Sir Clive Sinclair : RIP

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On Sept 16th 2021, Sir Clive Sinclair passed away - may he Rest In Peace.

I’m posting this because his Timex-Sinclair 1000 was my first home computer which I purchased at an A&P store ( a grocery store!) at Christmas/New Year 1982/3

It was a pretty basic device with a Z80 CPU (see the image below.). It had 2 KB of memory that I later upgraded to 16KB. (just a thought - that image below is 44 KB).

First game I ever wrote was Breakout - actually copied from a magazine. Locally we had a club and we did all kinds of things - usually adding a proper keyboard with buttons, and i still have the mini soldering iron. One gentleman added a modem - speed 300-400 baud if I remember correctly). The resolution on the TV screen, an actual TV, was 32x24 so I got into programming in Z80 machine language as a way to fake higher resolution. I eventually created a “diet” program that i tried to interest Casio in. Got one interview and a demo - but it came to nothing…

Anyway, I stayed with that computer till the early 90s when I eventually bought a Windows 3.1 machine and started playing “Castle Of The Winds”. Loved the adventure game ever since.

So if you ever get fed up with examples I post - blame Sir Clive. To me it was a start of an adventure in the world of computers - and I thank him.

Stay Safe All, gryff :slight_smile:

Image of TS1000

640px-Timex_Sinclair_1000_FL

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Yeah this is so sad. I never used a SInclair computer but my first computer was an Amstrad also running on a Z80. And funnily this is where I wrote my first game using only lines (move, plot, draw). it was a boss fight inspired by saint seiya :wink:

I kept it until I got an Atari ST and then a Commodore Amiga

Sir Clive Sinclair was a pionner, a trailblazer who opened the road we are all running on right now.

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Yes, RIP Sir Clive Sinclair.

I was first introduced to the Sinclair ZX-80 in school math class.

But at home it was the Commodore line.

@Deltakosh switching from Atari ST to Amiga back then would have been regarded as sacrilegious - did you lose any friends over that?! :laughing:

Between my friends at the time, arguments about the relative merits of Amiga vs Atari vs Amstrad were fierce.

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I lost some but gained a LOT new :wink:

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@gryff
Was my first computer too!
Inclusive the 16kb extra box which plugged at the back of it.
Great sample of affective memories!

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I also have learned programming on my ZX81 (its name in France) that I got in the 82 spring.
I still own this beast, one of the best part of my childhood.

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You would think that I would have had one, since I wrote my first program in '75 in 10 grade. Everything then was with cards on a 16k machine the size of a refrigerator. Even on to college, everything was cards except now on IBM mainframes, until just before the end when terminals became a lot more common for classes.

After school, I went to work for Xerox. Any equipment I needed for dial up support from home was all provided. I had a Z80 based machine running cpm80 at work, but not a Sinclair.

I saw the ads, & thought about buying one, but never felt the need to actually buy my own PC till '96, since I had a laptop being provided since the early '90s.

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