BBC News: ZX81: Small black box of computing desire
The Sinclair ZX81 was small, black with only 1K of memory, but 30 years ago it helped to spark a generation of programming wizards.
Packing a heady 1KB of RAM, you would have needed many, many thousands of them to run Word or iTunes, but the ZX81 changed everything.
[ more... ]28/04/2011
BBC News: Recreating the era of 8-bit computers
Chances are that you are reading this article on a computer screen. Most would agree that a modern 32 or 64 bit machine is a pretty complicated piece of equipment.
While it is easy to buy the parts of a modern PC - motherboard, graphics card and processor - the sheer complexity would defeat any attempt to build one starting with electronic components such as resistors, capacitors and chips.
[ more... ]28/04/2011