26 Sep
2021
26 Sep
'21
7:05 a.m.
I found this interesting for perspective. The British media (and
AFAICS of Australia, New Zealand and several bits of Europe) have been
saturated with coverage of a much-loved, widely-celebrated and revered
hero of tech.
As FC points out, even the American _tech_ media barely noticed.
?
The prescient, quirky legacy of U.K. gadget inventor Clive Sinclair
Little known in the U.S., Sinclair democratized computing with his
dirt-cheap 1980s PCs. Even his many failures were decades ahead of
their time.
?
https://www.fastcompany.com/90680349/clive-sinclair-obituary
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26 Sep
26 Sep
6:44 p.m.
My girlfriend commented to me that Americans don't understand London"s
Fleet Street scene of the 70's and early 80s and how Sinclair products were
represented there. In the US the "Timex Sinclair TS-1000" was a budget $99
computer for sale in Hallmark gift stores and its marketing represented
little of the fleet Street cache.
Bill
Bill
On Sun, Sep 26, 2021, 10:05 AM Liam Proven via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:
I found this interesting for perspective. The British
media (and
AFAICS of Australia, New Zealand and several bits of Europe) have been
saturated with coverage of a much-loved, widely-celebrated and revered
hero of tech.
As FC points out, even the American _tech_ media barely noticed.
?
The prescient, quirky legacy of U.K. gadget inventor Clive Sinclair
Little known in the U.S., Sinclair democratized computing with his
dirt-cheap 1980s PCs. Even his many failures were decades ahead of
their time.
?
https://www.fastcompany.com/90680349/clive-sinclair-obituary
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lproven at gmail.com
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27 Sep
27 Sep
12:31 a.m.
On 2021-09-26 7:44 p.m., Bill Degnan via cctalk wrote:
My girlfriend commented to me that Americans don't
understand London"s
Fleet Street scene of the 70's and early 80s and how Sinclair products were
represented there. In the US the "Timex Sinclair TS-1000" was a budget $99
computer for sale in Hallmark gift stores and its marketing represented
little of the fleet Street cache.
Bill
Here in Canada, HARDWARE store had them.
Ben.
5:14 a.m.
On Mon, 27 Sept 2021 at 03:44, Bill Degnan <billdegnan at gmail.com> wrote:
My girlfriend commented to me that Americans don't understand London"s Fleet
Street scene of the 70's and early 80s and how Sinclair products were represented
there. In the US the "Timex Sinclair TS-1000" was a budget $99 computer for
sale in Hallmark gift stores and its marketing represented little of the fleet Street
cache.
I can't say -- my first visit to the USA was in about 1997 or so.
I know that Sinclair computers were _so_ cheap that in the USA they
were perceived as toys, not worthy of any serious consideration.
USAnians in my experience tend to not consider the flipside of that:
in Europe, even the cheapest of American computers were all vastly
expensive and only very rich people had them.
*Because* they were so very expensive, what in the home markets were
perceived as minor flaws -- such as the C64's awful BASIC -- were
deal-breakers. If you were going to spend as much as a new car on an
early home computer, then you wanted something well-rounded: decent
graphics, decent sound, a decent BASIC, a usable keyboard, and maybe
mass storage that didn't cost as much as 2 extra cars.
Therefore things like the C64 were not appealing: terrible BASIC,
terribly slow disk drives which were _also_ terribly expensive. Or the
Atari 400, which had good graphics and a passable BASIC but a terrible
keyboard.
We didn't choose things like the ZX-81 or ZX Spectrum because they
were AWESOME AMAZEBALLS GREAT. We chose them because we could afford
them, and they had for their time a decent balance of features.
The genius of Sinclair was that they managed to combine
absolute-rock-bottom prices with a reasonable blend of good-enough
features.
Soon afterwards this was highlighted because, positioned in between
the unbeatably low Sinclair price points and the
desirable-but-unaffordable Commodore and Atari machines (and the
impossibly expensive Tandy and Apple ones), came a raft of other
machines from companies who were trying to get down to Sinclair prices
but the results were unusable near-junk:
? Mattel Aquarius
? Sord M5 (arguably)
? VTech Laser 200
etc.
Pretty much only Tangerine/Oric managed to successfully compete with
Sinclair at the lower end, with the Oric-1 and Oric Atmos.
