New Package, System, and Review

[rmx77]

my parents had the exact same computer. they didnt have the add on cartrages or any of the tape drives or anything but its long gone. i remember it though sad its gone :( i wish i could get one and alter it to run some awesome stuff

[DARKJURNEY]

Great to see such an obscure machine getting some publicity, has always. I dont think timex teamed up with sinclair to make the machine ,they just to put a label on the zx81 that says timex .

Always looking forward to your next hardware review

[JonnyInfinite]

the Sinclair ZX 81 was kinda a running joke in the '80s over here, known for being primitive. If you're interested in Sinclair, the company owned by Sir Clive Sinclair, i'd recommend the recent BBC drama 'Micro Men' which documents the events of that era.

[cgohma]

The Tape drives on these older computer worked very much Like a telephone modem they used sound modulation

[rkoguy]

@cgohma hmmmmmmm interesting.

[thegalaxybeing]

I had a Timex Sinclair 1000 and the cassette merely stores the games and you load them into the computer (slow process) One cool note. There was a "Maze" game for this computer that was actually in first person. It was very slow but still fun at the time. I had "Flight Simulator too. Also very slow I still found it fascinating!!

[desconocidos27]

the new logo is dope, dude, thumbs up

[smokkapi]

you should start your own museum

[absinthedude]

In the UK, those were extremely popular in the early 80's. There's still a considerable retro community using them, NASA even made use of them! The cassette tape stored data at 2400 baud (2.4k in today's parlance) so a 16k program could take 10 minutes or so to load. Yes, it loaded into the computer's RAM. A simple but versatile computer which even had spreadhseet and word processing software for it.

[TheInsanemonkeyboy]

I got one for $5 boxed at Goodwill sold it to my Teacher in College for $50 in the same week.

[medog2020]

@TheInsanemonkeyboy Liar.

[TheInsanemonkeyboy]

@medog2020 No sir I am not.

[medog2020]

@TheInsanemonkeyboy Prove it.

[TheInsanemonkeyboy]

@medog2020 And how would I do that? Its been 10 years since I was in college....

[medog2020]

@TheInsanemonkeyboy Get yourself a Pi.

[TheInsanemonkeyboy]

@medog2020 MMMM PIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[medog2020]

@TheInsanemonkeyboy 3.14

[gamerjr92]

$15 for a computer, go back 20 years and go tell all your friends lol.

[nexus000111]

@gamerjr92 I know this a very old comment but LMAO

[consolereviews100]

awesome package i remember playing this at my cousins house a long time ago!

[RandomXv]

Thanks for the videos Gamester im subscribed to like 8 gaming channels and your the only one putting out videos.

[sinistermoon]

Nice pick up man! It's smaller then I thought it would be.

[DeadFredVideo]

Awesome :) 5/5 video!

You should look up "Micro Men" from the BBC, it's like Pirates of Silicon Valley but with Sinclair and Acorn Computer :) Should be on torrents by now, really recommend you see it!

[legatodark]

wow how the hell did people use PC back in the day with so little memory

[calumknight1984]

Just to let you know with the amstrad cpc (amstrad bought out sinclair in the 80's was its competitor) which also used tapes you could actually copy the tapes if you had a hi-fi with 2 tape decks on it i remember my older brother doing it when i was younger it sounds like a modem so you may want to turn the sound down lol. But it would mean you had backup copies of games that arn't made anymore :)

[KevinLieber]

Didn't you get two? Are they both really dark when you hook them up?

[Gamester81]

Yeah I'm frustrated because both of them were dark.

[fvgotch]

Interesting find! It is so nostalgic to be albe to get a hold of items from the past.

[QuickSciFi]

I'm quite impressed with the size. Great vid. =)

[whrm3]

woah, it looks like one those big calculators.

[Sypran]

dang that thing is tiny! its like a one hand keyboard! and i thought todays minis were small

[Azure701]

Cool vid but Spectrum arguably created the IT industry in the UK, and many of the UK's top games developers cut their teeth on the Spectrum 48k (includeing the Stamper brothers who founded Rare); it was a legendary machine in the UK and much of Europe.

I had one as a kid but traded up for a Commodore 64, but the Spectrum 48k continued for years; it even had reasonable ports of Street fighter 2 and Sim City, albeit primitive ones.

[coltsrnumerouno]

$200 for a 16kb memory expansion? WOOOOW!!!

[sonicwashere]

What if this was like this now instead of youtube with videos you would get to share photos Lol.

And it would say

-Up to 1 second in length

-Up to 1k

[dixtremo]

how nostalgic!

my 192Mb memory pc seems less crapier now! thank you x3

[math8895]

cool

[zeldajunkielol2]

wow! you have alot of arcade machines.didn't know you had a neo geo and that other one.

[vintagevideogamegeek]

Checkbook Manager...hmmm...sounds like a fun game! LOL

[vintagevideogamegeek]

"It was a black and white computer, with no sound...."

