Those were the days - had a ZX81 with 1k of RAM, and had to plug it into the TV. Spent hours typing in BASIC scripts copied from magazines, and then several more hours searching for the frikkin "Syntax Error".
It was a Happy Xmas when I got a RAM upgrade (a 16K Panda that resembled a house brick and weighed around half a ton, and plugged into the back, but you couldn"t knock the table or it would disconnect), and an full size external keyboard with rubber keys (I say external literally - had to take the gubbins out of the ZX81 box and rebuild them inside the new keyboard) - so much better than the original touch pad keys. The biggest keyboard issue was the lack of key repetition.
These were the days when copying a game meant typing in the BASIC programme by hand, then saving it to tape on an attached tape recorder.... then taking that tape and putting it in my Dad"s state of the art Amstrad stereo that had TWO cassette decks and enabled tape-to-tape recording!
Oh the heady days.