And a few companies who comprehensively outdid Sinclair's
specifications but which resulted in uncompetitive prices. Of these,
Acorn thrived for a while, had a partnership with Apple, and its
offshoot ARM is now the biggest-selling CPU family in history, now
used by Apple, Microsoft and Google.
Amstrad briefly thrived (especially with the CPC and PCW ranges) and
then brought cheap PC clones to Europe, but failed to keep up as the
PC market moved to better-spec higher-end machines.
Ones that failed because they cost as much as a Commodore or Atari but
didn't have the range of games:
? Elan Enterprise
? Memotech MTX 512
? Camputers Lynx
? Tatung Einstein
? Dragon 32/64
I suspect that I've named 10 models of widespread 1980s home computer
there that most readers in the USA will never have seen.
I didn't own all of them, but I've played with every single one of them. :-)
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1:14 p.m.
Liam Proven says:
I know that Sinclair computers were _so_ cheap that in
the USA they
were perceived as toys, not worthy of any serious consideration.
This was true in more wealthy countries outside the US, too. Sinclair never got anywhere
in Germany compared to Commodore, for example. The ZX81 and Spectrum (and clones) did have
a presence in Spain and South America.
*Because* they were so very expensive, what in the
home markets were
perceived as minor flaws -- such as the C64's awful BASIC -- were
deal-breakers.
You make it sound like the C64 failed in the UK/European market. For others' benefit,
the C64 had about as much market share as the Spectrum in the UK (with Amstrad a very
solid third place, especially considering its later start, and BBC Micro significantly
behind) and beat it in Germany, Finland, and elsewhere. The C64 isn't included in the
recent book _The Computers That Made Britain_ for no reason.
If you were going to spend as much as a new car on an
early home
computer,
If you're going to exaggerate for effect, don't exaggerate so much that your
meaning is lost.
then you wanted something well-rounded: decent
graphics, decent
sound, a decent BASIC, a usable keyboard, and maybe mass storage
that didn't cost as much as 2 extra cars.
Sheesh.
Therefore things like the C64 were not appealing:
terrible BASIC,
terribly slow disk drives which were _also_ terribly expensive.
Disk drives were so much a non-presence in the UK home computer market until the Amiga/ST
in 1985 that there is no point in mentioning them at all. (It's not like Spectrum
users were enjoying disk drives while Commodore users were using cassette, after all.)
We didn't choose things like the ZX-81 or ZX
Spectrum because they
were AWESOME AMAZEBALLS GREAT. We chose them because we could afford
them, and they had for their time a decent balance of features.
Correct. The schoolyard disputes between Spectrum and C64 owners were between kids whose
parents decided to pay a few tens of quid for the more capable Commodore, versus those who
paid a few tens of quid less for the less capable (but still quite functional) Spectrum.
The same schoolyard disputes existed in the US, whether between Commodore and Atari 8-bit
owners, 2600, ColecoVision, and IntelliVision owners, or slightly later between Nintendo
and Sega owners. They still exist today, between PlayStation and Xbox owners.
I didn't own all of them, but I've played with
every single one of
them. :-)
Most children who participated in those schoolyard disputes have long since moved on (if
only to other platform wars, like Emacs/Vi, Mac/Windows/Linux, etc.). You sound like
someone still embittered by C64 owners around you bragging about their superior
computers.
28 Sep
28 Sep
5:17 a.m.
On Mon, 27 Sept 2021 at 22:14, Yeechang Lee via cctech
<cctech at classiccmp.org> wrote:
I am not. Bear in mind that the prices and market are and were _very_
different in the USA, from where you are posting.
I stand by it. The 1541, for example, was both overpriced and
under-performing. At school I used CBM PET drives attached over IEEE
and those were horrendously pricey.
This is not true at all.
I had a 5.24" disk drive on my 48K Spectrum before the Amiga was on
retail sale in Britain. They were there, but only for serious,
hobbyist users.
If you want to say that leisure users/gamers didn't have disks, fine.
But it's an overgeneralisation to say that they were not there --
which is the very same offence for which you're accusing me.
This was true in more wealthy countries outside the US, too. Sinclair never got anywhere
in Germany compared to Commodore, for example.
This may be true; I work for a German company but I've never lived
there. I know Amstrad-affiliate Schneider did well, and of course
Escom.
The ZX81 and Spectrum (and clones) did have a
presence in Spain and South America.
Indeed so, although I think more as clones than originals.
You make it sound like the C64 failed in the
UK/European market.
That was not my intention. I am telling you what _I_ felt and thought.
