[HN Gopher] Sir Clive Sinclair has died
___________________________________________________________________
Sir Clive Sinclair has died
Author : haasted
Score : 939 points
Date : 2021-09-16 17:26 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| hanoz wrote:
| Cheers Clive. Sorry to see you go. Your inventions were an
| incredible influence in my formative years and I wouldn't be here
| without you.
|
| 10 PRINT "RIP Clive Sinclair"
|
| 20 GOTO 10
| josefrichter wrote:
| In Czechoslovakia we had licensed clones of ZX Spectrum called
| Didaktik Gama. It didn't look nearly as cool, but it was
| affordable and thus the very first personal computer for a whole
| generation. Thank you Sir Sinclair!
| diskzero wrote:
| Ah, 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.
| open-source-ux wrote:
| _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.
| faichai wrote:
| My dad had a ZX Spectrum. The music to Spy Hunter is seared into
| my brain. Such early exposure to tech (and to some extent dealing
| with its crappiness) started me on the path to becoming the
| software engineer I am today. RIP Sir Clive.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| Britain's Steve Jobs.
| zepto wrote:
| Not really. That would be Herman Hauser.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| Both were company founds who went pair shaped in 1985. Both
| were narcissists obsessed with miniaturization and small
| items. Both were obsessed with the physical look of their
| devices. Both were not engineers.
| timbit42 wrote:
| I'd say Clive Sinclair was more like Britain's Jack Tramiel.
| Chris Curry or Herman Hauser would be more like Britain's Steve
| Jobs and Sophie Wilson as Britain's Steve Wozniak.
|
| Wikipedia calls Acorn, Britain's Apple. Just as Apple chose its
| name because it was before Atari in the phone book, so Acorn
| chose it's name because it was before Apple.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| 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!
| neilwilson wrote:
| Ouch.
|
| I'm here because of Sir Clive. Like many I started with a 1k
| ZX81.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| I've still got my Sinclair in a shoebox upstairs, complete with
| the 16KB RAM expansion pack, a program or two on cassette tape,
| and the cord for plugging it into my TV (which would probably
| need a whole chain of adapters today).
| nsxwolf wrote:
| My 77" LG CX OLED still has a coax RF input, and I've hooked a
| few consoles and computers up to it. And it actually looks,
| well, better than I expected I guess!
| decremental wrote:
| Who?
| streamofdigits wrote:
| They don't make them like that no more. What would it take for
| technology to feel again just... white magic.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| 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?
| midnightclubbed wrote:
| Weak argument. Sir Clive's influence on computing, particularly
| in Britain is enormous. For many of us his products are the
| reason we are part of this industry.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| I'm more reflecting on the fact that the number of
| programmers roughly doubles every 5 years and thus the number
| of Sir Clive's should be greatly increasing too, no?
| rsiqueira wrote:
| A clone of Sinclair ZX81 was the first computer that I touched
| and coded when I was a kid. My color homage to Sinclair ZX
| Spectrum in less than 140 characters of Javascript:
| https://www.dwitter.net/d/23871
| sillyquiet wrote:
| For us North Americans not very familiar with Sir Clive's
| machine, there's a pretty good summary of it:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jr7Q1yJOUM
|
| Apparently it, or a follow-up model, WAS available in the US,
| branded by Timex of all companies.
| chx wrote:
| Oh dear. My parents smuggled (!) a ZX Spectrum in 1985 into
| Hungary and they knew they will do it and while they were on
| their tour to Western Germany I was at a summer daytime camp at
| the nearby community center where we learned BASIC on them. And ,
| of course , played games , mostly Horace And The Spiders :) I was
| ten.
|
| Fast forward two decades and I was contributing to Drupal core
| (first core commit 17 years ago was
| https://i.imgur.com/ZGemjVc.png although Dries forgot to credit
| me, boo :) ) and another five years later I was working on a Top
| 100 website.
|
| Thanks Sir Sinclair.
| tpmx wrote:
| 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
| Alexander Armstrong), who developed the ZX Spectrum, and Chris
| Curry (played by Martin Freeman), the man behind the BBC Micro._
|
| (Sinclair didn't exactly like it though.)
| jecel wrote:
| It is interesting to watch the video of the actual interview
| that they recreate in the movie. The movie Sinclair seems a bit
| upset while the real life one was smiling a lot and being very
| friendly.
| empressplay wrote:
| "Games! Games! Everywhere I go games! This is what my lifetime
| of achievement has been reduced to! Clive Sinclair the man who
| brought you Jet Set f**ing Willy!" -- Clive Sinclair
| (fictional), Micro Men
| easton wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3l_NV9oQ1c
| hyperpallium2 wrote:
| Your reach should exceed your grasp, or what's a heaven for?
|
| A key quote from the documentary.
|
| "Reach" is what you can just touch with your fingertips
| outstretched; "grasp" is what you can firmly close your hand on
| and grip.
| pitspotter2 wrote:
| Thanks! I've heard that quote a few times but till now never
| grasped the full meaning.
|
| A link to the quote in the film:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXBxV6-zamM#t=5m9s
| simonw wrote:
| Micro Men is so good. I met the director once at an event and
| asked him if it would ever be released on DVD or equivalent and
| it sounded like that was unlikely, so it's great to see it
| available on YouTube.
| timthorn wrote:
| The Centre for Computing History videoed Chris Curry, Steve
| Furber and Hermann Hauser watching Micro Men and chatting for
| the tenth anniversary of its broadcast:
|
| https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/55810/Micro-Men-10th...
| cwilkes wrote:
| ZX81 was my first computer, putting the kit (!) together with my
| dad. Didn't work so sent it back and got a pre made one, found
| out later that at least 1/3rd of the kits didn't work.
|
| That, going through 101 Basic Computer Games, and typing in the
| esoteric Beagle Bros commands in their ads are fond memories.
| jacquesm wrote:
| The reason many of the kits didn't work is that the timing was
| super critical and parts variation alone could result in a
| built kit not working, especially if you added the RAM
| expansion.
| muh_gradle wrote:
| RIP Sir Sinclair.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Knights use their first names - he's Sir Clive, or Sir Clive
| Sinclair - never Sir Sinclair.
| xedarius wrote:
| My career as a games programmer was very much started by this
| magnificent machine.
|
| I think 'Hey Hey 16k' says it all.
|
| https://youtu.be/Ts96J7HhO28
|
| RIP good sir.
| aurizon wrote:
| Yes, I well remember the Sinclairs I played with. They never made
| the 'Apple leap', and slowly faded, but he had a lot of good
| ideas. With a Silicon Valley milieu in the UK, he would have done
| better. I was a Silicon Valley parts rat in the late 70's. Went
| there 2-3 times a year. Mike Quinn, Space Age metal products,
| Advanced Computer Products(Freeman Brothers), Bill Godbout and so
| on. They all had surplus warehouses. The tax law in the USA
| allowed old parts to be written off - but if you wrote them off,
| you could not keep them. If you kept them = not written off. This
| led to huge surplus warehouse entrepreneurs who bid on the
| scrapped parts and then resold them. This is the way it should
| be. In the UK/Canada companies wrote them off and KEPT them -
| sitting unused = no good to man or beast. I think that is why it
| was unique - US tax law.
| danielrpa wrote:
| The ZX Spectrum was my first computer. So many good moments with
| it... It's hard to describe it for the current generation - if
| you were there, you know what I mean.
|
| Sir Clive Sinclair had an enormous impact on my life and career.
| Today is a sad day for me :(
| gokhan wrote:
| It was also the first for me. It was expensive for my family to
| have but my school buddy had it and naturally we spent all our
| free time in their house typing programs from the large book.
| Fun times. RIP.
