I spent the evening playing with an online emulator for the Timex/Sinclair 1000. Here is a link to the emulator if you want to try it. While not a perfect simulation of the TS1000 experience, it was a bit of a trip down memory lane to a system that will, despite all of its copious limitations, always have a tiny wedge-shaped place in my heart.
You see, the Timex Sinclair 1000 (a rebadged Sinclair ZX81 with a whole 2K instead of the ZX81's measly 1K of memory) was my very first personal computer. I'd been turned on to personal computer's a few years earlier, but most systems were so far outside the bounds of my piggy bank, that I couldn't imagine actually owning one. But the TS1000, came out costing less than $100, and by the time I bought mine, it was IIRC less than $50.
I took it home and hooked it to my family's 13" television set and spent untold hours plugging away, first at the programming excersizes in the tiny computer's owner's manual (The one exceptionally good thing about this machine was its well written user manual), and then writing my own simple games (with only 2K for screen buffer and program storage, they had to be simple).
My family did a lot of traveling when I was a boy, and my father soldered up a battery pack so I could play with my computer when we were away from 110 volt power, our TV set was an AC/DC model, and the cassette recorder ran on batteries anyway, so I was able to hack away anywhere we went.
Now Dowe, don't go gettin' all mushy over the TS1000. I vividly remember them and yes, they did offer a great deal of fun for the costs (comparatively speaking, of course). But I have to admit, I do NOT miss the days of writing 500 lines of code to save onto a cassette so I could play word games such as "20 question"... 80: if :=yes then gosub 200! Nope, I don't really miss it all that much. LOL!
ReplyDeleteSeriously tho, I sincerely believe that those things led to a whole generation of programmers because it was an affordable alternative to the "real" computers that exposed a lot of us to the programming world.
It really makes you wonder what the next generation will be looking back on fondly.
Sappy facebook games and pr0nz on teh internetz? I don't know, I know some very intelligent mature teens, and I know that the next generation will turn out alright, but there aren't any easy ramps to learning electronics and programming as far as I can tell. Maybe JavaScript and Flash, but I'm afraid there's too much of a consumer rather than producer aspect to modern computers and electronics. The tools are there, if you look, but the old machines pretty much required at least some programming proficiency.
ReplyDeleteI'm probably just being and old fart clamoring for the good old days when we booted our computers up into BASIC up hill both ways in the snow.