RIP Thread

[RedOktober]

And now Boycie... what a day.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58617114

[RedOktober]

Anyone who’d seen a milk float might disagree.

What was the range of a milk float? I have no idea where my local ones were based.

[(o)(o)]

Indeed. Sir clive was actually more interested in the 'electric vehicle' concept than computers.

He was also a keen poker player.. this very program was my introduction to the 'sport' :



As for losses.. I do feel especially for those whose lives are cut short.

It seemed implausible that Sarah Harding would be taken within 12 months at age 39, that's cancer..

[tufty]

What was the range of a milk float? I have no idea where my local ones were based.

40 to 50 miles. Or twice round Craggy Island.

[KlaxonCow]

The problem with electric vehicles is battery technology. Sinclair chose to ignore it

Absolutely agreed.

That was also equally my point too, but I'm just coming at it from the different angle.

That, once battery tech did get good enough, we end up with this:



A not-particularly-aerodynamic family SUV that out-accelerates an Audi R8, which is supposed to be the car designed for this sort of thing.

So the electric vehicle concept is sound. But you can't pull it off without the battery tech to back it up, as I completely agree that THE problem with EVs is the batteries. I mean, an EV is, in essence, just an electric motor connected to a battery. It's all down to how much you can blast out of that battery at the motor - and then how long you can keep that up, before the battery dies.

These days, we can just about pull it off. Only barely, though.

Like, the best - most state-of-the-art - EV can get you 300+ miles range. Which is good, and more than enough for most people but, like, it's only just now getting comparable enough to a petrol tank, range-wise, to be a realistic alternative to it (and the petrol tank still wins on range, but the EV range is starting to get close enough that, for most people, it doesn't matter). Only now, 40 years of battery tech improvement later, can we really start saying that this is a valid alternative to the ICE.

So, I am saying the same as you, really. But I'm just throwing a "positive spin" on it, in tribute to someone who's just died, that he wasn't wrong to think "electric cars are the future" because they were and they are. But, yeah, totally wrong to think that you could make anything useful or compelling with the shit batteries available in the '80s.

Or, well, as I suggested, you perhaps could have legitimately done a basic "e-bike". Because, in a sense, that's what the C5 really was. A bike with battery assist, but you weirdly were sitting down and almost horizontal. If he'd admitted / accepted that it was just a battery-assisted bike - as you've still got to pedal the thing, like a bike - then redo it as an e-bike. And there is a market for that, as e-bikes are doing quite well as commute vehicles in cities and the odd bit of home delivery. It's a bike, but a bike with a throttle, so you can call on the battery to give an "assist" up a steep hill or whatever (and you can do regenerative braking and make use of the "pedal power" of the rider to actually keep trickle charge the bike, whilst in use).

That is, in my opinion, the C5 was really one of these, but in denial of its true nature:



And, without that denial, but actually coming out as an e-bike, in proper bicycle form factor, it could have been an at least moderate success, not a laughable failure. Same product - but designed and marketed the right way, as what it really was, I reckon it could've actually been made to work and sell. Even on the crap batteries of the '80s.

[venusian]

The C5 was important... as a lesson more than a design. Science and technology are built as much on failure as they are success.

If one wanted to pick holes in Sinclair's legacy, the place to do it is the QL. Whilst the company cut all the right corners on the ZXs, it cut all the wrong ones on the QL, casting a shadow over Sir Clive's reputation as a computing visionary.

[KlaxonCow]

If one wanted to pick holes in Sinclair's legacy, the place to do it is the QL.

But that was an industry-wide fault, as Commodore and others were equally embarrassed by the fact that their machines were mostly used for gaming - "Jet Set Fucking Willy!" - and then kept trying to bring out "serious business" machines. With built-in word-processors and "business apps" and shit.

With grand delusions that they were going to de-throne IBM with an 8-bit... if only it had 80 column mode and a crap spreadsheet in the ROM.

Yeah, Sir Clive did that - and famously voiced his embarrassment with having a successful gaming device, in that "Jet Set fucking Willy" quote - chasing after businesses. But he wasn't the only one, as the entire industry - Sinclair, Commodore, Amstrad, etc. - all essentially committed suicide trying to scale that "mount impossible".

Like, with the C128, Commodore went to effort of sticking Z80 in the thing, just to run CP/M, and then including two graphics chips - the VIC-II and the VDC - and the VDC was all about that 80 column mode. No hardware scrolling, no sprites and using its own separate video memory, so it was slow as buggery and not useful for games.

This is not an insignificant effort. They've put two CPUs and two graphics chips in the thing. In essence, they've stuck two different computers into one box. Just to run CP/M in 80 columns for "serious business" (and, even back then, CP/M was already a bit long in the tooth anyway).

Were there really C64 and Spectrum users crying out for better spreadsheet support? At least Amstrad went the sensible route eventually, by just making actual PC clones.

But they all chased "serious business" and a mad delusion that you could ever de-throne the IBM PC from that title, and a complete failure to appreciate that they were selling millions because of this new market of gaming. A market not to be sniffed at, it was already netting more cash than Hollywood back in the '90s. And, like, gaming PCs are where the boundaries are pushed and sticking "gaming PC" and some RGB on something is how you sell the most expensive components to make big profits.