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| The Spectrum and ZX81 are (rightly) the computers for which Clive
| Sinclair is remembered. But it was his unsuccessful follow-up,
| the QL, which inspired a certain Linus Torvalds to write Linux:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_QL#Legacy
| xkeysc0re wrote:
| Funny that it was inspiring in its frustrating designs / lack
| of features, rather than a "positive" sort of inspiration.
| 5faulker wrote:
| Failure can be a source of inspiration, after all.
| hughrr wrote:
| Sinclair was an expert at that. He guided many an
| industrial product designer to fortune by showing them
| exactly what not to do.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I can't tell - are you praising Sinclair, or shredding
| him? (I'm on the wrong side of the pond to have any real
| knowledge of him.)
| hughrr wrote:
| Shredding him.
|
| His business acumen was nil and his cost cutting nailed
| shut the coffin of every venture he started.
|
| I don't get the hero worship.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Maybe he didn't make a lot of money but he sure managed
| to inspire people.
|
| I know which I'd want to be _my_ legacy.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| 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.
| gojomo wrote:
| 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 harmed in the slightest
| with an honest recounting. Instead, the memory is
| improved with realistic texture.
| hughrr wrote:
| Yeah it is. The guy had a rabid cult following much like
| Musk does today. He had many financial victims with
| poorly engineered products.
|
| He made a very valuable contribution to the industry
| however.
|
| People have rose tinted glasses about it but the reality
| was products not turning up, not shipping, not working
| and a sour taste for many against technology.
|
| He even bought faulty RAM in which was discarded for the
| Spectrums and sold the ones that booted.
|
| The only reason it worked out for a lot of people is we
| have pretty strong consumer protection laws here!
| vasac wrote:
| He brought faulty RAM that had errors just in a single
| half and then he used just the other (correct) half -
| nothing wrong with that.
|
| Such cost cutting made it affordable to a large number of
| people - had it costed a couple of time more it could be
| a hard sell for my Eastern European parents. Fortunately,
| that didn't happen and now, 40 years later, I have a nice
| career and I'm still enjoying dealing with computers just
| as when I was a kid with ZX Spectrum.
| hughrr wrote:
| Actually that's not strictly true. Test methodology was
| "see if it worked and ship". Many many of the computers
| were returned and replaced immediately. And a lot of the
| new ones you got were the broken ones which were sent
| back and the chips replaced. I've seen a new one which
| still didn't work which had been reworked at least once
| and sold as new again.
|
| My father had a nice business for a few years doing adhoc
| repairs and then started his own PC import business in
| the end with the cash he earned fixing people's stuff.
| That was a world of difference.
|
| Agree with your comments about affordability. As you say
| about Eastern Europe, even the clones were more expensive
| I understand.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| It's not that unique in the computer business. I used to
| build PCs for a shop during the 90s internet craze. When
| we got a box of Quantum Bigfoot HDDs we'd be lucky if
| half of them worked. Someone who cared about quality
| wouldn't put that crap in a computer. But it was cheap.
| The soundcards we sold were so cheap they were cut
| diagonally to save on PCB material.
|
| Though this shop just did it for profit margin. Sinclair
| did it to make computers available to the masses.
| midnightclubbed wrote:
| Hero worship because he brought computers to the masses.
| The cost cutting was the point - there were already
| computers that cost the same as a nice TV, this was a
| computer a kid could get for Christmas. For many of us
| that oppertunity was the start of a lifelong passion.
| lordgroff wrote:
| 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.
| hughrr wrote:
| 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.
| xkeysc0re wrote:
| Spite is a great motivator
| afavour wrote:
| Oh wow, it turns out the QL hardware was reused in the ICL One
| Per Desk. We had one at home growing up (for some reason?!).
| Kind of funny to read that it's greatest success was in
| networking hundreds of bingo halls together across the UK.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Per_Desk
| RantyDave wrote:
| 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 :(
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Did you have one? I skipped the QL and went to an Amiga
| sedatk wrote:
| Reading QL BASIC source code was the first time I was exposed
| to structured programming. I really liked its BASIC dialect.
| Zardoz84 wrote:
| I have memories of my father using a QL. also, he was very
| lucky as he got a late version with many bugs fixed. He like it
| too, that when got a IBM PC compatible with a 8086, he thought
| that the QL was better.
| jhallenworld wrote:
| Has anyone ported ucLinux to the QL? Shouldn't be that hard..
| here it is on a minimal system:
|
| https://www.bigmessowires.com/68-katy/
| foldr wrote:
| My Dad had a QL at home and even had a small business selling
| software for it back in the day. It was a bit of a daunting
| machine for me as a child (I got more mileage out of the BBC
| Micro), but I have fond memories of playing around with it, and
| loading games off of microdrives.
| dboreham wrote:
| MK14 here.
| 123pie123 wrote:
| Whilst my first programs was on the acorn atom, Zx80 and zx81
|
| the zx spectrum hold a special place in my memory because the
| manual was fantasic - I learnt almost everything from it.
|
| and then progressed on to typing the monterous (using the
| aweful rubber keys) blocks of programs from magazines - THEN I
| learnt how to debug and rewrite the games that I'd just typed
| in from the magazines, because they never worked first time.
|
| but it felt like I was living in the future
|
| Thanks Clive - RIP
| ukd1 wrote:
| The QL was one of my first computers too, I loved that thing!
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| And it was an incredibly slick looking machine for the time!
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| After the first couple of biscuit-tin amplifiers and some
| bare board products like the Mk14, design became a Sinclair
| USP.
|
| He was a kind of proto-Jobs. While most of the competition
| made boring-looking devices, Sinclair hired some of the top
| people for the time and made products that stood out
| because they looked exciting.
|
| The ZX series are the best known, but there were precursors
| like the Black Watch and the Sovereign Calculator.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Watch_(wristwatch)
|
| http://www.vintagebritishcalculators.info/html/sovereign.ht
| m...
|
| He wasn't so good at making things that worked reliably or
| delivering them on time, but even with the delays the ZX
| comps were game changers.
| rcarmo wrote:
| My dad had a black watch. It was the stuff of Sci-Fi.
| elevaet wrote:
| Great cyberpunk aesthetic!
|
| http://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/sinclair-ql/3347
| mzs wrote:
| Sir Clive was in a memorable QL ad as well:
|
| https://youtu.be/as6hSAqJ_g4
| DerWOK wrote:
| Anybody noticed, the inventor of the ZX81 of course died at the
| age of 81. So, he predicted this decades ago?
| muzster wrote:
| Thank you Sir Clive.
|
| I will wear my clashing outfits for the next 8 days.
