Guess this dates me. My first computer was a 2k Sinclair. I was living in Borneo and actually received it in the mail. Wrote several simple programs, saving on tape. Then bought a newer Sinclair, Commodore 20, 64, 64 portable and 128. Really miss those days before windows, etc. (I started my career as a programmer with NASA in the 60's)

Hi nicksteel,

yes, I guess you're a little older than me as I started to crawl sometime in 1960
I remember the Sinclair, reading "Popular Electronics" back around 1975.
The first one, was a "white" case model (ZX80 ), and later the ZX81 was released ( if I remember correctly).
I played with a machine a friend had, and I remember the cool thing was that you actually didn't have to type all the keywords, as it was smart enough to know that, for example, if you started a line with a "FOR", it would automatically enter "FOR" just by pressing the "F" ( or something like that"
But I remember that every time you scrolled the screen, it didn't have a vertical blanking, so it would look like a strobe light on your face, and it was very annoying

On another note related to "Sinclair", I bought the little plastic "digital watch kit" ( around 1976 ), which I believe was the first red LED wrist watch on the market. I assembled it, and it lasted less that a week and every time I would wear it, it would come apart

-kwag

My first Computer was a Sinclair ZX81 with 1k of Ram
I remember the "K" "L" "C" Cursor s ..
That was, why most Variables where L N and F
Let L = ...
FOR F= 1 TO ..
NEXT N
and so on.. :P
Do you remember the "FAST" and "SLOW" modes of this machine?
They must been uset because the 4mhz Z80CPU also had to handle the Display electronic. That was why a "NewLine" Command in the Display was a h76 or 118 Dez = Z80 "halt" instruction.
The "FAST" Command disabled the Display to give th CPU more time to calculate
Another funny thing was the dynamic handling of Display-Memory unless you got more than 4k ram.

.. ok .. today it all sounds funny, but in my eyes it was a genius work of Sinclair to develope such a cheap Computer with so less hardware at this time.
I think we will laugh aboud the 800MB limitation of a (S)VCD in a view years, and what work we have to do to get more than 80 Minutes of Video on it

I remember the good old days of Sinclair and Commodore.

Here in the U.K Sinclair was one of the pioneer's in making the home micro computer.

I loved the ZX81 with it whoping 1k mem lol

I then owned the 48K Spectrum then upgraded to the Spectrum + then the 128K Speccy. I also owned a Commodore 64 I loved those old pc and I get very nostalgic and think of them with fond memories.

I still own my Amiga 1200 AGA with a huge 127Mb HDD

I will never get rid of my Amiga even though I dont use it, its just the sentimental value it has to me.

__________________
Regards.

Michael.

You bet I do
If I recall correctly, when the "FAST" setting was chosen, the display wouldn't be turned off during vertical blank interval, causing a flashing screen during scrolling
When "SLOW" was selected, the display was turned off during VB, so it would look better.
WOW, this was back in ~1980 for me

-kwag

I bought it at spring 1982 and the 16k Memory pack a view mounth later.
That was the time, when other people look at you as you where an alien, if you told them that you have your own computer (What is it good for). And you had no one to share your successes with
*In late 1983 a Spektrum 48k ....
*then at 1987 a QL which was a real Quantum Leap.. "real multitasking systhem" and a real good Basic in 16k of rom.
Ok the Microdrives and the Keyboard was a mess.

*1990 with the Atari 1040ST came the end of my Sinclair experiences

I remember a friend, who bought the 64KB memory pack, and the thing just hanged in the back of the machine
If you, by mistake, would lift the machine and the memory cartridge would move, bye bye and total freeze
I really hated that cartridge Never had one, but I drooled reading about it on magazines More drooling... Never got one of those. My last Atari machine was an Atari 800.
But I still have an Atari 400 with some cartridges, and they all work
Specially my favorite: Star Raider

-kwag

The Sinclair QL (Quantum Leap) was probably the only Sinclair I never owned but I heard so much about it was always interested in it.

Alas though because the QL was mainly aimed at the business class as opposed to the casual home user I never realy wanted to buy one especially at the time they were very expensive.

I remember those Microdrives what a dodgy piece of technology they were lol.

__________________
Regards.

Michael.

Hi there,

Oh My God ! That's too funny,...and all those good ole memories...
I am 6 years younger than my brother who had a ZX 81 with a 64 k extension...He attended the courses of one of the 2 more important engeneering schools here ine France, and I remember he had to program in Basic, Fortran etc...(that was Chinese for me at that time).