Seeing it as "not serious" and "for kids", they all turned their back on the thing that brought success, and never really understood that they'd created a brand new market... and ended up killing themselves off chasing the old traditional market. And, with irony, the eventual king of gaming? The IBM PC.

Yes, Sir Clive killed off his computer ambitions with that quest for the "serious business" market. But, well, they all did that - the whole industry - drinking the "serious business apps" Kool-aid. And, save Apple, none of them survived (not even IBM - their machine lived on, but it's now all cloud apps and shit with them, kicked out of their own market by competitors).

[(o)(o)]

Is this the time and place for a verbose analysis of Sir Clive’s computing legacy?

Bring on the dancing girls..

[Dio]

But they all chased "serious business" and a mad delusion that you could ever de-throne the IBM PC from that title, and a complete failure to appreciate that they were selling millions because of this new market of gaming. A market not to be sniffed at, it was already netting more cash than Hollywood back in the '90s. And, like, gaming PCs are where the boundaries are pushed and sticking "gaming PC" and some RGB on something is how you sell the most expensive components to make big profits.

Seeing it as "not serious" and "for kids", they all turned their back on the thing that brought success, and never really understood that they'd created a brand new market... and ended up killing themselves off chasing the old traditional market. And, with irony, the eventual king of gaming? The IBM PC.

Yes, Sir Clive killed off his computer ambitions with that quest for the "serious business" market. But, well, they all did that - the whole industry - drinking the "serious business apps" Kool-aid. And, save Apple, none of them survived (not even IBM - their machine lived on, but it's now all cloud apps and shit with them, kicked out of their own market by competitors).

Bit of a misread, I think. There's a bit much to go into, but the two key points are that a lot of people who weren't IBM did make a lot of money out of business computing in the 80s (in this country, mostly Alan Sugar, who by the end of the decade was making 80% of his money off the PCW line and then very cleverly made a planned exit from computing as he saw the open-standard PC juggernaut coming) and secondly that home computers were killed off in 1990 with the Megadrive and the SNES. Past that point home computing ceases to exist whether IBM exists or not.

Both the 16-bit machines were great successes while adequately hitting both home office and computing market. Yes, Commodore did cock up the Amiga for its first three years by not building a home version, but the failure was not aiming at a business market, it was that they didn't bother to aim at the home market as well.

The two repeated failures of the home computers are extremely simply stated:
- Not having enough colour on the screen, for the middle 8 bits. Seems an odd one, but all the machines that had limited colours and/or a limited number on screen at once were simply unsuited to gaming.
- Not being properly and continually optimised for high volume, low cost production then management using that to drive the machine cost to the minimum. Everything except the Tramiel - at Atari or Commodore - Sinclair and Amstrad machines was hit hard by this one, and it further hamstrung the Amiga, which had nominal production cost no higher than the ST but Commodore insisted on the premium.

Also, I wouldn't necessarily invest the early 80s with actual much 'targeting' at all. Generally people were building any old crap and throwing it at the wall to see what stuck. Nobody actually thought very much about the stuff they were building - the A8, C64 and Amiga were rare exceptions, but everything else was put together in days by guesswork. Which is why it's so trivial to pick holes in the designs of all of them.

[zip accident]

Bit of a misread, I think. There's a bit much to go into, but the two key points are that a lot of people who weren't IBM did make a lot of money out of business computing in the 80s (in this country, mostly Alan Sugar, who by the end of the decade was making 80% of his money off the PCW line and then very cleverly made a planned exit from computing as he saw the open-standard PC juggernaut coming)

Viglen was a Sugar purchase, and sold open-standard PCs (apparently still does, but they used to be bigger), and there were cheap Amstrad brand open-standard PCs well into the 1990s, the least forgivable thing that Sugar did was using the Sinclair brand to produce the nastiest PC ever.

and secondly that home computers were killed off in 1990 with the Megadrive and the SNES. Past that point home computing ceases to exist whether IBM exists or not.

I bought an ST in 1990, I was probably in a small minority, but I think it was probably 1993 or later before the market for Amigae and STs fully died.

The two repeated failures of the home computers are extremely simply stated:
- Not having enough colour on the screen, for the middle 8 bits. Seems an odd one, but all the machines that had limited colours and/or a limited number on screen at once were simply unsuited to gaming.

I had a Newbrain, colour nope, centronics port nope, I didn't understand the necessity of a centronics port at the time (alledgedly there was a Sinclair connection, but he was long gone before it shipped).

- Not being properly and continually optimised for high volume, low cost production then management using that to drive the machine cost to the minimum. Everything except the Tramiel - at Atari or Commodore - Sinclair and Amstrad machines was hit hard by this one, and it further hamstrung the Amiga, which had nominal production cost no higher than the ST but Commodore insisted on the premium.

The failure of the ST was in my view down to GEM becoming a non-competitor to Windows, and that was down to Apple threatening to sue DR (and the rest of the industry, but Microsoft, Commodore and Atari has the money to say "go away", eventually it came to court vs Microsoft and Apple rightly lost, but that didn't resurrect GEM).

