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Old 17th Sep 2021, 9:25 pm   #41
bobhowe
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Default Re: Sir Clive Sinclair. R.I.P.

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Originally Posted by Buzby123 View Post
I too had umpteen of Clive's inventions. Amps, radios, calculators, a watch, and of course, computers. Most were crap, but so futuristic that I couldn't resist having them.

As well as the obvious success of his early computers, it's often forgotten that Acorn would not exist if Chris Curry had not worked for Clive, and that led eventually to the ARM architecture in so many products today.

The legacy of Sir Clive is all around us.

R.I.P Sir Clive.
RIP Sir Clive I agree what Buzby 123 says about computers and The Sinclair Micro Vision TV was great kind regards Bob
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Old 17th Sep 2021, 10:39 pm   #42
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Default Re: Sir Clive Sinclair. R.I.P.

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... The Sinclair Micro Vision TV was great ...
I'd forgotten I had one of those !.

I lent it to my girlfriend, a student nurse. Students were not allowed TVs in their rooms in the nurses home, but this little set could be hidden in a drawer when not in use. All the other student nurses were well impressed, none of their boyfriends had anything to match a pocket telly !.

That girlfriend is now my wife.

If it can be proven that that little TV was instrumental in leading to our marriage, do you think I might have a chance of claiming compensation from Clive's estate ?.
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Old 17th Sep 2021, 11:03 pm   #43
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Default Re: Sir Clive Sinclair. R.I.P.

Pioneers can't do things by the book because it hasn't been written yet...
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Old 18th Sep 2021, 12:15 am   #44
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Default Re: Sir Clive Sinclair. R.I.P.

RIP Sir Clive, gave me hours of pleasure with his creations

I too made up an amplifier based on the P60.

I learned BASIC from scratch on a ZX81 working carefully through the manual, I was really made up when I wrote a FOR/NEXT loop without using FOR/NEXT!

Also had the 16k Ram Pack, Thermal Printer and later on a Spectrum, in fact I still have 2 XZ81s, a Ram Pack and a powersupply stashed away in a cupboard.

I wrote a passable fruit machine game with a random hold function.

Another maths type game I wrote presented you with an addition sum using random operands 1 to 9 plus an answer that was either correct, one too many or one less.

E.g ‘3 + 4 = 7’ that’s the right answer but it could also show the answer to be 6 or 8 as well.

You pressed either Y or N according to whether the answer was right or wrong. Your speed of answering caused the bars of a tuning type indicator to grow closer together a bit if your reactions were fast enough or move apart a bit if you were slower than a certain time. The aim of course was to get them as close as possible.

After playing it for a time I realised you didn’t actually have to do the sum!

If only one of the operands was odd then the answer should be odd.

In all other cases the answer should be even i.e. two evens should be an even answer and two odds should also be an even answer.

I trained my mind to look for that only and my reactions became quite fast in in due course, one finger of right hand hovering over the Y and another finger of left hand hovering over the N. My little mantra was ‘RIGHT answer RIGHT hand, WRONG answer LEFT hand, RIGHT answer RIGHT hand, WRONG answer LEFT hand…...’

When I got the Spectrum I wrote a machine code/basic program that would load in a ZX81 program from tape and make the necessary changes to the ZX81 non-standard character codes so they came out as correct ASCII codes, other codes needed to be changed so they were right for the Spectrum as well.

Wish I had kept those tapes but with the sands of time…...Oh well.
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Old 18th Sep 2021, 10:50 am   #45
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Default Re: Sir Clive Sinclair. R.I.P.

The Sinclair C5.
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Old 18th Sep 2021, 12:49 pm   #46
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Default Re: Sir Clive Sinclair. R.I.P.

I still have a Sinclair Micromatic (the later 2 transistor version) here. Unlike a lot of uncle Clive's products it worked first time and gave me many hours of listening to Luxembourg when I should have been sleeping...
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Old 18th Sep 2021, 1:42 pm   #47
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It has been said that the returned faulty ZX8x's in the bin were retrieved by the bin men then returned (again) as not working. A new one was sent back, the cost was probably well down in the noise and ignored. Unlike today's accountants who will gladly spend a quid on finding out where 10p went.
 
Old 18th Sep 2021, 2:11 pm   #48
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Default Re: Sir Clive Sinclair. R.I.P.

Sad to see Sir Clive leave us. A better bet socially than "Siralan" I suspect. There's a very full and fair Obit in today's Guardian that points out his failures or mis-judgements as well as the other brilliant side to his character. He said himself that, given the inclement weather soaking the driver and the cold temperature that would have affected the limited battery charge, January may not have been the best month to launch the C5 This reminds me of John Logie Baird's varying levels of success in a way. Clive's daughter Belinda says he was still working on an invention last week! There is a photo of her dad holding the gold version of his calculator.

"I am not a businessman by nature....I certainly have no desire to be hugely rich:I mean, I have been but that was just something that happened."

I was surprised to see that a long thread started by Aub [amongst other Sinclair ones] was only last year! "[Sir] Clive Sinclair." 17/6/20 That famous dispute on licensed premises isn't mentioned in the obit but Martin seemed to come up with a convincing description not involving Sir Clive directly [posts 27*/28* and 48*]. It's possible the crumpled note that I still have, advising further smoothing on a Z12 power supply came directly from the Sinclair kitchen table in Cambridge.

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Old 18th Sep 2021, 2:14 pm   #49
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Default Re: Sir Clive Sinclair. R.I.P.

No more discussion of the C5 please it's off topic for this forum.

