Gulliver's Sinclair ZX81 and Spectrum page
Way back in 1980, Sir Clive Sinclair launched the first personal computer to sell for
less than £100. It made use of the Zilog Z80 processor and he called it the ZX80. This
machine was quite limited, and in 1981 was superceded by the ZX81.
The picture above is the sexy beast that is the ZX81. It came as standard with 1K RAM, 8K ROM,
connected to a standard television set and cassette recorder (for data storage at 300 baud, for
comparison your modem probably runs at 28800 or 56000 baud). Add-ons from Sinclair and many
third parties could expand your ZX81 to anything up to 128K RAM (massive in those days).
Sinclair produced a thermal ZX printer, other companies produced compatible dot matirx
printers or interfaces to connect it to the office printers of the day. There were full
size keyboards for word processing and add on boards to turn the normally monochrome
graphics into colour and to add sound to this otherwise silent computer.
Many games were produced for this computer, and some of them are still playable 18 years on.
The ZX81's life was shortened by the arrival of colour computers like the Spectrum, and by
1984 it was on the slide. Nevertheless to this very day you can buy new ZX81s from a New
York company!
Why not visit some of the links below to take a trip down memory lane. If game downloads don't
work try right clicking on the filename and saving the link to disk.
The Xtender ZX81 emulator for DOS/Windows
My collection of ZX81 games for download. Requires Xtender
The ZX81 home page
The ZX81 support page
Above is the Sinclair ZX Spectrum launched in 1982. This featured 16 or 48K RAM as standard,
16 colour graphics at fairly high resolution for the time (256x196) and sound - albeit simple
beeps. There were literally thousands of games released for the Spectrum, which had a
lifetime of about 10 years - it was launched before the Commodore 64 but was still going
when Amiga sales slumped.
Although technically superior to the ZX81 it was in some ways less exciting, perhaps because
programmers could be less imaginitive with a machine that had more features. Follow the links below
for lots of Spectrum fun. If game downloads don't
work try right clicking on the filename and saving the link to disk.
Gerton Lunter's Z80 Spectrum emulator for Dos/Windows
My collection of Spectrum games. Requires Z80 or similar
Planet Sinclair
The games on my site in no way represent the vast amount of ZX81 and Spectrum software out
there. The do however represent my pick of the crop. If you want to find more follow the
links above, which are bound to lead you to sites with yet more Sinclair software. If you
are unfamiliar with the software my personal favourite for the ZX81 is 3D Monster Maze (a
prototype Doom in many ways) and for the Spectrum Manic Miner.
click here to download some games I wrote for the ZX81 and Spectrum
PETER GREEN
Send comments and mail to Angus Gulliver
a_gulliver@juno.com
Last updated by me on 25/2/99