The ZX81 introduced me to the world of computing.
I do wonder if he wasn't so keen on cost cutting, the extra few £ for a decent keyboard etc. would have actually given him more success.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9998969/Home-computing-pioneer-Sir-Clive-Sinclair-dies-aged-81-long-illness.html
Last edited by: zippy on Thu 16 Sep 21 at 19:22
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>> The ZX81 introduced me to the world of computing.
>>
>> I do wonder if he wasn't so keen on cost cutting, the extra few £
>> for a decent keyboard etc. would have actually given him more success.
>>
>>
The ZX81 also got me into computers. Most of the people who bought those and the Spectrum that followed didn't give a damn about keyboards as they couldn't type anyway.
It was the early Sinclair models that started the 1980's computer boom in this country, being so easily affordable.
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A True genius, a visionary, and like all of them Eccentric, I remember the watch, the TV, the little radio, the ZX81 (pfffttt to you whimps who bought the ready built one) All of it eye opening brave new techno world stuff that looked the part. Few of them worked well, and it all came to a head with the Spectrum. Oversold, ergonomically horrible, terrible business controls and the C5 was the inevitable conclusion of am eccentric genius who is not reigned in by someone sensible.
I was glad to be part of the sinclair generation and its a sad loss.
Last edited by: Zero on Thu 16 Sep 21 at 20:04
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>>
>> and its a sad loss.
>>
>>
True!
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The Spectrum was the market leader in the U.K. almost from the off, and consequently for ages had by far the best selection of games. Which is mainly what ours was used for…an early 48K pale rubber key one. 1983 or 1984 I think.
We had it for a while, though I think (but can’t be sure anymore) that we might have had a 128k one too. But by then, as a teenager, I’d found other things to do…. I do remember that in 1986 (remembered because it’s the year we moved) Dad brought an old IBM PC home from work for us to use - clicky keys, green screen monitor, weighed a tonne and used 5 1/4 floppies and a hard drive the size of which I can’t remember. But because we used that at home I bought an Amstrad PC1512 when I went to Uni in 1989, which had a mouse, the power supply in the monitor and a 20MB hard drive. Oh, and a dot matrix printer for the last minute printing of essays.
But, partly because of the Spectrum, my brothers and I used computers from before we were teenagers, and in the case of my youngest brother since he was 7. So none of us really remember life before them. They were there at home, school, (the good old BBC Micro) and work. Having said that, the speed with which a 4 year old can master an iPhone or iPad is something else…I remember watching one of my nephews trying to ‘swipe’ the TV screen when he was very little :)
And there was even a time that I thought a C5 would have been a great way of doing my paper round ;)
So thanks Sir Clive
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Jetpac, wasn't it? The little spaceman that one had to maneuver around the screen.
Many, many years later I was in a meeting with the directors of a well phone telephone company and in an idle moment we were just chatting. Turned out that one of them had made a not inconsiderable sum of money as a young lad writing books about ZX games.
Every time I mentioned it to people they always knew his name, but I didn't. Nice chap, and interesting.
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Oh so many games…. Jet Pac. Jet Set Willy. Horace goes Skiing. Manic Miner (a classic). Daley Thompson’s Decathalon - that one used a joystick!
youtu.be/BgUzteADsRI
Last edited by: VxFan on Fri 17 Sep 21 at 03:13
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>The ZX81 introduced me to the world of computing.
>
>I do wonder if he wasn't so keen on cost cutting, the extra few £ for a decent keyboard etc.
>would have actually given him more success.
I don't know. But the ZX81 was the first computer I ever touched and the machine that got me and kept me interested in the IT side of business until I got interested in business itself.
Until then I thought that welding was a pretty acceptable way to spend my time.
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I had a Sinclair digital watch and a calculator as school-boy. They had a "wow" factor then
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I was given a Sinclair Micromatic Radio as a present for passing the West Riding's 11 plus (based on continuous assessment rather than a single exam).
Listening to Radio 4 from bedtime to closedown massively increased my understanding of the world around me and seeded my awareness of politics and current affairs.
I still have a night time radio earpiece habit to this day.
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>> Listening to Radio 4 from bedtime to closedown massively increased my understanding of the world
>> around me and seeded my awareness of politics and current affairs.
>>
>> I still have a night time radio earpiece habit to this day.
meanwhile us normal people tuned into radio Luxembourg.
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>>meanwhile us normal people tuned into radio Luxembourg.
I tried, mostly unsuccessfully. And then on the 16th October 1973, when I was off school with a leg broken at rugby, Capital Radio started. My bedside radio didn't get switched off again until about 5 years later when I left home. 168.
Even these days the Capital Radio jingle is my ring tone.
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VIC 20 then BBC Micro where I learnt Basic.
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>> Even these days the Capital Radio jingle is my ring tone.
Radio Caroline replaced it for me, Could see the Mi Amigo from Clacton Seafront. Then of course came Radio London - Big L. As per the Bromp thread, nowt between us Essex lads and the transmitter.
And I always had a thing for radio piracy.......
Last edited by: VxFan on Fri 17 Sep 21 at 03:13
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>> Radio Caroline replaced it for me, Could see the Mi Amigo from Clacton Seafront. Then
>> of course came Radio London - Big L. As per the Bromp thread, nowt between
>> us Essex lads and the transmitter.
Mrs B has similar memories of Caroline's northern station off the Mersey estuary and visible from Crosby where they lived at the time. Her Dad used to drive them to the seafront to listen. There was some interaction between station and seafront listeners involving flashing car headlights.
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>> There was some interaction between station and seafront listeners involving flashing
>> car headlights.
>>
....why? It wasn't moored on the Dogger Bank.....
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Now of course, you have a dogging car.
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>> meanwhile us normal people tuned into radio Luxembourg.
You could actually make sense of Luxembourg in Essex?
In Yorkshire we got about 50% between the deep fades, and that was on a good night. No fancy electronic tuning and Synchonous AM on the Micromatic (or any other seventies transistor radio).
I do though have fond memories of Radio Eireann's equivalent of Week Ending.
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>> In Yorkshire we got about 50% between the deep fades, and that was on a
>> good night.
Essex, the Thames estuary part anyway, is very flat. Luxembourg is only 400km away and its all down hill, nothing in the way.
Last edited by: VxFan on Fri 17 Sep 21 at 03:14
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I had a hand in running Radio Julia International when I was at school. A short lived and very local pirate radio - but we had a lot of fun doing it.
Speccie 48 was my first computer and I have an emulator on the PC which I fire up once in a while. Jet Pac, Jet Set Willie, Lunar Jetman, Horace and the Spiders, Manic Miner, and Atic Atac were my favourites and I have all of them to play now.
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By far the best games were Leisure Suit Larry & the Lounge Lizards, Doom 2, Duke Nukem 3D, and Return to Castle Wolfenstein.
I first played Doom 2 late at night, in a dark room, on a big screen (A 20 inch CRT PC display was big then).
I went to bed about 3am had had 5 hours of nightmares.
Last edited by: Zero on Fri 17 Sep 21 at 11:15
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I don't remember Leisure Suit Larry at all. Doom 2, Duke Nukem and Wolfenstein I played for the first time on PCs, I think.
There were some quite good games on Digital MicroVAX / VMS but they were all played on CCT and so the graphics were seriously limited.
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Talking about these games, one has been at the back of my mind, and my mental hashtag that dragged it out was "Droids r us".
The game was "Space Quest". en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Quest_I
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Oh well if we're talking about PC games Lemmings was the first I remember to really tax the brain. Wolfenstein, Doom and the others were all fun though.
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Load “”
Save””
Am I remembering correctly??
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>> Load “”
>> Save””
>>
>> Am I remembering correctly??
You forgot a bit.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rqxz23IxRY&ab_channel=RarewareArchives
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Jeez you have no idea how much that made me smile!
The memories of loading hoping to hear the tone change to the high pitched tone and if it didnt you had to start from scratch again!!
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Sir Clive Sinclair Has Crashed
But the C5 survived?
classicsworld.co.uk/opinion/was-the-sinclair-c5-30-years-too-early/
Two C5s escaped to Esher. No potholes and no traffic by the post office.
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In many ways far more impressive than his later inventions was the Sinclair Cambridge electronic calculator launched in 1973.
Cost me 2 weeks pay as a trainee accountant at the time!
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Anyone remember the Sinclair pocket TV?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYZA0TZkjgA
At work sometime in the mid eighties a colleague brought one in one Saturday and the pair of us watched the England/Scotland football international. I had to stand directly behind him looking over his shoulder as you could only view it straight ahead or the picture would distort.
Technology might have been primative back then by todays standards, but the eighties were exciting times for consumer electronics with new stuff coming out by the month.
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Chris Curry talks about Clive Sinclair, Sinclair Radionics and Acorn Computers
this is brilliant, to those of us of a certain age and interest in "tech"
Its nearly an hour long, get yourself a cuppa and a few biccies, and settle down for this.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrTmvqwpZF8
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Sir Clive Sinclair Has Crashed - Robin O'Reliant
