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Sir Clive Sinclair has died

theguardian.com

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Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#451

Post by bennysomething »

raffraffraff wrote: post #408
bennysomething wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's somehow a relief to hear someone else had this same childhood experience!

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#452

Post by unbalancedevh »

Very late to the thread here, but I also got my start on a Timex/Sinclair 1000. I'm not sure what possessed my dad to buy one. I think I'm the only one in my family who touched it more than once. Being able to save programs on a regular cassette tape was awesome! I'll never forget typing in games from Compute! magazine, and then figuring out how to make them better. It's amazing what you could do in 2k of ram!

I was very disappointed when I came back from college once and decided to fire it up for old times sake, only for it to be dead for some reason. I still wonder how it went bad, sitting on my desk.

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#453

Post by hermitcrab »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #379
antod wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> thought they had more to do with circles than triangles, But that is exactly right!

sin and cos come from trigonometry (from Greek trigōnon, "triangle" and metron, "measure"). But they can be used for lots of other things, including calculating how to rotate an object or draw a circle.

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#454

Post by renaudg »

crucialfelix wrote: post #404
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.

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

It's a bit strange to compare the C64 with the Atari ST : the latter was a 16-bit computer, one generation after the C64. It had much better graphics. But it didn't match the Amiga :)

The mainstream 8-bit machine with the best graphics was probably the Amstrad CPC. Here's a comparison with the Spectrum for example : https://imgur.com/a/D7Ocd

When it comes to arcade-style gameplay though, the C64 was often ahead because of its hardware accelerated sprites (and a legendary sound chip that was ahead of its time)

Re: Sir Clive Sinclair has died

#455

Post by crucialfelix »

renaudg wrote: post #454
crucialfelix wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's a bit strange to compare the C64 with the Atari ST : the latter was a 16-bit computer, one generation after the C64. It had much better graphics. But it didn't match the Amiga :) The mainstream 8-bit machine with the best graphics was probably the Amstrad CPC. Here's a comparison with the Spectrum for example : https://imgur.com/a/D7Ocd When it comes to arcade-style gameplay though, the C64 was often ahead becau…

You are right, it was actually the Amiga I was thinking of. I was an Atari kid (music).
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