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My first computer was Spectrum. With broken cassette recorder. There was no other way to play games but writing them down from a recipe book. And picking up programming along the way. Discovering the new world, the world of the electron and the switch and then the beauty of the baud.
Thank you Sir!
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And it was an incredibly slick looking machine for the time!
After the first couple of biscuit-tin amplifiers and some bare board products like the Mk14, design became a Sinclair USP. He was a kind of proto-Jobs. While most of the competition made boring-looking devices, Sinclair hired some of the top people for the time and made products that stood out because they looked exciting. The ZX series are the best known, but there were precursors like the Black Watch and the Sovere…
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I can't tell - are you praising Sinclair, or shredding him? (I'm on the wrong side of the pond to have any real knowledge of him.)
Shredding him. His business acumen was nil and his cost cutting nailed shut the coffin of every venture he started. I don’t get the hero worship.
There's definitely a time for robust debate about his legacy and potential flaws, but that time and place should not be this thread.
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Shredding him. His business acumen was nil and his cost cutting nailed shut the coffin of every venture he started. I don’t get the hero worship.
Dude, he's just died. There's definitely a time for robust debate about his legacy and potential flaws, but that time and place should not be this thread.
He made a very valuable contribution to the industry however.
People have rose tinted glasses about it but the reality was products not turning up, not shipping, not working and a sour taste for many against technology.
He even bought faulty RAM in which was discarded for the Spectrums and sold the ones that booted.
The only reason it worked out for a lot of people is we have pretty strong consumer protection laws here!
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. T…
Absolutely feel the same. What a legend.
http://www.primrosebank.net/computers/zxspectrum/docs/Comple...
And 2k of Ram (we got the 16kb expansion). And some games on tape that were oddly good.
While i graduated to the schools apple computers a year after getting the machine, I’m still fond of it and because it’s really small, I still have it…( now where is the wall adapter). Quite a great machine from an era where the machines where more easy to understand.
I sold my Sinclair Scientific calculator, from the mid-seventies, just a month ago. Got a tenner for it even though it wasn't working. I miss those times, there was something so much more immediate, more real about computing in the 70s and 80s. It was somehow lighter and less intimidating. It's only just coming back with Arduino style kit. RIP
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. T…
Santa brought my house a Spectrum 48k Lo Profile when I was a kid with a cool KnightRider style keyboard.
Over the years I haven’t seen it talked about much if at all, so I always assumed it was a fairly niche model. After hearing about Sir Clive, I looked it up to find out how many sold and was surprised to learn that it never actually existed as a standalone device.
My dad must have bought the add-on kit, and an 81, and quietly upgraded it and just never told us kids. I’m gonna call him when I’m done typing this.
All I ever wanted to do on it was transcribe the programs from my magazines and try to learn how to make something of my own someday. I’m not sure what I’d be doing now if he had just brought home an Atari, but I almost certainly wouldn’t be in tech.
Cheers, Clive. I hope I see you down the road when the last of my cyan and red bars have run out.
For anyone interested: