Sinclair was selling the Sinclair VX-80/81 line of computers, sold in the US under the Timex brand name, not the Commodore computers. The Commodore VIC-20 was a completely different line that was much more useful.
Sinclair/Timex ZX-81 Sinclair was selling the Sinclair VX-80/81 line of computers, sold in the US under the Timex brand name, not the Commodore computers. The Commodore VIC-20 was a completely different line that was much more useful.
Sinclair/Timex ZX-81 Oops, ZX-80/81 line… old fart brain. Timex 1000 and Timex 2000 were the US versions. They sold for as low as $99.
I bought a set up that had the 16K memory module, under unit cooling fan (a necessity), and the dot-matrix thermal 40 column printer. I recall trying to find the sweet spot volume setting on a cassette recorder to record/playback your typed in by-hand programs, often in machine language, with fingers crossed the record volume was “just right” to save properly so you could restore it later after hours of painstaking input/programming work… only to find it was either too soft or too loud or there was too much tape hiss! AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!
The digital cassette tape transport that Commodore sold for the VIC-20/64 line made all those issue obsolete.