Timex-Sinclair 1000/ZX-81 vs. 3M Post-It Note

[Mirage]

Yes.

 

After seeing what other have done with the TS1K (Some kick ass games are shown on YouTube I was really quite surprised, I may have to pick up a TS1K again just for shits and grins) and what others have done with the M3 (Barely legible, often misspelled notation like "This is your sammich") I'll still stick with the TS1K

 

Hey, that's your right! In a moment of seriousness, I really do like the TS1000... well, I mean, for what it is. It can be fun, and like anything else, it's always cool to see how far people can push the technology. I swear I even read sometime that someone made the TS1000 create some sort of sound. I have a CIB one, but haven't had it out in awhile. I'd vaguely like to get one of the kit ones, but there would be no point, since it would be a shame to build it up now.

 

Really good point there on what little homebrewers have accomplished on the Post-It. Hmmmm... that was a good enough point to almost make me reconsider my vote!

[GroovyBee]

After looking at the arguments I've cast my vote in favour of the Post-It notes.

[+moycon]

Really good point there on what little homebrewers have accomplished on the Post-It.

 

Oh wait....

 

http://www.neatorama.com/2007/04/11/donkey-kong-made-with-post-it-notes/

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1OvgEXgSQo

[Mirage]

Very cool. Unfortunately, I ruled out that homebrew project in my rule regarding only original and two-years from release... yellow only.

[doctor_x]

when i look at a new platform, im always thinking "communications" - i.e.: does it have a modem? and if it does have a modem, has someone written a BBS for it.

 

now, i may be wrong - and im sure someone, somewhere out there in timex land wrote one, but I do not believe there was a publicly released BBS software for the timex...

 

with that said, i guess i would have to vote "post it note" simply because i could do messaging and "file transfer" easier with a post it note than I could the timex...

 

in retrospect, i think its a travesty that a bbs software wasnt written for the timex - someone wrote a bbs for the tandy model 100 for the love of all thats good and holy!!!!

[+moycon]

does it have a modem? and if it does have a modem, has someone written a BBS for it.

 

A printer and an auto-dial modem were available for $100 each.

 

http://www.computermuseum.li/Testpage/TimexSinclair.htm

 

Not sure about the second part though.

[BigO]

Yes.

 

After seeing what other have done with the TS1K (Some kick ass games are shown on YouTube I was really quite surprised, I may have to pick up a TS1K again just for shits and grins) and what others have done with the M3 (Barely legible, often misspelled notation like "This is your sammich") I'll still stick with the TS1K

 

http://www.highfashionhome.com/post-it-origami.html?

[JamesD]

I've seen the Post It Donkey Kong before... too slow of a frame rate to be playable.

[Vic George 2K3]

The Post-It isn't a machine, it's pieces of paper with adhesive.

Thanks for the astute observation. Glad the rest of you know how to have fun!

Want some real fun, try making a real computer out of Post-It notes.

[Mirage]

The Post-It isn't a machine, it's pieces of paper with adhesive.

Thanks for the astute observation. Glad the rest of you know how to have fun!

Want some real fun, try making a real computer out of Post-It notes.

 

I honestly don't know what you mean, but that's okay. This is just a little fun, don't take it too seriously, please. But, if someone wants to try out your idea, I'd sure be interested.

[carmel_andrews]

Sorry to take the pee but I think a post it note is a lightweight computer

[liveinabin]

The ZX81. My first machine. I also got (and repaired) one this Christmas.

Now, it's importance to the US is pretty nil, but this little machine was a huge deal in the UK.

See, it allowed you to own a computer for £69 (less than half of what anyone else was charging). That's really important and kickstarted the entire British gaming boom.

Many of the great UK games writers started out with the 81 and, for that reason alone, it does demand a little respect.

Sure, it had no color, no sound, some hardware issues, but that wasn't important then. It was a computer and that was enough.

[Mirage]

The ZX81. My first machine. I also got (and repaired) one this Christmas.

Now, it's importance to the US is pretty nil, but this little machine was a huge deal in the UK.

See, it allowed you to own a computer for £69 (less than half of what anyone else was charging). That's really important and kickstarted the entire British gaming boom.

Many of the great UK games writers started out with the 81 and, for that reason alone, it does demand a little respect.

Sure, it had no color, no sound, some hardware issues, but that wasn't important then. It was a computer and that was enough.

 

I'm sure its importance was higher to the UK, but I actually knew quite a few people BITD who had one here in the US. One friend I had actually used his quite extensively. It was super cheap at the time compared to anything else out, until all the prices on the other machines started dropping drastically. As I said previously, I actually like the little machine for what it is. No disrespect was intended. Some people will (and clearly have) understand what this thread was really about, and some will not, but I just wanted to make the note (again) that no disrespect toward the Sinclair machine is intended. My first machine was a Vic-20, which I think was (and is) a great machine, but some give it no respect, or even want to give it a try. And that doesn't bother me, because it doesn't take away from my enjoyment of it at all. One of my (many, probably too subtle, and probably not well-executed) points here is that people get SO offended and irate with each other in all these "vs" threads... the threads could be very interesting, but 95% of the time turn into petty bickering and bludgeoning with fanboyism... it's absurd and ruins a good thing every time. Well-reasoned replies like your own are a good thing, but the "I cannot believe you cannot see the truth when I'm telling it to you" responses are not. Compare my Vic-20 to a Lite-Brite, I don't care, won't offend me... it's a computer obsolete for 25+ years for crying out loud!

