RIP Clive Sinclair

[Woodface]

Definitely a game changer, I never had a PC back in the day, parents probably couldn’t afford one but loads of my mates had one.

RIP, a massive contribution to UK tech. The C5 was mocked as are e-scooters today but it is the fault of the idiot masses really.

 

[stevec67]

The A-bike and the Zike were total failures too.

For the same reasons. Put modern batteries in them and they are fine.

 

[paulfromcamden]

The BBC B obviously had a great keyboard, but it cost 4 times the price of a Speccy. The C64 had a nice keyboard, but again way more expensive than the Sinclair.

In our school the posh swotty kids had BBC Micros (and only ever used them to play Elite), the well off kids had C64s and most of my mates had Spectrums. There was the odd weirdo with some Texas Instruments thing.

 

[Linds]

That Ti had an awesome keyboard though and was in fact a great (games) machine

 

[Tony L]

In our school the posh swotty kids had BBC Micros (and only ever used them to play Elite), the well off kids had C64s and most of my mates had Spectrums. There was the odd weirdo with some Texas Instruments thing.

I’m too old to have seen a computer at all at school. My entry point was several years afterwards when a muso/geek friend had a BBC B he’d hacked into a 19” rack mount with all kinds of I/O etc. I learned a bit of BASIC there, even managed to get some basic CV/gate sequencing going with my SH101 synth. It wasn’t until a lot later that I ended up in IT.

 

[Mike Reed]

Think it was a Sinclair amplifier I had once (Butterfly?). Didn't work for long and was so jam-packed it was effectively unrepairable. A completely nutty acquaintance/friend with an electronics degree in 60s N.W. London started working for Sir Clive there and I think there were just the two of them. He moved up to Cambridge with him to start the new factory/office. Lost contact after that.

 

[Seeker_UK]

That Ti had an awesome keyboard though and was in fact a great (games) machine

Had a pretty good speech synthesizer you could buy as an add-on too, IIRC.

 

[robs]

RIP Sir Clive.
Certainly had a huge influence on me (ZX Spectrum).

 

[stevec67]

I nearly bumped into Sir Clive in London. He was striding towards me along the western end of Piccadilly. He was quite a slight chap and was nearly not spotted!

I did see him, outside South Ken tube, Exhibition Road entrance, when I was a student.

 

[Snufkin]

Amazing man but quality wasn’t his thing. Having said that we all owe him a great deal. RIP Clive.

 

[Bob McC]

For the same reasons. Put modern batteries in them and they are fine.

The A bike was a pushbike!

 

[sean99]

This is sad news, though 81 is not a bad run. I still have fond memories of my ZX81 - though had to be very careful not to wobble the 16k RAM pack (and lose an hour's programming).

 

[Tim Jones]

10 PRINT "RIP SIR CLIVE"
20 GOTO 10.

 

[Operajulian]

As a teenager I bought one of the self assembly calculator kits with my hard earned newspaper round money.
http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/scientific_-_giant_scientific.html

Probably spent more time trying to spell unacceptable words when turned upside down than doing real calculations.
Sad to see Sir Clive - go heavenwards.

 

[davidsrsb]

Sir Clive had great ideas and others after his knighthood, where people should have stood up to him and said no.
At least he tried to innovate and create, unlike Alan Sugar

 

[cj66]

The only Sinclair product that blessed my childhood home was my eldest brother's calculator. Loads of mates had a Spectrum though, although they were mainly gamers. The first computer I had access to was a BBC jobby, the one and only at my school, despite my father working for ICL . It really is impossible to ignore the mans contribution to the world.

The Wright brothers first flight was in a pile-o-poo plane that only managed a short flight down a field, naaaah it'll never catch on!

 

[RJohan]

I still have some parts of my ca 1976 Black Watch kit left. And the PS from my ZX81.

He did the usual pre Tesla mistakes when it comes to EV's, though. Small, slow, generally silly and to expensive. But he wasn't exactly alone.

 

[Jamie]

And a motor out of a washing machine IIRC.

That one is a bit of a myth. It was built in a washing machine factory, so the assumption was it had a motor from one. In reality:

"Although it was later said that the C5 was powered by a washing machine motor, the motor was in fact developed from a design produced to drive a truck cooling fan."

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Sinclair_C5

A mate at Newcastle Poly on my HND had a Spectrum with a printer, some sort of till roll size silvery thermal paper. Hard to see and faded quickly as I recall.

As an innovater, he was outstanding in some areas, but still had a go at others.

RIP Sir Clive. Those who never made mistakes never made anything.

 

[narabdela]

I remember spending hours inputting programs from one of those computer mags into a ZX81. (Machine code as well iirc).

You were completely ****ed if you made just one error buried somewhere along the way.

Happy days.

 

[Fatmarley]

My first computer was a 48k ZX Spectrum when I was about 11 or 12. I used to stay up all night trying to write games in Basic, and when I'd finally lie down in bed thinking about the game I'd just been working on, an idea would hit me, and I'd spring out of bed and switch it back on.

At school, I was very lucky because my form room was the computer room. We'd play Donkey Kong and Chuckie Egg until the bell rang. Our teacher was called Mrs Millichip (think that's how you spell it) which I thought was funny because it's sounds quite computery.