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Sir Clive Sinclair has died

• h2odragon 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX81 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX81 or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Sinclair_1000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Sinclair_1000 Those were wild little toys; and people stretched them beyond all reason.
  • GiorgioG 5y ago
    RIP. My first "computer" was a Timex Sinclair 1000. I still have it, though I lost the power supply.
  • ojbyrne 5y ago
    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.
    • homerowilson 5y ago
      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.
    • rwmj 5y ago
      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).
  • RantyDave 5y ago
    Chess in 1K. INCLUDING THE VIDEO BUFFER. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1K_ZX_Chess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1K_ZX_Chess
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  > "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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      > 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 5y ago
        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.
• sgt101 5y ago
  I owe him a career, I suspect a lot of others do as well.
  • abraxas 5y ago
    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 5y ago
    Yup. His little ZX computer was the gateway drug into programming for me.
  • zelos 5y ago
    Yep: from being given a +2 when I was 9, I don't think there was ever much doubt what my career would be.
• danielrpa 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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.
• zarkov99 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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.
    • vidarh 5y ago
      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.
      • dng88 5y ago
        Do the touch hot chip diagnostics a lot. Mainly for the faked pineapple II. Cannot afford intel memory chip then and has to settle down for Fujitsu memory chip.
    • AnonymousPlanet 5y ago
      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.
• mynegation 5y ago
  @dang - I believe that deserves a black ribbon. In some countries generations grew up learning hacking and programming with his computers (and knock-offs)
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • empressplay 5y ago
    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 5y ago
    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.
• kwhitefoot 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
    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.
    • kwhitefoot 5y ago
      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.
  • 5y ago
• deleted 5y ago
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• ggm 5y ago
  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.
  • rjeli 5y ago
    genuinely appreciate your anecdote, it is interesting to know, but perhaps a bit distasteful in reply to his death.
    • ggm 5y ago
      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 5y ago
      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 5y ago
• pmontra 5y ago
  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.
  • browningstreet 5y ago
    I wish I still had my original Osborne 1, and my Sinclair QL...
  • rwmj 5y ago
    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 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyluEM0N6TY
  • alok-g 5y ago
    I too still have the computer and it powers up. 90% of the keys have stopped working though.
  • pjmlp 5y ago
    I also own mine still, but I will never plug them again, too afraid to fry them.
• gojomo 5y ago
  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.
  • opencl 5y ago
    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.
  • jacquesm 5y ago
    On the ZX80 it was done in such a way that just processing your keyboard input caused the video to blank.
    • gojomo 5y ago
      That rings a bell!
      • jacquesm 5y ago
        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.
• dvirsky 5y ago
  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.
• diskzero 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 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.
• sys_64738 5y ago
  Britain's Steve Jobs.
  • zepto 5y ago
    Not really. That would be Herman Hauser.
    • sys_64738 5y ago
      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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      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!
      • daverol 5y ago
        Was the arm wrestling in 'The Mitre' or 'The Baron of Beef'?
        • HarHarVeryFunny 5y ago
• CobrastanJorji 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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!
• tpmx 5y ago
  The excellent Micro Men docudrama (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Men https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Men) has somehow been on Youtube since 2013: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXBxV6-zamM 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.)
  • hyperpallium2 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXBxV6-zamM#t=5m9s
  • empressplay 5y ago
    "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 5y ago
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3l_NV9oQ1c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3l_NV9oQ1c
  • simonw 5y ago
    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.
• cwilkes 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
  RIP Sir Sinclair.
  • chrisseaton 5y ago
    Knights use their first names - he’s Sir Clive, or Sir Clive Sinclair - never Sir Sinclair.
• Doctor_Fegg 5y ago
  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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_QL#Legacy
  • ukd1 5y ago
    The QL was one of my first computers too, I loved that thing!
    • TacticalCoder 5y ago
      And it was an incredibly slick looking machine for the time!
      • TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
        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) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Watch_(wristwatch) http://www.vintagebritishcalculators.info/html/sovereign.html http://www.vintagebritishcalculators.info/html/sovereign.htm... 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 5y ago
          My dad had a black watch. It was the stuff of Sci-Fi.
      • elevaet 5y ago
        Great cyberpunk aesthetic! http://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/sinclair-ql/3347 http://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/sinclair-ql/3347
• FartyMcFarter 5y ago
  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.
• coffeemug 5y ago
  I'm actually really sad about it. My first experience programming was with his machine. Rest in peace :(
• pjmlp 5y ago
  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 Coupé, although the later wasn't related to Sir Clive.
• Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    I've seen one of those during my time in Poland.
• spdegabrielle 5y ago
  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.
• terramex 5y ago
  Our first computer was БАЙТ - 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 5y ago
    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/1 https://twitter.com/varjag/status/1146500643328331776/photo/...
    • beirut_bootleg 5y ago
      Saw those ROMs in my Romanian clone called Cobra (Computers Brașov). 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-story-of-cobra-the-1980s-illicit-handmade-computer/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/11/the-underground-stor...
    • aix1 5y ago
      At some point in the mid to late 1980s, there was a craze in Minsk of seemingly everyone home-building ZX Spectrum clones. Probably the Ленинград design, though I'm not entirely sure. As I recall, all the components were off-the-shelf Soviet parts (K155 TTL series), so no ULA or anything fancy like that. https://spectrumforeveryone.com/technical/zx-spectrum-ula-types/ https://spectrumforeveryone.com/technical/zx-spectrum-ula-ty...
      • 5y ago
• maerF0x0 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      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?
  • goto11 5y ago
    Sinclair was probably as important in Europe as Apple II was in the US.
• hyperpallium2 5y ago
  That pocket TV is ridiculously cool and he knows it.
  • canada_dry 5y ago
    Yup! That, and his LED wrist watch - an absolute brilliant piece of work at the time!
• djhworld 5y ago
  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 :)
• veltas 5y ago
  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.
• Razengan 5y ago
  … 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.
  • Razengan 5y ago
    Oh hello angry person who went into my history and downvoted benign comments.
    • samhw 5y ago
      Haha, I was wondering why your comment was hidden. That kind of behaviour feels like yet another episode of 'Reddit comes to HN'.
• rcarmo 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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!
• ggambetta 5y ago
  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 https://microhobby.speccy.cz/mhforever/numero001.htm [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_Monster_Maze https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_Monster_Maze [3] https://gabrielgambetta.com/computer-graphics-from-scratch/dedication.html https://gabrielgambetta.com/computer-graphics-from-scratch/d...
• hyperpallium2 5y ago
  "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).
• kimi 5y ago
  I think this pretty much sums it up.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts96J7HhO28 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts96J7HhO28 RIP sir Clive.
• jacquesm 5y ago
  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.
• the-dude 5y ago
  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.
• faichai 5y ago
  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.
• neilwilson 5y ago
  Ouch. I'm here because of Sir Clive. Like many I started with a 1k ZX81.
• streamofdigits 5y ago
  They don't make them like that no more. What would it take for technology to feel again just... white magic.
• DerWOK 5y ago
  Anybody noticed, the inventor of the ZX81 of course died at the age of 81. So, he predicted this decades ago?
• thom 5y ago
  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-ql-the https://worldofspectrum.org/archive/books/working-sinclair-q... https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/2000420/Book/The_Working_Spectrum https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/2000420/Book/The_Worki...
  • ridruejo 5y ago
    That's awesome
• bane 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      There wouldn't have been a BBC without Uncle Clive.
      • hughrr 5y ago
        You mean there wouldn’t have been a BBC if he had tried harder? :)
      • TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
        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.
      • Wildgoose 5y ago
        Not true. The BBC was based on Acorn's "Proton" computer which was intended as a successor to the Acorn Atom.
        • dboreham 5y ago
          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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Computers
• gjkood 5y ago
  RIP Sir Clive Sinclair. His Sinclair ZX81 got me into my love for computing. I wouldn't be where I am without that exposure.
• protomyth 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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.
  • chrisseaton 5y ago
    It's Sir Clive, or Sir Clive Sinclair, never Sir Sinclair. Knights primarily use their first names, and their surname only for disambiguation.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
• ghoul2 5y ago
  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.
  • pistoriusp 5y ago
    Absolutely feel the same. What a legend.
    • belter 5y ago
      Same. This is my desk decoration: "The Complete Spectrum ROM Disassembly" http://www.primrosebank.net/computers/zxspectrum/docs/CompleteSpectrumROMDisassemblyThe.pdf http://www.primrosebank.net/computers/zxspectrum/docs/Comple...
      • beardyw 5y ago
        The book remains on the shelf behind me when most others have gone.
        • flir 5y ago
          For me it's these https://www.flickr.com/photos/nathanchantrell/6446816275 https://www.flickr.com/photos/nathanchantrell/6446816275 Godspeed, Sir Clive. Your projects were all bonkers in the best possible way.
      • 5y ago
• sillyquiet 5y ago
  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 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 5y ago
  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 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.
  • chx 5y ago
    Ps. Please play https://www.geeky-gadgets.com/33-year-old-zx-spectrum-challenge-solved-by-oxfords-museum-of-the-history-of-science-30-04-2015/ https://www.geeky-gadgets.com/33-year-old-zx-spectrum-challe... at his funeral.
  • stevekemp 5y ago
    Horace and the Spiders, as well as Horace Goes Skiing are very much part of my early memories of computers. I guess Dizzy comes close, but Horace was the first "character" I played, and looked out for.
• anigbrowl 5y ago
  Sir Clive was so far ahead of his time and brought color into so many lives. RIP.
• makerofthings 5y ago
  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.
• shever73 5y ago
  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
• hyperpallium2 5y ago
  ZX81 manual - coolest cover ever https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/content/media/13/659613-medium.jpg https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/content/media/13/...
  • jmkd 5y ago
    Wow, that bought a serious jolt of recollection, thanks
    • FabHK 5y ago
      Indeed. Good days. Anyone got a link to the full pdf? RIP, Sir Clive. I shall wear my (suitably black) ZX81 T-Shirt tomorrow.
      • LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
        There are several under [1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ZX81+Manual https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ZX81+Manual But I'd recommend this instead [2] https://www.timexsinclair.com/product/zx-forth/ https://www.timexsinclair.com/product/zx-forth/ for the real retro blast ;-)
• phenylene 5y ago
  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 ">".
• parkersweb 5y ago
  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.
• aurizon 5y ago
  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.
• shyrka 5y ago
  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.
• foofoo55 5y ago
  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_calculators.html 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_calculator.html http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/sinclair_-_the_pocket...
• deleted 5y ago
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• mobilene 5y ago
  Sadness. I got started in the 80s on a Sinclair ZX81. It changed my life.
• herio 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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.
• xedarius 5y ago
  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 https://youtu.be/Ts96J7HhO28 RIP good sir.
• andraz 5y ago
  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 5y ago
  Nevermind microsoft or apple. Sinclair is the real company that first saw the market of computer for the masses.
• Eliezer 5y ago
  I learned to program on a ZX81. What else is there to say?
• acomjean 5y ago
  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.
• ridruejo 5y ago
  RIP. Like many others in here, the ZX Spectrum was my first computer and I still have fond memories of that time.
• decremental 5y ago
  Who?
• jecel 5y ago
  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-Scale-160MB-Solid-State-Disk/ http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/3043/Anamartic-Wafer-... Currently: https://cerebras.net/ https://cerebras.net/
• kerrsclyde 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 :-)
• virgulino 5y ago
  I started with a Brazilian ZX81 clone, the Prologica CP200. It changed my life. Thank you, Sir Clive Sinclair.
• dave_sid 5y ago
  RIP
• rocketbop 5y ago
  Certainly deserving of a black banner.
• jensgk 5y ago
  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 :-)
• thinkingemote 5y ago
  I went without a Christmas present because my dad got me a zx spectrum for my birthday. I'm glad he did.
• lalabert 5y ago
  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.
• KineticLensman 5y ago
  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.
• klft 5y ago
  RIP Sir Clive and thanks for the ZX81!
• gorgoiler 5y ago
  Rest in peace, the “actor” behind Q in Spycat: An Interactive Expose of MI4.5.
• midnightclubbed 5y ago
  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.
  • B1FF_PSUVM 5y ago
    Also, earlier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sinclair_calculators https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sinclair_calculators In the days when slide-rules ... ah, ruled the land. RIP
  • nemo44x 5y ago
    As an American with British ties I will say a legend has passed away. My British side has a better recollection of computers than my American side from that era in large part due to his innovation.
  • djmips 5y ago
    When I went to college in Canada, my hosts where I rented a room had a ZX81 that they weren't using and I was allowed to put it in my room. What a fun world to come home to explore the inner workings. It had a printer and I figured out how to print graphics. I was overjoyed with my success. What a fun machine to hack around on! RIP
• mhd 5y ago
  I'm going to take a small tour with my A-Bike tomorrow.
• ianetaylor 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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.
• hanoz 5y ago
  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
• holoduke 5y ago
  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!!!
• klelatti 5y ago
  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.
• termau 5y ago
  So the creator of the zx81 dies at 81, my first computer, very sad.
• rsiqueira 5y ago
  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 https://www.dwitter.net/d/23871
• muzster 5y ago
  Thank you Sir Clive. I will wear my clashing outfits for the next 8 days.
• robarr 5y ago
  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!
• wst_ 5y ago
  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.
• rossmohax 5y ago
  What is the modern alternative to ZX? Something which encourages tinkering and reasonably priced.
  • danielrpa 5y ago
    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.
  • mrspeaker 5y ago
    I recently had the feeling of those early home-computing days from the Ben Eater's "8-bit computer from scratch" videos/kits. Really fun project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyznrdDSSGM&list=PLowKtXNTBypGqImE405J2565dvjafglHU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyznrdDSSGM&list=PLowKtXNTBy...
• GekkePrutser 5y ago
  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!
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• _joel 5y ago
  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 https://imgur.com/a/qgufGOE
  • _joel 5y ago
    There's also a lovely interview here https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58587521 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58587521
• throw_m239339 5y ago
  Grew up with Thomson computers and C64, Amiga so I never had the pleasure to use a Spectrum computer. But RIP sir.
• fieryskiff11 5y ago
  Never heard of her
• bnastic 5y ago
  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”
• JulianMorrison 5y ago
  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.
• dd444fgdfg 5y ago
  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.
• josefrichter 5y ago
  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!
• deleted 5y ago
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• Xophmeister 5y ago
  Very sad news. Like many commenting here, I cut my teeth on a Spectrum; a +3, when I was about 6 or 7. I remember my dad painstakingly inputting the code for an analogue clock program from a book. It took him hours but once I saw the result I was hooked and wrote all kinds of silly little programs, slowly learning what I could create.
• drumhead 5y ago
  I had a ZX81 and then a 48k ZX Spectrum. He revolutionised the computer industry in this country, so many of us got into the industry because of what he did. A true visionary.
• qnm 5y ago
  My first computer was a home-built ZX81 (manufactured in my hometown of Dundee) given to me by a capable and nerdy family friend, which was quickly replaced by a ZX Spectrum Plus 2 (it had colour and built-in tape deck) that Christmas - a move which has shaped my life ever since. I have fond (ish!) memories of typing in hex codes and BASIC from computing magazines to create games and demos, and having the ability to see and edit that code almost certainly give me the start of the career I have now. RIP Sir Clive.
• renaudg 5y ago
  I owe my career to this golden generation of micros (an Amstrad CPC in my case). Much respect to the man who undoubtedly kickstarted this revolution in Britain. Now, at the risk of sounding blasphemous : the ZX Spectrum is also the most annoyingly overrated, overhyped system in UK retro computing circles, bar none. While it might technically be able to display 8 (garish) colours (some of which are shades of others) it can't even do it without weird limitations ("colour clash"). For all intents and purposes, its software feels monochrome. You might get a couple of different background colours on screen, but sprites are nearly always monochrome with heavy use of dithering. They leave a lot to the imagination, that's for sure (check out the monochrome rainbows in Rainbow Islands :) ) The keyboard is rubbish, the machine doesn't come with a tape player, it doesn't do standard joysticks. Its BASIC is cryptic and underpowered compared to the Amstrad's (tbh, the C64's isn't great either, maybe the Amstrad just shines here) All of that was probably fair game for a cheap entry level machine in 1982, but by 1984 the Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC were both affordable and running circles around the poor Spectrum (each with their own strengths). Most other European countries had caught wind of this and chose a side (C64 in Germany / Nordics, Amstrad in France / Spain) and yet, Britain kept this bizarre and very unique love affair with the Speccy going strong, well into the early 90s. Today, the reality distortion field its fans live in would put Apple's to shame. The term "nostalgia goggles" must have been invented for ZX Spectrum Youtubers, seriously : they will do comparison videos between 8-bit conversions of arcade games where any outside observer would find the Spectrum port to be embarrassingly, almost comically inferior to the other two, but they'll still award it the top spot for reasons like "it plays well", or "it looks great despite the good old Speccy's limitations" On forums, you will show them side by side Amstrad/Spectrum game screenshot comparisons (like this one : https://imgur.com/a/D7Ocd https://imgur.com/a/D7Ocd) and they'll still insist the games on the right hand side look better. The publisher of the excellent "visual compendium" series of retrogaming books has one about the Spectrum, refuses to do one with the Amstrad. Go figure... In the end of course, it's all good fun to be reenacting what is really schoolyard squabble, but the inability of the British to recognise the one homegrown computer they should be proud of never ceases to amaze me ;)
• the_af 5y ago
  Tip of the hat from one C64 childhood user here. A friend owned a ZX Spectrum while I had the C64, and while I liked the games from my C64 more, the ZX was oddly appealing as well. Except for the chiclet keyboard! :P
• yrgulation 5y ago
  My first computer ever has been a zx spectrum. RIP sir. You changed at least one life for the better.
• bernardv 5y ago
  Thank you Sir. My ZX81 is where it all started.
• gwf 5y ago
  As a 14 year old in 1981, I bought a Timex Sinclair from Sears with money that I had been saving up for a over a year. Best. Purchase. Ever. What I learned on that $99 machine would change the course of my life. Thank you, Sir Clive, for helping me to find my calling.
• sas224dbm 5y ago
  When i hear the term "Manic Miner" i think of endless weekend sleepovers at my pal's place trying to solve those goddamn levels .. we would take it in turns on that crazy rubber keyboard of his Spectrum .. what a machine of the times .. awesome :)
• astral303 5y ago
  RIP Sir Clive Sinclair! I grew up on a Soviet clone of the ZX Spectrum 48, the Hobbit! Many hours spent. Many games written. Used to write BASIC on graph paper before entering it in.
• dynjo 5y ago
  Probably the saddest day in my IT career, this man started it all for me.
• Goety 5y ago
  Titans are falling
• DaveSapien 5y ago
  A sad day indeed. A true democratising force in computing, without his work I wouldn't have ever thought someone like me could write software. Even If I was too young to write at the time, the ZX Spectrum was my first/only video game experience, small games made by one or two people that my family could afford or borrow. This led me into making indie games and software dev, it gave me the idea of 'why not me?', the ZX Spectrum might not have been the door, but is sure was the key into a much wider world for me. It also led me to recreate my favorite thing about the ZX Spectrum, the loading sounds as a musical instrument. The ZX Plectrum.
  • muziq 5y ago
    Have you listened to early Jega ?
• korax_nyx 5y ago
  I will never forget those 8 colours. I hope that he realized how much joy and positive change he brought to many people like me. Rest in peace.
• RachelF 5y ago
  A better obituary and better journalism in general here: https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/16/sir_clive_sinclair/ https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/16/sir_clive_sinclair/
• zubairq 5y ago
  To my best recollection, I remember getting into computers when I first saw an advert for the ZX81 flight simulator in a computer magazine amd being totally amazed and inspired. Thanks Clive!
• krueger71 5y ago
  Sad to hear this. I got a ZX in the mid-eighties. It was the 16k-model but my father upgraded it to 48k, I think it even involved some soldering. One of my best friends also had one and we tinkered a lot, all by ourselves. To get stuff to load from copied cassettes on whatever tape deck or boom-box you had available was sometimes a very frustrating experience. We cleaned the tape heads with q-tips and alcohol, set the five-band eq to some previous good setting (marked with a pencil), then loaded, adjusted and retried. Typing in long listings from computer magazines, often failing and having to double check and re-type parts was quite common too. We also learned the value of RTFM. The first game my friend had on a cassette had a fold in leaflet. We spent one evening not being able to load it using the instructions. The next evening a brilliant move was made, remove the leaflet from the cassette and read the remaining part on the hidden side :) Success! These experiences definitely help remove any fear of tinkering with respect to computers and other digital equipment that I later on have noticed in others.
