It was the ZX81 and the following ZX Spectrum that got me started in IT so I was disheartened by today's news that he has passed away.


If anyone else out there also had fun getting started on his creations, poke your head up here.

Here's a link to the Guardian report: https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...r-dies-aged-81

Sad to hear Sinclair is gone. The Sinclair ZX81 was a great home machine. I programmed on the competition, a Commodore CBM 8032 with the external 8050 dual drive floppy disk. Developed a travel agency multi-part ticketing system and accounts receivable package. Ah, those were the days!

http://www.oldcomputers.net/pet4032.html

I too was saddened by this news.

I Started on a ZX81, then went to the VIC-20, then Spectrum for many years, then back to Commodore 64.

I still remember the day I brought a ZX81 back from work to show my mother what a computer actually looks like. We plugged it into our TV set and I showed her a little basic program that I had written to convert fahrenheit temperatures to centigrade and vice versa. She sniffed and said, "I can't see what's so revolutionary about that! It only does what you tell it to."

I said, "If you understand that, you already know more about computers than two thirds of the people in this country."

Didn't Sinclair also create that weird little three-wheeled car that you didn't need a driving license for because it was officially a motorbike? That sank without trace. But when I read the famous article "Linux is not Windows" which compares operating systems to bikes and cars, and warns about trying to create a hybrid, I was reminded at once of Clive Sinclair.

I had the Spectrum too, and learned Assembler on it. Computing was low on my list of priorities at the time. Later I moved to the Amstrad 6128 which ran games for the kids, but also had CP/M. I bought an Office software package for IR£7 or so with an editor, database, spreadsheet, & comms packages all complete on one 180k floppy.

Clive sank big bucks into some futuristic project that never happened. His idea was that you have the CPU in the centre communicating with all the slower peripherals and scrap the approach of everything waiting their turn on the same data bus. We have a version of it today - multiple cores in an APU, with

1. The GPU on it's own databus
2. The ram on it's own (double width) databus.
3. The Southbridge-type ASIC on a databus controlling the peripherals.

But although the idea was the future, in the 1990s it was too far, too fast. Back in the 1990s, chip fabrication couldn't deliver the speed, a vast amount of optimisation and circuit development needed to happen, and nobody's pockets were deep enough.

The Sinclair Scientific was the first scientific calculator that fit in your pocket and cost less than $100. I remember watching it compute a sin in 30 seconds. Pitiful as it was, it was an eye-opener on what you could accomplish if you set high goals.

I too started on a Spectrum and then switched to the QL. It's worth noting that Linus bought a QL in preference to a PC and said that he learnt a lot from disassembling the QDOS operating system. I still use some old QL software via an emulator running with Wine. The funny thing about QDOS was that it was a last-minute thing. The version of CP/M that Sinclair had commissioned was too slow and loo large, so he asked if any of his staff knew how to write an operating system — Tony Tebby volunteered, although he was an engineer hired to work on a portable TV!

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'Clive Sinclair, Inventive Computer Pioneer, Dies at 81'
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/29/t...lair-dead.html
I played with one briefly.
You can right-click on the URI, save the page, read your copy.

I forgot to mention this one, which I also used until 2010 when I replaced it with an old Thinkpad:
Cambridge Z88

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Had most of his computers at one time, learnt a lot, had a programmable calculator, tv and black watch as well, guess i was a bit of a fanboy, RIP uncle clive

Indeed, except it was actually a tiny electric car/bike. In 1985.
The man was ridiculously far ahead of his time, but his story is the classic tale of an inventor/scientist lacking the necessary business skills to bring his vision to fruition as a commercial product.

Compare that to Alan Sugar, who basically stormed in from the sidelines and re-implemented the most successful of Sinclair's products, with a few modifications that addressed their most obvious shortcomings. He was no inventor, but he was a shrewd businessman who knew to learn from others' mistakes. Amstrad (Alan Michael Sugar TRADing) even ended up buying up all of Sinclair Research's computer-related IP.

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In the US, it has to have 4 wheels to be a car. Is the UK different?

Yeah, it's a loophole in the UK laws.

A three wheeler = motorbike + sidecar (Obviously!) so it is taxed & licensed as a motor bike. It wasn't the only 3 wheel car made.

There was quite a vogue for those little things in the 50s and 60s. There are collectors — a 1963 Isetta is available on ebay for £15K — and there's a Bubblecar Museum in Boston (Links.)