Sinclair ZX80
Encyclopedia
The Sinclair ZX80 is a home computer
brought to market in 1980 by Science of Cambridge Ltd. (later to be better known as Sinclair Research). It is notable for being the first computer (unless you consider the MK14
) available in the United Kingdom
for less than a hundred pounds
(£99.95). It was available in kit form, where purchasers had to assemble and solder it together, and as a ready-built version at a slightly higher cost for those without the skill or inclination to build their own unit. The ZX80 was very popular straight away, and for some time there was a waiting list of several months for either version of the machine.
around a Z80 central processing unit
with a clock speed of 3.25 MHz, and was equipped with 1 kB
of static RAM and 4 kB of read-only memory
(ROM).
The ZX80 was designed around readily available TTL
chips; the only proprietary technology was the firmware
. While the successor ZX81 used a semi-custom chip (a ULA or Uncommitted Logic Array), this merely combined the functions of the earlier hardware onto a single chip — the hardware and system programs (except the BASIC
versions) were very similar, with the only significant difference being the NMI
-generator necessary for slow mode in the ZX81. (See ZX81 for technical details.) Both computers can be made by hobbyists using commercially available discrete logic chips or FPGAs.
programming language
, editor, and operating system
. BASIC commands were not entered by typing them out but were instead selected somewhat similarly to a scientific calculator - each key had a few different functions selected by both context and modes as well as with the shift key.
on the front; it owed its distinctive appearance to industrial designer Rick Dickinson. There were problems with durability, reliability and overheating (despite appearances, the black stripes visible on the top rear of the case are merely cosmetic, and are not ventilation slots).
connection
to a household television
, and simple offline program storage was possible using a cassette recorder. The video display generator of the ZX80 used minimal hardware plus a combination of software to generate a video signal. This was an idea that was popularised by Don Lancaster
in his 1978 book The TV Cheap Video Cookbook and his "TV Typewriter
". As a result of this approach the ZX80 could only generate a picture when it was idle, i.e. waiting for a key to be pressed. When running a BASIC program, or even when pressing a key for any input, the display would, therefore, black out momentarily while the processor was busy. This made moving graphics difficult since the program had to introduce a pause for input to display the next change in graphical output. The later ZX81
improved on this somewhat because it could run in a "slow" mode while creating a video signal, or in a "fast" mode without generating a video signal (typically used for lengthy calculations). Another issue was that the main RAM was used to store the screen display, with the result that the available screen size would gradually decrease as the size of a program increased (and vice versa) - with 1kB RAM, running a 990 byte program would result in only one row of characters being visible on the screen; a full screen (32*24) would leave only 384 bytes to the programmer.
Video output was strictly black-and-white, character-based. However, the character set included some simple block-based graphics glyphs, allowing crude graphics to be accomplished, with some effort. One advantage to using monochrome video is that different colour broadcast standards (e.g. PAL
, NTSC
) simply weren't an issue when the system was sold outside the UK.
on the motherboard. The same slot bus was continued on the ZX81, and later the ZX Spectrum, which encouraged a small cottage industry of expansion devices, including memory (Sinclair produced RAM expansion packs for the ZX80: the original ZX80 RAM Pack held either 1, 2 or 3 KB of static RAM; a later model held 16 KB, using dynamic RAM chips (DRAM)), printers, and even floppy drives.
Following the ZX81's release, a ZX81 8 KB ROM
was available to upgrade the ZX80 at a cost of around 20% of a real ZX81. It came with a thin keyboard overlay and a ZX81 manual. Simply taking off the top cover of the ZX80 and prying the old ROM from its socket and carefully inserting the new ROM and adding the keyboard overlay, the ZX80 would now function almost identically to the proper ZX81 - except for SLOW mode, due to the differences in hardware between the two models. The process was easily reversed to get the ZX80 back to its old self.
