[Coco] [OT]T/S 1K / ZX81 [Was:] More ebay madness

[John Eric]

 i have a ts-1000. i love playing with the lil' thing. it has a z80, ula, rom and a ram (2Kx8) - i think the zx81 had two 1Kx4 rams. still, i think it's neat, but i love playing with coco's lots more :)




________________________________
From: Phill Harvey-Smith <afra at aurigae.demon.co.uk>
To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Monday, January 26, 2009 6:25:38 PM
Subject: Re: [Coco] [OT]T/S 1K / ZX81 [Was:] More ebay madness

Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Monday 26 January 2009, Joel Ewy wrote:
>> Gene Heskett wrote:
>>> On Sunday 25 January 2009, Ed Orbea wrote:
>>>> If you thought that some of the CoCo prices are laughable, take a look
>>>> at this:
>>>> ...
>>> Tee tee. $5k?  Boggle...  Having once owned one of those, and finding its
>>> keyboard was a 30 minute wonder, I put a TI99/4a surplus keyboard on it by
>>> putting the whole thing in a bigger box, along with the 16k rampack, and
>>> gave it to my kids.
>> I still have a T/S 1K that has an aftermarket "real" keyboard and case,
>> along with a box of tapes.  About twice a decade I hook it up and
>> remember all that is so great about the CoCo.

Whilst I mostly agree, I do have a couple of the UK Sinclair ZX81s which are the same machine, which Timex produced under license. It should also be rememberd that the goal of the ZX81, and Sinclair's other machines was to produce a computer as cheaply as possible, to make them available to the masses.

For example the ZX80, the predesssor of the ZX81/TS1000, basically the same machine, but implemented soly with LS, whereas the ZX81 has a ULA to replace the LS, was the first computer available in the UK for under £100.

So it was aiming for the lower end of the market which it was very successful at, I believe more than 1,000,000 ZX81s where sold in the UK, and they where cirtainly cheaper than the CoCo (or even the Dragon) at the time near the end of it's availability you could pick up a ZX81+16K RAM pack for £45, and for a lot of people in the UK (me included) this was their introduction to computing, and yes I do still have it :)

A fairer comparison would probably be with the MC-10, though even that was priced a little too high for the UK market but in terms of specifications was probably closer to the ZX81, than the CoCo.

Still $5000 is a little on the steap side, My Wife bought me a couple of the ZX81 kits, a couple of years back, which including shipping from the US, only came to just over £100, mind the exchange rate was better back then :)

Cheers.

Phill.

-- Phill Harvey-Smith, Programmer, Hardware hacker, and general eccentric !

"You can twist perceptions, but reality won't budge" -- Rush.

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