What was funny (well,...there were actualy many funny things) was that he once lunched a "big program" (many pages) for showing the "trajectory" of the moon around our planet...LOL...It was very slow, and we had to wait for hours and hours to see those little ....(I don't have the word in English)...points.

It wasn't lovely, but it was working.

Aaaah,...I miss this period in the Computer history, that's for sure!

François

For sure François, for sure...
I mean those days there was REAL programmers that worked with as many little resources as 4Mhz CPUs and 48KB of internal memory.
And I still can remember GREAT computer games from that era (after the space invaders era of course) like jumping jack flash or chuckie egg or maniac miner or jet set willy.
And it worked great, not to mention great tools that aided me learning my maths.
Kids nowadays grow up with >3000Mhz CPUs, >1024MB of RAM and storage devices that can hold up to 120GB.
They don't know how programmers had to be creative to think in a motive to program on such a low end product that used to cost a fortune.
I'm not saying that nowadays people don't code but they code in a bad way.
Tools that could be coded in 20-30KB are done in 4-5MB just because they don't feel the need to watch on resources.
For me that's not the way to go.
And Karl can tell us all about it since he uses PureBasic for small projects and does great tools in 20-40KB with the same coding language we used in the early 80's .
Ain't that nice?
Oh boy how I miss those days...
Even I would go and buy the latest Spanish magazine like Micro Hobby just to get the sources for the latest spectrum/sinclair game
Hope some day they stop building on hardware and start looking at the coding tools we're using nowadays
smaller code usually means faster code thus less hardware needed.
Cheers guys

__________________
Rui

I agree with you 100% Rui
That's why I choose PureBasic, because I hate large runtimes and PIG libraries
BTW François, PureBasic is made in your home town
http://www.purebasic.com/support.php3
What an excelent tool it is

[On] - Off topic - They just released the BETA version for Mac OS X, so now I can start thinking about porting my applications to Mac OS X, with a simple compile
[Off] - Off Topic -

-kwag

Hi,

You took out the words out of my mouth rds...It's so easy now to program without taking care of the hardware necessities...(quite on the contrary !!!). "Thank you Intel and Microsoft,...and go ahead while poluting the planet with this mentality".

Yeah Karl,...Basic will remain my favourite language. I didn't know this link so i thank you.

Aaaaah,....Sinclair ZX 81, then Spectrum, then the Thomson TO7, etc...
Do you remember those movies: "Tron" (Walt Disney Productions, with Jeff Bridges) and "Electric Dreams" (with a Giorgio Moroder movie soundtrack) !!! Do you remember Eurythmics, with the "1984" song (and the blink of an eye to "Big Brother is watching you ?).
Jeasus (sorry Jorge...Lol); I missed this good old time.

And WHO would have thought we could ever have this hardware and software we have today ??? I guess noone. Well,...that's my opinion about it.


Take care,

François

Tron? Electric Dreams? Man, that's my youth you're talking about.
How could I had forgot about those?
The amount of PC power we have at home? I bet not even NASA had that at the early 1980's.
What was the hardware used on the shuttle?
8 or 16Mhz wasn't it?
Damn with the hardware I have now, I could try to touch down in Pluton
Cheer guys

__________________
Rui

Hi rds_correia,

eh, eh, eh...These are my good old days too...
I must admit I don't know if the NASA didn't have some special extra hardware we'll never be aware of, at that time...I remember those huge HD (many, many kgs and very big too...it actually wasn't called "micro-computers" for those companies, like IBM or Control Data (from which I got a French/US "computer diploma"...that I lost !)). That was fun! LOL

Eeeeeeer...If you happen to have "Electric Dreams" in VHS or DVD, thanks to tell me so...I couldn't find it in France, and I'd be glad to watch the movie...thinking I'm "forever youuuung,....I wanna be...foreeeeever young...." Lol.


See you later,

François

Hi François ,
No Electric Dreams, neither in VHS nor in DVD...
Ahhhh, Alphaville, that I think I still have on my Audio CD pile, somewhere.
Or did I left it at my parents when I moved?
Gotta check that
Cheers pal

__________________
Rui

No worry rds

I have the LPs somewhere...That's also a good souvenirs.

Apparently, we're from the same generation...I couldn't say Alphaville was "something I was addicted to", but that's really part of my best years. (sigh...lol).

I'm sure the shuttle wasn't only equipped with a single Sinclair ZX81...but I'm wondering if the "people inside" brought some CDs along with them (like this "Forever Young", for instance). Probably...Lol

Houston,...We have a problem!

Take care,

François