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| I suspect a lot of people on this website wouldn't be here were
| it not for him (perhaps me included).
|
| The sense of wonder I got as a kid by playing games and learning
| how to program on his machines made for amazing life-shaping
| experiences.
| rocketbop wrote:
| Certainly deserving of a black banner.
| zarkov99 wrote:
| RIP. 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.
| gunfighthacksaw wrote:
| Probably because back then you could rip apart your, say C64,
| and replace borked components with a soldering iron or so my
| dad told me.
| AnonymousPlanet wrote:
| Only a couple of years a go I replaced a blown cap on a
| motherboard. It was faster than replacing it with a new board
| because I happened to have a cap with the right specs. So in
| principle you still could do this today. If you don't use
| your soldering iron on the CPU or the RAM or ... well, lots
| of other parts.
| vidarh wrote:
| You could replace many ICs with just your fingers or a
| screwdriver. On the C64 the main ones like the CPU, graphics,
| sound and IO chips were in sockets, and that was similar on
| many home computers of the era.
|
| I freaked my parents out by switching chips between our C64
| and the floppy drive to see what would happen (they had
| _almost_ compatible CPUs and IO chips - many things kept
| working).
|
| Also: Repairing by touching chips to see if any of them were
| unusually hot was fun...
|
| EDIT: to bring this more back to the thread subject, as a
| Commodore user at the time we used to make fun of the
| Spectrums, but they absolutely had a massive impact on the
| market. Including on competitors - e.g. Tramiel got spooked
| by how cheap the ZX81 was, and it certainly contributed to
| choices made at Commodore. Sinclair's influence as a result
| spread wide and far beyond the sizable direct influence of
| his own machines.
| nabla9 wrote:
| Still today when I see picture of old computer, I get memory of
| the smell and the glow of the screen (Yes, computers at that
| time had electric smell).
| jmkd wrote:
| Ha, I thought this was just my Spectrum with dust / biscuit
| crumbs in it
| wiz21c wrote:
| I started with Apple 2+ but back then there were many computers
| to be fond of. There were Vic 20, Dragon 32, Amstrad, Thomson
| TO7, TRS-80, BBC. All were different, all had their
| capabilities. But what was fun is that everyone had access to
| the whole thing : hardware, software. Nothing was hidden behind
| layers of security. You could relate software and hardware in a
| very natural way. Everybody was fiddling around. Also, they
| were the first computers for the general public so software had
| to be invented every single day.
|
| I'm truly grateful to have been part of that, it gives such a
| perspective...
| dragonsky67 wrote:
| I started with an Amiga 500. Wonderful machine, but the lack
| of a built in compiler/programming language that allowed you
| to access the power of the machine was a lack that limited
| your learning. I think it resulted in me taking a very wide
| path to my current programming job than would otherwise have
| happened. Looking back, there is a lot of power in having to
| work hard to get a program from a magazine entered and
| working. You are forced to learn something about programming.
| jacquesm wrote:
| 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.
| Chris_Newton wrote:
| 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 software that might be flashier than what we had
| but was still in essence a guided programming environment
| with a simple but effective language? _Maybe_ include some
| sort of USB connectivity, primarily so that older kids
| could also control external devices like light boards or
| robot arms or turtles? I haven't come across anyone trying
| to do this that I can recall, but I feel like there's an
| entire ecosystem's worth of startup ideas in this space
| just waiting to be implemented. Maybe the next Sir Clive is
| out there somewhere to get it started.
| jarvist wrote:
| The Raspberry Pi 400 is basically this.
| https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-400/
| zozbot234 wrote:
| It's a very interesting device in a very Spectrum-like
| form factor. It also has its limitations, much like the
| Spectrum itself - you're not going to code comfortably in
| resource-intensive languages with it.
| dragonsky67 wrote:
| 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 cartridge, or
| you could type them in from a magazine (several times)
| and hopefully save them to a cassette.
|
| These days, if you want to play a game, you reach for
| your phone and install a free one that is far more
| capable than anything you could develop yourself.
|
| The real trick would be to create a development
| environment that will run on a phone. Apple have gone
| somewhat down this path with their Swift Playgrounds and
| you could always work with Scratch and similar systems or
| you could even do something in html/javascript, but none
| of these really give the same imperative to learning how
| that the original home computers did. You really need a
| system that lets you develop a full program, share it
| with your friends and modify (and break) it.
|
| You know the reality is that we do have these systems,
| and kids that are interested in doing anything other than
| just playing games can access them with a minimum of
| problems. I wonder how many of those ZX Spectrums, C64
| etc were given to kids, who on finding that they had to
| actually do some work to make them do anything useful
| relegated them to a shoebox under the TV. It is possible
| that for every positive story about "kid learns
| programming from ZX Spectrum" you would have a hundred
| stories of kid calling ZX Spectrum a piece of crap.
| mnd999 wrote:
| Me for one. ZX Spectrum +2 got me into programming. ROI on that
| home computer must be enormous.
| braben wrote:
| Same here, I owe him my whole career. One day I came to my
| house at nine years old and saw that metal with ruber thing and
| lots of colours that my father bought. Wonder and awe, as you
| said. One of the best times of my life was understanding and
| coding an assembler routine to achieve 64 columns. RIP Sir
| Clive Sinclair. So sad news.
| hyperpallium2 wrote:
| Rarity I guess? Computers were formerly even rarer. But
| everyone's got one in their pocket now.
| epx wrote:
| 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.
| billti wrote:
| I memorized the ZX81 (and Spectrum) manuals back to front.
| Around age 11 I used to write out assembly long-hand and
| "poke" the OpCodes into memory to write programs and drivers.
| I really credit what has now been a long and happy career in
| software development to the affordable computers Sir Clive
| developed. (My family was pretty poor growing up, but I
| convinced my Dad to spring the 80 pounds or so for one after
| I borrowed a friend's and took to it).
|
| What you could do was limited enough that you could master
| it, and I really think that's a good thing for education and
| motivation. When I think about teaching my kids to program
| today, I effectively get "choice paralysis" from all the
| paths I could go down and the options within easy reach.
| rwmj wrote:
| Steve Vickers wrote that manual. A couple of decades later he
| taught me an impenetrable course on mathematical structures
| in computer science. (My previous comments about that:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23760382
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26375986)
| Chris_Newton wrote:
| _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 opportunities. I'm not sure there is any
| analogous device I could give my kids when they reach the same
| age any more. Any device they do eventually get when they're
| older seems more likely to have preinstalled social media apps
| and regular security updates than a preinstalled programming
| environment and a line in the manual reassuring you that
| nothing you type will break your computer. Something certainly
| has been lost.
|
| 1 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21119236
| iso1210 wrote:
| People have different expectations to computers nowadays.
| They aren't isolated curiosities any more, you can't capture
| the environment of the 1980s home computer revolution.
