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Sir Clive Sinclair has died

theguardian.com

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Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#361

Post by GekkePrutser »

kindall wrote: post #311
GekkePrutser wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a way you could burn out a chip in the C64 with a poke command IIRC. And you could break the tape advance relay in the MSX by switching it on and off rapidly. Edit: Oops it wasn't the 64 but the PET: https://dfarq.homeip.net/the-killer-poke-for-the-commodore-p... Also, everyone here will know the phenomenon of bricking. You can damage hardware with software. Luckily it's very rare.

the tape relay was one of the TRS-80s IIRC. You could toggle it back and forth fast enough to overheat it and get it stuck.

Oh the MSX had it too for sure.. The TRS-80 was almost not sold here in Europe. We had some Radio Shack shops (called Tandy) here but the TRS-80 wasn't a big thing. We only got the LCD model.

But it was exactly the same thing yeah.. Jiggling the relay super fast would fuse it. One of my friends had this happen to his MSX 1, I think there was some early 'malware' in a copied game or something. But at least a relay replacement is not difficult or expensive.

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#362

Post by goto11 »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #57

RIP. With all due respect, Meta comment here: I imagine computing has become sufficiently ubiquitous such that in ~50 yrs time the HN bar will always be black because we will have > 365 important folks pass away each year. But will there be a HN then?

Sinclair was probably as important in Europe as Apple II was in the US.

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#363

Post by GekkePrutser »

Cosi1125 wrote: post #338
GekkePrutser wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> the Atari was very unpopular in Europe It depends on your definition of "Europe" ;-) The 8/16-bit Atari was (and still is, in some circles) extremely popular in Germany, Poland, and former Czechoslovakia.

Ok I'm from the Netherlands. The C64 was the computer and Atari was a very distant number 2 (or even 3, after the MSX). At least in my circles :) It was much more difficult to get an idea of the whole community back then.

But the C64 was 600 guilders at the time and the Atari was 'dumped' on the market at one point for 200 so it was an easy choice :)

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#364

Post by aix1 »

varjag wrote: post #102
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!…

At some point in the mid to late 1980s, there was a craze in Minsk of seemingly everyone home-building ZX Spectrum clones. Probably the Ленинград design, though I'm not entirely sure. As I recall, all the components were off-the-shelf Soviet parts (K155 TTL series), so no ULA or anything fancy like that.

https://spectrumforeveryone.com/technical/zx-spectrum-ula-ty...

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#365

Post by blippage »

I was thinking this morning about how the Raspberry Pi never really quite got it right in bringing the legacy of the early 80's computers into the 21st century.

The Pi Foundation bring out new models, but I think this just complicates things. They are evolving more towards PCs. I think this is unfortunate. The question they should be asking is: what if we crossed a RP2040 with a Pi Zero? Perhaps with a very simple "DOS".

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#366

Post by Wildgoose »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #336
Chris_Newton wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I had to give a talk on coding a few years back. I brought in my Acorn Atom to show people what I started on. 12Kb of memory, no hard drive, no sound card, no network, monochrome display. The BASIC language it knew had maybe 10 keywords, and the Assember had another couple dozen commands. Everything in the computer was simple, easily understood, and robust (turning the computer off wiped everything except the ROM - e…

Agreed. I taught myself to program on my Acorn Atom, I still remember the "Aha!" moment when I finally understood what I needed to make a simple "Space Invaders" program on my (minimal) 2K Acorn Atom, (later sold by "Bug Byte" software).

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#367

Post by Angostura »

mikro2nd wrote: post #329
RantyDave wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I mean, they were speedy compared to tapes.

I remember at university writing a couple of little programmes that allowed the swanky BBC Model B (with no floppy drive) to use the Spectrum as a file server, over the serial interface.

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#368

Post by Angostura »

hughrr wrote: post #190
lordgroff wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, the 48K is in history books, and is fondly remembered by many of us tech geeks who cut their teeth on that machine. It doesn't matter everything else didn't work out, I'd be pretty damn happy with that legacy.

Yes and no. The 48k was a bit of a disaster to start with. Lots of failures, bugs galore, a full recall due to power supply shock hazard. Not to mention the horrible keyboard. When you look at the microscopic view of owning one computer from him that worked it does somewhat rose tint the overall view of things which was not good.

> Not to mention the horrible keyboard.

There were lots of home computers available with proper keyboards. As a kid I couldn't afford any of them.

That horrible keyboard did me just fine.

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#369

Post by ArcticCelt »

dragonsky67 wrote: post #215
Chris_Newton wrote: post #163

Earlier 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…

TLDR - Kids who want to learn to program already have access to the tools to do this... It's just that most kids don't want to learn to program. Wasn't this what the One Laptop Per Child (OTLP) project was trying to achieve? The problem is that when the ZX, C64 etc were around there was no alternative. If you wanted to play games, you could either shell out for more hardware and purchase the games on disk or cartridg…

>The problem is that when the ZX, C64 etc were around there was no alternative. If you wanted to play games, you could either shell out for more hardware and purchase the games on disk or cartridge, or you could type them in from a magazine (several times) and hopefully save them to a cassette.

I agree. When there is no shortcut you find much more motivation to go the hard way. I was in that exact position when I was 10, and I kept messing up copying the basic lines from books so I got a book for kids that teached me basic, this way I was making my own code and could debug it. I made simple games completely from scratch that way it was how I got into programing.

I can understand that now with so many shortcuts available for kids the same motivation is not there anymore. It's like once you get access to cheat codes in a game that makes you invincible and gives you infinite money, the challenge is not there and you lose interest.

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#370

Post by Angostura »

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #248
epx wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Started with a ZX-81 clone. The factor I liked most was the attention with the manuals, they really cared to teach the basics of programming, even low-level things, to the layman.

Self soldered my first computer ever from a ZX81 kit. They were available as bargain sellout at the time(1985). When other people already used Commodore64 or the first Amigas or Atari STs. But I've been sceptic and low on funds :-) Wasn't that difficult because there weren't much parts. And no SMD. Scale was almost like electronic breadbording. And it worked for the first time! Regarding the Handbook, compare this im…

That image of the manual gave me the same visceral jolt of excitement that it did when I first saw it in 81
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