RIP Sir Clive

[JoJo1973]

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2...es-aged-81

Sad news... I was a Commodorian but Sinclair machines were a marvel of engineering.

[Valentin Albillo]

(09-16-2021 09:21 PM)JoJo1973 Wrote:  https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2...es-aged-81

Sad news... I was a Commodorian but Sinclair machines were a marvel of engineering.

May condolences to his family & relatives. May he rest in peace.

I thoroughly enjoyed some of his productions, most especially the ZX 81, which was the first real computer I could afford, and the Spectrum.

V.

[Gene]

Sir Clive was definitely a giant.

Very OT to this thread, but Valentin's mention of the Spectrum, reminded me of this:

Spectrum laptop

[Ren]

As others have mentioned;
the producer of the ZX81, died at 81!
R.i.P. Sir Clive.

The TS1000 was my first computer (Closeout price: $30), followed sometime later by a used Vic-20.
I somehow killed the TS1000 when I tried to add a "real" keyboard.
A year ago, I bought a TS1000 at an Estate Sale, ($6), its keyboard ribbons are broke, and I don't have a CRT to test it...someday...

[Claudio L.]

Nothing but respect for Sir Clive Sinclair, may he rest in peace.

I grew up with a Spectrum 48k, an amazing little machine.
He was way ahead of his time on electric vehicles as well, so far ahead that the idea didn't catch on. Today his C5 would've probably been a big hit with young people.

[Thomas Okken]

I took my first steps in electronic computing with the Sinclair Scientific. And the first computers I owned were a ZX-80 and a ZX-81. Primitive machines, but they were affordable, and that made all the difference.

Thank you Sir Clive. Happy travels!

[Marc van Lemmen]

I always loved the inventions from Clive Sinclair, the calculator watch, the MTV1.
The ZX Spectrum was not my first computer, but it was the first 'real' computer for me and I still have it.

Rest in peace.

[JimP]

(09-16-2021 09:21 PM)JoJo1973 Wrote:  https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2...es-aged-81

Sad news... I was a Commodorian but Sinclair machines were a marvel of engineering.

My first pocket calculator was a Sinclair Cambridge (1973) -- year 1 in high school in bonny Scotland. My classmates were fascinated and I suspect some were a little jealous. (We all still had slide rules!) Followed that up with an Oxford 300 when I needed some scientific functions in 1976. And still have an Oxford form factor Scientific Programmable (the one with 24 steps and a substantial program library on cards). Many of the keys are dodgy but it's a bit of a collector's item.

Sir Clive was a genuine pioneer whose ideas were ahead of the curve. In spite of the execution of some of them being less than ideal, one could not fault his vision. RIP.

[Eddie W. Shore]

RIP and Forever Gratitude, Sir Clive

[Maximilian Hohmann]

Hello!

(09-20-2021 12:47 PM)Eddie W. Shore Wrote:  RIP and Forever Gratitude, Sir Clive

The same from me. He did not invent anything revolutionary new, but through his ingenious electronic designs he made things affordable for common people. My first "home computer" was a ZX81 bought as kit in 1981 or 82. I had wanted to have my own computer long before that, but a Commodore PET 2001 or Tandy TRS 80 (or an Apple II...) were far out of reach. And neither of them would have taught me as much about electronics, computing and software as "pimping" the ZX81 did. In the end mine had "high resolution graphics", an external keyboard from a discarded industry terminal which required a self-made interface containing around 150 transistors, a selfmade interface for Centronics printers, an EPROM programmer, several switchable RAM banks, and a proper video output (instead of the original RF TV connector). All that stuff together cost less than an HP-41 in those days... Thanks again Sir Clive Siclair.

Regards
Max

NB: I have plenty of Sinclair calculators in my collection now. They may not be as solid as those from HP, but every one is special in it's own way. From the cheapest four-banger to the silver plated Royal Jubilee Sovereign. I also like the digital mutlimeter with the purple LED display (it really is made from red LEDs with a blue sheet of plastic on top).
And if lithium batteries would have been around in the 1980ies, who knows if we all would be driving Sinclair electric cars by now.

[Ren]

(09-20-2021 01:33 PM)Maximilian Hohmann Wrote:  [...] I also like the digital multimeter with the purple LED display (it really is made from red LEDs with a blue sheet of plastic on top).

I had no idea Sinclair made a DMM!
A web search turned up this:

https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/sinclair_d...pdm35.html

I just may have to find if one can be bought for a decent price!

(decent, as in incredibly cheap for this bottom feeder!)

[Maximilian Hohmann]

Hello!

(09-20-2021 02:27 PM)Ren Wrote:  I just may have to find if one can be bought for a decent price!er!

I think I found mine on eBay for less than 5 Euros. Perfectly functional of course, like most of the Sinclair calculators that I have. They may be made in the cheapest possible way, but they are almost indestructable.

A quick search found one Sinclair PDM-35 multimeter on eBay UK for 185 GBP plus shipping, boxed and in mint condition, but it would probably not be Sir Clives' will that anyone spend so much on any of his products :-)

Regards
Max

[Garth Wilson]

The movie "Micro Men" about Sinclair is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXBxV6-zamM .

[Valentin Albillo]

(09-20-2021 01:33 PM)Maximilian Hohmann Wrote:  I had wanted to have my own computer long before that, but a Commodore PET 2001 or Tandy TRS 80 (or an Apple II...) were far out of reach. And neither of them would have taught me as much about electronics, computing and software as "pimping" the ZX81 did.

Same here, but on the software front rather than hardware. At the time the ZX81 was released I had already extensively used a real computer (not a glorified calculator), the HP-85, a quality machine but tremendously expensive, way way out of my reach.

Then the ZX81 entered the picture and I could easily afford one, with 16K RAM expansion and all. The hardware was quite poor: the keyboard, the wobbling 16K expansion which made me lose my programs all the time whenever I pressed a key too hard or something else. But, it had a pretty decent if very slow BASIC *and* creating machine code (Z80A assembler) directly on it was perfectly possible (and even easy), which ran at (for the time) tremendous speed. That I couldn't do with the HP-85, with its proprietary Capricorn CPU and no easily-available info on its instruction set or any way to create binary programs using just the bare-bones machine, you needed the very expensive and hard-to-get Assembler ROM (though I eventually managed to do it nevertheless.)

Thus, I thoroughly studied the Z80A instruction set and soon was able to assemble by hand a number of utility routines (mainly graphics ones) and fast-running full-machine-code video games and hybrids of part BASIC, part machine-code. Matter of fact, I intend to upload a number of them to my site as part of my newly-created Project HAM.

It was extremely fun, I learned a lot about machine-code programming, and I heartily thank Sir Clive for it. May he rest in peace.

Regards.
V.

[Maximilian Hohmann]

Hello!

(09-20-2021 08:21 PM)Garth Wilson Wrote:  The movie "Micro Men" about Sinclair is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXBxV6-zamM .

Thanks for posting this! I wanted to go to bed a little bit earlier today, but had to watch it through in one go. Those were the days...

Regards
Max

[Garth Wilson]

(09-20-2021 11:16 PM)Maximilian Hohmann Wrote:  Those were the days...

Things were all new and wonderful, yet there was mystery and insecurity about where it would all go, which companies and systems would survive the coming shakedowns, etc..

[Maximilian Hohmann]

Hello!

(09-20-2021 08:21 PM)Garth Wilson Wrote:  The movie "Micro Men" ...

I just stumbled across this follow-up video of some of the protagonists (the real ones, not the actors!) of "Micro Men" ten years after the film was made. Unfortunately Clive Sinclair is not there, but I found it very interesting as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4I2ktcWdJM

Regards
Max

[Liamtoh Resu]

I still have my ts 1000 -- i plan to fire it up again soon.

I believe you could input something like "sin(x)" and the sinclair
basic would evaluate it before passing it to the variable.

I bought the forth tape for it -- but as EJD said my mind was crippled
by learning BASIC as my first language. The documentation for the forth
was not so great. Later I used a Jupiter Ace simulator and found the
forth there was more friendly.

I built a wooden thing a majigee to keep the 16K memory cartridge in place.

Thanks for the tip about the "Micro Men".

Clive Sinclair was truly an original!

Cheers.

[agarza]

I still have my Sinclair ZX80 (US version).

[Ren]

I bought a TS1000 (with stryofoam and torn cardboard box) for $6 at an Estate Sale a couple of years ago.
I don't have a CRT to test it with, and the keyboard ribbons are broken, but someday...

My first "computer" was the TS1000 (bought at closeout, and later the 16K Ram pack $30), followed by a used VIC-20 and an Atari 400XL. It was a decade later before I bought a used PC compatible (8088).