What a steal! CAD$69.99 in 1983 and comes with the arcade game, Frogger and Mixed Game Bag 1!
The problem, and the best way to disappoint a kid – to be clear, the corporation, not my mum who spent hard earned money in 1983 to get me my first computer.
To use those games, you’d need a 16K RAM Pack!
I first explored programming on this computer, with a membrane keyboard and the manual in hand, oh and a Panasonic tape recorder to save my programs to.
I’ve mentioned people in my life who inspired me in my career. I mentioned my great uncle, Reggie.
In my life story of the Timex Sinclair 1000, is another person that inspired me – Kenyon Taylor.
Kenyon and his wife were friends of my grandparents. In my fact, one of his sons and my mother dated for a period of time, I think, in the 1950s. When we would vacation in Northern Ontario, we would often travel to Mindemoya on Manitoulin Island where they lived.
Kenyon is famous as one of the co-inventors of the modern trackball, DATAR, vehicle detection systems, and Flip Disk Displays among a number of other patents. In many respects, I was standing in the presence of engineering greatness not really comprehending it as a kid.
We last saw Kenyon shortly before he passed away in June 1986. I remember Robyn and I being very quiet at his side with mum and some of his family members. He is someone I wish I could have spoken to as a teenager or an adult.
Back to our connection on the Timex Sinclair 1000 – When we visited Kenyon, he had a Timex Sinclair 1000 and he inspired me to learn more programming on it and printed out a number of programs for me to type in.
I still have those programs, printed on the Timex Sinclair 2040, using thermal paper!
It gave me some really good inspiration for algebra and trigonometry in high school.
This is one of a number of moments in my history, definitely a gift that I will always appreciate.
I didn’t always use the Timex Sinclair 1000 after about 1988. I’d occasionally pull it out and plug it in for fun, but I have fully transitioned to using my Commodore 64 for gaming, and homework. None the less, I held on to the computer and, as mentioned, I still have it, as well as two backups – one from an acquaintance from high school, and one my partner Sté is passing on to me.
Sinclair computers were such an important part of making computing available to the masses back in the 80s, especially in Europe and would go on to great acclaim with the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, of which I picked up a Spectrum+ when I lived in Norwich in 1995.
