In the 80s I always remember my friend's dad bringing home a ZX80 or 81 and as the first task, proceeding to type at the command prompt:
POP-A-POINT PENCIL
As you might expect, it didn't work and just returned an error.
Apparently before buying it he'd watched in WH Smiths or Boots as a worker looked up prices of store items on it. He thought he could do the same.
That was my first home computer experience and I've often wondered what on earth he saw in the shop. Did they really keep the price lists on a ZX81?
Any ideas?
Cheers!
Well, not impossible.
Not sure it'd be a commercial system, doing a web search doesn't reveal anything, but someone in the shop could have tried to do something?
If the system was kept pretty simple, i.e. a database containing not much more that description and price, where you entered the description and the program found the item and displayed the price, would be feasible. Depending on memory available. Not sure there's normally be enough capacity for a large shop, like W.H.Smiths or Boots are mentioned. Not sure how fast it'd be, without some indexing or hashing for the lookup. Also, the convenience of carrying a monitor around.
Maybe more likely the demo machine had something set up to impress the punters. Maybe only had a few stock items entered?
By the way, 'POP-A-POINT' is a brand name, which includes various types of pencil (and other things), so POP-A-POINT PENCIL would be the 'description' of a stock item. So the program would need to have been active already, so maybe your father didn't see the prog being loaded/started?
Geoff
Just a thought... could had it been used as a terminal? Otherwise I guess that they would be using a memory expansion at least, I do not see how you can introduce a whole database in 1KB :)
Thanks for all the very helpful and interesting info guys.
Based on this thread http://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?p=791444 I'm now suspecting it had a 16KB expansion and was running the inventory software mentioned in that thread!
Cheers!
6128s were used in Greece to run video stores (before the 1512 and 1640 were introduced, which took the local industry by storm), but then again those had so much more memory and the advantage of a disk-based database to boot; I doubt a poor ZX81 could be used to run much more than a comics collection?
Quote from: Gryzor on 12:26, 08 August 16
6128s were used in Greece to run video stores (before the 1512 and 1640 were introduced, which took the local industry by storm), but then again those had so much more memory and the advantage of a disk-based database to boot; I doubt a poor ZX81 could be used to run much more than a comics collection?
I owned a 1512. I convinced my dad it was the best for his work, a decision I reached based solely on the marketed Tiger image.
(http://www.sorgonet.com/8086/gem/gemtiger.gif)
Never thought it was running video shops in Greece at the same time! If only he ran a video shop not a building firm...
Cheers!