One of the most common modifications by hobbyist users was to move the motherboard into a larger case, with a full-size keyboard. This had the dual advantages of making the machine easier to type on, while increasing ventilation to the motherboard (reducing the likelihood of overheating).
symbol
, relatively unusual for its day.
The primary audience for such computers at the time was hobbyists, and the ZX80 was primarily marketed towards that end. In the US, the ZX80 was available in two forms: a prebuilt unit for US$199.95, or a "kit" version, which provided all the parts but required assembly, for US$149.95. Capitalizing on the price, the system was advertised (in computing and electronics magazines) with the slogan "The first personal computer for under $200".
(produced in the USA), and from Brazil
the Nova Eletrônica/Prológica NE-Z80 and the Microdigital TK82.
Home computer
Home computers were a class of microcomputers entering the market in 1977, and becoming increasingly common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a single nontechnical user...
brought to market in 1980 by Science of Cambridge Ltd. (later to be better known as Sinclair Research). It is notable for being the first computer (unless you consider the MK14
MK14
The Microcomputer Kit 14, or MK14 was a computer kit sold by Science of Cambridge of the United Kingdom, first introduced in 1977 for UK£39.95. The MK14 eventually sold over 50,000 units. It used a National Semiconductor SC/MP CPU , 256 bytes of random access memory which was directly expandable...
) available in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
for less than a hundred pounds
Pound sterling
The pound sterling , commonly called the pound, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, its Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territory and Tristan da Cunha. It is subdivided into 100 pence...
(£99.95). It was available in kit form, where purchasers had to assemble and solder it together, and as a ready-built version at a slightly higher cost for those without the skill or inclination to build their own unit. The ZX80 was very popular straight away, and for some time there was a waiting list of several months for either version of the machine.
Hardware
Internally, the machine was designed by Jim WestwoodJim Westwood
Jim Westwood was the chief engineer at Sinclair Research Ltd in the 1980s, starting at the company in 1963. Westwood was the technical mastermind behind many of Sinclair's products and worked there for more than twenty years...
around a Z80 central processing unit
Central processing unit
The central processing unit is the portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer program, to perform the basic arithmetical, logical, and input/output operations of the system. The CPU plays a role somewhat analogous to the brain in the computer. The term has been in...
with a clock speed of 3.25 MHz, and was equipped with 1 kB
Kilobyte
The kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. Although the prefix kilo- means 1000, the term kilobyte and symbol KB have historically been used to refer to either 1024 bytes or 1000 bytes, dependent upon context, in the fields of computer science and information...
of static RAM and 4 kB of read-only memory
Read-only memory
Read-only memory is a class of storage medium used in computers and other electronic devices. Data stored in ROM cannot be modified, or can be modified only slowly or with difficulty, so it is mainly used to distribute firmware .In its strictest sense, ROM refers only...
(ROM).
The ZX80 was designed around readily available TTL
Transistor-transistor logic
Transistor–transistor logic is a class of digital circuits built from bipolar junction transistors and resistors. It is called transistor–transistor logic because both the logic gating function and the amplifying function are performed by transistors .TTL is notable for being a widespread...
chips; the only proprietary technology was the firmware
Firmware
In electronic systems and computing, firmware is a term often used to denote the fixed, usually rather small, programs and/or data structures that internally control various electronic devices...
. While the successor ZX81 used a semi-custom chip (a ULA or Uncommitted Logic Array), this merely combined the functions of the earlier hardware onto a single chip — the hardware and system programs (except the BASIC
BASIC
BASIC is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages whose design philosophy emphasizes ease of use - the name is an acronym from Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code....
versions) were very similar, with the only significant difference being the NMI
Non-Maskable interrupt
A non-maskable interrupt is a computer processor interrupt that cannot be ignored by standard interrupt masking techniques in the system. It is typically used to signal attention for non-recoverable hardware errors...
