Sinclair ZX80 questions

[Jules Richardson]

Tim Shoppa wrote:
> Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>> Out of interest, anyone know how many ZX80s were sold as kits? This one's a 
>> factory-built one, complete with original ZX80 PSU. The heatsink for the 
>> regulator gets pretty hot, and that's even without the RAM pack plugged in...
> 
> Mine was sold as a kit, but came assembled! They had run out of kits
> and giving those who had paid for a kit the pre-assembled ones. I was
> slightly disappointed. This was at the end of the ZX80 era right before
> the ZX81.

That is a shame - I imagine to a lot of people the aim was the fun in 
assembling a kit, rather than the cost saving...

> I did a google search and looked on Wikipedia but some of the details
> there do NOT match my memory. They say there were only 50,000 ZX80's sold
> and this seems to be a ridiculously low number for a mass-market
> machine sold through many different channels.

I think you're right and that only applies to UK machines; other sites I've 
seen suggest that the total number produced and sold worldwide was over 100,000.

It's interesting how rare they seem to be considering those sales figures - I 
mean there are plenty of other machines around where sales were only a 
fraction of that and yet there's still a healthy number in private hands.

cheers

Jules

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