|
| If you do want a similar experience (at least superficially)
| to a spectrum 48k, get a Pi 400, don't connect it to a
| network, but don't expect the same outcome as you had -- the
| world is different, there are very different things competing
| for attention, and different rewards for time spent.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| My 8 and 10 year old kids have just discovered the Roblox
| editor. They are building mutiplayer 3d worlds.
|
| The 8 year old is the most enthusiastic about it. He is
| second grade at school and knows addition, and subtraction,
| and his times tables but has not started multiplying more
| than single digit numbers.
|
| Right now they are mostly placing blocks around and
| decorating the world, but they are very interested in the lua
| scripting. I have no doubt that they will soon be attempting
| to read that read the Roblox API docs. Actually, they'll be
| watching youtube video tutorials.
|
| Anyhow, I just wanted to point out that while the old 8 bit
| days are gone, there are plenty of ways kids can build things
| and tinker with computers and software.
|
| PS: buy your kids a Steam Deck.
| tcbawo wrote:
| What a great learning tool the early personal computers were.
| It's a pipe dream, but I would have loved to have given my
| children a simpler device and restricted the internet until
| they were capable of assembling the hardware/software to get
| connected. These devices exist today as VMs. But, what I
| think we've lost is the boredom and free time that drives
| that type of learning and discovery.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Sir Clive was so far ahead of his time and brought color into so
| many lives. RIP.
| jecel wrote:
| Several things Sinclair was made fun of back in the day are now
| "the work of geniuses". Among them is wafer scale electronics.
| Sinclair's:
|
| http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/3043/Anamartic-Wafer-...
|
| Currently:
|
| https://cerebras.net/
| kerrsclyde wrote:
| My love of computing began with my Spectrum.
|
| I was bought a ZX Spectrum +3 when I was 10, the one with a
| floppy drive. My parents were persuaded by the salesman that
| floppy drives were the future and that it was worth paying more
| for the +3 rather than the +2 with it's tape drive. Correct, but
| hardly any games were available on disk which left me a bit
| miffed at the time.
| thorin wrote:
| Multiface 3 from romantic robot was the key peripheral you
| needed. After loading a game you could save an image to disk,
| so you could also create save points anywhere and poke in cheat
| codes :-)
| hyperpallium2 wrote:
| That pocket TV is ridiculously cool and he knows it.
| canada_dry wrote:
| Yup! That, and his LED wrist watch - an absolute brilliant
| piece of work at the time!
| thom wrote:
| Grew up in a house surrounded by many wonderful machines, but by
| far the most beautiful and alluring were the Spectrums. My dad
| wrote some reasonably popular books on these things in the 80s
| which pretty much set me on my way:
|
| https://worldofspectrum.org/archive/books/working-sinclair-q...
|
| https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/2000420/Book/The_Worki...
| ridruejo wrote:
| That's awesome
| _joel wrote:
| RIP Sir Clive.
|
| My parents were having a clear out and found my old (2nd hand
| when I got it!) Speccy, just last week. It's been in a box but I
| feel compelled to see if it's in working order still (no leaky
| caps please or dodgy joints, at least there's no old PSU to worry
| about)
|
| https://imgur.com/a/qgufGOE
| coffeemug wrote:
| I'm actually really sad about it. My first experience programming
| was with his machine. Rest in peace :(
| ggm wrote:
| We 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 curse the membrane keyboard to this day.
|
| Smart man. Crap product. A joke of the times from British TV: the
| Sinclair digital penis: 1 inch long and takes 28 days to come.
|
| I understand how many people bootstrapped into computing from the
| spectrum btw, a friend made significant money from writing sw for
| it. Tiny compilers, games.
| Miraste wrote:
| > The calculators were highly approximate trig functions
|
| This is true, but not the whole story. The Sinclair calculator
| undercut its only competitor at the time by 75%(!), bringing a
| scientific calculator to a lot of people who otherwise would
| never have had one. He did this by using a chip designed for
| four-function math and using a series of brilliant (if, yes,
| slow and approximate) hacks to fit arithmetic _and_
| trigonometry in the same 320 assembly instructions and three
| registers. It cuts basically every corner, but my favorite one
| is that it didn 't have room for constants like pi in the ROM.
| No matter what they did they couldn't fit it in. Eventually,
| they just printed pi on the case. My impression of Sir Clive is
| that he always tried to take shortcuts no other company would
| dare, and while this often flamed out, sometimes he pulled it
| off and brought a lot of technology to a lot of people.
|
| Here's a fantastic breakdown of how the calculator worked and
| why it was so impressive:
|
| http://files.righto.com/calculator/sinclair_scientific_simul...
| mjw1007 wrote:
| Looking back, maybe the lesson is that there are some occasions
| when giving up on quality in order to make a cheaper product is
| an excellent idea, and 8-bit computers in the early 80s was one
| of those occasions.
|
| (While, for example, electric road vehicles in the mid 80s was
| not.)
| ggm wrote:
| Yes. Hooking up with Timex (a very stodgy, cheap product
| company at the time) was a big move. Ultimately commodore did
| for them, but it took Sinclair to the US.
|
| The Sinclair car would sell well now the market for escooters
| is established.
| rjeli wrote:
| genuinely appreciate your anecdote, it is interesting to know,
| but perhaps a bit distasteful in reply to his death.
| ggm wrote:
| 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.
| hughrr wrote:
| It really irks me when someone is misrepresented when they
| drop dead. I'm personally fine with the parent poster's
| comment because it's exactly a fair representation of the
| guy's products. They were mostly awful to some degree.
| Razengan wrote:
| Why are you whining so much about anyone's obituary?
| (Really see this guy's comments) Who hurt you?
| hughrr wrote:
| I have a fair amount of experience with Sinclair products
| both from ownership and repair perspective.
|
| We should speak the truth of the dead and not lie to
| ourselves.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| I went without a Christmas present because my dad got me a zx
| spectrum for my birthday.
|
| I'm glad he did.
| robarr wrote:
| The is a kind of ridiculous expression "you never forget your
| first one". Well mine was a ZX81. I will never forget her.
|
| Thanks sir Clive!
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| Grew up with Thomson computers and C64, Amiga so I never had the
| pleasure to use a Spectrum computer. But RIP sir.
| holoduke wrote:
| When I was 8 years old I had a teacher who let me explore the
| spectrum zx every midday break. I spend so many hours loading
| tapes with games and programs. It was for sure the spark for me
| to start my life with programming and computers in general. Rest
| in piece. A legend!!!
| bane wrote:
| One of the legacies from Sinclair's era is the profound
| understanding of the power of young hobbyists working on cheap
| computers, and how that leads to a workforce trained in STEM.
| This idea directly inspired the development of the Raspberry Pi
| which has been beyond wildly successful and may be the most
| popular line of British computers in history.
| hughrr wrote:
| Sort of. As a former Sinclair user his products taught me
| patience and tolerance.
|
| I jumped ship the moment I could afford a BBC.
| dboreham wrote:
| There wouldn't have been a BBC without Uncle Clive.
| hughrr wrote:
| You mean there wouldn't have been a BBC if he had tried
| harder? :)
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Sinclair was a contender for the BBC project, but couldn't
| make it happen.
