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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 tha
by 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 agoAbsolutely feel the same. What a legend.
- belter 5y agoSame. 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 agoThe book remains on the shelf behind me when most others have gone.
- flir 5y agoFor 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.
- aix1 5y agoThought I'd also mention "The ZX Spectrum ULA". https://www.amazon.com/ZX-Spectrum-Ula-Microcomputer-Computer/dp/0956507107 https://www.amazon.com/ZX-Spectrum-Ula-Microcomputer-Compute...
- headmelted 5y agoMy story is so similar to yours (and I’m sure many others). Santa brought my house a Spectrum 48k Lo Profile when I was a kid with a cool KnightRider style keyboard. Over the years I haven’t seen it talked about much if at all, so I always assumed it was a fairly niche model. After hearing about Sir Clive, I looked it up to find out how many sold and was surprised to learn that it never actually existed as a standalone device. My dad must have bought the add-on kit, and an 81, and quietly upgraded it and just never told us kids. I’m gonna call him when I’m done typing this. All I ever wanted to do on it was transcribe the programs from my magazines and try to learn how to make something of my own someday. I’m not sure what I’d be doing now if he had just brought home an Atari, but I almost certainly wouldn’t be in tech. Cheers, Clive. I hope I see you down the road when the last of my cyan and red bars have run out. For anyone interested: https://www.flickr.com/photos/anachrocomputer/2671208818 https://www.flickr.com/photos/anachrocomputer/2671208818
- brulard 5y agoI got an Atari and I'm in tech. Why should that be any different?
- tcbawo 5y agoI assume he meant an Atari video game system rather than an Atari personal computer.
- headmelted 5y ago100% this.
- GekkePrutser 5y agoYeah I (or rather my parents) got an Atari 800XL and it totally got me in tech. But yeah Atari was much better known for its having consoles (5200 and 7800 I think). I was never interested in those. Especially because the Atari was very unpopular in Europe. The C64 was king. That also made it more expensive which was why I got the 800XL. But it also meant much less software around which is how I started programming.
- simonebrunozzi 5y agoI had no idea. This is amazing.
- RantyDave 5y agoI'm another who had exactly the same experience. That one sentence did the entire country a massive favour (and is, sadly, no longer true) The quality of the documentation with these early computers was also truly exceptional. I learned basic in a weekend.
- midnightclubbed 5y agoTo elaborate your point every ZX Spectrum came with a detailed manual from which you could learn Basic. And in the back it had a ascii table with all the Z80 instruction codes - so once you had basic down you could try assembly!
- timthorn 5y agoThe keyboard itself was almost the Spectrum's own manual, listing all the BASIC keywords - because to enter one of the keywords, you just typed the key with that label. That made programming possible for a preschooler.
- rodgerd 5y agoMore than just that; the block diagram and a lucid explantion of floating point mathematics that has lasted me for 40 years.
- nanis 5y agoMine was smuggled into the country due to currency crises and import/export controls. I owe thanks to my mother for arranging that so that I could graduate from writing programs using paper and pencil to using an actual computer. Thank you Psion's Horizons cassette for teaching me about computer architecture. Thank you Toni Baker for teaching me Z80 assembly so I could program x86 with no problem. But, thank you Sir Clive, above all, for making such an affordable and approachable computer. What I learned on the ZX81 and the ZX Spectrum is still with me.
- ComodoHacker 5y agoIn my country, there weren't any originals, even smuggled. Clones were built and sold by local engineers, using smuggled schematics and photocopies of circuit board layouts. The one I first get my hands on as a kid was built by my elder brother, an electronics engineer. I was so fascinated, I remember secretly sneaking into his house when he was at work to play the games. He taught me electronics and encouraged me to understand the schematics and build one for myself. And I eventually did, but I got something wrong, and it worked unstable. I never got patience to find the cause and get it right. But I definitely got charmed by electronics and programming because of this. Thank you, Sir Sinclair. And thank you, my brother.
- krallja 5y agoDo you still have the nonworking computer? Might be a fun project for a rainy weekend.
- CodeMage 5y agoMine was a second-hand smuggled ZX Spectrum 48k. The first computer I ever saw was Galaksija, at the school where my mom and dad worked. The school later got a Lola 8, but by then my mom and dad bought me a used Spectrum and I was happily plugging the depths of BASIC, and later assembly. Farewell, Sir Clive, and thank you for some of my best memories.
- cable2600 5y agoI still write programs on paper and pencil to see if I can do it as accurately as the machine can.
- dvirsky 5y agoSame here, but it also reminds me, the first programming lesson in school (not on a Spectrum but on an IBM PC), our teacher told us "there's nothing you can do with code that will harm the computer in any way" (these computers did not have a hard drive so you could not wipe anything). This immediately set us on a quest to find ways to prove him wrong - the basis of hacker thinking. Not that we did find anything with our limited knowledge but it was a nice thought exercise (our best bet was to create a program that constantly switches between graphics mode and text mode. The monitor would make a clicking sound when this happened, so we figured if we do this enough times we'll probably burn some circuit, but we never tried it).
- GekkePrutser 5y agoThere was a way you could burn out a chip in the C64 with a poke command IIRC. And you could break the tape advance relay in the MSX by switching it on and off rapidly. Edit: Oops it wasn't the 64 but the PET: https://dfarq.homeip.net/the-killer-poke-for-the-commodore-pet/ https://dfarq.homeip.net/the-killer-poke-for-the-commodore-p... Also, everyone here will know the phenomenon of bricking. You can damage hardware with software. Luckily it's very rare.
- dvirsky 5y agoIt's much harder with early 80s hardware (and no internet to learn this stuff) than with modern hardware. These machines were stateless beasts. You could either damage the BIOS with writing to it somehow, or fry some hardware. I suppose you could damage the floppy drive head with very intensive seek commands in a tight loop, or something like that.
- robryk 5y agoI managed to kill one PC floppy drive by switching the motor that rotated the disk and not switching it off (because my crash handling was nonexistent and floppy read routine I was writing crashed somehow). I guess the disk rotation motor (or its switching circuitry) overheated (after all, it was supposed to be used with a reasonably low duty cycle): the drive would no longer rotate the floppy (so I could also not tell if the rest of the drive still worked).
- k__ 5y agoHaha, that's really wholesome. I remember how I destroyed my first PC on the first day by flipping a switch on the PSU before turning it on. Good times.
- detritus 5y agoI did the same with my very first PC. For shame! I'd been used to simpler 16bit and 8bit machines, including a spectrum...
- matthewmcg 5y agoOut of curiosity, what switch would that have been? Was it a 220/120V setting?
- hnick 5y agoI'd bet it is, because I did the same (in a 240V country). I knew it wouldn't end well and did it anyway because, I guess, as a kid I was used to the world not letting bad things happen so didn't really believe it would. There isn't a switch on the toaster or TV that bricks it after all. Anyway got a spark and the magic smoke, and bought a new PSU from a guy at school for $15.
- srcmap 5y agoMy first compute was ~1984 Timex_Sinclair_1000 $99 and with 2K RAM. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Sinclair_1000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Sinclair_1000 It definitively the gateway drug that hook me into computer. Bought $6 book on how to program Sinclair computer and copy the Basic Code from the book into that computer and record that program into audio cassette tape and output to analog TV. Now I working daily with systems that have 128 cores, 256 threads, 256-768MB of L3 cache memory, 1TB DDR+ 8xGPUs each with 32GB of HBM. I still think I got more "High/Rush" from the sinclair 1000 37 years ago than the latest 128C/256T CPU. Now is a job, back than it was an adventure, exploration to whole new world!
- RachelF 5y agoyep, same for me. I remember being astounded as a kid that you could make something that would actually be seen on a TV screen!
- adfm 5y agoMy first computer was a Timex Sinclair 1000, too. That keyboard was too much, but you kept at it! And if you even looked at that memory module funny, it would short out and you'd have to stay up all night and re-key everything back in by hand. We got more use out of the TRS-80s at school, but having a machine to ourselves at home was influential.
- cable2600 5y agoI had a Timex/Sinclar 1000 with the 64K memory module that sort of worked half the time. Zot, there it goes again and I have to type everything in again because I didn't save it to tape.
- poetaster 5y agoMe too! Astounded to write sprites to a screen. Objects. Collision detection.
