Clive Sinclair of C5 fame just died

[GoatersLeftShin]

Very true. He brought computers to the masses. I remember Amiga and Atari selling for 4 figures which was out of reach for most. Some classic and influential programmers were born from bedroom coding, and he helped that

Completely agree mate. Back then bedroom programmers like Kevin Toms (wrote Football Manager the first ever football management game), Matthew Smith (Manic Miner, JSW) and Mike Singleton (Lords of Midnight and Doomdarks Revenge) were household names and responsible for some of the best games of all time. How they got what they did into about 33k or so astonishes me.

The punk ethos of doing it yourself and this brand new technology combined brilliantly in the early 80s. Those games are the equivalent of Sgt Pepper, Pet Sounds on young British kids minds of that era. Just think how much the football management game industry is worth today!

I do wonder what I would be doing today if it wasn't for Sir Clive. This weekend on Facebook I've seen plenty of others day the same thing.

 

[m7mcfc]

The Commodore 64 was much better.
RIP Clive

 

[Stuuuuuu]

So did anyone ever complete Jet Set Willy?

 

[East Level 2]

And some of the chips (and possibly discrete transistors) for Sinclairs computers and cars were made, or at least designed and tested, by Ferranti Semiconductors in Chadderton.

 

[talkativesprout]

The Commodore 64 was much better.
RIP Clive

Yes but you have just compared the Model T to an Escort.

The Vic20 was the equivalent ;)

Now the Amstrad...winner winner chicken dinner, you can have any colour you want...as long as it is green

 

[I am Irrefutable]

RIP Sir Clive.

Loved my Spectrum as a kid, I got the James Bond version for Christmas when I was about 13 or so, loved the Light Gun that came with it.

Loved Daley Thompson's Decathlon, Emlyn Hughes Soccer and I became an expert at Arkanoid.

10 mins to load a game that seemed like 10 hours, copying games on tapes on our hi fi systems. Ah the good old days.

Rest easy Sir Clive

 

[Blue Maverick]

My mate had a Spectrum and I desperately wanted one ended up with a Dragon 32 which apart from Chucky egg was pretty crap. Used to live playing Manic Miner, Jest Set Willy, Atic Atac and Knighlore. I remember when the Hobbit came out and it blew my mind, I’ve loved gaming every since, Amiga 500, SNES, Sega mega drive, Nintendo 64, PS1, PS3, xbox360, PS4 and an Xbox x series now, along with my gaming PCs. I really need to get out more.

 

[Tommy_Catons_Perm]

Like many others, my first foray into home computing was the ZX81 and then the ZX Spectrum.

Used to buy the magazines like "Sinclair User" to program the games, they spent ages to do, but it was all part of the fun.

As many will testify one of the greatest frustrations in life was when your old cassette player was loading a game and you were almost ready to play it.........then it crashed just before loading completely!!

R.I.P Sir Clive - another person synonymous with my youth

Another frustration was spending ages typing in programs printed in those magazines and then the computer freezing or crashing before you managed to save it.

I liked the noise and yellow and blue or cyan and red zigzag lines when loading a game from the cassette.

I did an o level in computer studies and my project was a BASIC program on the ZX spectrum to write a football league table from the results of the matches. It used a "bubble sort" routine and I printed the program on the crappy burner type printer on narrow silver paper.

I remember trying to learn assembly language or machine code because the BASIC programs were very slow. But never understood assembly language really.

My dad had bought the zx spectrum for us all to use at home. He wouldn't let us use the mysterious PEEK and POKE commands in case we permanently damaged the computer...