|
| We might not have had ARM if Acorn hadn't won the contract.
| andraz wrote:
| RIP
|
| My first computer was Spectrum. With broken cassette recorder.
| There was no other way to play games but writing them down from a
| recipe book. And picking up programming along the way.
| Discovering the new world, the world of the electron and the
| switch and then the beauty of the baud.
|
| Thank you Sir!
| marcodiego wrote:
| Nevermind microsoft or apple. Sinclair is the real company that
| first saw the market of computer for the masses.
| shyrka wrote:
| As much as the hardware fuelled my interest in computing, and
| ultimately forged my career. Something that I think isn't
| appreciated enough was the beautiful design language Sinclair
| employed. I've always viewed Sinclair as proto Apple.
| djhworld wrote:
| RIP
|
| I had a hand-me-down spectrum although I don't remember learning
| to program on it, just the games. Was probably too young at the
| time.
|
| So I guess I can credit it for starting my life long love for
| computer games :)
| gjkood wrote:
| RIP Sir Clive Sinclair.
|
| His Sinclair ZX81 got me into my love for computing.
|
| I wouldn't be where I am without that exposure.
| mhd wrote:
| I'm going to take a small tour with my A-Bike tomorrow.
| veltas wrote:
| I didn't grow up with the ZX Spectrum, but I managed to buy one
| (actually a few) a number of years ago, and had a lot of fun
| playing around in BASIC and then writing programs in assembly.
| The computer's design is so very simple, it was a nice
| introduction to low-level computing and I now do that for a
| career. It's no surprise to me hearing about how many careers
| started on that system, I somehow think that -- in the age of
| CodeAcademy and endless free JavaScript courses -- computing is
| somehow so much less approachable.
|
| Sad news, rest in peace Sir Clive.
| fieryskiff11 wrote:
| Never heard of her
| pmontra wrote:
| My 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.
| alok-g wrote:
| I too still have the computer and it powers up. 90% of the keys
| have stopped working though.
| pjmlp wrote:
| I also own mine still, but I will never plug them again, too
| afraid to fry them.
| browningstreet wrote:
| I wish I still had my original Osborne 1, and my Sinclair QL...
| rwmj wrote:
| Don't plug them in without doing some basic checks! A common
| fault with the ZX81 at least is the PSU and/or the internal
| voltage regulator degrades/fails and will destroy the RAM
| chips. Have a look through some of Noel Retro Lab videos for
| some tips first: https://www.youtube.com/c/NoelsRetroLab/videos
|
| Edit: Different channel, but here's a video about ZX81
| restoration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyluEM0N6TY
| bnastic wrote:
| As an 8yo, I thought ZX was a German computer, because like every
| other home computer of the time it came from a shop in Munich's
| Schillerstrasse. Somehow it found its way into Eastern Europe
| that wasn't too keen on importing computers.
|
| An old joke says it was passing through customs as a "washing
| machine programmer, not a computer, see, its all rubbery"
| mynegation wrote:
| @dang - I believe that deserves a black ribbon. In some countries
| generations grew up learning hacking and programming with his
| computers (and knock-offs)
| empressplay wrote:
| Agreed! The Timex Sinclair 1000 (US ZX81 rebadging) was my
| first computer when I was 6 and as an autistic child it really
| helped keep me engaged and I suspect that without it I would
| have ended up in special education classes... Sir Clive
| literally changed my life
| FearNotDaniel wrote:
| Absolutely. His systems did _so_ much to democratize computing
| in the 8-bit era, and there must be countless greybeards who
| owe their careers to the access that Sinclair Computers
| granted. Likewise, many non-technical entrepreneurs who made
| tons of cash in the first dotcom boom would only be able to
| find programmers able to work for them because they had self-
| trained in skills that schools knew nothing about by staying up
| late staring at the family TV with one of these little machines
| plugged into it.
|
| More democratising than other machines around at the time,
| because those less-well-off families in the UK who couldn't
| afford a BBC Micro or CBM-64 could more easily scrape together
| the funds to buy a ZX Spectrum instead.
|
| My personal anecdote: I didn't have enough pocket money to feed
| my Pac-Man addiction in the arcades, and my family certainly
| wasn't going to splash out on an Atari console, so I wrote
| myself a Pac-Man clone in ZX Basic. It turned out that
| programming was so much more fun than playing the game in the
| long run, and almost 40 years later people are still paying me
| to do this! Thank you, Sir Clive.
| [deleted]
| virgulino wrote:
| I started with a Brazilian ZX81 clone, the Prologica CP200. It
| changed my life. Thank you, Sir Clive Sinclair.
| protomyth wrote:
| Sir Clive Sinclair was a hero of mine for realizing that
| computing could be for children of poorer families. The Apple II
| is lauded for the classroom, but it was way too expensive for my
| family. Without people like Sir Sinclair, I and many other would
| have never been able to enter this profession we so love.
|
| Apple gets the credit, but it was Sir Sinclair, Commodore, Atari,
| and TI that raised a generation in computing.
|
| Rest well great man.
| joosters wrote:
| Yes! As a kid, I was jealous of friends who had 'better'
| computers, but the appeal of the spectrum was seeing how it
| could be pushed to its limits and do amazing things.
|
| Learning BASIC and then assembly on the spectrum got me hooked
| on computers, all thanks to Sir Clive making it possible and
| affordable.
| Razengan wrote:
| ... 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.
| gojomo wrote:
| When I had no computer, I wanted one of those <USD$200 ZX81s so
| badly - just from seeing it magazines, & maybe pressing some of
| its keys at the electronics counter of someplace like maybe a
| _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_.
| jacquesm wrote:
| On the ZX80 it was done in such a way that just processing your
| keyboard input caused the video to blank.
| gojomo wrote:
| That rings a bell!
| jacquesm wrote:
| The scary thing: this all seems like _yesterday_ to me. For
| years I thought we were counting up to when we die, but now
| I realize we are actually counting down.
| opencl wrote:
| 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.
| lalabert wrote:
| As someone who started coding just before the zx80 arrived I
| fully appreciate the difference he made! I was reading ETI (if
| you don't know what the stands for you are too young :) that had
| adverts for the MK14 which was the predecessor to the zx series )
| when it all kicked off and I was in awe! A true innovator.
| pjmlp wrote:
| My 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 Coupe, although the
| later wasn't related to Sir Clive.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| Somewhat amazingly, my mother-in-law was Sir Clive's financial
| controller at Sinclair Radionics. His financial rigour was
| somewhat less developed than his entrepreneurial skills,
| apparently.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| 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
| danielrpa wrote:
| One thing the Arduino doesn't quite have is that the ZX
| machines, while not cutting edge, were quite novel and "high
| tech".
|
| Most people who have an Arduino also have a supercomputer-
| phone. But a ZX81 or ZX Spectrum were, at the time, all you
| could afford and relatively advanced to the point of being
| amazing for most other people (who didn't own any computer
| whatsoever).
