ZX81

Obviously, hence the name, the Dragon 32, it had 32 kilobytes of RAM, and its operating system, if you want to call it that, was, uh, Microsoft Extended Color BASIC.

Now, obviously, unlike things like the rubber keyboard Spectrum or the ZX81, if you want to say, inferior keyboards, in inverted commas, it did come with a full typewriter-style keyboard, and, um, equally it didn't need a monitor.

You'd be able to connect that just to a standard television.

It supported cassettes and ROM cartridges as well, similar to most-

We should have got you on the episode.

My original home computer was the Sinclair ZX81.

Yeah.

But my dad actually got us a Memotech MTX.

Yep, yep

... and the ZX81.

And because my father was in this technical college, we had e- electrical engineers who were building those kits.

We got to go around and play with them.

I remember playing on that ZX80 and then getting the ZX81, and being able to control the TV, which was so much the sort of the centerpiece of the house and everything that went on in, in the house, being able to type and then change what was on the screen, um, mind, mind, mind-blowing.

Yeah.

[laughs]

And who really wants to learn a more complicated typewriter? Well, the answer was not a lot of people.

I will say I had my first ever computer was a Sinclair ZX81.

Yeah, they are the most painful thing to use.

I mean, I love them.

And with that, you are dropped into the game.

Now, Jason, I would assume that naturally you would have used the ZX81 version.

I played the Spectrum version, which was a little tricky to get into.

It was probably my fault, but the code business to load, that wasn't something that I'd encountered.

That machine was a Timex Sinclair 1000.

It was the American version of a British computer called the Sinclair ZX81.

Launched in July of 1982 as the first fully assembled computer ever sold for under $100.

I was about 14.

The only ones I would have been interested in at that time would have been duking for apples at Halloween.

So the first computers I was aware of would have been the Spectrum ZX81, if you recall that.

That would have been when I was a roughly nine or 10 year old child.

And one of the pupils named Steven Davidson, he came into the school, he brought this computer with him and we all crowded around the computer in the dining hall of Abernethy Primary School.

But in terms of actual, uh, consoles and things like that, it was, it was quite hard.

Even things like the, um, you know, uh, the Spectrum or the ZX81 was quite rare.

rare.But we did get magazines, even in regional towns, magazines and shops like that.

The shops that sold magazines and, um, [smacks lips] news agencies were quite big with importing stuff, and it was reasonably cheap back then for the, for the, some of the magazines.