Three years ago, I received my first ZX81 computer kit in the mail. Only three short years ago, I considered myself a computer illiterate. Since then, things have changed somewhat; but before I tell you about that, let me backtrack a little. I hope that in doing so I might help encourage some of you who are just getting started, and are finding the going perhaps a little rougher than you anticipated. In the process, I’ll tell you how SyncWare News came about, and how it is that you are now holding this re-compilation of the first volume.
Before I got my first ZX81, I was more or less familiar with “conventional” electronics, but I found that somehow the computer revolution had passed me by. I’d had a little exposure to the big mainframe on campus during my college days, but that was already a vague memory of stacks of cards with holes in them, big noisy line printers and large white air-conditioned rooms full of stuff that was accessible only to the “high priests” of the computer staff. But that’s about as far as it went. I was growing increasingly restive, feeling that I was missing out on the most significant and exciting aspect of contemporary life.
Even just three years ago, the cheapest, most basic computer couldn’t be had for less than $500; so imagine my delight when I saw an ad in “Popular Science” for a computer kit with a paltry $100 price tag! Well, I strained the family budget and sent my check to an outfit called “Sinclair Research, Ltd.” in New Hampshire, hoping that this wouldn’t be just another mail order rip-off. A couple weeks later, I got a plain box in the mail; when I opened it, my fears intensified. Oh, dear! Three big chips, two little ones, and a few bags of miscellaneous resistors, diodes and some other stuff. Besides that, there was a small circuit board and a little black ABS box with a membrane keypad to put it all into. “This can’t possibly be a computer!” I thought. I assembled it anyway, curious now as to | what kind of comic-book novelty I had let myself in for this time. I put it together and (you guessed it) it didn’t work. Some digging, through the thankfully included schematic, showed a resistor that wasn’t even mentioned in the mimeo’d assembly “additions” sheet. It still didn’t work. “Oops, that solder splash shouldn’t be there… probably fried the silly thing.” Lo and behold, there was the inverse “K” in the lower left corner, just as it was supposed to be!
In the months that followed, I became hooked. It wasn’t long before the built-in 1K of RAM simply wasn’t enough and I got a 16K RAM pack, At the same time, problems and drawbacks seemed to occur faster than I could get around them. “Slow” mode was excruciatingly slow, “Fast” mode clipped right along but sure messed up the display. The RAMpack would wiggle and I’d be left with a screen of garbage, or the power plug would glitch out at the slightest provocation. I’m sure that I don’t have to elaborate further; you’re probably tired of hearing these and other horror stories by now.
Yet, these very drawbacks turned out to be a strong point in the machine’s favor; they forced me to become intimately familiar with the hardware of my machine as well as with its software aspects. Unfortunately, when I first started there was little “outside” help. SYNC magazine was almost impossible to find. Syntax helped, but it was only one source. So most of what I learned was by direct experience and LOTS of experimentation, After I’d had the machine for about a year, support was growing; but by this time I found that I had learned more on my own than I was picking up from the magazines.
Throughout all this, the traditional computer community disdainfully ignored the machine, It was simply not, in their eyes, a “real” computer, and it almost seemed that the computer shops and magazines went out of their way to put it down (no profit margin, they say). At best, you’d be viewed as an eccentric if you admitted using a Sinclair, and more often than not, you’d get thinly veiled taunts about crashes, overheating and its “ridiculous” way of handling the screen. There was no help there, either.
Then the good news arrived that Timex would be marketing the machine in North America, and the aftermarket exploded in a proliferation of add-ons, programs and other support. The golden days had arrived; the ugly duckling had made good. Unfortunately, the best laid plans can (and do) go awry. Timex’s biggest mistake, in my view, was entering the market with a virtually unchanged machine, keeping the membrane keyboard and all the other faults of the ZX81. Meanwhile, they worked on the TS1500, a significant improvement with moving, full-size (Spectrum) keys, built-in 16K RAM, and internal decoding for additional memory, but it was too little and too late! By the time they released the 1500, they had flooded the market with 1000’s and acquired a bad name, because they had been selling an experimenter’s machine to a dime-store market,
All was still not lost. The damage to the Timex reputation could have been recouped with the TS2068, If only it didn’t have those bugs in the EXROM, which prohibited further expansion until corrected. And correction would have simply been too expensive. Speculation? Perhaps so, but Commodore is still doing fine with its C64, which is in many ways an inferior machine to the TS2068. Sure, the home computer market is “volatile,” but that alone doesn’t make it non-viable.
