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Sinclair Does Linux 105

Posted by CmdrTaco from the nifty-hardware dept.
Cpt_Kirks writes "The creator of the Sinclair [?] computers in the UK is now working on a cheap, portable Linux box." Nifty seeing this on wired with some comments about the inventor himself.
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Sinclair Does Linux More

Sinclair Does Linux

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  • Re:Linux - Portable? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Linux IS battery-friendly. On Tecre520 it lasts at least half an hour longer than Win95 with "cooling" software, and more than hour longer than plain win95.

  • Re:I dare to dream (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    > I will not buy a portable computer [...] until...

    I think you just described something rather like a Psion Series 5! (These gadgets are very popular over here in the UK - I don't know why no-one's heard of them in the US.)

    Superficially, they look rather like that WinCE rubbish (or rather: vice versa), but they've been designed from the ground up by people who *know* about handhelds. They have more usable and powerful built-in apps, heaps of free and commercial s/ware (including net access), built-in development language, better PC connectivity than WinCE (so I'm told - I don't have a PC :), pen and/or keyboard operation, IrDA and RS232, and run for 20-30 hours on a pair of AAs.

    With that in one pocket, and my Nokia 8810 in the other, I can log on to the net wherever I am: at work, on the train, on holiday...!

    And its OS, EPOC, looks set to be an industry standard. Some mobile phones already run it too - the developers, Symbian, are jointly owned by Psion, Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola.

    Hopefully, when the forthcoming machine (with colour, Java etc.) is released, Psion will do a better job of marketing it...

    (My only bias is that I've been a very happy Psion user for several years, and don't understand why everyone doesn't have one!)

    Gidds/
  • I read that Linus programmed on the QL, apparently the keyboard broke and he couldnt get a replacement, so he was writing a driver for a different keyboard.

    Read this in the PCW(UK) Linux Column

  • This is what VNC was based on. When ORL (Now owned by AT+T) made it, it was for a very simple portable computer. The system was called Teleport [att.com]


  • Wow, sinclair, the love of my childhood, my first computer! It'll be interesting to see what they can do in 90s (or 2000s I guess).

    --Vitaliy
  • Small/cheap monitors can be gotten for under $80 from various Korean manufacturers. True, this means you won't sell a complete computer system for $150 or so, but you can sell much of one for that price.

    Hard drives, the other part of the equation, are a different story. The cheapest price I've seen on a currently produced hard drive is around $110.(Can't build a company on closeouts and remainders, which are the only things I've seen cheaper).

    Still, it should be relatively easy to get a $299 price minus monitor, $399 with monitor. By comparison, a Commodore 64 costed $199 and its 1541 disk drive costed $199 during its brief burst of popularity during the early 80's. So even if Sir Clive aimed at the $399 price point for the whole package, history shows that it's a viable price point. Especially if the final package is a bit more useful than the woeful Commodore 64 (which was a great little hacker toy if you enjoyed 6502 assembly language and wire-wrapping your own circuit boards to plug into the socket on the rear, but otherwise was pretty useless for anything but simple crude games).

    Coleco Adam was a different story. Each one costed about $800 to make and was priced at $599. So they lost money on each one, but made it up in volume (snicker).

    -E
  • Posted by PasswdIs ScoreOne:

    The latest versions of word, ie, etc. won't run well on slower hardware. And older versions are, of course, removed from the market when new versions come out. The media player update that cane with IE50 drops frames and does audio skips constantly when playing VCD MPEGS on my P2000MMX (it's only 1.5 years old and was top of the line then!). The old version of the media player, which I switched back to, ran them perfectly with no frame drops. What more proof do you need that programmers will write sloppy inefficient software just because the hardware is faster? And since the latest "upgrades" of the OS just require faster HW or tons more RAM, this ensures that users will be 'forced' to buy Pentium III 666MHzs even if they are just reading email and writing a few letters.
  • Posted by Vik Olliver (at home):

    Sir Clive is not jumping on a bandwagon, he's starting a new wagon train. Who else is building cheap Linux boxes? Nobody. If he succeeds, the dominance of Wintel will be broken and we'll see a whole new era of computing, totally based on Linux.