For others' benefit, the C64 had about as much
market share as the Spectrum in the UK (with Amstrad a very solid third place, especially
considering its later start, and BBC Micro significantly behind) and beat it in Germany,
Finland, and elsewhere. The C64 isn't included in the recent book _The Computers That
Made Britain_ for no reason.
Sure, it did do well... but somewhat after the market was established,
and in the timeframe where kids were the main customers, wanting home
computers for games, replacing adults who wanted them for programming.
If you were
going to spend as much as a new car on an early home
computer,
If you're going to exaggerate for effect, don't exaggerate so much that your
meaning is lost. then you
wanted something well-rounded: decent graphics, decent
sound, a decent BASIC, a usable keyboard, and maybe mass storage
that didn't cost as much as 2 extra cars.
Sheesh. Therefore
things like the C64 were not appealing: terrible BASIC,
terribly slow disk drives which were _also_ terribly expensive.
Disk drives were so much a non-presence in the UK home computer market until the Amiga/ST
in 1985 that there is no point in mentioning them at all. (It's not like Spectrum
users were enjoying disk drives while Commodore users were using cassette, after all.)
Most children who participated in those schoolyard
disputes have long since moved on (if only to other platform wars, like Emacs/Vi,
Mac/Windows/Linux, etc.). You sound like someone still embittered by C64 owners around you
bragging about their superior computers.
If I am embittered it is more because of what I see as the US school
of computer design has triumphed: large, complex, general-purpose OSes
for everything, and equip the device with enough processor and storage
that it remains usable -- even if it kills battery life.
Examples:
? Windows NT
? Linux
? modern UNIX in general: *BSD, macOS, etc.
In contrast, what I see as the European school prospered in the
1980s-early 1990s: small, purpose-designed OSes for each role,
allowing inexpensive computers with relatively small amounts of CPU
and storage to be powerful, capable, and competitive.
Examples:
? Psion EPOC16 on the Series 3 / Workabout
? Psion EPOC32 (unrelated) on the Series 5/Series 7/netBook/MalayBook etc.
? Its descendant, Symbian, on countless Nokias, SonyEricsson etc.
? Acorn RISC OS on the Archimedes -- still around, still being
updated, & now FOSS
? Arguably Sinclair's QDOS family on QL-compatibles -- some still in
production today, and the OS is FOSS
? Perhaps Amstrad's PCW range, the last CP/M computers
? Adam Dunkels' Contiki OS
--
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5:49 a.m.
On Mon, Sep 27, 2021 at 01:14:54PM -0700, Yeechang Lee via cctech wrote:
I went and looked up the numbers. A 1983 Fiat Panda was ?3k (list). At the
same time, the C64 was selling for ?345. So it's an order-of-magnitude out,
but still a formidable sum of money: a factory-new rustbucket (e.g. Renault
Duster) is about ?10k today and I wouldn't willingly drop ?1k on a machine
with similar deficiencies to the C64.
Any Brit lucky enough to have ?345 burning a hole in their pocket in 1983
would have more likely gotten a BBC Micro for ?399. The Beeb had less memory
and the graphics and sound were less useful for games, but it had a faster
CPU (2MHz uncontended), much better BASIC, higher-resolution graphics, and
was generally a rather more well-rounded and serious machine.
Once you were doing useful things on the Beeb, a dual disk drive and decent
monitor would beckon, at which point the price quickly creeps upwards to
that of a second-hand car.
Liam Proven says:
[...]
If you were
going to spend as much as a new car on an early home
computer,
If you're going to exaggerate for effect, don't exaggerate so
much that
your meaning is lost.
29 Sep
29 Sep
8:51 a.m.
On Tue, 28 Sept 2021 at 22:05, Peter Corlett via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
I went and looked up the numbers. A 1983 Fiat Panda was ?3k (list). At the
same time, the C64 was selling for ?345. So it's an order-of-magnitude out,
but still a formidable sum of money: a factory-new rustbucket (e.g. Renault
Duster) is about ?10k today and I wouldn't willingly drop ?1k on a machine
with similar deficiencies to the C64.
Any Brit lucky enough to have ?345 burning a hole in their pocket in 1983
would have more likely gotten a BBC Micro for ?399. The Beeb had less memory
and the graphics and sound were less useful for games, but it had a faster
CPU (2MHz uncontended), much better BASIC, higher-resolution graphics, and
was generally a rather more well-rounded and serious machine.
Once you were doing useful things on the Beeb, a dual disk drive and decent
monitor would beckon, at which point the price quickly creeps upwards to
that of a second-hand car.
I thank my learn?d friend for the correction.
OK, not a new car -- a 2nd hand, used, car.
So, as Fred says, around 1980, the early all-in-one ready-to-use
machines like the PET & TRS-80 were the cost of a used car in the
States. ?-for-$ they cost around _three times_ as much in the UK.
A few years later, the much cheaper 2nd-generation home computers from
Commodore and Atari were *still* in the ballpark of the cost of a
cheap used car in the UK, and easily as much if you added a disk
drive... while a Sinclair was about a third of the price, and even
with the (crappy but *much* better than audio cassettes!) ZX
Microdrive and the interface/controller, were _still_ around the price
of a standalone C64.
Whereas, as Peter says and I agree, if you were hobbyist and not a
gamer, a BBC Micro was a more attractive buy -- capable of 80-column
text, hi-res mono graphics, and with an excellent, fully-structured,
recursion and all, blisteringly-fast BASIC interpreter which also
supported inline 6502 assembly language.
And also *extremely* expandable -- not only could it have a 2nd 6502
CPU, or a Z80 and CP/M, later it could even have a NatSemi 32016 or an
ARM 2nd processor. Not just able to network, use a hard disk, have
additional ROMs and things, it even talked to Laserdiscs:
https://www.domesday86.com/?page_id=2140
Definitely preferable if you wanted a _computer_ and not games.
Although it had great games, too, including the seminal Elite.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JCU4Hulgcg
I wanted one very much, but my family couldn't afford it... so I got a
Spectrum. 2nd hand, it cost one-fifth the price of a BBC Model B.
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27 Sep
27 Sep
1:49 p.m.
My girlfriend commented to me that Americans don't
understand London"s
Fleet Street scene of the 70's and early 80s and how Sinclair products
were represented there. In the US the "Timex Sinclair TS-1000" was a
budget $99 computer for sale in Hallmark gift stores and its marketing
represented little of the fleet Street cache.
They rarely even made it into stores. They were more of a magazine ad for
"Real computer for $49.95" (which was about 25 pounds at the time)
If they made it into stores, they might have ended up hanging on a peg
next to a blister pack of half a dozen rubber wedge doorstops.
I think that it is truly tragic about the price gouging.
A number of people have commented that computers were sold as if the
exchange rate was 1:1! A computer that sold for $1000
would be sold in UK for 1000 GBP! (the equivalent of $3000)
As soon as they came out, I bought a TRS80 for $400 (it would have been
$600 if I didn't already have a CCTV composite monitor and a tape
recorder). How much did the TRS80 sell for in UK?
So, in USA, you had arguments between $600 TRS80 and $600 Commodore PET,
with the wealthier kids buying Apple.
When the IBM PC (5150) came out in August 1981, it was less that $2000, if
you supplied your own RAM, floppy drives, and monitor. (~$1300 + CGA +
FDC)
They were in the price range of a cheap used car.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
1:52 p.m.
I remember in college we raised some money and bought 10 in kit form. It went so well
that 2 weeks later we ordered 10 more kits. We were astonished to find the second order
of 10 already assembled and tested.
Cool stuff?
George Rachor
On Sep 27, 2021, at 1:49 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
My girlfriend commented to me that Americans
don't understand London"s Fleet Street scene of the 70's and early 80s and
how Sinclair products were represented there. In the US the "Timex Sinclair
TS-1000" was a budget $99 computer for sale in Hallmark gift stores and its marketing
represented little of the fleet Street cache.
They rarely even made it into stores. They were more of a magazine ad for "Real
computer for $49.95" (which was about 25 pounds at the time)
If they made it into stores, they might have ended up hanging on a peg next to a blister
pack of half a dozen rubber wedge doorstops.
I think that it is truly tragic about the price gouging.
A number of people have commented that computers were sold as if the exchange rate was
1:1! A computer that sold for $1000 would be sold in UK for 1000 GBP! (the equivalent of
$3000) As soon as they came out, I bought a TRS80 for $400 (it would have been $600 if I
didn't already have a CCTV composite monitor and a tape recorder). How much did the
TRS80 sell for in UK?
So, in USA, you had arguments between $600 TRS80 and $600 Commodore PET, with the
wealthier kids buying Apple.
When the IBM PC (5150) came out in August 1981, it was less that $2000, if you supplied
your own RAM, floppy drives, and monitor. (~$1300 + CGA + FDC)
They were in the price range of a cheap used car.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
29 Sep
29 Sep
8:37 a.m.
On Mon, 27 Sept 2021 at 22:49, Fred Cisin via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
I think that it is truly tragic about the price gouging.
Strongly agreed.
The TI-99/4A wasn't a great computer, with foolish design compromises,
but it was driven out of the market by unfair pricing.
The Amiga was a superior machine in almost every way to the Atari ST,
and should have been a bit more expensive -- I'm sure it was to
produce. But no, another price war.
And so on.
A number of people have commented that computers were
sold as if the
exchange rate was 1:1!
Yup. But that was probably me. A computer that sold for $1000
would be sold in UK for 1000 GBP! (the equivalent of
$3000)
Yup. A particular habit of Apple, to be fair, but not unique to them.
Also, the US cost of living is substantially cheaper -- e.g. gasoline.
Today the average US price is ?0.80 per litre.
EU average is about c?1.40 per litre.
Source:
https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/USA/gasoline_prices/
https://www.tolls.eu/fuel-prices
How much did the TRS80 sell for in UK?
Which model?
They were pretty rare here -- I don't think I ever saw a single one
anywhere outside Tandy store display units.
https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/5791/was-the-trs-80-mode…
Model I, 4K Level I: ?385.25
Model I, 16K Level II: ?546.25
--
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8:47 a.m.
I had a TI 99/4 when I was a kid. It was my first computer (although I
used my friend's Apple ][ much more).
All I can say is, what a piece of garbage. It was horrible in every way,
and it overheated if you left it on too long. SLOWEST BASIC EVER!
On Wed, 29 Sept 2021 at 16:37, Liam Proven via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:
On Mon, 27 Sept 2021 at 22:49, Fred Cisin via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
--
Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems: "The Future Begins Tomorrow"
Visit us at: http://www.yoyodyne-propulsion.net
--------
"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign,
that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." -- Jonathan Swift
I think that it is truly tragic about the price gouging.
Strongly agreed.
The TI-99/4A wasn't a great computer, with foolish design compromises,
but it was driven out of the market by unfair pricing.
The Amiga was a superior machine in almost every way to the Atari ST,
and should have been a bit more expensive -- I'm sure it was to
produce. But no, another price war.
And so on.
A number of people have commented that computers
were sold as if the
exchange rate was 1:1!
Yup. But that was probably me. A computer that sold for $1000
would be sold in UK for 1000 GBP! (the equivalent
of $3000)
Yup. A particular habit of Apple, to be fair, but not unique to them.
Also, the US cost of living is substantially cheaper -- e.g. gasoline.
Today the average US price is ?0.80 per litre.
EU average is about c?1.40 per litre.
Source:
https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/USA/gasoline_prices/
https://www.tolls.eu/fuel-prices
How much did the TRS80 sell for in UK?
Which model?
They were pretty rare here -- I don't think I ever saw a single one
anywhere outside Tandy store display units.
https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/5791/was-the-trs-80-mode…
Model I, 4K Level I: ?385.25
Model I, 16K Level II: ?546.25
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? gMail/gTalk/FB: lproven at gmail.com
Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ? Skype: liamproven
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9:04 a.m.
On Wed, 29 Sept 2021 at 17:45, John Many Jars
<john at yoyodyne-propulsion.net> wrote:
I had a TI 99/4 when I was a kid. It was my first computer (although I used my
friend's Apple ][ much more).
All I can say is, what a piece of garbage. It was horrible in every way, and it
overheated if you left it on too long. SLOWEST BASIC EVER!
Harsh but not entirely unfair.
It had, IMHO, a lot of foolish compromises, including the BASIC in an
interpreted bytecode and a crippled memory bus.
But if there hadn't been a price war, most of its defects would have
been fixed in the announced, demonstrated but cancelled, TI-99/8.
https://www.99er.net/998.html
10MHz 16-bit machine with Extended BASIC _and_ Pascal included, speech
synthesis, expandable to 16MB RAM... all before the Mac, let alone the
Amiga.
And a relative of that *did* ship, later on, in the form of the Geneve
9640, a replacement motherboard that fitted into the 99's Peripheral
Expansion Box.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneve_9640
--
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9:09 a.m.
On Wed, 29 Sep 2021, John Many Jars via cctalk wrote:
I had a TI 99/4 when I was a kid. It was my first
computer (although I
used my friend's Apple ][ much more).