 

And honestly, on that note, I'd prefer to just let this thread die altogether. I hope we can let that happen. The moments where it was (or could have been) funny are now past anyway. Sorry to anyone offended, that certainly was not the point. The TS-1000/ZX-81 certainly has a place in history as an important step in bringing the price of computers down for both hobbyists and users, and it's fun to see how far people can push it (and any old machine) to this day.

 

Thanks for playing along.

[Keatah]

post-it notes are multitasking. tens of users can use a pack all at one time. And they support sneakernet ootb!

[BigO]

"I just wanted to make the note (again) that no respect toward the Sinclair machine is intended."

Heh.

[+moycon]

My first machine was a Vic-20, which I think was (and is) a great machine, but some give it no respect,

 

Mine (After the free TS1k) was the C64, I had two friends who had the VIC-20 years before I got the C64 and we loved it!!

Actually the one friends didn't own it, his grandmother did!! She lived like 2 blocks from him though and we would go over to her house almost every day.

She had SO many games (I think her son was a software pirate) We'd play VIC-20 for hours. Soon after the C64 came out, she got one of those and had about 6 disk boxes full of games. I don't know what she did with the VIC-20 but I was kind of sad I couldn't play some of those old VIC games anymore.

Maybe a persons fondness for something depends on if they grew up using it.

[Mirage]

"I just wanted to make the note (again) that no respect toward the Sinclair machine is intended."

Heh.

 

Doh! That's what I get for trying to type that much on my way out the door to work. It was not a Freudian slip, I swear!

[Mirage]

 

Maybe a persons fondness for something depends on if they grew up using it.

 

I'm sure this is largely the case, as for anything else. Some will discover it later and like it, but huge chunk of anything like this, is of course nostalgia. I loved typing in games/programs into the Vic-20. I didn't do that nearly so much on the C64 I had later.

[The_Laird]

I do wonder why Timex didn't follow on and release the Spectrum in the US too.

[almightytodd]

...But what about

?

[Mirage]

I do wonder why Timex didn't follow on and release the Spectrum in the US too.

 

I wish they had. I've always wanted to mess with a Spectrum, but haven't ever had the chance (aside from emulation).

 

...But what about

?

 

Hilarious! Perfect!

[channelmaniac]

I've never gotten a paper cut from a TS1000

[JamesD]

Data entry is much less frustrating with Post-It Notes.

[almightytodd]

I'm going to necrobump this thread. The TS1000 was my first computer; I was in my early 20's with a wife and a baby. The low price made it possible for me to possess a machine with the same CPU that I had coveted in the TRS-80 four or five years earlier. Today, I can reminisce about my first experiences with a microcomputer using the EightyOne emulator, or the online version in Javascript, the JtyOne.

 

Sure, the TS1000/ZX81 had no exclamation mark, so the closest you could get to "Hello World!" was, "Hello World?". But my interest in this little machine was analogous to model railroading; the TS1000 was like a model of a real computer. For learning programming in BASIC, it was perfect. All of the keywords were right there on the keyboard in front of you; and you entered keywords with a single button-press. The cursor prompt would switch between "K" for "Keyword", and "L" for "Letter" automatically, so it helped you learn the rules of the language.

 

It was easy for the ROM BASIC interpreter to tokenize the keywords, because they were coded in the upper 128 bytes of the character codes. This saved memory space so for BASIC programming, with the 16k RAM pack, it was plenty. This strategy also made it easy for Sinclair's BASIC to have syntax checking. After writing a line of code and pressing New Line/Enter, if you had used a keyword in an incorrect way, or forgotten the closing quotes for a PRINT statement, a small black box with a white letter "S" for "Syntax" would appear in the line of code at the location of the offense, ready for correction.

 

Additionally, as you entered lines of code, if you realized you'd done something wrong in one of the lines above, you could press the down-arrow key to move a pointer down to the line you were interested in, then press the "Edit" key (Shift-1) to bring that line of code down to the editing line. Most other BASIC computers of the day required you to retype the entire line to correct it. Oh, and one more thing about Sinclair's quirky character set; it was set up so after the numbers 6,7,8,9 it went right into the letters A,B,C,D,E...  ...so converting decimal numbers to hexadecimal was trivial; just use the CHR$ function and add "28" (0) to the number. Here's the conversion of a byte (High and Low Nibble) in just four lines of code:

 

410 LET N=I
420 LET H=INT (N/16)
430 LET L=N-(H*16)
440 LET H$=CHR$ (H+28) +CHR$ (L+28)

 

The one thing I really wish had been done, was if Sinclair built a similar machine, but with a built-in assembler instead of BASIC. They could have put all of the Z80 assembly keywords on the keyboard the way they did it for BASIC (each button could have up to five functions assigned to it). They could have announced it as the "ZX81 Master System" for hobbyists wanting to learn Assembly Language programming. I think the reason they didn't think to do this, was that computers were so new and the public so uninformed, it would have been upsetting to people who bought the "Master System" thinking it must be the superior machine, but then realized that Assembly Language is not nearly as friendly as a starter language as BASIC.

 

 

[almightytodd]

Here's a screenshot showing some of the keyword tokens, and their numerical equivalents in decimal, hexadecimal, and binary: