A belated happy 30th birthday to the ZX81

[mal7921]

It was 30 years ago on March 5th that the ZX81 was launched in the U.K.

While not the most powerful computer, even compared to its rivals, it was launched at a price point that was more affordable for the average U.K. consumer, £49.99 as a kit and £69.99 as a fully assembled ready to use machine with a whopping 1K of RAM!!!

While it will not be featured here in any chiptune capacity (It had no sound!), it is still an important milestone in computer usage and awareness, especially here in the U.K.

Happy 30th birthday.

http://www.reghardware.com/2011/03/04/s ... niversary/

http://www.old-computers.com/museum/com ... st=1&c=263

[NCGM]

Hey I still have a ZX81 and the other day on Ebay I saw an auction for a SD card based hardware addon.

Some info here and a Youtube video:

http://www.rwapsoftware.co.uk/zx812.html


[youtube][/youtube]

[youtube][/youtube]


NCGM

[bid]

Hi,

there is a ZX81 emulator for Atari here!!
http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=13966

Cheers, Bid

[yerzmyey]

While it will not be featured here in any chiptune capacity (It had no sound!)

Hehehe. Not really. It works like Spectrum48 - they were selling AY-interfaces for it so it had sound like Atari ST (but without SidSound).
There were several standards of YM/AY ports on ZX81 but the most popular was ZonX.
Now ZonX is being produced again (partly because of my screams on various forums ) in two versions -
- a stand-alone version
- a version for ZXpand interface (SD card and 32Kb of RAM for ZX81.

Check dis MP3 out:
http://chipmusic.org/yerzmyey/music/squ ... timex-1500
I made this song especially for ZX81 with YM chip.



More info if anybody's interested:
http://chipmusic.org/forums/topic/6668/ ... tion-ayym/
http://www.rwapsoftware.co.uk/zx812.html
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/s ... light=zx81

PS: lately ZX81 was tested with 2 YM chips. It works.

[NCGM]

Love the ZX81 tune you made; did it take much work to do?

[yerzmyey]

Love the ZX81 tune you made; did it take much work to do?

Hi,

the biggest problem is to use the keyboard. It is touch-sense keyboard. But You have to watch all over again to check out it You press the proper keyz.

Still, the ZX81 can be used for some acoustic activity after all.