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Sir Clive Sinclair has died

theguardian.com

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Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#101

Post by ghoul2 »

RIP Sir.

I was gifted the 48K when I was 6 yrs old - it changed my life. I am here because Sir Sinclair built a machine whose setup instructions said:

Now that you have set up the computer, you will want to use it. The rest of this booklet tells you how to do that; but in your impatience you will probably already have started pressing the keys on the keyboard, and discovered that this removes the copyright message. This is good; _you cannot harm the computer in this way._ Be bold. Experiment. If you get stuck, remember that you can always reset the computer to the original picture with the copyright message by taking out the '9V DC IN' plug and putting it back again. This should be the last resort because you lose all the information in the computer.

"You cannot harm the computer in this way."

That single sentence started a life long journey. I doubt I would have been bold enough at that age to mess around with one of our most valuable possessions.

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#102

Post by varjag »

terramex wrote: post #52

Our first computer was БАЙТ - Belarussian clone of ZX Spectrum. It was mid to late 90s and it was already super obsolete at the time, but every time we took it out and connected to TV it filled me with a sense of wonder and unknown that started my fascination with electronics and programming. What an amazing impact Sir Clive had on so many lives. Even my nickname on this very website comes from my favourite game I p…

Very similarly mine was Santaka, another Belarusian clone of a 48K. Had that horrid Cyrillic font instead of lowercase Latin.

It was built by a former military supplier plant so its heritage stuck out in unexpected details (like 8x 2Kb ceramic package gold plated ROMs). I've upgraded it over the years with memory expansion, printer port, "real" keyboard, sound chip and disk controller. It grew into quite a hairball!

https://twitter.com/varjag/status/1146500643328331776/photo/...

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#103

Post by hughrr »

dboreham wrote: post #100
hughrr wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sort of. As a former Sinclair user his products taught me patience and tolerance. I jumped ship the moment I could afford a BBC.

There wouldn't have been a BBC without Uncle Clive.

You mean there wouldn’t have been a BBC if he had tried harder? :)

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#105

Post by chx »

Oh dear. My parents smuggled (!) a ZX Spectrum in 1985 into Hungary and they knew they will do it and while they were on their tour to Western Germany I was at a summer daytime camp at the nearby community center where we learned BASIC on them. And , of course , played games , mostly Horace And The Spiders :) I was ten.

Fast forward two decades and I was contributing to Drupal core (first core commit 17 years ago was https://i.imgur.com/ZGemjVc.png although Dries forgot to credit me, boo :) ) and another five years later I was working on a Top 100 website.

Thanks Sir Sinclair.

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#106

Post by afavour »

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #37

The Spectrum and ZX81 are (rightly) the computers for which Clive Sinclair is remembered. But it was his unsuccessful follow-up, the QL, which inspired a certain Linus Torvalds to write Linux: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_QL#Legacy

Oh wow, it turns out the QL hardware was reused in the ICL One Per Desk. We had one at home growing up (for some reason?!). Kind of funny to read that it's greatest success was in networking hundreds of bingo halls together across the UK.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Per_Desk

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#107

Post by hughrr »

5faulker wrote: post #76
xkeysc0re wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny that it was inspiring in its frustrating designs / lack of features, rather than a "positive" sort of inspiration.

Failure can be a source of inspiration, after all.

Sinclair was an expert at that. He guided many an industrial product designer to fortune by showing them exactly what not to do.

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#109

Post by foldr »

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #37

The Spectrum and ZX81 are (rightly) the computers for which Clive Sinclair is remembered. But it was his unsuccessful follow-up, the QL, which inspired a certain Linus Torvalds to write Linux: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_QL#Legacy

My Dad had a QL at home and even had a small business selling software for it back in the day. It was a bit of a daunting machine for me as a child (I got more mileage out of the BBC Micro), but I have fond memories of playing around with it, and loading games off of microdrives.

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#110

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

dboreham wrote: post #100
hughrr wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sort of. As a former Sinclair user his products taught me patience and tolerance. I jumped ship the moment I could afford a BBC.

There wouldn't have been a BBC without Uncle Clive.

Sinclair was a contender for the BBC project, but couldn't make it happen.

We might not have had ARM if Acorn hadn't won the contract.

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