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| 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 infamous Christmas parties (since he knew Chris
| Curry).
|
| The good thing about those old computers was the simplicity.
| The only thing on a NASCOM-1 between your assembly code and the
| hardware was 1KB of monitor program.
| abc_lisper wrote:
| Leaky abstractions in not well thought out solutions caused by
| exponential growth in computing is the issue. Rich Hickey's
| "Simple made easy" talks about this very thing.
| h2odragon wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX81 or
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Sinclair_1000
|
| Those were wild little toys; and people stretched them beyond all
| reason.
| ojbyrne wrote:
| The ZX81 was the first computer I ever touched, in terms of
| "stretching," for me it stopped working after I used it for an
| hour or so.
| rwmj wrote:
| The ZX81 was also my first computer. Have to say I must have
| better luck because mine is still going to this day (although
| I did recently need to service and fix it).
| homerowilson wrote:
| Also my first computer, bought as a kit and I soldered it
| together. Mine lasted a long time. It was so limited though I
| learned Z80 assembler, which turned out to be really cool.
| The ZX-81 was a wonderful machine.
| RantyDave wrote:
| Chess in 1K. INCLUDING THE VIDEO BUFFER.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1K_ZX_Chess
| GiorgioG wrote:
| RIP. My first "computer" was a Timex Sinclair 1000. I still
| have it, though I lost the power supply.
| rcarmo wrote:
| My first computer was a ZX81, and his machines made a profound
| impression on my early days in computing (and became even more
| remarkable once I was able to understand the hardware design
| tricks involved).
|
| Good thing we have things like the Raspberry Pi to recapture some
| of that magic for our kids.
| canada_dry wrote:
| Ditto. I assembled/soldered the thing my self. Went on to using
| it to learning assembly language and how the internals work
| (buses, etc).
|
| I've retired after a great career in IT/Systems tech and it was
| Clive's little computer that was the gateway drug for me!
| foofoo55 wrote:
| The Guardian article claims "Sinclair invented the pocket
| calculator", but other calculators were on the market before his:
|
| http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/history_of_electronic...
|
| [edit] More details on his calculators, which were quite cool,
| especially his trick to decrease power consumption and the super-
| slim Sinclair Sovereign:
|
| http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/sinclair_-_the_pocket...
| wst_ wrote:
| I will never forget characteristic screen loading method. A
| 256x192 resolution, 16384 - beginning of video memory, 6144 bytes
| of B&W pixel data in 3 blocks and 768 bytes for 8*2 color
| palette. Those visuals and numbers are imprinted in my memory...
|
| Two people who changed my life forever - Sir Clive Sinclair and
| my Father who'd been bold enough to invest in Timex 2048 despite
| price and difficulties of life behind an iron curtain.
|
| Thank you. Both of you.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| Rest in peace, the "actor" behind Q in _Spycat: An Interactive
| Expose of MI4.5_.
| ggambetta wrote:
| The ZX Spectrum+ I grew up with still works (only had to replace
| the keyboard membrane). What an amazing piece of tech. I have
| fond memories of it, and I also keep my collection of Microhobby
| Magazine [1], which is effectively how my career started.
|
| I had some earlier contact with a ZX81 but I don't remember much
| of it - really only playing 3D Monster Maze [2], a very early
| ancestor of 3D shooters.
|
| The ZX Spectrum+ and the ZX81 are so meaningful to me, you could
| argue they're the focus of my book's dedication [3]. Would I be
| where I am today, would I be who I am today, if back in the day
| it wasn't as easy as PLOT 6,5?
|
| Rest in peace, Sir Clive.
|
| [1] https://microhobby.speccy.cz/mhforever/numero001.htm [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_Monster_Maze [3]
| https://gabrielgambetta.com/computer-graphics-from-scratch/d...
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > "But he did not make personal use of his own inventions. His
| daughter said he never had a pocket calculator as far as she
| knew, instead carrying a slide-rule around with him at all times.
| And he told interviewers he used neither a computer nor email."
| simonh wrote:
| That doesn't particularly surprise me. His computers weren't
| aimed at middle aged adult engineers. The early calculators
| weren't all that sophisticated. They were convenience devices
| rather than serious tools. There's nothing wrong with designing
| products aimed at people other than yourself.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > His computers weren't aimed at middle aged adult engineers.
|
| Maybe not Clive Sinclair's products specifically, but you'd
| be surprised with what professional engineers could use these
| 'toys' for. Keep in mind that machines with comparable
| featuresets could sell for huge prices well into the early
| and even the mid-1960s, and were used for real, sometimes
| critically important work.
| chalst wrote:
| Turing's Pilot ACE, that Turing considered didn't have
| enough memory for real work, had 32 mercury delay lines
| with 1024 bits each: that's four times as much memory as
| the ZX81.
| [deleted]
| dvirsky wrote:
| For its time and price vs. performance, the Spectrum might have
| been the best personal computer ever made. It was my first
| machine, and I loved it so much.
| hyperpallium2 wrote:
| "Horace Goes Skiing" was written by Fred Milgrom, co-founder of
| Beam Software (studio) and (I think) Melbourne House (publisher).
| His team also did _The Hobbit_. The studio is based in Melbourne,
| Australia.
|
| "Knight Lore" was by Ultimate Play the Game, whicn became Rare
| (Banjo-Kazooie, GoldenEye 007, Donkey Kong Country etc).
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| Have you tried turning him off and on again?
|
| In a less facetious tone, the Spectrum plus was my first
| computer, and I rather like the way the BASIC was based on single
| keypresses, with every built in function there to see on the
| keyboard. It was spectacularly well designed to be learned.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Uh 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.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I've seen one of those during my time in Poland.
| makerofthings wrote:
| I learned to program on the 48k when I was about 8. Couldn't
| figure out how to save my code to tape so I just left the machine
| switched on for weeks whilst I wrote games and then let them go
| when I had to turn the power off. I learned more sat alone with
| that machine than anywhere else in my life. Rest in peace Sir
| Clive Sinclair.
| spdegabrielle wrote:
| First 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.
| mobilene wrote:
| Sadness. I got started in the 80s on a Sinclair ZX81. It changed
| my life.
| sgt101 wrote:
| I owe him a career, I suspect a lot of others do as well.
| zelos wrote:
| Yep: from being given a +2 when I was 9, I don't think there
| was ever much doubt what my career would be.
| abraxas wrote:
| Absolutely. During a time when most any other computer was an
| unreachable dream in communist Poland the ZX Spectrum was a
| gift to the emerging geek community here. I was lucky to have
| received my own in 1984. I was one of the first in the
| neighbourhood to get one. It literally cost about 2 months of
| my dad's wages. Those were the days.
| canada_dry wrote:
| Yup. His little ZX computer was the gateway drug into
| programming for me.
| Eliezer wrote:
| I learned to program on a ZX81. What else is there to say?
| klelatti wrote:
| Let's not forget that without Sir Clive we would probably never
| have seen Acorn and then Arm start in Cambridge. The computing
| world would have been very different without him.
|
| RIP.
| shever73 wrote:
| So sad to hear this. The ZX Spectrum was my introduction to both
| computers and programming and still has a special place in my
| heart. RIP Uncle Clive
| acomjean wrote:
| We had the "timex Sinclair ZX 1000" a gadget loving aunt gave us.
| I think That's the US version of that computer. I remember
| searching for the space bar... it was a button on the lower right
| of the membrane keyboard. Each key had like 4 things on it.
| Letters/ characters/symbols and basic commands. Entering basic
| programs was interesting but I learned a lot.
|
| And 2k of Ram (we got the 16kb expansion). And some games on tape
| that were oddly good.
|
| While i graduated to the schools apple computers a year after
| getting the machine, I'm still fond of it and because it's really
| small, I still have it...( now where is the wall adapter). Quite
| a great machine from an era where the machines where more easy to
| understand.
| termau wrote:
| So the creator of the zx81 dies at 81, my first computer, very
| sad.
| kimi wrote:
| I think this pretty much sums it up....
