Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP

My first computer was a Timex 2068 just before Timex got out of computers. I had seen advertisements for the 1000 model but it looked like junk at the time (no real keyboard, you needed to have the 16K RAM cart to do anything). Still the 1000 was CHEAP. When I vacationed in Greece for a summer between HS and college in the 80's I remember seeing all the advertisements for the Sinclair models with the wafer drives and thought they were cool looking. I think I even seen a few real models at the airport shops. Still using anything other then a disk drive was a pain and that device seemed too expensive for Europe at that time. Even after I promptly purchased a used C64 from a friend I still looked at the mailing lists for Timex/Sinclair products sold out of NYC shops. They had all kinds of add-ons and some software to make the units workable but most of it was for the 1000 model which must have sold quite a few units before being discontinued compared to my 2068. -----Original Message----- From: Mark J. Blair via cctalk Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2018 3:33 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP Over here in the US, I remember seeing the Sinclair QL in a magazine (probably Byte?) and thinking it looked exotic and interesting. I thought the little tape drives looked neat, and didn?t know enough to appreciate how much better a floppy drive would have made the system. I have no regrets at all about getting an Amiga 1000 to take to college, and now I appreciate even better than then just how lucky I was. But to this day, I?d still like to play with a QL and get an idea of what it would have been like to head off to college with a shiny new one of those. There are a few other UK computers which I?m also curious about, since they?re not so common over here in the US. -- Mark J. Blair <nf6x at nf6x.net> http://www.nf6x.net --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus