| Timex Sinclair 1000 Personal Computer | |
| Written by AnubisTTP on 2025-05-01 |
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The Timex Sinclair 1000 is a very small and inexpensive home computer that was released in 1982 in the United States by the Timex corporation. Originally sold in the United Kingdom as the Sinclair ZX81 by Sinclair Research, the Timex Sinclair is best known for its extremely affordable price. When it was released in 1982, a new Timex Sinclair could be bought for as little as $99 dollars, an insanely low price for a home computer at the time. That low price came at a cost however; the Timex Sinclair is graced with a horrific membrane keyboard that is almost surely the worst to ever to appear on a home computer. The Timex Sinclair's low price forces it to be spartan in other ways as well; the only external ports provided are RF video out, audio ports for an external tape drive, and a card edge expansion bus connector. Like many computers of the time the Timex Sinclair was designed to use a standard television set as a computer monitor; the Sinclair's graphics capabilities were limited to 32 column by 24 row text output, though basic graphics could also be generated with custom characters in the character set. The example shown here includes an optional 16k ram expansion as well as a Sinclair 2040 thermal printer, which are daisy-chained to the expansion card connector.
Despite the Timex Sinclair's manifold faults, it has an unusually large and rich software library. Though the Timex Sinclair was not a particularly popular product in the US, the original Sinclair ZX81 sold quite well in the United Kingdom, and an army of British programmers pushed the machine to its absolute limits. Ingenious hardware manufacturers even figured out ways to address the machine's keyboard situation, and the ambitious ZX81 owner could re-home their computer into a new case with a full travel keyboard that greatly enhanced usability.
Timex Sinclair 1000, shown with optional Sinclair 2040 printer and RAM expansion.
The Timex Sinclair 1000 is one of the smallest personal computers ever made.
Timex Sinclair 1000, IO ports.
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