- nsxwolf 5y agoI remember the TI-99/4A BASIC manual said something like “errors will not harm your computer” and it had a similar reassuring effect on my child self.
- GekkePrutser 5y agoI love that attitude and I totally agree with the sentiment. Just experimenting is how you learn best. Especially in those days it was a unique sentiment. Most devices came with long instruction manuals which people would actually read, and even schematics. Until the home computer came, only educated professionals were allowed to go near computers. I think Steven Levy called them the IBM high priests in his book "Hackers". It's old but a good read. Now nobody reads the couple of pages that come with their new phone. Good.
- pvg 5y ago"You cannot harm the computer in this way." This seems quite likely to have been inspired by some of the intro documentation for the Apple ][, apparently written by Jef Raskin. Short comment about it from a few years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15077364 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15077364
- nmstoker 5y agoIt's fascinating how empowering knowing just how safe you are can be. I used nearly this exact phrase the other day with someone who appeared fearful of a dashboard tool and once they realised they could basically do no harm whatsoever it freed them up to experiment and learn.
- t43562 5y agoWell, it's not strictly true at all that you are totally safe, I think, but you have to behave as if you are or you get nowhere. That's quite a metaphor for life in general.
- mkl 5y ago> Sir Sinclair FYI since I've seen this mistake a few times in this discussion: Sir Clive or Sir Clive Sinclair. "Sir" and "Dame" are attached to the given name, never the surname. I don't know why it's different from other titles, and Wikipedia doesn't seem to explain, just states the rule: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir
- hellbannedguy 5y agoWhat I didn't know is if you are knighted, you have to give up your birth citizenship.
- helsinkiandrew 5y agoForeigners get honorary knighthoods: Bill Gates, Steven Spielberg, Dwight Eisenhower etc. Apparently if you take up British Citizenship it automatically converts.
- eru 5y agoWell, a knight is a servant to the monarch, thus subject of her.
- mkl 5y agoThat seems to be a US rule [1], not a condition imposed by the knighting jurisdiction. Maybe some other countries have similar no-titles rules, but I couldn't find any (might be searching for the wrong terms). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Emoluments_Clause https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Emoluments_Clause
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Zuider 5y agoNot quite true. If you wished to be addressed by the title of 'Sir' or 'Dame,' you would have to be a British citizen, but a non citizen can add letters after their name, e.g. Bob Geldof, KBE, remains a citizen of the Republic of Ireland.
- firecall 5y agoWho remembers waking into a store on the high street in Britain and seeing rows of different computer systems! Sinclair Spectrums, BBC Model B and so on! It was glorious! It was so exciting as a kid! Going to each of them and writing 3 lines of basic to print my name infinitely! A truely golden age of discovery!
- FearNotDaniel 5y agoRemember this well. Though my three line programs were a little more mischievous. When Boots the Chemist weirdly started selling computers I thought it was fun to go in on a Saturday afternoon and type: 10 PRINT "Boots is rubbish, shop at Dixons."; 20 GOTO 10 I thought I was a genius. Probably should have got a slimy career in adtech after that, but thankfully I didn't.
- 123pie123 5y agothe WHSmiths shops had some of their computers sound amplified through the cassette players a mischeivious program of 10 pause (big number) 20 beep 30 goto 20 it would sit there for ages until a key was pressed, then beep very loud when a person - who's very first touch of a computers keyboard, would seemly set an alarm off. the faces of the customers thinking they've broke the computer is still etched in my mind
- alexfoo 5y ago*FX 200,3 10 *MOTOR 1 20 *MOTOR 0 30 GOTO 10 And then leave the shop quickly as the BBC Micro's internal relay quickly destroys itself.
- dwd 5y agoThat is such an empowering statement. I've said before on HN that fear of what may happen stops many people from experimenting with computers, coupled with locking everything down and hiding the non-consumer-friendly aspects out of site. Starting with a blinking cursor, the worst you could do was format a floppy disk with your work on it - or blow a fuse because you were tinkering with the internals.
- 13of40 5y agoIt works on that generation of machines, but when I was young I carried that philosophy into learning Unix in the early 90s, and some of the results weren't as positive. It was a net positive, though.