All I can say is, what a piece of garbage. It was horrible in every way,
and it overheated if you left it on too long. SLOWEST BASIC EVER!
The TI 99/4A is what you get when the MBAs on the design team outnumber
the engineers by ten to one.
g.
--
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http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind.
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Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies.
ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment
A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes.
http://scarlet.deltasoft.com - Get it _today_!
27 Sep
27 Sep
1:40 p.m.
While the American public were very ignorant of Sinclair's achievements,
the US home computer makers were very worried about them. In 1983 both
Commodore and Texas Instruments were working on their "ZX81 killers".
https://www.99er.net/992.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_16
-- Jecel
28 Sep
28 Sep
10:36 a.m.
Jecel Assumpcao Jr says:
While the American public were very ignorant of
Sinclair's
achievements, the US home computer makers were very worried about
them. In 1983 both Commodore and Texas Instruments were working on
their "ZX81 killers".
The US industry thought that the $99 price point needed to be reached, in part because of
the Timex/Sinclair 1000's example; besides the 99/2 and Commodore 16, the TRS-80 MC-10
is another example of the ultra low-cost "Sinclair fighter".
The industry did not expect that a) more usable computers would reach the $99 price point,
including the 99/4A ($49 after discontinuation) and VIC-20, and b) the TS 1000 didn't
sell very well in the US anyway. Then the video game crash of 1983's aftereffects
essentially wiped out the US home computer industry outside the C64, with Apple II and the
PC for those willing to pay more.
12:21 p.m.
Yeechang Lee wrote on Tue, 28 Sep 2021 10:36:15 -0700
The US industry thought that the $99 price point
needed to be reached, in
part because of the Timex/Sinclair 1000's example; besides the 99/2 and
Commodore 16, the TRS-80 MC-10 is another example of the ultra low-cost
"Sinclair fighter".
Ah, yes - the MC-10. At least that one was actually sold (unlike the
99/2) even if it was only a few months.
In 2014 I helped the local university reboot their computer museum. They
made the MC-10 one of their center pieces. I pointed out that it was so
obscure and short lived that it had essentially no impact on computing
history. On the other hand they had an original IBM 5150 PC which they
kept in storage as "too boring". I tried to convince them that it was
the most significant machine they had in their collection but they
didn't listen.
The industry did not expect that a) more usable
computers would reach
the $99 price point, including the 99/4A ($49 after discontinuation) and
VIC-20, and b) the TS 1000 didn't sell very well in the US anyway. Then
the video game crash of 1983's aftereffects essentially wiped out the US
home computer industry outside the C64, with Apple II and the PC for
those willing to pay more.
Jack got his revenge on TI for driving Commodore out of the calculator
business.
Some people like to plot the fall of the 99/4 prices starting with the
original in 1979. That doesn't make sense because that price originally
included a bundled color monitor, which the improved 99/4A didn't. TI
thought that they could sell the machine at a loss and people would have
to buy their expensive software and peripherals. Many videogame console
makers have had success with this strategy, but while somebody buying a
$450 TI99/4A might consider getting an even more expensive floppy disk
drive as well, the person buying a $90 TI99/4A will try to get by with a
free audio cassette and if it didn't work out would just throw the
machine in some drawer.
The $100 computer class violated Bell's law by being a passing fad.
Every new lower cost computer class started out as a toy compared to
previous computers (mainframe vs minis, minis vs micros). But Moore's
law allowed them to grow into useful products. The problem was that
there were no good low cost storage options. Floppy drives stayed in the
$500 range for a long time before going down to $100 in the 1990s and
then dropping to $10 at the end of the 1990s right before they died out.
Adding an SD card reader to any of those old, really cheap machines
makes them so much more usable than they were back in their day.
Sinclair was aware of this, which is why he attempted the "micro drive"
endless tape and the wafer scale integration battery backed RAM. Not to
mention the EPROM programmer of the Z88.
-- Jecel
2:24 p.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: Jecel Assumpcao Jr via cctech
Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 2021 3:21 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: An American perspective on the late great Sir Clive Sinclair,
from Fast Company
I had a choice between the MC-10 and the Timex 2068 in 83' and went for the
Timex.
The Timex 1000 was useless without a RAM expander which added to the cost.
All the cheap machines like the 1000, MC-10, C-16 etc were DOA because of
the lack of software because everyone was making software for the best
selling C64, Apple II and Atari 800.