Cheers

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Old 18th Sep 2021, 2:23 pm   #50
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Default Re: Sir Clive Sinclair. R.I.P.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Buzby123 View Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by bobhowe View Post
... The Sinclair Micro Vision TV was great ...
I'd forgotten I had one of those !.

I lent it to my girlfriend, a student nurse. Students were not allowed TVs in their rooms in the nurses home, but this little set could be hidden in a drawer when not in use. All the other student nurses were well impressed, none of their boyfriends had anything to match a pocket telly !.

That girlfriend is now my wife.

If it can be proven that that little TV was instrumental in leading to our marriage, do you think I might have a chance of claiming compensation from Clive's estate ?.
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Old 18th Sep 2021, 2:31 pm   #51
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Default Re: Sir Clive Sinclair. R.I.P.

Noted Mike. I had no idea that there is a restriction now but I assume others may have used it to go in the direction of the internal combustion engine which is strictly forbidden by the Mods, as everything then goes off topic. My intention was just to point out that Sir Clive readily admitted he wasn't too good at promotion, as well as business in general.

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Old 18th Sep 2021, 2:37 pm   #52
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Default Re: Sir Clive Sinclair. R.I.P.

My first experience of Sinclair was helping my sisters friend build his Sinclair Cambridge Scientific calculator, he was nervous about soldering in the components and my father and I did some of it for him. One christmas I was given a Cambridge Programmable calculaator which was the first programmable device I had and I learnt it inside out, wishing only that it had a bigger memory. I later was allowed to use my teachers MK14s to write some programs for "open day" at school, which eventually many years later lead me to design my "Issue VI" replica. I also recall seeing the adverts for Sinclairs Matchbox Radio, Hi-fi modules and the "Black Watch" in the electronics magazines I read cover to cover as a kid. I never owned any of his later computers, but experienced all of them "second hand" through borrowing time on my friends computers.

Sinclair made a huge impact on the electronics scene, and is responsible for the huge pool of programming talent this country has. His impact on low-cost computing was as great as the Raspberry Pi that came 30 years later.
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Old 18th Sep 2021, 3:52 pm   #53
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Default Re: Sir Clive Sinclair. R.I.P.

Like others who have posted on this thread, I too have various memories of Clive Sinclair.
Way back in the early '60's I seem to remember that he sold re-branded transistors, selected & tested as 'Red spot', white spot' etc.
I too built many of the early kits; the micro radio, the calculators & various amplifiers.
R.I.P.
He will certainly be missed, but hopefully not forgotten

David.
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Old 18th Sep 2021, 7:46 pm   #54
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Default Re: Sir Clive Sinclair. R.I.P.

Only one memory, and a quite inconsequential one. The firm I worked for at one time did a bit of air taxi work and I once saw him in reception. Unmistakeable, but as I said inconsequential!
I do have a calculator somewhere I built from a kit however.
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Old 18th Sep 2021, 8:26 pm   #55
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To use a modern expression, the Sinclair brand was used throughout his exploits, the good and the not quite so. There is confidence for you.
 
Old 18th Sep 2021, 9:03 pm   #56
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Default Re: Sir Clive Sinclair. R.I.P.

I had several Sinclair products including the Scientific Calculator kit for my second year at PCFE I still have it somewhere. Reverse Polish Notation actually makes more sense when your trying to work out long algebraic strings . I repaired many of the Project series amplifiers never bought one when they were new as I found the ratings beyond optomistic! Still have my Black watch, to be fair to Sir Clive the lens on my Black watch kept falling out and getting lost but the replacement were cheap and available.
I think that sums up most of his products they were at a price where almost everyone could afford them, sure you could get a similar product from one of the big boys for a similar price if you were prepared to wait 3 years

I never bought a Sinclair computer because by the time the ZX80 hit the shops I had running CPM on my Nascom for more than a year, and by the time the ZX81 hit the shops I was onto the Apple II but it is amazing how many of the programmers I work with got their first taste of programming on one of Clive's machines. Personally for the reasons given I was never a fan of his computers but I am probably in the minority.

To that end it can said that Sir Clive brought future products to the market today and he certainly wasn't afraid to put his money into his dreams.

RIP Sir Clive Sinclair.
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Old 19th Sep 2021, 2:24 am   #57
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Default Re: Sir Clive Sinclair. R.I.P.

BBC radio 4 has a long running half-hour obituary programme 'The Last Word' in which it summarises the lives of several people, some very well known, some less so, who have passed away in the week leading up to the initial broadcast - it is repeated later the same week.

I think the first broadcast is at 16.00 on Fridays and the repeat is at 20.30 two days later. It would be very surprising if Sir Clive does not get a mention.
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Old 19th Sep 2021, 2:21 pm   #58
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Default Re: Sir Clive Sinclair. R.I.P.

I once saw an intrepid (suicidal?) individual trundling south, lunchtime, in a C5 on the A38 in Bishopston, Bristol!
Sir Clive certainly added his personal vector to the time-line...
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Old 19th Sep 2021, 3:04 pm   #59
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Default Re: Sir Clive Sinclair. R.I.P.

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I once saw an intrepid (suicidal?) individual trundling south, lunchtime, in a C5 on the A38 in Bishopston, Bristol!
Sir Clive certainly added his personal vector to the time-line...
Heh My dad had that copy of Practical Wireless, I remember reading the article about the radio. At the time I was too young to understand most of it, but I guess some things stuck!
I wish I still had all those wireless worlds... luckily they are still available online!
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Old 19th Sep 2021, 10:00 pm   #60
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Default Re: Sir Clive Sinclair. R.I.P.

Related, Alan has put up a page on how he acquired the Sinclair computer business and how he managed to save Sir Clive's dignity by doing so.

https://www.amshold.com/social_media...lair_story.htm
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