13 Jan
2014
13 Jan
'14
6:57 p.m.
On 13 January 2014 16:56, Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at gmail.com> wrote:
One of my co-workers, who designed some of our
68000-based
COMBOARDs had a QL, the only one I've seen in the States (I bought an
Amiga the next year).
Even here, I didn't know many people with them. When I was at
university (1985-1988, and using a Spectrum, later a Spectrum 128,
with an MGT DISCiPLE and a 5?" floppy drive) there was a guy - I think
on some kind of CompSci degree course - with a QL. He couldn't afford
his own printer, so he brought his QL into the computer centre
periodically. He had a hacked-up serial printer lead and as the QL was
so small and contained its own twin drives, but could not drive any
kind of industry-standard CRT monitor, he would bring it in, connect
it to a printer, boot it blindly - no screen - and load his app,
whatever it was, and print out his work using memorised keystrokes.
My computer - a fair bit less powerful - comprised about half a dozen
boxes interconnected by ribbon cables and so on. It wasn't remotely
portable. There really was something to Sir Clive Sinclair's vision of
a portable computer in 1983/1984. Arguably, the Z88 was that vision
come to fruition, and done right. I just wish mine could take standard
solid-state media, but it came along about 15y before such media were
standardised.
--
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