Sir Clive Sinclair has died.
- Thread starter Scania
- Start date
We did the same until the Speccy owners brought 3D Star Strike to our computer club. You could hear the jaws of the C64 and Atari 800 owners hitting the floor!
First computer was a Spectrum 48K+, Clive Sinclair was the quintessential British boffin that I took for granted considering him as a nerd as a kid when seeing him on TV and laughing at the C4 catastrophe.
As an adult realising what energy, drive and sheer intelligence that he possessed to make an actual British computer a success makes me respect him greatly. He had huge ambition for projects that he pulled off more than a few times successfully despite his later failures.
As for C64 vs Spectrum? I "upgraded" to a C64 after seeing Barbarian with sid chip music while loading and full colour, non clashing graphics, but in hindsight Spectrum was still really nice for what it did in many games as well.
As an adult realising what energy, drive and sheer intelligence that he possessed to make an actual British computer a success makes me respect him greatly. He had huge ambition for projects that he pulled off more than a few times successfully despite his later failures.
As for C64 vs Spectrum? I "upgraded" to a C64 after seeing Barbarian with sid chip music while loading and full colour, non clashing graphics, but in hindsight Spectrum was still really nice for what it did in many games as well.
And those of us with BBCs and Electrons got plenty of stick from both Spectrum and C64 owners, and then Elite came along and changed everything.
Man of Honour
Fond memories of my ZX81, thank you Sir Clive.
RIP
RIP
Quite simple really, he kept his personal wealth separate from his businesses, in 1983 he was worth £100m(!)
A similar thing happened with Chris Curry and Herman Hauser of Acorn, both made millions at the peak of the home computer bubble but had it squirrelled away by the time Acorn was bailed out by Olivetti.
Didn't it just?
Really? Because there was nothing there the Star Wars Arcade game already did on the C64
I remember being insanely jealous of BBC owners when I saw Elite running on the Acorn stand at a computer show. Luckily the C64 got a version a while later, which while running slower was still decent.
I was the sixth person to get to Elite status on the C64.
The C64 Star Wars game arrived a bit later and it was utter rubbish compared to 3D Starstrike. And of course the C64 never got anything as good as Starstrike 2 with its polygon graphics. The problem was the C64's processor was just clocked too slow for really decent 3D.
As much as I'm a massive C64 nerd, the hardware did tend to encourage certain types of games, while the Speccy was simpler but a complete blank slate for programmers to exploit which led to some more original games. I'm privileged to have known both Jon Ritman (Matchday, Head Over Heels) and Mike Singleton (Lords of Midnight) and I find it significant that their most original games were developed for the Spectrum first.
Associate
- Joined
- 17 Nov 2018
- Posts
- 483
Micromen=another case of student (Chris Curry) turning against master (Sir Clive Sinclair). Those sort of things don't usually end well. |If they put their differences aside and made a comeback they could have been huge.
It's not too late for them and Alan Sugar...
To quote micro men, “We could have been the British IBM” - Curry to Sinclair after their infamous bust up in a pub after both companies had fallen into financial turmoil, the sad part was he was absolutely right, they could indeed should have….
Look at ARM (which once stood for Acorn RISC Machine) , it was literally a sideline project that wasn’t even mentioned in the takeover talks between Olivetti & Acorn, once Olivetti had control it was introduced along the lines of “oh yeah, we’re working on this….” Olivetti didn’t appreciate what they were sitting on…
This is an interesting read…
https://m.huffingtonpost.co.uk/ellee-seymour/the-day-olivetti-stitched_b_1306101.html
Last edited:
Associate
- Joined
- 17 Nov 2018
- Posts
- 483
I meant, Alan Sugar joining forces with Chris Curry and his Austrian mate making a comeback. They've got a perfect time and just think of the possibilities-
The smartphones
The tablet PCs,
the accessories
the laptops
There's no stopping them
Not a chance, both Curry and Hauser are firstly well over retirement age,75 & 72 respectively, both - especially Hauser - have numerous other interests already and both are extremely wealthy in their own rights, as for Lord Sugar, again, very wealthy, numerous interests already and himself getting on a bit.
In their positions, why would you bother?
Clive Sinclair came to my workplace in 1992 (I was then working for a chip company). However the closest I got to meeting him was nearly bumping into him as I was going into the toilets and he was on the way out! A 'sorry' was exchanged, but that's the limit of my interactions with the great man.
All counts.... I think I may start a GD thread on random famous people met
Man of Honour
I was more a Commodore kid in the 80s but still had the odd tinker with a Spectrum however, Sir Clive was way ahead of his time and I hope he has found peace.