- WalterBright 5y ago> "You cannot harm the computer in this way." I've long suspected that Star Trek trained people to be fearful of pressing the wrong key, as it would always send a huge electric shock through the hapless keyboardist and send him flying across the bridge.
- stevekemp 5y agoA lot of people started programming thanks to the ZX Spectrum, and I'm one of them too: https://blog.steve.fi/how_i_started_programming.html https://blog.steve.fi/how_i_started_programming.html It was easily the most popular home computer in the UK at that time, though I imagine a large number of people started with the BBC - via the school integration. I still have my manuals, and recently paid for a print of the keyboard to hang on my wall. (I almost bought a dead 48K model, and framed it, but getting a poster/print was slightly cheaper.)
- hallarempt 5y agoMy dead ZX Spectrum 48k does hang on the wall, behind my desk. The rainbow colors are amazingly light-fast.
- marttt 5y ago> "You cannot harm the computer in this way. Be bold." What an empathetic, caring, tactful way to teach tech to kids. The whole instruction is like that, a really well composed message. No hypes or overpowering, just guiding children to quiet explorations.
- helsinkiandrew 5y ago> "You cannot harm the computer in this way." But your soul dies slowly as you have to reload your program from tape cassette. I remember learning machine code on my Spectrum and having to reload the assembler several times an hour.
- noneeeed 5y agoThe most dispiriting day of my childhood was when I discovered that the write connection to the tape deck on my Spectrum +2a had failed and the day's worth of code I'd written had been lost and I had a blank tape.
- ghoul2 5y agoheh. I fortunately did not know things like assemblers existed. I hand-assembled my assembly to machine code using the mnemonic table provided at the end of the programming manual. I had an entire diary full of columns of hand-encoded hex numbers (and a decimal column - you needed the numbers in decimal to "poke" them into RAM).
- b3lvedere 5y agoDad bought a ZX Spectrum. I was very curious and wanted to play with it. Dad gave me the huge manual and told me to study that first. I didn't. Instead i tried every key and this started my huge computer adventure that will probably only end when i'm dead.
- croon 5y agoAmazing to see the amount of similar comments here. I too grew up with the ZX (and later an Atari ST), and made my first program (a game, of course). It felt very zen to write it, play it, and then being okay with not saving it when I cut the power.
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoI grew up with a PC and that already wasn't as straightforward; we were Told in no uncertain terms that we should make sure to use the 'shut down' option in the menu or else Bad Things would happen (= disk parking). And changes in the system were permanent, so I never really experimented with the computer until my mid-to-late teens when I went to school for computer stuff - my dad was the expert until then.
- noneeeed 5y agoI saw something similar with my gf in uni. She hadn't had a computer at home and she was really intimidated by the computers there. It wasn't just because she was unused to them, but she was petrified of breaking them. It wasn't until I let her use mine and got her to relax about breaking it that she really started to learn how to use them properly.
- noneeeed 5y agoI try to keep this in mind with my kids. I try to not worry too much about them breaking stuff, and where possible put them in situations where they can experiment and try stuff without risk of screwing something up. Although I also like to repair stuff, and I think there's something nice about them breaking it and then us fixing it. It's why things like the RPi and the Micro-bit are so cool for education, you can experiment with them and if it all goes wrong just reset them and carry on. However I'm also concious that I and my kids are lucky to be able to absorb any financial/time cost from them breaking something. Not everyone can.
- lewisjoe 5y agoI'm curious how a generation of us grew up curious what a computing machine could do, just because it had all those fancy keys to press. They pushed us into creating stuff. But these days, we have smartphones with a hundred times more computing power, but it fails to trigger any creative curiosity into kids these days. Maybe I'm wrong, but is there any co-relation with how many ways the device could interact with the operator vs the level of creative curiosity it triggers?
- smoyer 5y agoI had a similar experience with a ZX-81 (and a TS-2000). What's interesting related to your "You cannot harm the computer in this way" quote is that I see that experimentation embodied in my kids (who grew up with a PC in the house) but also the anti-pattern in my mother and my in-laws who clearly didn't have a computer in the house until middle-age (note that I left my dad our of this category as he was an EE building embedded systems for instrumentation for much of his career).
- xwowsersx 5y agoLove this.
- poetaster 5y agoDamn. I got a rush from learning to touch type on the IBM Selectricks....