Background
This is the famous Sinclair ZX81 computer which appeared in a number of guises around the world. It was my first computer and i had many hours of both frustration and great fun with it. The trickiest part of using the ZX81 was when you had to load or save a program to audio tape. It could be quite frustrating getting the volume setting correct but once you did i found that it was pretty reliable. Of course that first save of a large program and then trying to re-load it was always a bit nerve racking!
I had spent most of the second half of 1980 trying to justify spending some hard earned summer job money buying a ZX80 in either kit or assembled form but kept putting it off. Just when i got the courage to go ahead i opened a copy of a magazine and there was the advert for the ZX81.
I got the ZX81 in July 1981 after ordering it in April. It was supposed to be 4 weeks delivery but it was more like 12 weeks. I had lots of exams to get through first so it was probably better that it did not arrive when it was supposed to. I still have all the original packaging and manuals, all in excellent condition. I later purchased the 16KByte external RAM pack. Although this was supposed to be a bit unreliable and any slight knock was likely to cause the ZX81 to crash i never had any of the infamous 'wobbly RAM pack' problems.
I had spent most of the second half of 1980 trying to justify spending some hard earned summer job money buying a ZX80 in either kit or assembled form but kept putting it off. Just when i got the courage to go ahead i opened a copy of a magazine and there was the advert for the ZX81.
I got the ZX81 in July 1981 after ordering it in April. It was supposed to be 4 weeks delivery but it was more like 12 weeks. I had lots of exams to get through first so it was probably better that it did not arrive when it was supposed to. I still have all the original packaging and manuals, all in excellent condition. I later purchased the 16KByte external RAM pack. Although this was supposed to be a bit unreliable and any slight knock was likely to cause the ZX81 to crash i never had any of the infamous 'wobbly RAM pack' problems.
The keyboard came in for lots of criticism but once you got the hang of it your development productivity could be quite high. All the BASIC keywords had an individual key so there was no need to type individual letters for the commands.
The syntax checking while developing a program was quite revolutionary for its time. When i started using Microsoft Visual Basic and Visual C development tools about 10 years after i first used the ZX81 the 'in line' syntax checking there reminded me of the ZX81.
This shows the ZX81 in its original 'squeaky' polystyrene packaging with its PSU and the manuals.
Because my ZX81 was so late being delivered as were so many due to the huge demand i got a cassette tape with some games on it as a form of compensation.
This picture shows the ZX81 with its manual which surprisingly still has its 'new book smell 'about it.
The manual was pretty good and i liked the spiral spine which made reading and typing at the same time easy rather than trying to somehow jam it open as happens with so many books and manuals.
I later purchased an interface I/O board kit which i planned to use to control stepper motors, DC motors, relays etc. The plan was to control the World but sadly i never got around to it! I will add some photos of the I/O board kit and the 16KB RAM pack in the near future.