Thank you Sir Clive.
I will wear my clashing outfits for the next 8 days.
Sir Clive Sinclair has died
221–230 of 455 posts
Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died
#222The is a kind of ridiculous expression “you never forget your first one”. Well mine was a ZX81. I will never forget her.
Thanks sir Clive!
Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died
#223RIP 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…
I remember the TI-99/4A BASIC manual said something like “errors will not harm your computer” and it had a similar reassuring effect on my child self.
Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died
#224I will never forget characteristic screen loading method. A 256x192 resolution, 16384 - beginning of video memory, 6144 bytes of B&W pixel data in 3 blocks and 768 bytes for 8*2 color palette. Those visuals and numbers are imprinted in my memory...
Two people who changed my life forever - Sir Clive Sinclair and my Father who'd been bold enough to invest in Timex 2048 despite price and difficulties of life behind an iron curtain.
Thank you. Both of you.
Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
I got an Atari and I'm in tech. Why should that be any different?
I assume he meant an Atari video game system rather than an Atari personal computer.
Yeah I (or rather my parents) got an Atari 800XL and it totally got me in tech. But yeah Atari was much better known for its having consoles (5200 and 7800 I think). I was never interested in those.
Especially because the Atari was very unpopular in Europe. The C64 was king. That also made it more expensive which was why I got the 800XL.
But it also meant much less software around which is how I started programming.
Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died
#226What is the modern alternative to ZX? Something which encourages tinkering and reasonably priced.
Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
Given the availability of tech like the Pi now, I wonder what it would take to build a modern, child-friendly device in the same spirit around it: something that offered a fun and instructive introduction to programming, in a box that was self-contained, safe and practically indestructible. Design a case with a sealed keyboard? Expose standard power and display connectors with robust ports? Write some child-friendly…
The Raspberry Pi 400 is basically this. https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-400/
It's a very interesting device in a very Spectrum-like form factor. It also has its limitations, much like the Spectrum itself - you're not going to code comfortably in resource-intensive languages with it.
Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died
#228Really sad. I never owned any of his products. But he was a gifted engineer and inventor and his focus on bringing tech to the masses was admirable.
The C5 still looks modern today!
Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died
#229RIP. Many a programming career, including mine, was started thanks to Sir Clive. There was a sense of wonder and awe around those machines that is no where to be found these days, even though we have so much power computational power. Something was lost.
There was a sense of wonder and awe around those machines that is no where to be found these days, even though we have so much power computational power. Indeed. After I saw this sad news and your comment, I was reminded of an earlier HN comment¹ I had written about the joy I experienced as a young child learning to program on a ZX81 and my regret that my children’s generation are not growing up with the same opportu…
What a great learning tool the early personal computers were.
It's a pipe dream, but I would have loved to have given my children a simpler device and restricted the internet until they were capable of assembling the hardware/software to get connected.
These devices exist today as VMs. But, what I think we've lost is the boredom and free time that drives that type of learning and discovery.
Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died
#230RIP 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…
I love that attitude and I totally agree with the sentiment. Just experimenting is how you learn best.
Especially in those days it was a unique sentiment. Most devices came with long instruction manuals which people would actually read, and even schematics. Until the home computer came, only educated professionals were allowed to go near computers. I think Steven Levy called them the IBM high priests in his book "Hackers". It's old but a good read.
Now nobody reads the couple of pages that come with their new phone. Good.