ZX81 Home Page!
OK, so it's not much of a home page really. In fact it's hardly a home
page at all, but when I built it back in about '93 I couldn't find a better one, or indeed one at all. So I built this, and it's still here!
History
Even though the ZX81 was released behind schedule (in true Sinclair Research
style) it was at least a couple of years ahead of it's time. Unfortunately
this now makes it about 11 years out of date. But never mind, it was
revolutionary at the time, being not only a calculator, but a calculator
which was capable of displaying graphics! Apparently you could use it to
run a power station (or so Uncle Clive told us), but I'm not sure that I'd
want to live next door to that sort of an operation these days.
When Timex got in on the act, the ZX81 became the Timex Sinclair 1000
(or TS1000 for short) and the screen colours changed from black on
white to black on cyan.
Technical Details
The CPU for the ZX81 is a
Zilog Z80.
This is what the inside of the ZX81 looks like.
I wanted to put more technical stuff here; maybe one day...
Touching Personal Story
When I bought my second hand ZX81 it was in working order and I had no
problems with it (aparts from the frequent white-outs and the fact that
my digital watch probably has more powerful technology). As time went
by though, the keyboard (for want of a better name) died on me. This
was because I liked the computer (again, for want of a better name),
and I used it. So, not wishing to retire the whole computer just because
the keyboard had conked out I set to with the back of an old cornflakes
pack, some aluminium foil and some sticky tape, and I built myself a new
keyboard. Imagine my surprise then when the thing actually worked! At
last I had found a working use for all those hours I had spent watching
Blue Peter when I was younger. This
thing may not be as cunning as today's computers, but you could build your
own accessories! I still have the odd trouble with the SHIFT key,
but maybe one day I'll complete the repair job, and my old ZX81 will be fully
functional again.
Stuff on the net
"So, where can I go for this nostalgia?" I hear you cry (because I've got
a good imagination :-). Well, best is if you can get hold of the real
thing, but it's slow, and those white outs... I found some
emulators out there, but they keep moving! In anycase, you'd do well to check out the
ZX81 page on Planet Sinclair. I use Jeff Vavasour ts1000-2 emulator (not least because it's free!)
The Planet Sinclair page also has a link to snapshots available for downloading.
The emulators
Xtender and Xtricator apparently share save-formats, and
zx81 files can be converted to Xt*r format simply by
renaming file.81 to file.p. Apparently however the reverse conversion
doesn't work.
You can download Nick Joslin's programs for
converting between .SND files of ZX81
programs and .P files. There's a bit of documentation...
Aparts from that... I suppose there's always the newsgroup
comp.sys.sinclair, but they seem to be
more interested in the ZX-Spectrum. I suppose you can't really blame them...
WWW Personal Computing an Emulation Home Page
cpg@geocities.com
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