MY EARLY DAYS WITH COMPUTERS
By Robin Morom (K4R)
Part 3
At the beginning of 1980 the home computer craze had not really
started. One of the obvious reasons was the price of everything. This
was before the 1980s 'boom' and what may look just expensive today
was in those days truly horrendous. Most of the manufacturers had
apparently not even considered that home computers would be a serious
market. If the change can be put down to one man then that must be
Clive Sinclair. In March 1980 he made the breakthrough - the ZX80
came on the market: kit £79.95 including VAT - ready assembled for
£99.95. This did not include the mains adaptor, an extra £8.95 (or
supply your own 9 volts at 600mA). All you needed was a TV and a
cassette recorder and you were away. A miracle of its time, though it
may seem quaint today.
For those people used to a typewriter the keys seemed a little
strange, consisting of a 40-key membrane keyboard integral with the
PCB. The whole machine was only 175 x 220 x 35 mm and weighed in at
340 grams, which was lighter than most calculators of the time. One
advantage of the 'keyboard' was that it was impossible to spill
coffee through it! There were only 40 'keys'. Since there was no
key-repeat function, using the <RUBOUT> key was hard on the fingers
if you made a big error. Talking of errors, these were drawn to your
attention at the programming stage since the machine would not accept
a line which had an error. There was a horrible flicker on the screen
for every key press. This was due to the fact that the keyboard
operated on interrupts and the screen was NOT memory mapped. The
latter would have been impossible since there was a grand total of 1k
of RAM! Yes, I did say 1k. However there was a great deal of VERY
clever programming to make the best use of it. Sinclair claimed that
their 1k was as good as anyone else's 4k. Extra RAM was available via
an (empty) 3k expansion board for £12.00 and chips at £16.00 for each
1k. The display was black on white but characters could be printed
white on black, hence the claim that there were 24 graphics symbols,
though most users would have called it 12.
By the way, all prices I quote are WITHOUT VAT (then 15%) unless
otherwise stated.
The ZX80 Basic used was somewhat similar to Microsoft 4k but had some
unusual features. All Basic keywords could be entered by one key
press and since they used what they called 'anticipation logic',
typing in a program was eased somewhat. One of the minor snags with
this was that LET was not optional.
The demand for the ZX80 far exceeded the supply for the first few
months but by July there was a User Club going. As far as I remember,
the main problem with the machine seemed to be in SAVEing & LOADing
to and from cassette. This could be quite critical and some recorders
never worked reliably at all. It was very frustrating to wait two or
three minutes for a load at 300 baud and not know until the end that
something was amiss.
ALSO IN 1980:
The UK101 (see part 2 in Issue 37) was down in price to £179 by
August.
I see that in August I could have bought an Anadex 9-pin dot matrix
printer for 'ONLY' £895 and from Cumana a 40 track disc drive for
£236 or 77 track for £345 . The prices did not include the disc
interface which was an extra for most computers.
Acorn had now announced the ATOM. This had a 'proper' keyboard and 2k
RAM and 8k ROM expandable to 35k and 16k respectively. Again no
colour or sound of course but plenty of additions to be available 'in
the future'. The price was £120 as a kit and £150 ready built, prices
plus VAT & p&p. A note in the ads said "Your ACORN ATOM may qualify
as a business expense". As usual, supply your own TV and cassette
recorder.
Also available:
The Edukit, 256 bytes of RAM & hex keyboard for £34.10
The Junior (Elektor Magazine). Similar to above but more scope for
expansion.
TRS80 - from US but converted to UK standards - 16k RAM £395
Centronics interface £76 extra
This computer turned up in various versions, including
colour, over the next few years.
Exidy Sorcerer - 16k £399 - 48k £499
Apple II Europlus 48k £690
It would be impossible to list accurately all the variations
available. Within a very few months there were innumerable new
computers and accessories. Disc drives were only for the very rich
and so were printers, although there were slight signs of hope for
the less affluent of us. The trouble was that most of the available
computers did not have interfaces or disc controllers as standard. On
some machines a possible answer to the printer problem was to buy a
secondhand teleprinter, as they were then being phased out by
businesses. You could pick up an old Creed Type 54 for about £20, but
they were very heavy and VERY noisy. The main attraction to me was
that they could be interfaced with the UK101 fairly easily.
September: For those who had managed to get a ZX80 early in the year,
there were already offers to part-exchange them!
Into 1981:-
January -
32k Pet including built-in monitor for £825. Twin disc drives £895
extra.
16k RAM pack now available for ZX80 - £49.95
March -
TRS80 (see above) down to £325. (Tandy now had a pocket version,
confusingly also called the TRS80) at £119.
Integrex announce a COLOUR printer. £895
In contrast Seikosha have an 80 column dot matrix printer at £199
delivery included. Print speed only 30 chars/sec.
May -
Now the BIG news of the year - Sinclair replace the ZX80 with the new
ZX81, and cheaper! Kit £49.95. Ready built £69.95. They had sold over
fifty thousand of the earlier version and were leading the field by
miles. Not only that, but you could buy the new 8k Basic Rom and plug
it into your old ZX80 for under £20. This updated it to (almost) the
same as the ZX81. Still only 1k RAM as standard but 16k pack for
under £50 and a printer promised 'coming soon'. Most of the bugs were
out now, the screen flicker was gone and it had more maths functions.
June -
UK101 down to £149. Sound (£39) and colour (£85) boards available.
Epson MX80 printers for £359
July -
Teac disc drives - 40 track £225 single - £389 double
77 track (yes 77) - £299 single - £499 double
And so on and so on.....
By the spring of 1981 there was a great deal of talk (and rumour)
about the burgeoning BBC computer literacy project. It was even
suggested that the BBC might bring out their own computer! I hope to
deal with this next time.
In October the UK101 was down in price again! £125 and with 8k RAM or
£99.95 with only 1k.
New computers seemed to be arriving in the shops almost every day.
Atari 400 & 800; Tandy have colour now; there's the DAI with 48k - 16
colours and sound for £595; Video Genie; Superbrain; various new
Pets; the Microtan from Tangerine and many, many more.
Accessories by the score. One of these was the Arfon light pen. The
ad said "at last a true light pen at a low cost!" (Their exclamation
mark) It was £80 + VAT +£2.99 p&p. It did include software however.
By the end of the year it seemed that everyone wanted a computer for
Christmas. There was a great shortage of the more popular ones. Those
who had a ZX81 hoped to get a printer. When it came out it was rather
a disappointment. Priced at £49.95 it also connected to any ZX80
which had been upgraded with the 8k ROM. The printout was on a roll
of special paper only 4 inches wide. This came in 65ft rolls and
there was one supplied with the printer. Printing speed was 50
chars/sec with 32 characters per line and 9 lines per inch.
In the final part of this saga I will try and cover the early days of
the BBC machine and hopefully a few of its competitors.