Ake,

ZX81...

On Mon, 02 May 2005 08:39:49 +0200, Ake Hedman wrote:

> That was a wonderful thing. Clive Sinclair the genius designed it. Sold 
> as a kit also IIRC. Keyboard scanning, graphics generation etc done by 
> the CPU to keep the production cost down.
> 
> Makes me remember....   :-)

Indeed, and the ZX81 was the successor to the ZX80, which was a bit less capable.  I met "Uncle Clive" once 
(later "Uncle Sir Clive") at a computer exhibition, and asked him about a portable television of his design, 
because I had one that I wanted to use as a tiny computer monitor (text only of course - this was in the late 
70's when there was no such thing as graphics!).  He thought about it for a moment, and decided it wasn't 
really possible, because there was nowhere in the exposed circuitry where there was a straight "video" signal 
- the chip that did most of the work produced the scanning and luminance signals directly, so it would have 
been really hard to spoof it.  Nice bloke, very friendly and helpful, and very "ordinary" to talk to.  Shame 
about the C5...

Cheers,


Howard Winter
St.Albans, England


-- 
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist