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Sir Clive Sinclair has died

theguardian.com

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Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#421

Post by richardjdare »

Chris_Newton wrote: post #163
jacquesm wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and today such a perspective is almost impossible to achieve outside the embedded space. Even a Raspberry-Pi is many orders of magnitude more complex than say a Dragon 32 (Color Computer clone, by the way) or a BBC Micro.

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…

I'd like to see such a device, but unlike the Pi, or specially contrived educational environments, the 8-bit home computers were the centre of a growing market for games and software, seemingly only a few steps away from your first attempts at working through the manual that came with your computer. This was a huge motivation for many of us who started programming in the home computer days.

I remember games that had a note on the back of the box asking for programmers to send their work to the publisher's address for consideration. Magazines advertised commercial software obviously sold by one guy out of his house, and featured interviews with programmers who were only a few years older than me. If you owned a home computer and could program it, you imagined you could access this growing and exciting world, and maybe make some money.

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#422

Post by samhw »

Razengan wrote: post #292
Razengan wrote: post #71

… I dreaded this day. He was the first “computer celebrity” I knew of and looked up to. Always expected him to make some kind of comeback in a world that sorely needs something like what the ZX Spectrum (& C64) was in its time.

Oh hello angry person who went into my history and downvoted benign comments.

Haha, I was wondering why your comment was hidden. That kind of behaviour feels like yet another episode of 'Reddit comes to HN'.

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#423

Post by kwhitefoot »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #26
kwhitefoot wrote: post #13

I sold my Sinclair Scientific calculator, from the mid-seventies, just a month ago. Got a tenner for it even though it wasn't working. I miss those times, there was something so much more immediate, more real about computing in the 70s and 80s. It was somehow lighter and less intimidating. It's only just coming back with Arduino style kit. RIP

I had a Sinclair Scientific too - so small with hard clicky keys! Back then it was a wonder to type numbers that looked like words when you held it upside down. I expect more people here will remember the ZX80, but what about the minimal SC/MP-based MK-14 that came before... I skipped that but got a NASCOM-1 kit the following year (1978). I worked at Acorn in the early 80s and Sir Clive attended a couple of our infam…

I splashed out on a Nascom 2. I wish I had a keyboard as good as the one it came with now.

Had a bit of a fright after I finished soldering everything and switched it on. Nothing happened! So I laboriously went over all 1200 (?) solder joints again and breathed a sigh of relief when it worked.

I bought an old 5 bit code teleprinter and wrote a driver so that I could print by connecting the UART to a couple of transistors driving a mercury wetted relay to drive the printer. I think it would be a lot more complicated to do that on any modern computer.

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#424

Post by randomswede »

mkl wrote: post #270
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…

> 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

It's one of those "how important is the title" things. According to an article in the workplace magazine at a (now very) former workplace, to celebrate the honours doctorate of Princess Christina, her full title (with doctorate) would be "Princess Christina, Dr Mrs Magnusson".

The explanation given is that the princesshood attached to her, personally. I suspect it is the same with a knighthood. And the "dr" comes before the "mrs", as it is more prestigious.

But, as with many things, don't think TOO hard about it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Christina,_Mrs._Magnu...

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#426

Post by xwowsersx »

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…

Love this.

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#428

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

daverol wrote: post #315
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at Acorn in the early 80's. I once arm wrestled Chris Curry in a bar. Neither one of them was really a Steve Jobs figure. I doubt many BBC Micro owners at the time would even have heard of them, unlike Sinclair who was in the press all the time. Curry was more of a drunken playboy, and Hermann more business man than marketeer or face of the company. It was a dream job for a geek!

Was the arm wrestling in 'The Mitre' or 'The Baron of Beef'?

I don't remember the name, but it may have been somewhere across the road from Kings college.

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#429

Post by dboreham »

Wildgoose wrote: post #374
dboreham wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There wouldn't have been a BBC without Uncle Clive.

Not true. The BBC was based on Acorn's "Proton" computer which was intended as a successor to the Acorn Atom.

Sounds like you folks weren't around at the time!

I mean the whole idea of making a computer in the UK for educational purposes wouldn't have happened. We would have had the Apple II.

Acorn was founded as a result of Clive's activities. Go read the wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Computers

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#430

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

gojomo wrote: post #194
disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude, he's just died. There's definitely a time for robust debate about his legacy and potential flaws, but that time and place should not be this thread.

When should we schedule the full, honest picture, if not now, when he's on people's minds moreso than he will ever be again? I love the positive remembrances here. I also appreciate the full picture, like the joke about the "Sinclair digital penis" in another thread. Sinclair did well for himself & his family. He did a lot of good in the world, from the people he introduced to tech. Neither he nor his legacy are harm…

> When should we schedule the full, honest picture, if not now, when he's on people's minds moreso than he will ever be again?

I don't know (and I know very little about him, tbh), but I was raised to not speak ill of the dead, and it's stuck.

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