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 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.