25 Mar
2002
25 Mar
'02
12:55 a.m.
> Assuming I wanted to get a ZX-81, what would I
want?
Take a stable ZX81 or TS1000 and pull off the
composite video to feed a
monitor. Add a decent keyboard and bump the RAM to 64KB. You'll want a
printer and a good cassette recorder, too.
If you don't plan to add any hardware which
requires a ROM, then you might
want to add NVRAM to the unoccupied 8-16K address space. A Hunter board is
perfect for this, if you can find one.
If you require hardware which could benefit from
having code in ROM, then
the 8-16K space can be used by an add-on ROM.
Well, this would be a neat professional ZX81 setup - just you miss the
whole fun of getting the real minimalistic ZX81. One _can_ do usefull
stuff with just one or two KBytes of RAM. one has a real lot of fun
by just playing around with this little plasic box in front of an old
TV set.
I'd suggest an out of the box ZX81 (or Timex 1000) to start with, and
realy trying to play with only one K ... next step could be the internal
expansion to whooping TWO K - and oh boy, programmers dreams will come
thru. A 16K expansion is already semiprofessional (and needed if you
want to run most of the software (still, there are a lot of amazing
programms for just one K - inclunding books with several such programms.
I still think tha'ts the most fun, haggling with tight resources).
Eventualy over time a PIO/Joystick Interface is also a nice add on.
If you'd like to have a little more luxury, a TS1500 is your choice.
A 'real' keyboard (rubber keys) and 16 K (?) of memory !
A professional system, like Glen tells is quite nice, but you need
also some more knowledge about the pitfalls of a ZX. Start of with
the fun of a simple system, and if you're a late victim of the ZX
infection, then you'll soon expand into the ZX96 dimension.
Gruss
H.
(Not a ZX fan, but I realy like to dig out a ZX80 or 81 from time to
time just to play around with the most minimalistic _full_ system ever)
--
VCF Europa 3.0 am 27./28. April 2002 in Muenchen
http://www.vcfe.org/