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Sir Clive Sinclair has died

theguardian.com

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Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#401

Post by ghoul2 »

antod wrote: post #303
becurious wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were many 3rd party add-on keyboards for the 16K/48K Spectrum. I got the Saga 1 Emperor keyboard the Christmas after I got my 48K. You opened the case of the Spectrum, removed the ribbon connectors from the board and then attached the new keyboard and screwed the bottom plus board to it. There was some magical feeling back then that I think is hard to capture now. The manuals were really good for teaching you -…

> I learned sine and cosine from the diagrams in the manual years before we covered them in maths. You too? I didn't fully understand them, and thought they had more to do with circles than triangles, but yeah that circle drawing code in the Spectrum manual was my first exposure to sin and cos.

Oh wow. Memories.

Sin/Cos were just the gateway drug. To do interesting stuff on the computer, I ended up learning matrix algebra (for rotating things on screen) and even simple calculus (filling out areas) years before they were mentioned at school. When school math caught up, my math grades shot thru the roof - while remaining a below-avg student on everything except math and science.

I used to literally bring the spectrum programming manual with me to all our vacations - using it to hand "assemble" assembly programs into machine code (I had never heard of an assembler - and I won't have had any way to get my hands on one even if I had known about them) so that I could type them in when we got back home.

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#402

Post by ghoul2 »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #322
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.

heh. I fortunately did not know things like assemblers existed. I hand-assembled my assembly to machine code using the mnemonic table provided at the end of the programming manual. I had an entire diary full of columns of hand-encoded hex numbers (and a decimal column - you needed the numbers in decimal to "poke" them into RAM).

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#403

Post by Zuider »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #277
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 :(

I attribute the decline of the UK’s domestic computer industry (including Acorn) to the scene as-a-whole being either uninterested or unwilling to embrace PC-compatibility. Had they done that, I think they could have secured better distribution deals, especially in education, but eve more-so overseas. What if Sinclair, Amstrad, and Acorn were able to establish themselves as a third-way (like Amiga and Be almost did)…

Amstrad did bring out an IBM-copatible Amstrad PC which had moderate success.

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#404

Post by crucialfelix »

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.

Commodore 64 was great for graphics. Atari 1040ST was great for music.

All the best music software was on Atari I think due to the excellent timing and MIDI support: Cubase, Emagic Notator/Logic (now only by Apple)

Though I guess both of those started on C64 but then migrated to Atari

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#405

Post by alexfoo »

123pie123 wrote: post #359
FearNotDaniel wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

the WHSmiths shops had some of their computers sound amplified through the cassette players a mischeivious program of 10 pause (big number) 20 beep 30 goto 20 it would sit there for ages until a key was pressed, then beep very loud when a person - who's very first touch of a computers keyboard, would seemly set an alarm off. the faces of the customers thinking they've broke the computer is still etched in my mind

    *FX 200,3
    
    10 *MOTOR 1
    20 *MOTOR 0
    30 GOTO 10
And then leave the shop quickly as the BBC Micro's internal relay quickly destroys itself.

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#406

Post by Zuider »

mikro2nd wrote: post #391
Angostura wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Someone did eventually bring out a floppy-drive peripheral for the QL, but it was basically too late to save the platform. Also, iirc, you needed to be drop-dead rich to afford one.

There were long delays in delivery if you ordered a Sinclair QL, to the point that people speculated that 'QL' stood for a long 'Q' and an 'L' of a wait!

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#407

Post by xiphmont »

mikro2nd wrote: post #391
Angostura wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Someone did eventually bring out a floppy-drive peripheral for the QL, but it was basically too late to save the platform. Also, iirc, you needed to be drop-dead rich to afford one.

Many people did, and the drives were not expensive at all really, not if you ever popped over to a swapfest (I had one, and money was very tight in our family at the time, but Dad was adamant that we have a computer to play with--- forward thinking, plus he wanted to play with it too).

But you're right-- it was too late to save the QL by then.

Of course, that wasn't the only problem with the machine, not by a longshot. I did my very first commercial hardware hacking in high school building/selling plug-in 'spiderboards' to protect the oh-so-fragile ZX8301 chips, and got my first oscilloscope in college to chase down all the ground bounce that was still occasionally killing the NMOS ROMs...

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#408

Post by raffraffraff »

bennysomething wrote: post #371
raffraffraff wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same! I had the Spectrum +2A model, which had a bunch of issues running older software. The OCP Art Package didn't work at all, so I ended up writing a really awful drawing program in BASIC. Figured out how to poll the mouse, detect button presses etc. I drew a toolbar on the left of the screen depicting squares, circles etc. If the mouse button was pressed within one of those, the drawing mode was changed. That woul…

Genuine question: I had a 2a+ too, it crashed all the time. Really frustrating. I believe it was because amstrad bought spectrum and started building them cheaper. Did your crash all the time?

Yeah. My friend had a +2 and it was solid. Didn't crash that much, worked with the older 48k software. The +2A was junk but it definitely taught me to be patient and persistent with shitty tech. Seems like my whole career has been based on that.

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#409

Post by alexfoo »

tpmx wrote: post #33

The excellent Micro Men docudrama ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Men ) has somehow been on Youtube since 2013: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXBxV6-zamM (1h24m) Micro Men, working title Syntax Era, is a 2009 one-off BBC drama television programme set in the late 1970s and the early-mid 1980s, about the rise of the British home computer market. It focuses on the rivalry between Sir Clive Sinclair (played by A…

I had the best of both worlds in my upbringing.

My father knew Clive Sinclair thanks to the Cambridge tech/hifi scene at the time, and we also used to live near him in Madingley. Somewhere in my dad's shed there's a ZX81 with a single digit serial number (amongst a lot of other similar machines: Jupiter Ace, ZX80, various Spectrums with weird and wacky keyboards, Dragon 32, Commodore 16 Plus/4, etc).

A bit later we also lived next door to Franni and Geoff Vincent who were part of the Acorn team that designed and built the BBC Micro. They used to let me come round (aged 8 or so) and use their Model B whenever I wanted.

Sir Clive Sinclair had a HUGE influence on my life. RIP.

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#410

Post by Shinchy »

Like many here I started programming on the origin ZX Spectrum, typing out code and hitting record on a cassette tape machine. The pure joy of buying a magazine and copying the code inside to create your own game. Tinkering with it to make it your own and passing on your recorded creation on to friends at school.
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