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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 b

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.
mnd999 5y ago
Me for one. ZX Spectrum +2 got me into programming. ROI on that home computer must be enormous.
hyperpallium2 5y ago
Rarity I guess? Computers were formerly even rarer. But everyone's got one in their pocket now.
epx 5y ago
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.
- rwmj 5y ago
  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=23760382 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26375986 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26375986)
- billti 5y ago
  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.
  - stevekemp 5y ago
    Same here - writing code in assembly, on paper, then looking up the opcodes in the back of the orange manual. Having to write out the bytes and using DATA to store them, and POKE to put them in-memory. Calculating the JMP offsets by hand, and taking the time to SAVE to cassette before running it for the first time. I didn't write much assembly, but I spent a hell of a long time removing protection from Spectrum games, and patching the code to give me infinite lives/time.
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
  Self soldered my first computer ever from a ZX81 kit. They were available as bargain sellout at the time(1985). When other people already used Commodore64 or the first Amigas or Atari STs. But I've been sceptic and low on funds :-) Wasn't that difficult because there weren't much parts. And no SMD. Scale was almost like electronic breadbording. And it worked for the first time! Regarding the Handbook, compare this image of the cover [1] https://i.imgur.com/0WarG.jpg https://i.imgur.com/0WarG.jpg with [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaxxon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaxxon I felt so very, very Zaxxonized! Anyway, it lasted me about half a year, where I got a 16KB RAM extension, learned how to duct-tape this so I don't get resets, a data-capable cassette recorder for reliable storage, which my ghetto blaster didn't do, learned Z80 assembly including illegals, replaced parts of the ROM with RAM to get glorious 256x192 pixels in black & white instead of block graphics, and finally got an Atari 520stfm with flicker free 640x400 pixels on 12 inches, because why not? I've already been used to BW from the ZX81.
nabla9 5y ago
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 5y ago
  Ha, I thought this was just my Spectrum with dust / biscuit crumbs in it
wiz21c 5y ago
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...
- jacquesm 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      The Raspberry Pi 400 is basically this. https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-400/ https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-400/
Chris_Newton 5y ago
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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21119236
- tcbawo 5y ago
  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.
- iso1210 5y ago
  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 5y ago
  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.
braben 5y ago
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.

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.

mnd999 5y ago

Me for one. ZX Spectrum +2 got me into programming. ROI on that home computer must be enormous.

hyperpallium2 5y ago

Rarity I guess? Computers were formerly even rarer. But everyone's got one in their pocket now.

epx 5y ago

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.

rwmj 5y ago
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=23760382 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26375986 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26375986)
billti 5y ago
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.
- stevekemp 5y ago
  Same here - writing code in assembly, on paper, then looking up the opcodes in the back of the orange manual. Having to write out the bytes and using DATA to store them, and POKE to put them in-memory. Calculating the JMP offsets by hand, and taking the time to SAVE to cassette before running it for the first time. I didn't write much assembly, but I spent a hell of a long time removing protection from Spectrum games, and patching the code to give me infinite lives/time.
LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
Self soldered my first computer ever from a ZX81 kit. They were available as bargain sellout at the time(1985). When other people already used Commodore64 or the first Amigas or Atari STs. But I've been sceptic and low on funds :-) Wasn't that difficult because there weren't much parts. And no SMD. Scale was almost like electronic breadbording. And it worked for the first time! Regarding the Handbook, compare this image of the cover [1] https://i.imgur.com/0WarG.jpg https://i.imgur.com/0WarG.jpg with [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaxxon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaxxon I felt so very, very Zaxxonized! Anyway, it lasted me about half a year, where I got a 16KB RAM extension, learned how to duct-tape this so I don't get resets, a data-capable cassette recorder for reliable storage, which my ghetto blaster didn't do, learned Z80 assembly including illegals, replaced parts of the ROM with RAM to get glorious 256x192 pixels in black & white instead of block graphics, and finally got an Atari 520stfm with flicker free 640x400 pixels on 12 inches, because why not? I've already been used to BW from the ZX81.

nabla9 5y ago

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 5y ago
Ha, I thought this was just my Spectrum with dust / biscuit crumbs in it

wiz21c 5y ago

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...

jacquesm 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    The Raspberry Pi 400 is basically this. https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-400/ https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-400/

Chris_Newton 5y ago

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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21119236

tcbawo 5y ago
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.
iso1210 5y ago
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 5y ago
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.

braben 5y ago

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.