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts96J7HhO28 RIP sir Clive.
| dave_sid wrote:
| RIP
| [deleted]
| rossmohax wrote:
| What is the modern alternative to ZX? Something which encourages
| tinkering and reasonably priced.
| danielrpa wrote:
| Raspberry Pi, I suppose. But it doesn't feel the same, but the
| Pi is really underpowered compared to the average
| phone/computer, while the ZX Spectrum was the most powerful,
| and only, computer millions could afford.
| terramex wrote:
| Our first computer was BAIT - 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 played on Spectrum when I was a kid. Now I'm a game
| developer myself.
| varjag wrote:
| 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!
|
| https://twitter.com/varjag/status/1146500643328331776/photo/...
| beirut_bootleg wrote:
| Saw those ROMs in my Romanian clone called Cobra (Computers
| Brasov). Young me was fascinated by the way they were encased
| in some sort of clear epoxy instead of black ceramic. You can
| read more about the clone here:
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/11/the-underground-
| stor...
| hyperpallium2 wrote:
| ZX81 manual - coolest cover ever
| https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/content/media/13/...
| jmkd wrote:
| Wow, that bought a serious jolt of recollection, thanks
| FabHK wrote:
| Indeed. Good days. Anyone got a link to the full pdf?
|
| RIP, Sir Clive. I shall wear my (suitably black) ZX81 T-Shirt
| tomorrow.
| klft wrote:
| RIP Sir Clive and thanks for the ZX81!
| phenylene wrote:
| I learned to program in 1982 when my mom bought me a Timex
| Sinclair 1000 (2K RAM!) and had to type in all the games from
| source listings in books and magazines. At some point later, I
| bought a 16K memory expansion pack which was awesome until you
| jiggled the computer a little bit and it would reset all memory.
|
| The very first bug I had to figure out was when I was typing in
| an expression like "A <> B", and not realizing that "<>" was a
| single character on the keyboard, and not "<" followed by ">".
| jensgk wrote:
| I also owe a lot to Sir Clive. At 13 years old in 1981, My
| friends father bought a ZX80 for him. Some days after, I was at
| his home and he explained, what he had figured out about it. The
| same evening at home, I wrote my first program on paper (a
| Russian roulette game, I think). I couldn't wait until the next
| day, when I came home to him again, to see if my program would
| work. After some work we got it working :-) and I was hooked. I
| began buying the magazines "Your Computer" and "Byte", and even
| though English was a foreign language, I managed to understand
| some of it. A few months later, on my birthday I got my own ZX81,
| and after that an Acorn Atom, and then an Acorn Electron, and
| then a PC clone, and then... Still working with programming, now
| in data science :-)
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Really sad. I never owned any of his products. But he was a
| gifted engineer and inventor and his focus on bringing tech to
| the masses was admirable.
|
| The C5 still looks modern today!
| parkersweb wrote:
| Growing up we first had a Sinclair Cambridge calculator, then a
| ZX81 (complete with a 16K RAM expansion pack!), then a Spectrum
| that we upgraded to a Spectrum+ by sending off for the upgrade
| kit. We even had a Sinclair thermal printer...
|
| So many happy memories of weekends spent entering game code from
| the back of magazines and then venturing into writing our own.
| Genuinely don't think I'd be in the software industry today if it
| hadn't been for his creations.
| dd444fgdfg wrote:
| I talked to him on the phone once, many years ago. Even though I
| was a kid I knew who he was. Very sad. RIP.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Ah, that's too bad, really. Pocket calculators, Electric
| vehicles, cheap personal computers, e-bikes and probably others
| that I'm not aware of. Game changers in every instance, not all
| of them equally successful but you really can't fault the man for
| trying.
| herio wrote:
| Even as a Commodore person who's never really owned a Sinclair
| computer, it can't be underestimated what an impact Sir Clive had
| on early home computing.
|
| He truly showed that affordable computing is possible and in my
| mind also inspired the large home computer "cottage industry" in
| the UK.
|
| Kudos and may you long be remembered.
| pantulis wrote:
| I remember how I aspired to get a ZX81 and then my dad brought
| the Vic20 home (color! 5+8kb!) so I became a Commodore fanboy
| but hey, Sir Clive is my hero too.
| midnightclubbed wrote:
| Very sad. For American readers it may be difficult to explain
| quite how much Sir Clive and his products shaped tech and a large
| number of British engineers. So many of us found a love of
| programming from Sir Clive's computers.
|
| The beautiful thing about Sir Clive's products (particularly the
| ZX Spectrum) was that they were cheap. Basically a Zilog Z80, a
| ROM, RAM, membrane keyboard, and a single asic. No sound chip, no
| video chip, no disk drive, bring your own tape deck (connected
| directly to Z80 IO pins).
|
| By designing for cost Sinclair Research were able to make a home
| computer that working class families could afford. Rather than
| being an enthusiast purchase, kids could bug their parents for
| one - and millions did. Thousands of these kids turned their
| programming experiments into businesses and careers.
| ghoul2 wrote:
| 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. This is good; _you cannot harm the computer in
| this way._ Be bold. Experiment. If you get stuck, remember that
| you can always reset the computer to the original picture with
| the copyright message by taking out the '9V DC IN' plug and
| putting it back again. This should be the last resort because you
| lose all the information in the computer._
|
| "You cannot harm the computer in this way."
|
| That single sentence started a life long journey. I doubt I would
| have been bold enough at that age to mess around with one of our
| most valuable possessions.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I love that attitude and I totally agree with the sentiment.
| Just experimenting is how you learn best.
|
| Especially in those days it was a unique sentiment. Most
| devices came with long instruction manuals which people would
| actually read, and even schematics. Until the home computer
| came, only educated professionals were allowed to go near
| computers. I think Steven Levy called them the IBM high priests
| in his book "Hackers". It's old but a good read.
|
| Now nobody reads the couple of pages that come with their new
| phone. Good.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| I had no idea. This is amazing.
| RantyDave wrote:
| I'm another who had exactly the same experience. That one
| sentence did the entire country a massive favour (and is,
| sadly, no longer true)
|
| The quality of the documentation with these early computers
| was also truly exceptional. I learned basic in a weekend.
| midnightclubbed wrote:
| To elaborate your point every ZX Spectrum came with a
| detailed manual from which you could learn Basic.
