Jeff’s first computer was a Sinclair ZX-81 that was purchased while he was in the US Air Force stationed in the UK. At that time, he was a technician working on advanced microwave satellite communications equipment and had access to a Hewlett-Packard minicomputer with a FORTRAN compiler.
This, along with his programming experience in college, led him to purchase the ZX-81 when he saw it advertised in a British electronics magazine. Over the five or so years that he used that computer, I learned to program in BASIC and hand-assembled machine code and to use the features and limitations of the “little black door-stop” to the fullest.
While stationed at Offutt AFB, a co-worker that was moving up to a CP/M based computer from his TS-2068. When he saw the 2068, he knew he wanted it. He had been impressed by the functionality that Clive Sinclair had managed to squeeze into the ZX-81 and from examining the documentation of the TS-2068, he saw that this was a machine with much promise. He bought the machine and started programming right away and found, as expected, that there was much to like about the 2068.