ZX81 Patents

Discussions about Sinclair ZX80 and ZX81 Hardware
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RWAP
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ZX81 Patents

Post by RWAP »

I was just looking at patents for the Jupiter Ace project discussion and noticed a ZX81 Expansion System patent exists:

http://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicat ... KC=A2&ND=5

It is not registered to Sinclair Research - in fact it is registered to Gdansk University and dates from 1985 - any ideas what it might be??
poglad
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Re: ZX81 Patents

Post by poglad »

Here's the guy listed as the inventor: http://panda.bg.univ.gda.pl/~janusz/

He lists two Z80 projects in his recent hardware project list!
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PokeMon
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Re: ZX81 Patents

Post by PokeMon »

Seems to be published/registered for Poland only (local).
And it will expire latest in 6 days. "19840510" :mrgreen:
RWAP
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Re: ZX81 Patents

Post by RWAP »

I contacted Janusz and he has sent an interesting reply:
Myself I still have at least half a dozen of ZX81s equipped with Memotech expansion modules (I also have somewhere Memotech MTX C/PM computer..). Maybe it is hight time to dust them off..

As far as patent you refer to; I filed at least two or three claims. I will check and let you know the exact content and status of these claims. Just after I filed these patents I moved from Poland to.. Glasgow where I stayed for some 5 years and worked in Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at Strathclyde University.

You may not be aware of the fact that in mid 80s, in Poland ZX81s and ZX Spectrums were extensively used not as home computers but in Universities for quite "scientific" purposes. One of my first application of ZX81 was the automation of one of our UV-VIS spectrometers. We also run, at the time, a course of numerical processing with ZXBasic!.
As ZX81 was rather poorly equipped with I/O ports we decided to construct our own (hence patent claims).
I was quite unhappy with ZX81 membrane keypad and multifunction keys. So after a deeper study of hand(!) disassembled ROM (it was before Logans ZX ROM disassembly book was available in Poland) I designed a replacement keyboard.
The new keyboard had additional Shift like keys: "Function" "Graphics" and "Extended". With the use of these keys entering of ZX BASIC keywords become much simpler (eg to enter SIN one would just press FUNCTION+Q). The keybord had also a separate cursor keys- all functionality wired in 74xx TTL logic.
We also replaced casette tape recorder with paper punch/reader machine.
One of my friends designed a "high resolution graphics" module similar to Memotech HRG...

I think that I could be able to dig more about projects we did with ZX81 and Spectrum if only anyone would be interested...
I will ask him to dig around and see what they can find :)
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1024MAK
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Re: ZX81 Patents

Post by 1024MAK »

Thanks for that Rich!

Very interesting. Would very much like to hear more from Janusz :D

I hope you asked him if he could provide some pictures as well.

One of my ebay buys a few years ago, was some ZX81s that look to have come originally from a UK school or UK college or similar. So they were not just used in Polish educational establishments.

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