My first computer was a Sinclair ZX81, back in 1981.
A humble 8 bit, black and white computer, with just one kilobyte of memory.
The software for this computer was basically limited to text based applications, but with the addition of the 16k ram pack, this opened up more posibilities. Ready made software was available on cassette, and using any old cassette player, the program could be loaded into the computer. Unfortunately though, it was not as straight forward as all that. According to Sinclair, the volume setting on the cassette player had to be just right. If it was too low, the computer wouldn't pick it up, and if it was too high, the sound became distorted. It took anything upto 15 minutes to load in a 16k program; with no guarantee of success. I found that blasting it through at full volume tended to have a higher success rate.
There was one game released for the ZX81 which gave an insight of what was to come. "3D Monster Maze". Out of the countless number of times I had tried to load this game, it only worked once, and just long enough for me to see a blocky black and white T-Rex come lumbering towards me on the screen, before the computer gave up and crashed.
There was also a problem with the 16k ram pack. It was very sensitive to movement, the slightest vibration would instantly freeze the computer, or reset it. This became known as the "Ram Pack Wobble". There were plenty of suggestions of how to cure the problem through the various magazines, and the method I adopted was to connect the ram pack to the computer via a 6 inch ribbon cable. It still wasn't 100%, but it made a vast improvement.