Please, excuse my digressing. Even before Timex bowed out, I saw a market for a publication for others like myself who needed support for the machine that they simply couldn’t get from the available magazines; something a little “meatier,” more oriented toward technical applications, and at the same time more down-to-earth about its drawbacks as well as its potentials. Enter, SyncWare News. I had been supplying battery back-up supplies for the ZX81, and had a list of about 200 names of customers and inquiries, and acquired a similar list from another starving supplier. So, I put together some of my own discoveries and programs, and sent out a promotional issue to these lists,
Shortly after the promotional issue went out, I received a letter from a Thomas Bent in Maryland, who asked if I’d be interested in some math routines. “Sure,” I said, “send me what you’ve got.” Well, that left it wide open. A few weeks later, Tom sent a very comprehensive well written article on solving simultaneous equations, complete with annotated listing; the works! Not only that, he had plenty more up his sleeve, I decided this fellow was definitely someone to include in “my” endeavor, and made him “Associate Editor.” Meanwhile, I kept thinking of other things to write up, Tom’s articles kept getting longer, and other authors were starting to take an interest in submitting their input. By the fourth issue, the amount of material was well over twice the originally intended maximum, and even with most of the stuff at 12 CPI and compressed line feed, issue 1:4 filled a cram-packed 48 pages. Meanwhile, subscriptions had grown, mostly by word of mouth, but weren’t enough to keep us going. Something had to give.
On a long shot, I approached another fellow who seemed to share the same philosophy of support and open communication, yet who seemed to have a knack for promotion and organization that we technical scatter-brains lacked, That fellow, of course, is Thomas B. Woods, from the same neck of the forest as my beloved computer was originally distributed. He agreed to take over as publisher, and Tom Bent accepted the job of Editor-in-Chief, leaving me free to recuperate from a year to doing most of it myself and relocate to a saner environment. Meanwhile, several outstanding authors agreed to help out and supply their own expertise and support to our project.
The result is SyncWare News, Volume 2, but with the new life brought into the publication by all involved, we soon ran out of the few issues I had left of Volume 1, Rather than simply reprint the somewhat crude dot-matrix originals, we decided to re-edit, reformat, and re-organize the material into a single full size daisy-wheeled journal, You are looking at the result of this project. The material is as current as ever; “The Custom TS” will (I hope) help out as long as there are ZX81/TS1000’s to be upgraded, LPRINT HINTS should aid in getting you and your dot-matrix printer on friendly terms, and “Cassette Connection” and the video information will hopefully make for peaceful relations with your most important I/O devices. Tom’s chapter on mathematics is easily the most timeless of all; no matter what machine you have, this material gives more real, usable math information than stacks of conventional textbooks. It is our sincere hope that SWN Voll is one publication you will refer to again and again as you make your way from “computer illiterate” to “certified hacker.”
Much more is in store for Volume 2, as mentioned, other authors are sending significant contributions, and SWN is no longer just a two-man show. We’ve expanded to the new machines (TS2068, Spectrum, QL [when it arrives], possibly Memotech MTX512 if the interest is there). We intend to continue the “Spirit of the ZX” by providing hardware projects, machine~code programming, alternate languages, and technically oriented applications. Emphasis will remain on material of a more advanced nature, but we won’t leave the beginner behind. In my first editorial I wrote the following:
“New users will also benefit from SWN, even though we will assume that you have a working knowledge of the machine’s basic operation. Even concepts that are perhaps over your head at first will become clearer as you gain proficiency, and your collection of SWN will be a valuable resource as you progress beyond beginnerlevel books and other publications.”
“Don’t forget!! Even the most incredible program was written by someone who was once a beginner, mystified and overwhelmed by the apparent endlessness of it all. Our writers will do their best to make your education as painless as possible, by discussing the ‘why’ as well as the ‘how.'”
Most probably, there is no end to it all. Once you’re comfortable with the present state of the art, it will not be too difficult to keep up with new developments. I sincerely hope that SWN 1 will continue to help you catch up, while SWN 2 (and 3, 4, etc.) will help keep you abreast of changes. So on that note, I’ll end off and wish you all continued “Happy and fulfilling Sinclair Computing!”