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.
Back then I was
kind of waiting for a better low cost machine than a
ZX-80 when mine died ie: Real keyboard, real memory , floppy disk even .
I was hoping for 68000 something but it never happened.
Well, Sinclair sold it and called it QL.
A 68008, running at 8 (?) MHz, (almost) Real Keyboard (at least as
good as most PC keyboards in the $10 range), Reak Memory (128K, as
much as the first Mac, but expandable to 640 or 900) and two tape
drives with ~100K each.
Furthermore: Serial Interface, Joystick Ports and a full figured
Network. As cream ontop of the cake a complete application suite
with Word Processing, Spreadsheet, Database and Business Graphics.
And all together at about 900 Mark (back than ~250 GBP). Lower
than all other comparable systems (in fact even lower than the
C64 in some shops)
Maybe check
http://www.uni-mainz.de/~roklein/ql/
for raw technical data or
http://www.soft.net.uk/dj/aboutql/aboutql.html
for quite detailed information
and just for the heck of it, there is the Q40 and Q60, a 68040/060
based QL compatible system with 40 to 80 MHz. See
http://www.q40.de/
Seams like the Germans have a hang for pushing old stuff beyond all
Linits (check the ZX-Team pages, or the Milan, as stat of the art
Atari ST follow up).
Gruss
H.
--
VCF Europa 3.0 am 27./28. April 2002 in Muenchen
http://www.vcfe.org/