-generator necessary for slow mode in the ZX81. (See ZX81 for technical details.) Both computers can be made by hobbyists using commercially available discrete logic chips or FPGAs.
Firmware
The ROM contained the Sinclair BASICSinclair BASIC
Sinclair BASIC is a dialect of the BASIC programming language used in the 8-bit home computers from Sinclair Research and Timex Sinclair...
programming language
Programming language
A programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....
, editor, and operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
. BASIC commands were not entered by typing them out but were instead selected somewhat similarly to a scientific calculator - each key had a few different functions selected by both context and modes as well as with the shift key.
Case
The machine was mounted in a tiny white plastic case, with a one-piece blue membrane keyboardMembrane keyboard
A membrane keyboard is a computer keyboard whose "keys" are not separate, moving parts, as with the majority of other keyboards, but rather are pressure pads that have only outlines and symbols printed on a flat, flexible surface...
on the front; it owed its distinctive appearance to industrial designer Rick Dickinson. There were problems with durability, reliability and overheating (despite appearances, the black stripes visible on the top rear of the case are merely cosmetic, and are not ventilation slots).
Video output
Display was over an RFRadio frequency
Radio frequency is a rate of oscillation in the range of about 3 kHz to 300 GHz, which corresponds to the frequency of radio waves, and the alternating currents which carry radio signals...
connection
RF connector
A coaxial RF connector is an electrical connector designed to work at radio frequencies in the multi-megahertz range.RF connectors are typically used with coaxial cables and are designed to maintain the shielding that the coaxial design offers. Better models also minimize the change in transmission...
to a household television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
, and simple offline program storage was possible using a cassette recorder. The video display generator of the ZX80 used minimal hardware plus a combination of software to generate a video signal. This was an idea that was popularised by Don Lancaster
Don Lancaster
Donald E. Lancaster is a prolific author, inventor, and microcomputer pioneer best known for his magazine columns. He is also known for his "TV Typewriter" dumb terminal project, his book on technical entrepreneurship The Incredible Secret Money Machine, and his work on and advocacy of early...
in his 1978 book The TV Cheap Video Cookbook and his "TV Typewriter
TV Typewriter
The TV Typewriter was a video terminal that could display 2 pages of 16 lines of 32 upper case characters on a standard television set. The Don Lancaster design appeared on the cover of Radio-Electronics magazine in September 1973. The magazine included a 6 page description of the design but...
". As a result of this approach the ZX80 could only generate a picture when it was idle, i.e. waiting for a key to be pressed. When running a BASIC program, or even when pressing a key for any input, the display would, therefore, black out momentarily while the processor was busy. This made moving graphics difficult since the program had to introduce a pause for input to display the next change in graphical output. The later ZX81
Sinclair ZX81
The ZX81 was a home computer produced by Sinclair Research and manufactured in Scotland by Timex Corporation. It was launched in the United Kingdom in March 1981 as the successor to Sinclair's ZX80 and was designed to be a low-cost introduction to home computing for the general public...
improved on this somewhat because it could run in a "slow" mode while creating a video signal, or in a "fast" mode without generating a video signal (typically used for lengthy calculations). Another issue was that the main RAM was used to store the screen display, with the result that the available screen size would gradually decrease as the size of a program increased (and vice versa) - with 1kB RAM, running a 990 byte program would result in only one row of characters being visible on the screen; a full screen (32*24) would leave only 384 bytes to the programmer.
Video output was strictly black-and-white, character-based. However, the character set included some simple block-based graphics glyphs, allowing crude graphics to be accomplished, with some effort. One advantage to using monochrome video is that different colour broadcast standards (e.g. PAL
PAL
PAL, short for Phase Alternating Line, is an analogue television colour encoding system used in broadcast television systems in many countries. Other common analogue television systems are NTSC and SECAM. This page primarily discusses the PAL colour encoding system...
