A few days ago I found a box in the warehouse of my friend Carlo, containing some Sinclair items. They had some traces of humidity, fortunately on the outside only. I took them apart, cleaned, tested and then reassembled them, taking a few pictures as usual.

Sinclair ZX Interface 1

The Interface 1 is composed of a single board, here’s the exploded view:

The two sides of the board:

A detail of the connector:

The ports on the back allow you to connect further expansions, create a computer network, and manage serial peripherals; the side connector is used to connect the first Microdrive.

Sinclair ZX Microdrive

Here’s the exploded view of the Microdrive:

This is the interior of the Microdrive shown from the other side, to see the two small boards better:

The microswitch checks if the cartridge is write protected: as for cassette tapes, you can remove a little plastic tab on the side to prevent writing. A detail of the head:

The cartridges are really small, I took a picture with a one pound coin (it seemed more appropriate for an English product :-) to have a dimensional reference.

They are very delicate, and furthermore they weren’t built to last decades; in many of them the sponge material behind the tape just turns into dust, making them unusable.

Together with the Microdrive you got 4 cartridges in a case, instructions, stickers and a notepad.

The plate on the bottom can be unscrewed and repositioned to couple another drive (up to eight).

And now a couple of pictures with the ZX Interface 1 and the ZX Microdrive connected to the ZX Spectrum.

Further reading

Infinite loop: the Sinclair ZX Microdrive story

Servicing the Sinclair ZX Microdrive

Replacement microdrive felt pad