SYNTAX ZX80

One of the first publications for the ZX80 was a newsletter called SYNTAX ZX80 published by Kirtland H. Olson of the Harvard Group. When I got my ZX80 there was a flyer about the publication packaged with the computer. But unfortunately, I had barely scraped together enough money to buy the computer itself so I couldn’t afford the subscription.

Now some 36 years later, I stumbled across a nearly complete set of these on ebay. It’s an amazing publication with a wide variety of content. It has reviews, announcements, how-to articles, troubleshooting tips, software listings, hardware projects, advertisements, classifieds and reader contributed material.

I bought the lot with the intention of scanning and digitizing them all and was super fortunate to have found the original publisher, Kirt Olson. I wrote him a letter and he responded by e-mail and gave me permission to scan and upload them to the Internet Archive. He’s also been very generous with his time and has scanned a few issues that I was missing from my collection.

So far, both issues of volume 1 and eleven of twelve issues of volume 2 have been scanned and are available with the rest to soon follow. To find them go to http://archive.org and search for “syntax zx80” or click this link: https://archive.org/search.php?query=syntax%20zx80

Another item published by the Harvard Group was a ZX80 4k ROM listing with annotations from the original ROM author. I haven’t located a copy yet but I have permission to scan and load it as well. It is an 8.5 x 11 inch, plastic spiral bound book, that’s approximately 100 or so pages long. It has dark yellow covers. If you have a copy you would be willing to sell or loan, please get in touch!