Micro Men. Clive Sinclir Story on BBC4 now.
Discussion
Technonotice said:
It did portray Sinclair to be a bit of a cock though. Was that the case?
I think they may have stretched things a little - he was slightly odious, especially with trying to get the QL out "on time". He totally ballsed that one up something rotten.No getting around him being incredibly creative, and a very typical british inventor - hugely flawed, but incredibly talented.
cazzer said:
Me too. I miss those days tbh.
Technology was raw, fun, and much more accesible.
Technology was raw, fun, and much more accesible.
Oh, so true. Sitting down with your 22" b/w TV typing in some massive (1K) program.I wrote a few games and a few control programs as well (using an I/O port) for fun.
Had access as well to an Apple ][ and slowly moved onto that and then onto 8051 programming for business but I dont think anything at the time beat the 'joy' of sitting quietly reading a book and learning all about Z80 assembly.... Until girls came along
(Still have lots of Apple ][ bits here all stored away).
Back to the programme:
Clive Sinclair is an obnoxious 'phone flinging a
hole ? Really? Where were all these stories taken from....Curry?If so, it has destroyed my image of him.
Edited by Morningside on Friday 9th October 10:05
Morningside said:
cazzer said:
Me too. I miss those days tbh.
Technology was raw, fun, and much more accesible.
Technology was raw, fun, and much more accesible.
Oh, so true. Sitting down with your 22" b/w TV typing in some massive (1K) program.I wrote a few games and a few control programs as well (using an I/O port) for fun.
Had access as well to an Apple ][ and slowly moved onto that and then onto 8051 programming for business but I dont think anything at the time beat the 'joy' of sitting quietly reading a book and learning all about Z80 assembly.... Until girls came along
(Still have lots of Apple ][ bits here all stored away).
Back to the programme:
Clive Sinclair is an obnoxious 'phone flinging a
hole ? Really? Where were all these stories taken from....Curry?If so, it has destroyed my image of him.
Edited by Morningside on Friday 9th October 10:05
Hehe, MCS51 - used that in 3rd year of Uni. First experience of Intel assembler after years of 6502 and then ARM coding. Absolutely hated it. Not helped by our underspeccing the blasted kit - 128 bytes of RAM, no separate stack space.
Those were the days .....
Dammit. Missed this.
I remember his stuff well. At the time of the Spectrum, I was an APL/COBOL analyst/programmer on IBM mainframes. One Christmas eve my brother phoned me up to say that he had bought his son a Sinclair computer, and "as I knew all about those computer things" could I go over and write some games for him. That was a long night of learning and hacking code. I can't remember the language but I think it might have been STOS - or maybe that was when he bought the Atari... dunno, ages ago.
Anyway, as you can probably imagine, they weren't the most exciting games you ever saw
Bright guy, but IMO could have done with some solid advice on how / whether to take his innovation to market in some cases.
I remember his stuff well. At the time of the Spectrum, I was an APL/COBOL analyst/programmer on IBM mainframes. One Christmas eve my brother phoned me up to say that he had bought his son a Sinclair computer, and "as I knew all about those computer things" could I go over and write some games for him. That was a long night of learning and hacking code. I can't remember the language but I think it might have been STOS - or maybe that was when he bought the Atari... dunno, ages ago.
Anyway, as you can probably imagine, they weren't the most exciting games you ever saw
Bright guy, but IMO could have done with some solid advice on how / whether to take his innovation to market in some cases.
simonrockman said:
I'm surprised they didn't do a 'whare are they now' bit at the end.
Simon
Simon
That would have been a good idea. Although to be fair I cannot see Sinclair now contributing to any talk/discussion after portraying him like that!I think someone should produce a 21st century Spectrum/ZX81 powered by 9v battery in the base and displayed onto an popup LCD.
A retro stocking filler.
Some people still like to fiddle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKu9qreiI3E&fea...
For those who still like to fiddle
Old school basic (It has sprites)
http://darkbasic.thegamecreators.com/
Old school basic (It has sprites)
http://darkbasic.thegamecreators.com/
Haven't finished watching it, but it was quite entertaining. Not sure how accurate though.
I was under the impression that Chris Curry was as argumentative as Sinclair, so it seemed odd that he was portrayed as quite meek. My landlady worked for Sinclair and didn't seem to think he was so bad. The programme didn't make much of Sinclair's habit of buying cheap components and making them do things they just weren't designed for.
As for where are they now..
Sinclair Research still exists, largely producing bikes, radios and power assist units for wheelchairs.
Chris Curry set up a company called GIS in 1985, which specialises in Smart Cards and card readers.
Hermann Hauser was involved in the split of Acorn into Acorn and ARM, and founded a very successful venture capital company. Last I heard he was a non-exec director of Cambridge Display Technology which is one of the companies that developed OLED displays. Of all of the people in the story, I gather his success has been the most long lasting.
Roger Wilson went on to design the ARM chip that is produced in billions and powers many mobile phones. Unfortunately when ARM was split off from Acorn, he stayed with Acorn, which has since been consumed by Broadcom.
I was under the impression that Chris Curry was as argumentative as Sinclair, so it seemed odd that he was portrayed as quite meek. My landlady worked for Sinclair and didn't seem to think he was so bad. The programme didn't make much of Sinclair's habit of buying cheap components and making them do things they just weren't designed for.
As for where are they now..
Sinclair Research still exists, largely producing bikes, radios and power assist units for wheelchairs.
Chris Curry set up a company called GIS in 1985, which specialises in Smart Cards and card readers.
Hermann Hauser was involved in the split of Acorn into Acorn and ARM, and founded a very successful venture capital company. Last I heard he was a non-exec director of Cambridge Display Technology which is one of the companies that developed OLED displays. Of all of the people in the story, I gather his success has been the most long lasting.
Roger Wilson went on to design the ARM chip that is produced in billions and powers many mobile phones. Unfortunately when ARM was split off from Acorn, he stayed with Acorn, which has since been consumed by Broadcom.
Tuna said:
Roger Wilson went on to design the ARM chip that is produced in billions and powers many mobile phones. Unfortunately when ARM was split off from Acorn, he stayed with Acorn, which has since been consumed by Broadcom.
Is he still called 'Roger' though? I heard something very odd was going on.Gassing Station | TV, Film, Streaming & Radio | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff