine, just with a different name logo; the TS-1000 had a MASSIVE 2KB memory chip though lol.

My dad used to have one of these, or rather the TK82, which was a copy of it.

Yep, I did that.. typed something rude on 4-6 of them can't remember zx81 (rubber keys version), run/run/run/run ... walk out of the shop :D

Do one of the Amstrad CPC family. They where great machines.

Great video, but the tape in the little animation was going the opposite way than what the play arrow was showing and those tape players where not auto-reverse or it would have been written on it.

@Computerphile

9 жыл бұрын

Nintenloup wolf I think the 'auto-reverse' lettering had rubbed off over time.... >Sean :o)

That was basically the first computer I had, but with a different name: Timex Sinclair 1000. I never got the cassette to work so I had to type in the code every time.

Can you create a video on the Casio PB100? I could programme it like my Spectrum, but carry it in my pocket!

i had one of them and the the ZX128+2

@mickles1975

9 жыл бұрын

jmm1233 ZX 128+2 eh? La de dah. You must have been rich :P