Also, I wouldn't necessarily invest the early 80s with actual much 'targeting' at all. Generally people were building any old crap and throwing it at the wall to see what stuck. Nobody actually thought very much about the stuff they were building - the A8, C64 and Amiga were rare exceptions, but everything else was put together in days by guesswork. Which is why it's so trivial to pick holes in the designs of all of them.

That sounds right, there were so many terrible 8-bits.

[Dio]

The ST was no failure in the home arena. It sold very well for about five years against technically superior competition. It is perhaps odd it didn't do better against the Mac, given that it was superior in just about every respect bar physical space. GEM is a fair argument there. Windows is not; that didn't really make progress until much later, when the 386 and VGA were making PCs genuinely graphically capable but also five times the price, but what really built PC momentum in the business space wasn't GUI - it was ten years of back-compat (plus the ease of porting from CP/M to DOS extending the suite of business apps back another five years on top of that).

Note that the senescence of the ST came much faster than the 8-bits - both the Spectrum and the C64 were still selling in pretty decent numbers in 1990, four years after they were obsoleted, while the low-end 16-bits slid very rapidly off a cliff in 1991-3 once it was clear the consoles had stolen their lunch.

[venusian]

My point about the QL was not where the machine was marketed but the tech.

The QL had poor looking graphics at the exact moment the consoles and machines like the Amiga were kicking things up a gear. It had a crippled slow processor just when everybody was moving up to full-16 bit. It has awful custom storage just when everybody was moving to floppy discs. It had /that/ keyboard just as real keyboards were taken as granted.

In contrast to the Spectrum which had hi-res colour graphics when that was only just becoming the norm, it had a fast-enough processor (especially compared to it's screen RAM), and had convenient storage equal to it's peers, and enough memory. It cut corners on sound, peripheral chips and keyboard but those were the right things to skimp on, in contrast to the QL.

[Dio]

Well, that's kind of the point. It wasn't bad because it was a machine chasing a business marketplace. It was just plain awful full stop. It's a 16-bit version of the morass of 8-bit trash with basically no redeeming feature.

I suspect the Spectrum's success was as much down to luck as judgement. What's certainly right is that it was all about Sinclair - his role was absolutely key in that he set the target market and set the brand perception just right for the time, but then he lucked out that the machine Altwasser designed was just good enough. But there's so many obvious-in-hindsight things that could have been done (e.g. selling a third 80KB SKU was possible at pennies of cost, and that could have led to a much higher profit unit in the short term and a much more capable one in the medium; similarly, zero-cost tweaks to the ULA would have left it capable of displaying 64 colours on screen at once from a palette of 100+ and having far more capable sound).

[KlaxonCow]

Bring on the dancing girls..

I've always wondered with photos like this - perhaps Rik can enlighten us - but does the photographer actually explicitly say things like "you girls have got the biggest tits, so come to the front and lean towards the camera"? Or is it more implicit - that the girls themselves know what they've got, and already know where to stand / lean / squat for maximum effect?

Just because, you know, in actual real life, that sort of thing would be totally out-of-order - and, these days, would you not be risking being "cancelled" for any such suggestions? - but, at the same time, in an already sexually dubious photo like this (where the women are clearly there just to "decorate" Sir Clive), there's the angle that this is what such a photo is all about, so it's just doing your job - "being professional", in a manner of speaking - to direct the shoot for the best end results.

It just all seems - from my perhaps naive layperson's viewpoint - like a very fine tightrope to walk indeed. So it intrigues me how the hell anyone actually negotiates such a weird social space.

[zip accident]

My point about the QL was not where the machine was marketed but the tech.

The QL had poor looking graphics at the exact moment the consoles and machines like the Amiga were kicking things up a gear. It had a crippled slow processor just when everybody was moving up to full-16 bit. It has awful custom storage just when everybody was moving to floppy discs. It had /that/ keyboard just as real keyboards were taken as granted.

In contrast to the Spectrum which had hi-res colour graphics when that was only just becoming the norm, it had a fast-enough processor (especially compared to it's screen RAM), and had convenient storage equal to it's peers, and enough memory. It cut corners on sound, peripheral chips and keyboard but those were the right things to skimp on, in contrast to the QL.

Well, that's kind of the point. It wasn't bad because it was a machine chasing a business marketplace. It was just plain awful full stop. It's a 16-bit version of the morass of 8-bit trash with basically no redeeming feature.

I suspect the Spectrum's success was as much down to luck as judgement. What's certainly right is that it was all about Sinclair - his role was absolutely key in that he set the target market and set the brand perception just right for the time, but then he lucked out that the machine Altwasser designed was just good enough. But there's so many obvious-in-hindsight things that could have been done (e.g. selling a third 80KB SKU was possible at pennies of cost, and that could have led to a much higher profit unit in the short term and a much more capable one in the medium; similarly, zero-cost tweaks to the ULA would have left it capable of displaying 64 colours on screen at once from a palette of 100+ and having far more capable sound).

The QL was unfortunate. It was below the ST, which was below the Amiga, which was below the Mac. It needed to be better, or cheaper, by the time it was cheaper it was pretty much dead.