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Sweet deal for 30 bucks brotha!

[shaurz]

Hahaha I never knew any Sinclair machines were sold outside the UK. Yeah Sinclair always focused on affordability so the spec isn't so great and the keyboards suck ;-)

[afluffyman]

at the time this was well the shit XD

[Spidermankevin78]

i have one of these makes a great door stop!!! LOL just look at it its a wedge

[invisionuk]

Ah yes, that picture you displayed of the followup machine was originally known as the ZX Spectrum in the UK, and was released in 16k and 48k varieties (and yes, was in colour). It had a number of newer and more advanced models come after it. The ZX81, ehhh, it's mainly just nice to own one just for the importance of the machine in computing history, opposed to the usefulness of it. That said, I'd never actually seen a Timex version before, so this was really interesting to me!

[xxxvulturexxx]

It's crazy how much computers have changed in 25 years or so...

[TheMatthewProduction]

pretty small awesome package though =D

[DlNKYDANA]

It's so small. I think it looks quite nice though! I still can't believe it came with 2....boxed! Great deal. And sealed games from the early 80's...Awesome! Great Review.

[Chipsturs]

oh man this brings back some memories, love sinclair computers, i had a 128k +, but that is a very nice find! nice one.

[MNC122703]

This is super cool man , how does the cassette play the games ?? does it work with the computers memory???

[Gamester81]

You know I think it does work with the memory and I'm not sure how it reads it from the cassette. It's pretty cool though. Check out my vid over the Starpath Supercharger if you haven't seen it already. It shows how it works for the Atari 2600.

[3yE]

1. connect portable cassete player to spectrum

2. turn on spectrum

3. enter LOAD "" (the word LOAD takes only one keypress in keyword mode)

4. see screen border flash. rewind your casette and play it now.

5. as soon as the game is fully loaded (may take many minutes) , press stop on player.

[MNC122703]

hey bro , I tagged you , its in the how many times was I tagged video , its the video right before my latest bro , if you do it or not

you wont be a dick lol Your a super cool dude eatherway

[Gamester81]

Cool Mike. Thanks for the tag. I'll check it out.

[dpsinoh]

I had one of these as a kid. I'm pretty sure I had a 64k memory expansion pack. I remember getting pretty good at programming the thing. The book showed all kinds of expansions for it, most I don't even know if they made it to market, but I remember a full sized keyboard and a floppy drive. I don't think I had any "official" games and application programs. I hope to see the Flight Simulation review on this computer.

[newcoleco]

I do own one computer like this, not boxed, no extra memory, but I have one. I did show it to someone who didn't believe there was small and cheap computers in the past.

I've no experience with this computer. I did watch videos about things people do with this computers and I did try an online emulator once.

The coolest thing I've heard about this computer is the 1K Chess game. A complete chess game with AI under 1K... that's incredible.

[preydog1]

Get ready for the long load times.LOL

[Lorfarius]

If you like this system you should really consider buying the later Spectrum's. The 128K +2 is a good one to go for or +3 if you want to play disk games.

[Lorfarius]

That's a bargain for $30!

[Ready03]

remember playing one when I was younger, ZX81. nice price,

[SonictheBedHog]

Checkbook Manager is like the best game ever! I so own at that gane,

[nastyguard007]

ZX81? Is that a predecessor to the ZX-Spectrum? I don't remember this one, but I played the Specy a lot!

[hawkez2003]

I had one of these back in 1983. JC Penny clearanced them in a catalog. I got the computer for $19.99 and the 16K expansion for $19.99. It was quite alot of fun at those prices. Computer magazines back then had BASIC games you would type in. They were in various formats Sinclair, Atari CBM VIC 20 etc. I also got a brand new Tandy cassette player recorder for it (probably for $19.99 as well.)

[WeirdRicky]

That looks interesting i have never seen one of those. great vid!

[misterintellivision]

i had one of those once but it didn't work...so that kinda sucks

[musicalbacon2]

i remember reading about this computer in a "worst computers of all time" list. i heard it was only the cheapest computer if you didn't count the almost manditory add ons, which made it more like 500 or 600 dollars before costs for software. good find!

[invisionuk]

Whoever made that list is obviously an idiot. It was a very very important computer at the time.

[BenwaysWorld]

Modern TVs really don't like ZX81s, which is probably why you were getting a dark picture. They work much better on old b&w CRT portables with manual tuning.

Also be very careful when playing games while using the RAM pack. Any movement at all will make it crash, as the connection between the pack and the edge connector is very poor.

They're remembered with such fondness in the UK, as they brought affordabe computing to the masses.

[PhatPhunk]

Awesome system Gamester81!! Looks really small and compact! I thought they would redesign it to fit the American market.. much like what happened to the NES :P Great vid bro!

[timspacedout87]

You don't sound overly impressed!

[RoziKino]

YESSSSSSSSSSS