• JasonBlack555 5y ago
  I had the ZX81. It's amazing what you could do with 1KB (not 1MB or 1GB) of memory. That said, the 16KB RAM pack was necessary to do anything useful.
• ricardo81 5y ago
  I'd grew up with a Commodore 16, then Amstrad. Never owned a 'speccy' but it was the machine everyone else around me had. Definitely part of a thankful generation with fond memories.
• otikik 5y ago
  My first computer was also a Spectrum (Spectrum+ 48k). Incredible machine, it taught me lots of things, including ... patience! What a journey has been since then. Thank you, Sir.
• marcus_holmes 5y ago
  I was always an Acorn kid (now ARM and taking over the world). I still have my Acorn Atom; 12Kb of memory (with the expansion pack) that somehow included a BASIC interpreter, assembler, and left 10Kb of usable program/graphics memory. I was jealous of the Spectrum kids with the sheer number of games made for the Spectrum. I'd go round to my mate's house who had a Spectrum but wasn't into games, and bug him for hours until he'd load something up and we could play it. I'd then try and make bad clones of those games on my Atom. I think there's a whole generation of British techies like me, raised in the 80's, who owe Sir Clive (and his peers) our entire careers. If there's a Tech Valhalla, he'll be seated on the high table.
  • Wildgoose 5y ago
    Likewise. I only ever had an Acorn Atom. My tech friends had Sinclairs and then upgraded to BBC computers. (Not an option for a working class kid like me). I was an early enthusiast and originally wanted a Nascom One. I was so frustrated when they went bust, but the (August?) 1980 edition of Practical Computing included the first advert for the Acorn Atom so I switched my attention to that.
• praptak 5y ago
  I was a (small) part of the Spectrum hackers clique in Warsaw. Most of us had "Masterface" which was a hardware extension that had a switch to replace the ZX ROM with a custom-baked one and used NMI to do things like snapshotting the state of the machine to tape or loading a custom debugger. The first one was used for pirating games (but pirating by snapshotting was considered cheap) but the debugger was the real deal. It fit in the screen memory (so as to mess as little as possible with the game memory) and let us discover "pokes" for infinite lives. I think it was called Fox Mon or Foxmon? Cool times.
• 8fingerlouie 5y ago
  RIP. I, like many others here, started on a ZX Spectrum 48k. It was a wonderful time where one could experiment and "learn by doing". I spent days copying program code from a magazine into the REPL, and after debugging it for a while, i marvelled at the space invaders game i had "made myself". It was also a time where local radio stations would dedicate a couple of hours every friday night to broadcast user made programs. Yes, that's right, 2 hours of "brrzzzziiiiwwwwwhhzzz". Before each program was broadcast, the radio host would give a small intro to what was being broadcast, and the computer needed to run it. We had classes with no set agenda, where "nerds" could meet up, and we could code whatever we wanted. The whole "world" was different back then, and looking back i can easily see how a generation of skilled engineers came to be.
• 2a0c40 5y ago
  LD HL,(16396)
  • andromaton 5y ago
    Address of screen buffer. Back pages asm instructions. From zero to matrix in a thin red and black book. I doubt our kids ever felt that trip. Im sorry about that.
• creativenolo 5y ago
  RIP As Charlie Brooker put it, "the ginger bearded midwife to the computer revolution." I still want a Spectrum, remember when I bought them, and flicking through the cassettes at the village newsagents.
• tentacleuno 5y ago
  RIP Sir. I'm too young to have experienced the computers many speak of on this thread. They seem to spark a surprising amount of nostalgia, though.
• gadders 5y ago
  Imagine if he had never existed. We'd probably all be accountants or something. What a talented man.
• G3rn0ti 5y ago
  RIP. His Sinclair C5 vehicle was being laughed at in his time. Nowadays electric bikes are a thing.
• blippage 5y ago
  I was thinking this morning about how the Raspberry Pi never really quite got it right in bringing the legacy of the early 80's computers into the 21st century. The Pi Foundation bring out new models, but I think this just complicates things. They are evolving more towards PCs. I think this is unfortunate. The question they should be asking is: what if we crossed a RP2040 with a Pi Zero? Perhaps with a very simple "DOS".
  • marttt 5y ago
    I was just thinking about how and when to bring my children to computers the other day. I came across RC2014, contemporary homebrew Z80 computer: https://rc2014.co.uk/ https://rc2014.co.uk/
• xfz 5y ago
  POKE 23609,0
• f_allwein 5y ago
  > 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. Now that is probably unique among computer pioneers…
• rbanffy 5y ago
  In Brazil we had only clones, as the military dictatorship wanted to bootstrap a local industry. The only exception I remember was HP-85, which was classified as a scientific instrument or something other than a personal computer. The first computer I had at home was a CP-200, a ZX-81 clone with an inverted video signal (white on black) and calculator keys made by Prologica (who also cloned the ZX-80, the Intertec Superbrain, the TRS-80 model 3, CoCo and, later, PCs). Didn't last long - we returned it to get a much more practical Apple II+ (a clone, again). The damage to my brain, though, was done: I discovered the thrill of writing programs. The ZX Spectrum was the only other Sinclair cloned in Brazil, by a different company, Microdigital. I really like the elegant, minimalistic electronics design (even though it did hurt performance to task the Z80, which is no speed demon itself, with putting up pixels to the screen) of the ZX-81.
  • fipar 5y ago
    Here in Uruguay we had the original Spectrums, but Microdigital's clones were more affordable. The TK-90 was my first computer, upgraded a few years later to a TK-95. Those are the computers I learned to program in, so I'm grateful both to Clive Sinclair and to the folks at Microdigital for helping me get into my career!
    • rbanffy 5y ago
      The TK-95 was pretty neat - a Spectrum that looked like a Commodore Plus 4. Brazilian cloners had the most remarkable design mismatches, such as the TK-2000, a Microprofessor II clone that looked like an Atari 1200, the CP-400, a CoCo clone that looked like a Timex-Sinclair 2068, and that later got an Apple //c like keyboard, and an (improved!) Apple //e (the MicroEngenho Pro) that looked like a PC.
• giuseppeciuni 5y ago
  In late '80s an italian advertisement company sent to almost all italian families a book where you could buy almost everything using Post Offices. A kind of amazon's father :-). If any italian will read this post he will remember "Postal Market". In the last pages of that book there were all tech stuffs to buy including ZX Spectrum, commodore 64, etc. I was 7-8 years old and I was fascinated about those things. I didn't have enough money to buy a computer. When I reached the right amount (my savings) to buyone, Postal market hasn't sold any computer anymore. I started in 1991 with a "12 Mhz 80286 Vegas Communications". I still rimember the feeling when I was browsing those pages
• Shinchy 5y ago
  Like many here I started programming on the origin ZX Spectrum, typing out code and hitting record on a cassette tape machine. The pure joy of buying a magazine and copying the code inside to create your own game. Tinkering with it to make it your own and passing on your recorded creation on to friends at school.
• qwerty456127 5y ago
  Wasn't he the last Sir who was not an actor or a singer?
• simongauld 5y ago
  RIP Sir Clive. Like so many here, my introduction to computers and the career I carved out was the ZX81. I think perhaps Clive left his own dent in the universe.
• elcdodedocle 5y ago
  My first computer was a Sinclair clone hooked up to the only TV we had at home. So was the case for so many people in my country in the 80s who couldn't afford the disproportionately more expensive machines. Kudos to this genius for bringing inexpensive computer access to the layman. He could have patented the shit out of his company's systems, charge whatever he wanted for them, and spend a ton of money on an army of lawyers defending his patents and making him a shit ton more. Instead he gave so many of us early access to the tools we would use to make our living, so we weren't in a huge disadvantage any more. I couldn't be more grateful.
• unbalancedevh 5y ago
  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.