2 ms·

Great idea in principle, however... In the early 1980's, the ZX81 was the poverty specification machine. Rich kids had their fancy BBC Micro Model B, Atari 800

Great idea in principle, however... In the early 1980's, the ZX81 was the poverty specification machine. Rich kids had their fancy BBC Micro Model B, Atari 800, C64 or other proper machine, in a heated study room, with dependable electricity and other niceties. Working class kids had the ZX Spectrum, Vic 20 or, if their grandma got the memo wrong, something like a Dragon 32 or Oric 1, which counted them out of the games swapping world of the playground. Poor kids had the ZX81 and really poor kids had the ZX81 that you had to make yourself, the kit-form version that was £20 cheaper. Or failing that, a hand-me-down ZX80 or a Microbrain thing with just a hex keypad and a few LEDs. Hence, although it might seem a great idea to make a ZX81 nowadays, for the British poor kid, it comes with the stigma, the reminder that it was you that had the kit-form ZX81, with no heated study room, and no 16K of RAM.

Scubabear68 2y ago
We were relatively poor back then. I got a Timex Sinclair 1000 after begging relentlessly for it, $99 was a lot to my dad. I was around 13 or so. Learned BASIC, assembly, a bit of Forth on that thing, and as I grew up branched out to C64 and Apple II’s and PCs, eventually became a professional developer. It all was enabled by the TS 1000 (and by extension the creation of the ZX-80 and ZX-81). To steal a cheesy movie quote, that $99.95 little slab of plastic and chips changed my stars.
musicale 2y ago
How is the ZX Spectrum not a great machine? Isn't that where Elite was born? Building a ZX81 from a kit sounds highly educational - not to mention learning how to wring the last bit of performance and functionality out of a tiny system with minimal RAM.
- Theodores 2y ago
  Elite was Braben and Bell on their Acorn Atom, which became the BBC Micro. Original Elite was tied into BBC Micro specific things such as how the display worked, BBC Elite had a split display mode with black and white high-resolution at the top (Mode zero) and four colour 'mode two' at the bottom, for the 'dashboard'. The AY-3-8912 sound card in the BBC Micro was also part of it. On the Spectrum there was just the beeper, and the display was not capable of those clever modes that Braben/Bell amazed everyone with. I will explain the problem with rutabaga... In northern Europe, nobody wants to eat rutabaga (swede) because that was what people ate when there was nothing else to eat, it was poverty food, best fed to the animals. Actually swede is a fine vegetable, I eat swede all the time, but I never went through a famine. With the kit form ZX81, imagine being an eleven year old in the cold with a soldering iron and a Sinclair kit-form ZX81, knowing that the most you will get out of it is 1K Chess, when your friends are playing JetSet Willy on a Spectrum or better, no need for this wholesome electronics stuff, just mainlining the good stuff, as in games. We were just kidding ourselves about microcomputers and programming, think of your peers and how many of them ever had working code to share with you. It never happened.
  - musicale 2y ago
    Thanks for the great reply! Hmm, I could see why the ZX81 kit would be educational but perhaps not as exciting as the ZX Spectrum with its color graphics and game library. I'm not an expert on the Spectrum, but it seems like a very capable machine, with a lot of good games, some great contemporary books and magazines, and many fans here on HN. It looks like later models featured a capable sound chip. And it had a Z-80 CPU, allowing the +3 to run CP/M natively.

Scubabear68 2y ago

We were relatively poor back then. I got a Timex Sinclair 1000 after begging relentlessly for it, $99 was a lot to my dad. I was around 13 or so. Learned BASIC, assembly, a bit of Forth on that thing, and as I grew up branched out to C64 and Apple II’s and PCs, eventually became a professional developer. It all was enabled by the TS 1000 (and by extension the creation of the ZX-80 and ZX-81). To steal a cheesy movie quote, that $99.95 little slab of plastic and chips changed my stars.

musicale 2y ago

How is the ZX Spectrum not a great machine? Isn't that where Elite was born? Building a ZX81 from a kit sounds highly educational - not to mention learning how to wring the last bit of performance and functionality out of a tiny system with minimal RAM.

Theodores 2y ago
Elite was Braben and Bell on their Acorn Atom, which became the BBC Micro. Original Elite was tied into BBC Micro specific things such as how the display worked, BBC Elite had a split display mode with black and white high-resolution at the top (Mode zero) and four colour 'mode two' at the bottom, for the 'dashboard'. The AY-3-8912 sound card in the BBC Micro was also part of it. On the Spectrum there was just the beeper, and the display was not capable of those clever modes that Braben/Bell amazed everyone with. I will explain the problem with rutabaga... In northern Europe, nobody wants to eat rutabaga (swede) because that was what people ate when there was nothing else to eat, it was poverty food, best fed to the animals. Actually swede is a fine vegetable, I eat swede all the time, but I never went through a famine. With the kit form ZX81, imagine being an eleven year old in the cold with a soldering iron and a Sinclair kit-form ZX81, knowing that the most you will get out of it is 1K Chess, when your friends are playing JetSet Willy on a Spectrum or better, no need for this wholesome electronics stuff, just mainlining the good stuff, as in games. We were just kidding ourselves about microcomputers and programming, think of your peers and how many of them ever had working code to share with you. It never happened.
- musicale 2y ago
  Thanks for the great reply! Hmm, I could see why the ZX81 kit would be educational but perhaps not as exciting as the ZX Spectrum with its color graphics and game library. I'm not an expert on the Spectrum, but it seems like a very capable machine, with a lot of good games, some great contemporary books and magazines, and many fans here on HN. It looks like later models featured a capable sound chip. And it had a Z-80 CPU, allowing the +3 to run CP/M natively.