In the beginning

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 ZX81 computer - the cheapest computer WH Smiths sold. WH Smiths took a down payment and then weekly instalments. I did all sorts of odd jobs to generate the funds, and after 1 year, my parents made the final instalment as a Christmas present.

It is with fondness and sadness I describe my ZX81 here. With fondness because this computer, purchased in 1982, was my first ever computer. I didn’t come from a well-off family, so unlike my classmates, I didn’t upgrade to a better computer with bigger RAM, faster CPU and colour for quite a few years (my second computer was a Memotech MTX512 bought in 1988 from an ex-factory computer stock retailer, my third was the Cambridge Z88 which served me well during the studying years, and the rest to this day have all been PCs ). Before the Memotech purchase, I tried to keep up with my peers, by buying, modifying and building new parts for my ZX81. The side effect is that my classmates went into various different professions whilst I got into computer engineering.

Many of the parts were homemade and by trial and error. Fiddling around with electronics and writing programs was a good foundation in hardware and software engineering for me. The main system box was a modified cigar box! The keyboard was homemade and the joystick interface was conceived by connecting an Atari joystick directly to the keyboard switches matrix. In the right of the photo, you can just make out a black box. This was a system housing four "mains" power sockets and relays that I had hooked up to the ZX81 and had programmed it to control anything that had a "mains" plug - mostly 220VAC lamps, although I do remember connecting multiple cassette players once too and switching them on and off in succession.

The sad part of this story is due to my ZX81 system being stolen a few years ago. I just have this one photo of my main ZX81 system. I still, however, have my spare ZX81 (given to me by one of my classmates when he upgraded to a Commodore 64) and a collection of cassettes - some original games, many copies and some programs written by me.

The picture below must have been around 1985. There were no Smartphones then. I would have to beg my father to take pictures with his 35mm camera. The film was relatively expensive to buy and develop then and he was not keen to take pictures of inanimate objects that he did not understand.

This system had the following specification:

ZX81

System box with LED (homemade)
Kayde 16K RAM (purchased)
External keyboard (homemade)
3 Channel Sound Card (purchased)
Video Inverter (homemade)
Atari Joystick (purchased- blue ball from shampoo bottle)
ZX Printer (purchased)
DK’Tronics graphics card (Acquired from a school friend)
DCP I/O Pack (purchased)
DCP Interpack (purchased)
Tape Recorder (borrowed from my mother)
B&W Portable TV (Inherited)
Green Screen Overlay (purchased)

Apart from the sound card, all purchased items were second hand.

Ultimately, I want to take a ZX81 and rehouse it and improve it for use in the modern-day setting. So,  do what I did in the '80s but this time do it in this decade!