I played around with the 2068 for a while and finally went for a used C64.
--
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus
27 Sep
27 Sep
4:38 a.m.
On 9/26/21 9:05 AM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:
I found this interesting for perspective. The British
media (and
AFAICS of Australia, New Zealand and several bits of Europe) have been
saturated with coverage of a much-loved, widely-celebrated and revered
hero of tech.
As FC points out, even the American _tech_ media barely noticed.
From the other side of that, growing up in the UK, nobody I knew talked
about Apple or Atari, and Commodore was only on the radar because of the
C64's capability as a games machine (and later the Amiga) - I don't think I
even saw a PET prior to 2005, although I know there were a few infestations
of them here and there :-)
In other words, I'm not entirely surprised.
Thoughts on what might have happened had the BBC's Computer Literacy
Project never come about? Sometimes I wonder about that. Acorn might have
remained more focused on business hardware, and the Spectrum would have
appeared but perhaps not taken off in the way that it did. Would other
competing domestic machines have become more widespread? Or would the
country have seen the likes of Apple get a foothold earlier than they did?
Jules
5:23 a.m.
On Mon, 27 Sept 2021 at 13:38, Jules Richardson via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
From the other side of that, growing up in the UK, nobody I knew talked
about Apple or Atari, and Commodore was only on the radar because of the
C64's capability as a games machine (and later the Amiga) - I don't think I
even saw a PET prior to 2005, although I know there were a few infestations
of them here and there :-)
In other words, I'm not entirely surprised.
Excellent point, yes.
Thoughts on what might have happened had the BBC's
Computer Literacy
Project never come about? Sometimes I wonder about that. Acorn might have
remained more focused on business hardware, and the Spectrum would have
appeared but perhaps not taken off in the way that it did. Would other
competing domestic machines have become more widespread? Or would the
country have seen the likes of Apple get a foothold earlier than they did?
(!) That's a tremendous "what if" question! :-)
I find it interesting that I never saw or even heard of the Acorn Atom
until ~25Y after it was discontinued. Compared to the ZX-81 it was an
amazing machine, clearly much better in every way -- but also about
3-4x the price, so just not competitive at the time.
I think the Acorn Proton -- later renamed the "BBC Micro" of course --
would have gone the same way without the Beeb backing it. Good spec,
tremendous features, but just too expensive and given that it was an
educational machine, not competitive as a home/games computer with the
C64.
And if the BBC Micro flopped, there'd be no ARM chip. Possibly meaning
no Apple Newton. And that might have massively delayed smartphones,
because basically all smartphones are ARM-based.
Similarly to the way that without the unholy combination of IBM,
Microsoft, OS/2 and Windows, then we might have all had Digital
Research OSes and multitasking before we got inexpensive GUI
computers... and the PC industry would have gone in a very different
direction.
Possibly to the advantage of Atari and Commodore.
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lproven at gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven ? Skype: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 ? ?R (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
8:24 p.m.
On 2021-09-27 5:38 a.m., Jules Richardson via cctalk wrote:
On 9/26/21 9:05 AM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:
Commodore in the USA/CANADA was often pressed into service for a cheap
text video overlay for broadcast TV. Was that TV overlay ever used in
the UK or Europe?
Ben.
I found this interesting for perspective. The
British media (and
AFAICS of Australia, New Zealand and several bits of Europe) have been
saturated with coverage of a much-loved, widely-celebrated and revered
hero of tech.
As FC points out, even the American _tech_ media barely noticed.
From the other side of that, growing up in the UK, nobody I knew talked
about Apple or Atari, and Commodore was only on the radar because of the
C64's capability as a games machine (and later the Amiga) - I don't
think I even saw a PET prior to 2005, although I know there were a few
infestations of them here and there :-)
28 Sep
28 Sep
12:27 a.m.
Commodore in the USA/CANADA was often pressed into service for a cheap
text video overlay for broadcast TV. Was that TV overlay ever used in
the UK or Europe?
Ben.
In the UK, Acorn gear was used quite a bit for overlays and computer
generated graphics. I think the Amiga was used to a certain extent in
commercial and small-enterprise video production, but the BBC almost
exclusively used RISCPC and BBC Micro's for their graphics.
The Centre for Computing History (a Cambridge based museum) did a great
video on the old Acorn broadcast gear used by the BBC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exW-LbLRJV0
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exW-LbLRJV0>
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