
Computing History - Sinclair ZX81 Computer Launched - jedwhite
http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/5447/Sinclair-ZX81-Lanuched
======
iuguy
For HN Readers who care little about an obscure computer from the UK, Micro
Men is an incredible movie about the people behind the 80s UK computer
revolution and the chip design at the core of pretty much every modern
smartphone. It's as much about the egos, the business behind it all and the
race for dominance over the burgeoning home computer market as anything else,
and has Martin Freeman and Alexander Armstrong in title roles.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEV1gefvy_k>

Incidentally, Acorn (who ended up getting the BBC project) went on to design
their own CPU for their next generation computing lineup, a funny little chip
design called the Advanced Risc Machine, or ARM, now the most use CPU design
in the world.

~~~
rbanffy
So, in the end, the Archimedes really won ;-)

I remember an article on BYTE (badly missed) that pictured an Archimedes as
capable of doing floating point math faster than a 386 _with_ a 387 attached.

I always wanted one.

~~~
rbarooah
Not to mention that you could power an ARM2 by collecting the waste heat from
a 386 using a thermocouple.

~~~
rbanffy
I don't know about the 386, but you could power a lot of stuff out of the heat
of a Pentium 60.

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iuguy
I'm amazed this got to the front page. It's a terrible article about a
computer that was the precursor to the computer that completely revolutionised
the UK's computing industry, was father (or grandfather) to millions of
British geeks and nerds, and taught a generation how to program.

Some better links for those wondering what the hell this is all about:

<http://oldcomputers.net/zx81.html> \- Includes the pictures of the ZX81's
other key use as a door stop

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX81> \- A highly informative Wikipedia article
not just about the zx81 but covering some of the business end of things as
well.

[http://www.1up.com/features/spectraspective-history-
sinclair...](http://www.1up.com/features/spectraspective-history-sinclair-
spectrum) \- A great article covering the history of the successor (the ZX
Spectrum) including the ZX81.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEV1gefvy_k> \- 3d Monster Maze, the great-
great-great grandaddy of Doom and Wolfenstein 3d. Skip to about a minute in if
you're not bothered about the loading noise.

~~~
rbanffy
> was the precursor to the computer that completely revolutionised the UK's
> computing industry

I may be wrong, but I always had the impression that honor belonged to the
Beeb, not the Spectrum.

~~~
leoc
My recollection is that schools adopted the BBC, but consumers bought the
Spectrum. Later on (as I recall) the C64 took an increasingly large share of
the market.

~~~
rbanffy
Interesting. The BBC was, in many respects, very sophisticated for the time.
It makes sense the simpler, cheaper, Spectrum made a larger splash in the home
market.

In Brazil, the home market belonged to Apple II clones at first. Small offices
split evenly between TRS-80s and IIs, with a small participation of CP/M
machines. Later the home split between IIs and MSXs, losing space
progressively to IBM clones. And then it all became this dull x86 world we now
know.

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edderly
Oh boy, is it really 30 years since we had wobbly RAM packs and Horace goes
Skiing?

~~~
chalst
We had the wobbly RAM packs with the ZX80, only they were white.

A sharp quote about the ZX80: _With an unusable keyboard and a quirky BASIC,
this machine discouraged millions of people from ever buying another
computer._

<http://computermuseum.50megs.com/brands/zx80.htm>

I loved that machine. Most memorable was that as you used up nearly all of the
memory, the number of rows displayed on screen started to reduce.

------
justincormack
My first computer! Although I started programming on the Acorn Atom just
before that. The combination of wobbly RAM pack and thump sensitive keyboard
was not a good one. But those were exciting times.

~~~
watmough
My dad gave up on our ZX81 ever arriving and bought an Acorn Atom from an
electronics guy at work.

I ended up with a Spectrum, then a BBC, then a Dell 486 and various home-
builts an Macs since then.

