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Sir Clive Sinclair has died

theguardian.com

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Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#321

Post by helsinkiandrew »

hellbannedguy wrote: post #320
mkl wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sir Sinclair FYI since I've seen this mistake a few times in this discussion: Sir Clive or Sir Clive Sinclair. "Sir" and "Dame" are attached to the given name, never the surname. I don't know why it's different from other titles, and Wikipedia doesn't seem to explain, just states the rule: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir

What I didn't know is if you are knighted, you have to give up your birth citizenship.

Foreigners get honorary knighthoods: Bill Gates, Steven Spielberg, Dwight Eisenhower etc. Apparently if you take up British Citizenship it automatically converts.

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#322

Post by helsinkiandrew »

ghoul2 wrote: post #101

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…

> "You cannot harm the computer in this way."

But your soul dies slowly as you have to reload your program from tape cassette. I remember learning machine code on my Spectrum and having to reload the assembler several times an hour.

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#323

Post by FearNotDaniel »

firecall wrote: post #282
ghoul2 wrote: post #101

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…

Who remembers waking into a store on the high street in Britain and seeing rows of different computer systems! Sinclair Spectrums, BBC Model B and so on! It was glorious! It was so exciting as a kid! Going to each of them and writing 3 lines of basic to print my name infinitely! A truely golden age of discovery!

Remember this well. Though my three line programs were a little more mischievous. When Boots the Chemist weirdly started selling computers I thought it was fun to go in on a Saturday afternoon and type:

   10 PRINT "Boots is rubbish, shop at Dixons.";
   20 GOTO 10
I thought I was a genius. Probably should have got a slimy career in adtech after that, but thankfully I didn't.

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#324

Post by krueger71 »

Sad to hear this. I got a ZX in the mid-eighties. It was the 16k-model but my father upgraded it to 48k, I think it even involved some soldering.

One of my best friends also had one and we tinkered a lot, all by ourselves. To get stuff to load from copied cassettes on whatever tape deck or boom-box you had available was sometimes a very frustrating experience. We cleaned the tape heads with q-tips and alcohol, set the five-band eq to some previous good setting (marked with a pencil), then loaded, adjusted and retried. Typing in long listings from computer magazines, often failing and having to double check and re-type parts was quite common too.

We also learned the value of RTFM. The first game my friend had on a cassette had a fold in leaflet. We spent one evening not being able to load it using the instructions. The next evening a brilliant move was made, remove the leaflet from the cassette and read the remaining part on the hidden side :) Success!

These experiences definitely help remove any fear of tinkering with respect to computers and other digital equipment that I later on have noticed in others.

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#325

Post by eru »

hellbannedguy wrote: post #320
mkl wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sir Sinclair FYI since I've seen this mistake a few times in this discussion: Sir Clive or Sir Clive Sinclair. "Sir" and "Dame" are attached to the given name, never the surname. I don't know why it's different from other titles, and Wikipedia doesn't seem to explain, just states the rule: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir

What I didn't know is if you are knighted, you have to give up your birth citizenship.

Well, a knight is a servant to the monarch, thus subject of her.

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#326

Post by toyg »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #225
tcbawo wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In Italy, Atari "meant" the 2600. Later there was the brief rivalry of ST with Amiga, but only musicians ever bought the ST.

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#329

Post by mikro2nd »

RantyDave wrote: post #193
afavour wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The QL failed because (amongst other things) they had outsourced the basic interpreter to another company for the ZX series and decided to bring it in house for the QL :(

No: The BASIC on the QL was one of the best BASICs ever. What killed the QL was imho those fucking awful microdrive cartridges. Unreliable, slow and quick to fail.

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#330

Post by otikik »

My first computer was also a Spectrum (Spectrum+ 48k). Incredible machine, it taught me lots of things, including ... patience!

What a journey has been since then.

Thank you, Sir.

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