I remember a time when my nerd friends all had Sinclair ZX81s[1] with 1k of RAM. My dad was a chemical engineer, so bought an HP85a[2] which was the sort of com

I remember a time when my nerd friends all had Sinclair ZX81s[1] with 1k of RAM. My dad was a chemical engineer, so bought an HP85a[2] which was the sort of computer you would use to control lab equipment etc. I remember showing it to my friends: 1. Built in screen 2. Built in THERMAL PRINTER! 3. Built in magnetic tape drive (Sinclairs had to use a cassette player which was way way worse). 4. Massive, overwhelming 32k of ram!!![3] On the one hand it could run visicalc. On the other hand, their computers could run games. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX81 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX81 [2] https://oldcomputers.net/hp85.html https://oldcomputers.net/hp85.html [3] With an expansion cartridge you plugged into the back