 Sir Clive 's marketing achievement was to downgrade the " concept " of a computer to the point where he could claim to provide one for less than the magical £ 100 mark . To this end , efficient keyboards and monitors , useful amounts of memory , efficient filing and storage systems and the like were stripped away , to leave an affordable facsimile of a " computer " . The market image was more important than what the computer could do , but the burgeoning industry in computer games provided an application which adolescents – young and old – eagerly seized on as the raison d 'être for their new gadget . In the main , it was ignorance of genuine computer technology that fired the success of the ZX range , despite the availability of accessories that , albeit inefficiently , turned the Z80 processor chip at the heart of these up @-@ market toys into the core of a useful machine . 
