Welcome to the first installment of the T/S Help and Information. This column is designed to answer questions, give advice, and give general information about the Timex Sinclair family of computers. Our first letter is from John Novak of Munster, Indiana.
I have a ZX81 and I have been doing some changing of the basic unit. The problem I have is I can not get my ZX81 out of the shift mode, I added a keyboard and had no problem, but when I tried to increase the size of my heat sink, it started.
It appears, when you added your new heat sink, you shorted out one of the keyboard signal lines. Try removing the heat sink and test the computer to see if this fixes it. If the problem is gone, put the heat sink back on and insulate it from any exposed connections. If the problem is still present, try disconnecting line K0 from the computer, this is the signal line for the shift key, and work your way back to the keyboard, while checking for shorts.
Many have complained about the inverse characters in the magazine being unreadable. The main cause of this, is using Radio Shack’s thermal paper. This paper prints somewhat darker than the paper supplied with the printer when it was purchased. In the future an effort will be made to correct this.
This concludes the first installment of T/S Help, your letters are greatly appreciated, and are a necessary part of this column. You can now address all of your questions technical or non-technical, comments or suggestions to me directly,
Send to: John Marion, Greenup, Kentucky 41144