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RIP Clive Sinclair

I remember searching the local library in 1978 for books on computing and the sparse pickings.
Contrast that with the resources available to the youth of today.
That’s Clives legacy.
 
A bit of a character who lived in the village back in the 90s bought a C5. He used to go to the village pub in it, but the battery was inclined to go flat. A Met police officer who lived locally recalled going on duty in the early hours one day, and witnessing the C5 being towed home by the fellow's distinctive convertible Range Rover, the owner himself at the wheel of the C5, certainly the worse for wear. The policeman, not yet on duty, took the view that discretion was the better part of valour, and went on his way.
 
A friend’s work colleague bought a system 2000 in about 1970.
It looked very ‘Futuristic.’
( Well it was a ‘2000 system’, presumably well ahead of its time )

I did like the circular speakers, which presumably had the same drivers as the Q16s.
It sounded OK, though I only heard it running with the tuner.

The owner did ‘phone me once as he had left it switched on overnight.
I thought later, if it didn’t blow up then it would probably be OK.
It lasted for many years.
Oddly, I have never seen another pair of those speakers.
 
I'm sure I have one of these somewhere with all the books.

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I would be very surprised if it works.
 
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I’ve got an Oxford 100 and it still works fine. A total battery hog and if you divide by zero it goes completely mad and gets stuck in a recursive loop! One of their earliest calculators I think, it predates the classic Sinclair logo.

PS I’ve also got an old Sinclair Microvision TV that I’ve had since the early ‘80s. I think that’s now had it, last time I stuck some batteries in it I couldn’t get a raster so I suspect whatever the tiny CRT uses as flyback has now given up. Obviously nothing to tune it to TV-wise these days, but I wanted to see if I could get the Spectrum to display on it!
 
PS I’ve also got an old Sinclair Microvision TV that I’ve had since the early ‘80s. I think that’s now had it, last time I stuck some batteries in it I couldn’t get a raster so I suspect whatever the tiny CRT uses as flyback has now given up. Obviously nothing to tune it to TV-wise these days, but I wanted to see if I could get the Spectrum to display on it!

I thought the Sinclair TV used some weird battery that looked like a large flat piece of ravioli and that were made of unobtanium. Must have been another *ahem* 'pocket' TV.
 
Saw this on the news this morning, brilliant guy, nut's, well all the good ones are, invented the first computer, ish, and calculator, and how could we forget the Sinclair C5,
 
I dont think he ever got over not winning the franchise with the BBC for a BBC Micro that was won by Acorn that grew into much bigger things to ARM the design company behind most smart phones. I had one of his crummy scientific calculators that gave wrong answers - My dad in his travels went up to Cambridge and got a refund - they got rid of him asap as at the time there was an Arab dignitary visiting lol. I also had one his match box radios. I think he was really nothing more than an electronics toy maker
 
I had a Sinclair Science calculator in my 6th form back in 1974 that used Polish notation...so 1 million...1,000,000 would become 1 E 6...most students doing chemistry or physics had one...we pretended they were Star Trek communicators.

Clive Sinclair was a visionary....Chapeau...RIP :(

and it gave wrong answers if you looked.
 
Let us not forget that he made a class D amplifier in the early to mid 60's and then there was the Sinclair IC12, an early "gain clone" type IC, at a guess probably made for him by Plessey
 
I think he was really nothing more than an electronics toy maker
.

Yes. He struck lucky then because instead of selling a few thousand toys he sold several million, these toys were programmable, people could learn from the manual, books, friends, magazines dedicated to the subject. Dozens of software houses were amazingly creative with what they achieved. The ZX machines unlike many of their peers, were easily portable around to a friend’s house etc., before miniaturisation of things like TVs, cameras, etc was really a thing. I kinda partly get the electronics toy maker comment and then I kinda think it’s a bit of a numpty comment TBH. Huge fan and countless happy memories, I make no apology for that.
 


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