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Had pre digital Sinclair op amp/transistor products. The reliability was awful, the instructions to build incomplete, massive mains hum on the stereo amp. Used

by ggm 2y ago

Had pre digital Sinclair op amp/transistor products. The reliability was awful, the instructions to build incomplete, massive mains hum on the stereo amp. Used it for years! (My dad built it, 3 transistor failures in construction from inadequate insulation. He was an EE and knew how to make stuff) The calculators used firmware wired software loops and tables with fixed precision to do trig which introduced errors so inverting functions didn't return original input. He was knighted under Thatcher. A lot of people felt he did not deserve it. On the whole a mixed legacy. The path from Sinclair to Alan Suger suggests shonky UK entrepreneur boosting each other. Real innovation was in Ferranti, Marconi and GEC and of course what became ARM holdings and the wolfson institute. And Linn.

rwmj 2y ago
He was a giant compared to all the nobodies knighted and enobled by the last government. Despite his computers being very shonky, affordable computers from Sinclair, Amstrad and others drove a UK wide computing revolution which led many of us to have the careers we do today.
- ggm 2y ago
  Absolutely had a net positive outcome. Was also a self boosting prat. The Sinclair electric car summed him up in many ways: overpromised and under delivered time after time. But the zx80 and spectrum, bootstrapped thousands into computers in the home. BBC micro came one year after, absolute beast of a product by comparison. The acorn atom which proceeded it was meh (i had one)
kstrauser 2y ago
That's a perspective I've never heard. In the US, Sinclair was never a particularly famous figure. I knew who he was - his name was on the TS-1000 my parents bought me when I outgrew the Atari 2600's BASIC Programming cartridge - but that's about all he was, a name on some funky hardware. I was under the impression he was kind of thought of as UK's Nikola Tesla or something.
- ggm 2y ago
  > I was under the impression he was kind of thought of as UK's Nikola Tesla or something. He was a brilliant self publicist. Nobody in the British computing or related digital electronics industry thought he was a second Tesla. The public at large was totally being sold that kind of line, not that Tesla's name was ever mentioned in those days by anyone. Same with Lord Sugar and amstrad. Dyson gets similar accolades these days. Or Jony Ive.

by ggm 2y ago

rwmj 2y ago

He was a giant compared to all the nobodies knighted and enobled by the last government. Despite his computers being very shonky, affordable computers from Sinclair, Amstrad and others drove a UK wide computing revolution which led many of us to have the careers we do today.

ggm 2y ago
Absolutely had a net positive outcome. Was also a self boosting prat. The Sinclair electric car summed him up in many ways: overpromised and under delivered time after time. But the zx80 and spectrum, bootstrapped thousands into computers in the home. BBC micro came one year after, absolute beast of a product by comparison. The acorn atom which proceeded it was meh (i had one)

kstrauser 2y ago

That's a perspective I've never heard. In the US, Sinclair was never a particularly famous figure. I knew who he was - his name was on the TS-1000 my parents bought me when I outgrew the Atari 2600's BASIC Programming cartridge - but that's about all he was, a name on some funky hardware. I was under the impression he was kind of thought of as UK's Nikola Tesla or something.

ggm 2y ago
> I was under the impression he was kind of thought of as UK's Nikola Tesla or something. He was a brilliant self publicist. Nobody in the British computing or related digital electronics industry thought he was a second Tesla. The public at large was totally being sold that kind of line, not that Tesla's name was ever mentioned in those days by anyone. Same with Lord Sugar and amstrad. Dyson gets similar accolades these days. Or Jony Ive.