I'm actually really sad about it. My first experience programming was with his machine. Rest in peace :(
Sir Clive Sinclair has died
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Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died
#42We had one of his op-amp home hifi kits from before his computing days. I'm not going to gloss things up here, it was shit. Noisy, bad circuit design, bad instructions. Delivery was often fraught: he had no supply chain and always went to market before stocks built up. Sinclair is notorious for overpromising and under delivering. The calculators were highly approximate trig functions, the Sinclair e-car was a joke. I…
genuinely appreciate your anecdote, it is interesting to know, but perhaps a bit distasteful in reply to his death.
Yes, perhaps it is. Eulogies and Obituaries are different things. I'm not here to eulogise him, for sure. He was a controversial figure in his own lifetime, a brilliant self promoter. Lord Alan Suger learned a lot of marketing tricks from him.
There's something quintessentially British about promoting tech wizards as heros for making remarkably average product, but making it mass market. Sinclair electronics and Amstrad unquestionably took computing to the masses, in all its buggy variety.
Sinclair's calculator made the V&A design gallery as an icon. It was pretty unusable, but stunningly beautiful. My dad refused to let me get one (he was a compsci professor) and I got a Texas instruments handheld instead.
Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died
#43RIP. 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.
Me for one. ZX Spectrum +2 got me into programming. ROI on that home computer must be enormous.
Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died
#44My first actually owned was a Timex 2068, although I do remember seeing those ZX 81 maker kits on electronic stores on sale.
I was quite envious from my pals that eventually got +2A and 3 models, specially with the 3 one, having floppies and CP/M version available.
Pity that QL did not work out, nor the Sam Coupé, although the later wasn't related to Sir Clive.
Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died
#45When I had no computer, I wanted one of those Sears . IIRC the video output often cut out whenever a user program was running? I'm sure I would have enjoyed having one, but was fortunate enough my parents picked up an Apple ][+ instead. Still, warm feelings towards that unit, & its series, as something that made home computing thinkable .
Drawing video took up a very large fraction of the CPU cycles on the ZX81 so there was a 'fast mode' and 'slow mode'. Fast mode cut out video output when programs were running, slow mode left it on and ran at something like 1/4 the speed.
Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died
#46My first computer was a ZX81, then an QL. I still have them at home. Maybe I'll try to power them up. I've found some listings of programs I wrote in BASIC on the ZX81. They are only marginally easier to understand than machine code, maybe not :-) but they were the first step to bring me here. Thanks Sir Sinclair.
I also own mine still, but I will never plug them again, too afraid to fry them.
Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died
#47The 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…
Your reach should exceed your grasp, or what's a heaven for?
"Reach" is what you can just touch with your fingertips outstretched; "grasp" is what you can firmly close your hand on and grip.
Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died
#48Uh oh. Soviet ZX spectrum clone was my first computer, and the first I ever wrote a program on using a built-in basic at an age of 10. This was a magnificent device that brought me a lot of joy. Rest In Peace, Sir Clive.
Now, I'll go play some Manic Miner or Nether Earth in your honor.
Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died
#49First computer I ever typed a program into was zx80 that belonged to a friend of my dad. He (a journalist) didn’t like the membrane keyboard so he attached a teletype keyboard.
Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died
#50Ah, the Timex Sinclair 1000! I would fantasize about having one while looking at magazines ads. You could buy the kit, build it and learn so much about computing, all for $99.95 US! Sure, the 1K of RAM was a bit limiting, but you could save up and buy a 16K RAM pack.
Sure, the 1K of RAM was a bit limiting...
1K of RAM seems an unimaginably miniscule memory limit today, but incredibly you could squeeze a game of chess in that limit using a bit of creativity. The YouTube channel Nostalgia Nerd compares a game of chess on the 1981 Sinclair ZX81 1KB computer vs. a modern PC.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3By_rdwxSg
When you think of the oceans of RAM available today, a 1KB limit feels like something from a completely different world.