This website is about my first home computer, the Sinclair ZX81, it was
a very popular computer due to its ease to program using the Basic
programming language, and also due to its low price, around £70, when
it was released.It followed on from where the Sinclair ZX80 left off, but was superseded by the Sinclair Spectrum in 1982, which had colour and sound.
The ZX81 had 1k of RAM as standard, this was easily upgraded using a RAM pack, which could be plugged in to a bus connector that was on the rear of the computer, I bought a 16k RAM pack, although with one of these plugged in the back of the computer, care had to be taken not to knock the computer or RAM pack whilst the computer was in use as it could result in a system crash otherwise known as a whiteout, manufacturers soon came up with a ribbon cable connector to help overcome this.
The ZX81 had a Z80A microprocessor which ran at 3.25MHz.
Programs were displayed on any standard television, and saved to and loaded from any standard cassette deck, which was a very time consuming operation.
The screen would display 32 characters horizontally and 22 characters vertically.
A thermal printer was available although I never quite got round to buying one, so I cannot really comment on it.
Although I spent many hours writing programs, mainly games, only one was ever published in a magazine, even though many were submitted. For having this particular program included in the magazine I did receive £10, which was about a quarter of a weeks wages for me at the time so I was more than happy.
The magazine that I always sent my programs to was Sinclair Programs which was published by ECC Publications. It was as far as I know the only magazine dedicated to publishing amateur programmers programs, although I should imagine some of the programmers of published programs have gone on to better things in the IT sector now.
The links at the top of the page will take you to pages that include the layout of the keyboard, the front cover of the issue that featured my program, the page that it was featured on, I have also included the code on the final page.