Sir Clive passed away.

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bwinkel67
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Re: Sir Clive passed away.

Post by bwinkel67 »

swensont wrote:If I had not purchased my ZX81 in high school, I"m sure it would have eventually bought another computer, but the low price of the ZX81 made it so easy. The ZX81 allowed me to learn how much fun programming could be. That sealed my decision to major in Computer Science in college. In College I kept buying the next Sinclair computer (T/S 100, T/S 2068, QL, and eventually the Z88).

The ZX81 started me down the path of my career. When my step-father saw the ZX81 (with memory pack), he said "You spent $250 on that?". It sounded expensive at the time, but in the long term it was well worth it.

Thank you, Sir Clive.
Wow, we had a similar path...and both in the US I think. I did skip the TS lines and had a few year gap between the ZX81 in 1982 and the QL in 1989. I did keep the little ZX81 going for as long as I could, writing a terminal program, a text editor, etc... I even wrote an assembler for it that I'm still trying to recover. Last Sinclair computer I bought was the Z88 but I also invested in his mini FM radio (I have two of them) and did find a white calculator in eBay in the late 90's.

Clive Sinclair just made stuff that I liked. I was never drawn too much to Commodore or Texas Instrument's early computers. Maybe Radio Shack a little since I have a pocket computer and would have liked to have the Model 100. The styling of those computers just appealed to me.


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Team Andromeda QL
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Re: Sir Clive passed away.

Post by Team Andromeda QL »

Van told me the sad news, while I was at work yesterday.

RIP Sir Clive and thank you so much for getting me into gaming.
I'll never forget my Christmas 85 with Gift From the Gods and my ZX Spectrum 128k


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NormanDunbar
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Re: Sir Clive passed away.

Post by NormanDunbar »

Brane2 wrote:Which is work of Rick Dickinson, not Clive.
The mods have had a complaint regarding this, and some of your other comments on this memorial thread.

Please be respectful here, thanks.

If you need to air your opinions on whether Clive was a visionary or not, go ahead, but please start a separate thread. Keep comments and memories here respectful to the departed.

Thanks.

Cheers,
Norm.


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vanpeebles
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Re: Sir Clive passed away.

Post by vanpeebles »

110% Norm.

So far I've read pages of tributes on two football forums, and seen tweets by Musk and the Boss of Microsoft about Sir Clive.

It's a shame most of the news articles are missing out loads of his stuff. First UK satellite receiver, the Cambridge Forum mobile phone network etc. Sir Clive even even made some scuba diving motors! The Z88 was an excellent all round product.


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NormanDunbar
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Re: Sir Clive passed away.

Post by NormanDunbar »

I always wanted a Black Watch. And the calculator. A school mate had one. It would count up from zero if you divided by zero! Always amused me to see that.

Cheers,
Norm.


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vanpeebles
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Re: Sir Clive passed away.

Post by vanpeebles »

NormanDunbar wrote:I always wanted a Black Watch. And the calculator. A school mate had one. It would count up from zero if you divided by zero! Always amused me to see that.

Cheers,
Norm.
I want the car version for my MGB, I'm sure I read that Sinclair watch won a swiss watch award.


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Pr0f
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Re: Sir Clive passed away.

Post by Pr0f »

Z88 was a great computer - used to use that on my way to work on the train - was so quiet. I have acquired a few to refurbish and upgrade internally - still a very useful little item - an excellent combination of software and hardware that just did what it needed to do - it wasn't fanciful, super high res or anything like that - but it didn't weigh much and could run off four reasonably cheap AA batteries - what more could you ask.


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Ruptor
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Re: Sir Clive passed away.

Post by Ruptor »

janbredenbeek wrote:My first computer I learned to program on was a ZX Spectrum back in 1983. I guess that was what Sir Clive aimed for - making technology accessible for the average person and letting them create their own programs, not just consuming and playing games (even though the Spectrum eventually became very successful as a games machine).
We have a similar path starting with a ZX Spectrum because I had the money by the time it came out. You are right about the era here in Britain that was about invention and progress that the Spectrum gave to the individual at home. We had TV programs like Tomorrows World that showed inventions and things that could come and Sinclair gave us a tool to join in hence the computer revolution. They are trying to do the same with the RPi to get children in to creation of programs rather than playing games. I always wanted a black watch too but couldn't afford one.
Thanks Sir Clive. RIP


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mrzap000
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Re: Sir Clive passed away.

Post by mrzap000 »

Chr$ wrote:Just read that the main man has died, aged 81. That's a bummer. I hoped he would go on forever. At least the things he put to market in the 80s are still being tinkered with and will certainly live on.
That dark beauty that entered my room in 1985 and is still perfectly operational despite the layer of dust, will outlilve me too.
Had Sir Clive been a regular enterpreneur, the QL wouldn't have been that imperfect but at the same time exhilarating piece of technology that inspired many people.
Had it been without limitations and flaws, it would have been a boring Mac. An incomplete OS made us have fun extending it. The slow RAM doubled our IQ while trying to optimize our code. Its perfect incompleteness made us become curious and creative. Geniuses are beyond perfection.
So, thank you Sir Clive for giving us such imperfect yet inspiring creations.


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Re: Sir Clive passed away.

Post by NormanDunbar »

One of my first programs for the ZX-81 was a database system, written in Basic, to catalogue my record collection. I had hundreds of singles and LPs back then (ahem, still do! Now with added CDs.) I managed to write something that could load and save from tape, enter data through the keyboard and search etc. I was chuffed to buggery!

When I started entering data, I got about 4 records catalogued before I got "Error 4". (Out of Memory) I was gutted. After saving for literally months, I could afford a Cheetah (I think) RAM expansion to take me up to 64 KB (I think) but by then, I had lost the will to catalogue my records.

Happy days!


Cheers,
Norm.

PS. I had an interest in databases ever since those heady days writing my own. I'm an Oracle DBA these days and run my own company with my wife, who does system testing. Without Clive, I'd have neither of these fine things.Oh, yes, I did eventually catalogue my records.


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