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Sad news - The passing of Uncle Clive

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I found out at the weekend, that Sir Clive Sinclair (age 81) had passed away on the 16th of September after fighting a long illness. This is sad and it makes me reflect back on the early '80s and the excitement of the growing home computing market. I've already mentioned how I got into computers, and Uncle Clive (as some of the computer press affectionately called him at the time) and his team, through the release of the ZX81 started me off in my tinkerings and my path into a computer career. Sure, Clive had some strange inventions in his years but he was a genius, and well ahead of his time.  The trick with the ZX81 was the reduction in logic components required (just four chips can be found on the ZX81 PCB as standard). Bill of materials cost was reduced through the use of an Uncommitted Logic Array (ULA), a  component taking all the discrete logic and combining it into one chip. This took care of the screen refresh, the IO from the keyboard, the signal to the UHF modulator a
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Why reincarnate?

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The ZX81 although cheap and affordable made that achievement possible by omitting a lot of hardware that was standard on other systems available at the time.  The ZX81 with its 1K RAM, membrane keyboard, low-resolution graphics certainly put it at the bottom rung of the computer ladder. However, these limitations supported a UK cottage industry where solutions to major ZX81 hardware limitations were offered as upgrades. The adverts that peppered the computer magazines then, typically claimed they were turning the ZX81 into a professional computer: Memory extensions, External keyboards, I/O cards, Joystick ports, hard disk drive storage and even colour modules. I was not unique in expanding the ZX81. This was the home computer revolution and many others (particularly electronics enthusiasts)  were upgrading and modifying their ZX81's and particularly in the early '80s when all the decent computers were relatively expensive. There were all sorts of projects to expand the ZX81, yo
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In the beginning

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What's all this about I hear you say? Well, this blog will be all about my ongoing love for my first ever home computer - The Sinclair ZX81.  The start of this affair is documented elsewhere but I repeat and expand here as it was a good few years ago I published on my website vectrex.co.uk: It all began, when I saw this diminutive sized black computer sporting a  strange keyboard on the shelf in WH Smiths in mid-1981. Every weekend I would try to go to this shop to try out this and other computers. I would read monthly magazines such as Sinclair User, Your Computer in the local library and wonder how the other kids were able to write their names on these computers. Remember, like many, my only concept of a computer was of mainframes and what I had seen on SciFi programs. Eventually, through the reading of the magazines and trying BASIC commands out, I too was able to get my name repeating across the computer screens. I managed to talk my parents into supporting me in getting me a Z
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