|
| And in the back it had a ascii table with all the Z80
| instruction codes - so once you had basic down you could
| try assembly!
| timthorn wrote:
| The keyboard itself was almost the Spectrum's own manual,
| listing all the BASIC keywords - because to enter one of
| the keywords, you just typed the key with that label.
| That made programming possible for a preschooler.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| I remember the TI-99/4A BASIC manual said something like
| "errors will not harm your computer" and it had a similar
| reassuring effect on my child self.
| pistoriusp wrote:
| Absolutely feel the same. What a legend.
| belter wrote:
| Same. This is my desk decoration: "The Complete Spectrum ROM
| Disassembly"
|
| http://www.primrosebank.net/computers/zxspectrum/docs/Comple.
| ..
| beardyw wrote:
| The book remains on the shelf behind me when most others
| have gone.
| flir wrote:
| For me it's these
| https://www.flickr.com/photos/nathanchantrell/6446816275
|
| Godspeed, Sir Clive. Your projects were all bonkers in
| the best possible way.
| dvirsky wrote:
| Same here, but it also reminds me, the first programming lesson
| in school (not on a Spectrum but on an IBM PC), our teacher
| told us "there's nothing you can do with code that will harm
| the computer in any way" (these computers did not have a hard
| drive so you could not wipe anything).
|
| This immediately set us on a quest to find ways to prove him
| wrong - the basis of hacker thinking. Not that we did find
| anything with our limited knowledge but it was a nice thought
| exercise (our best bet was to create a program that constantly
| switches between graphics mode and text mode. The monitor would
| make a clicking sound when this happened, so we figured if we
| do this enough times we'll probably burn some circuit, but we
| never tried it).
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| 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.
| srcmap wrote:
| My first compute was ~1984 Timex_Sinclair_1000 $99 and with 2K
| RAM. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Sinclair_1000
|
| It definitively the gateway drug that hook me into computer.
|
| Bought $6 book on how to program Sinclair computer and copy the
| Basic Code from the book into that computer and record that
| program into audio cassette tape and output to analog TV.
|
| Now I working daily with systems that have 128 cores, 256
| threads, 256-768MB of L3 cache memory, 1TB DDR+ 8xGPUs each
| with 32GB of HBM.
|
| I still think I got more "High/Rush" from the sinclair 1000 37
| years ago than the latest 128C/256T CPU. Now is a job, back
| than it was an adventure, exploration to whole new world!
| headmelted wrote:
| My story is so similar to yours (and I'm sure many others).
|
| Santa brought my house a Spectrum 48k Lo Profile when I was a
| kid with a cool KnightRider style keyboard.
|
| Over the years I haven't seen it talked about much if at all,
| so I always assumed it was a fairly niche model. After hearing
| about Sir Clive, I looked it up to find out how many sold and
| was surprised to learn that it never actually existed as a
| standalone device.
|
| My dad must have bought the add-on kit, and an 81, and quietly
| upgraded it and just never told us kids. I'm gonna call him
| when I'm done typing this.
|
| All I ever wanted to do on it was transcribe the programs from
| my magazines and try to learn how to make something of my own
| someday. I'm not sure what I'd be doing now if he had just
| brought home an Atari, but I almost certainly wouldn't be in
| tech.
|
| Cheers, Clive. I hope I see you down the road when the last of
| my cyan and red bars have run out.
|
| For anyone interested:
|
| https://www.flickr.com/photos/anachrocomputer/2671208818
| meelford wrote:
| The top keys have 7 (incl colours) functions per key. So
| cool!!
| brulard wrote:
| I got an Atari and I'm in tech. Why should that be any
| different?
| tcbawo wrote:
| I assume he meant an Atari video game system rather than an
| Atari personal computer.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| 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.
| headmelted wrote:
| 100% this.
| PapaSpaceDelta wrote:
| For a lot of us Brits Sir Clive's machines were our first
| glimpse of the future. If that doesn't sound like you, then
| just stand aside while we mourn our hero.
| headmelted wrote:
| _EDIT: I should clarify I meant an Atari game system._
|
| I was just talking about my own experience, but since you
| ask (and I'm certain this will bore but you _did_ ask):
|
| I got into tech due to having access to that computer, at
| that time, in an environment that otherwise wouldn't have
| been amenable to learning about it at all.
|
| In my case - our family Spectrum was later replaced by a
| SNES and after that a PS1. After the 48k, I didn't have
| access to a PC at home for another decade, and wouldn't
| have seen the point of saving enough to get it if not for
| having the Spectrum.
|
| If I had gotten an Atari to begin with I wouldn't have had
| those experiences. I guess something else inspired you
| along the way - for me it was this.
| k__ wrote:
| Haha, that's really wholesome.
|
| I remember how I destroyed my first PC on the first day by
| flipping a switch on the PSU before turning it on. Good times.
| detritus wrote:
| I did the same with my very first PC. For shame! I'd been
| used to simpler 16bit and 8bit machines, including a
| spectrum...
| nanis wrote:
| Mine was smuggled into the country due to currency crises and
| import/export controls. I owe thanks to my mother for arranging
| that so that I could graduate from writing programs using paper
| and pencil to using an actual computer.
|
| Thank you Psion's Horizons cassette for teaching me about
| computer architecture. Thank you Toni Baker for teaching me Z80
| assembly so I could program x86 with no problem.
|
| But, thank you Sir Clive, above all, for making such an
| affordable and approachable computer. What I learned on the
| ZX81 and the ZX Spectrum is still with me.
| ComodoHacker wrote:
| In my country, there weren't any originals, even smuggled.
| Clones were built and sold by local engineers, using smuggled
| schematics and photocopies of circuit board layouts.
|
| The one I first get my hands on as a kid was built by my
| elder brother, an electronics engineer. I was so fascinated,
| I remember secretly sneaking into his house when he was at
| work to play the games.
|
| He taught me electronics and encouraged me to understand the
| schematics and build one for myself. And I eventually did,
| but I got something wrong, and it worked unstable. I never
| got patience to find the cause and get it right.
|
| But I definitely got charmed by electronics and programming
| because of this. Thank you, Sir Sinclair. And thank you, my
| brother.
| ridruejo wrote:
| RIP. Like many others in here, the ZX Spectrum was my first
| computer and I still have fond memories of that time.
| [deleted]
| ianetaylor wrote:
| Like so many I learned to code on a ZX80 and basically never
| stopped. I'm here 40+ years later, typing this on a HoloLens and
| marveling at the impact that little computer had on me and the
| world. RIP Sir Clive
| keithnz wrote:
| My first experience of programming was on a ZX81, we also had a
| thermal printer, I remember having this overwhelming sense of
| possibilities watching that little printer work and becoming
| fascinated with computers controlling machines. Much of my
| career has been doing hardware/electronic/mechanical systems. I
| have fond memories of those early times where it was an
| exciting time where we devoured every word about computers.
| the-dude wrote:
| Although I was in the Acorn camp, my first home exposure was to a
| friends ZX81. The keyboard!
|
| In highschool, my physics teacher had a C5, which he could not
| get 'road legal' in The Netherlands.
|
| Great times. RIP.
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