, NTSC
NTSC
NTSC, named for the National Television System Committee, is the analog television system that is used in most of North America, most of South America , Burma, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, and some Pacific island nations and territories .Most countries using the NTSC standard, as...
) simply weren't an issue when the system was sold outside the UK.
Expansion
Other than the built-in cassette and video ports, the only provided means of expansion was a slot opening at the rear of the case, which exposed an expansion bus edge connectorEdge connector
An edge connector is the portion of a printed circuit board consisting of traces leading to the edge of the board that are intended to plug into a matching socket. The edge connector is a money-saving device because it only requires a single discrete female connector , and they also tend to be...
on the motherboard. The same slot bus was continued on the ZX81, and later the ZX Spectrum, which encouraged a small cottage industry of expansion devices, including memory (Sinclair produced RAM expansion packs for the ZX80: the original ZX80 RAM Pack held either 1, 2 or 3 KB of static RAM; a later model held 16 KB, using dynamic RAM chips (DRAM)), printers, and even floppy drives.
Following the ZX81's release, a ZX81 8 KB ROM
Read-only memory
Read-only memory is a class of storage medium used in computers and other electronic devices. Data stored in ROM cannot be modified, or can be modified only slowly or with difficulty, so it is mainly used to distribute firmware .In its strictest sense, ROM refers only...
was available to upgrade the ZX80 at a cost of around 20% of a real ZX81. It came with a thin keyboard overlay and a ZX81 manual. Simply taking off the top cover of the ZX80 and prying the old ROM from its socket and carefully inserting the new ROM and adding the keyboard overlay, the ZX80 would now function almost identically to the proper ZX81 - except for SLOW mode, due to the differences in hardware between the two models. The process was easily reversed to get the ZX80 back to its old self.
One of the most common modifications by hobbyist users was to move the motherboard into a larger case, with a full-size keyboard. This had the dual advantages of making the machine easier to type on, while increasing ventilation to the motherboard (reducing the likelihood of overheating).
Versions
The UK version of the machine was the standard, and only changes that were absolutely necessary to sell units in other markets were made. In fact, the only real change made in most markets involved the video output frequency (the ZX80 used an external power transformer, so differences in AC line frequency and outlet were not an issue to the machine itself). One outcome of this is that the machine had some keyboard keys and characters that were distinctly British: "Newline" was used instead of "Enter", "Rubout" instead of "Backspace" or "Delete", and the character set and keyboard included the PoundPound sterling
The pound sterling , commonly called the pound, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, its Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territory and Tristan da Cunha. It is subdivided into 100 pence...
symbol
Pound sign
The pound sign is the symbol for the pound sterling—the currency of the United Kingdom . The same symbol is used for similarly named currencies in some other countries and territories, such as the Irish pound, Gibraltar pound, Australian pound and the Italian lira...
, relatively unusual for its day.
Reception
Sales of the ZX80 reached about 50,000 — an unheard of number for the day which contributed significantly to the UK leading the world in home computer ownership through the 1980s. Owing to the unsophisticated design and the tendency for the units to overheat, surviving machines in good condition are quite uncommon and can fetch high prices by collectors.The primary audience for such computers at the time was hobbyists, and the ZX80 was primarily marketed towards that end. In the US, the ZX80 was available in two forms: a prebuilt unit for US$199.95, or a "kit" version, which provided all the parts but required assembly, for US$149.95. Capitalizing on the price, the system was advertised (in computing and electronics magazines) with the slogan "The first personal computer for under $200".
Clones
There were also unauthorised clones of the ZX80, such as the MicroAceMicroAce
The MicroAce was an unlicensed clone of the Sinclair ZX80, manufactured by the eponymous MicroAce of Santa Ana, California. The MicroAce came with an option to expand the internal random access memory to 2K, but had an identical copy of the ROM. The company was sued by Sinclair Research, who were...
(produced in the USA), and from Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
the Nova Eletrônica/Prológica NE-Z80 and the Microdigital TK82.