    Now if only he could build a wireless LAN card into the things, we'd end up with a communications revolution as well. Instant networks? Comms with no service provider and bills anyone?

    Vik :v)
    [ Yes, I was one of the Sinclair Spectrum 3 programmers]
  • Sir Clive has said a few times that he thinks the "bit-part" nature of the PC (mobo + RAM + vidcard etc) has held back hardware development: in short, it trades in efficiency for upgradeability. He's always preferred on-the-board solutions (hardware OS, anyone?)

    I'm sceptical about this rumour, but if he were to return to computer design, I'd imagine it would be with something along those lines. Sadly, that's what killed the Z88, the first real laptop: worked like a dream, no upgrade path. Alas.
  • Did anyone follow the link to MENSA [mensa.org] and take the MENSA workout? The obvious answer to #10 is 8, but this can't be right, because a circle doesn't really have any "sides". I must be looking at the problem wrong...
  • The explaination says the circle has 1 "line," but I still don't think that's right.

    Exactly! When I went to school, lines were straight. :-)

    TedC

  • But you're wrong. Software bloat used to be like that, but to my perception it no longer is. You can run Word 97 on the same PC that ran Word 95 with very very minimal performance difference. Try that with word 6.0 vs word 2.0 (yes, they skipped a few version numbers, I believe).

    Playing animations is a totally different task, and I suspect you would have found that older versions of media player would have skipped and dropped just as much. If you have different requirements for what you *do* with the software, then you hvae to get a different machine, but it is no longer simply the "required" software upgrades *themselves* that are forcing machine upgrades.

    Which is very cool, in my humble opinion.
  • indeed it is a conspiracy! watch your back...
  • Why does he just port Linux to the ZX81 instead? But seriously, according to the article it says it'll be two years before the machine is to market. I don't see why it would take that long, there are plenty of good options for a cheap PC right now. You can throw together an AMD based machine which would be quite nice for next to nothing. I wonder if they're actually planning on designing their own motherboard rather than OEM'ing something.

    Oh, well, the ZX81, Spectrum, etc. were classics. Perhaps this new machine will eventually become one, too!
  • Small surprise to see him going with Linux, given this quote from Sir Clive on the IBM PC in Wired some time ago:

    "I hated the operating system; it was a complete and utter kludge, and the whole bloody design was just a mess. I wouldn't go anywhere near it."

    Does anyone want to buy my Microdrive? :-)

    Ade_
    /
  • When I was a kid living in Connecticut, our public library had ZX80s that you could "check out" with your library card and take home. It was fun to play around with, but I had an Apple ][+ at the time so I didn't really need to buy one.
  • Ok, so how is Mr. Sinclair going to sell the computer to the great majority of geeks who spend most of their time on the 'net? Through department stores? Considering that current Linux computer retailers were practically born off the Internet (and Linux itself, obviously), it'd be pretty hard to do otherwise. But then, he's just starting now, so let's give him time and see what he comes up with. I'm intriged with this.
  • This could be really good news -- Uncle Clive has a habit of getting the design right. I still have my ZX81 and Speccy, although I find XZX [philosys.de] taking over these days...

    However, he's proved absolutely hopeless at marketing. The auditors' reports for Sinclair Research have basically declared it an unviable company, due to the losses it's made for so many consecutive years. They note that the company only remains viable while Sir Clive bolsters it with his personal fortune.

    As with most of us in the UK, I still have a soft spot for Sinclair, and I hope this succeeds. I've no doubt it will technically be a very good product -- not cutting edge, but good enough, and at a sensible price. It'll live or die by its marketing, though.

  • >However, he's proved absolutely hopeless at marketing...It'll live or die by its marketing, though.

    absolutely true. this is one area that US companies exceede at, just take a look at the marketing of the new apple machines.

    i wish that some money was spent on marketing 'cause aside from the quirks in the designs from sinclair, they are cheap.


  • http://webserv.vnunet.com/www_user/plsql/pkg_vnu_s earch_mo.s_story?c_story_id=82266

  • Rubber (Score:1)

    by MouseR ( 3264 )
    This is amusing.

    We'll again see computers that come with rubber bands to hold them ROM Packs and memory cards.

    "What's the best rubber band I can get to run Linux on that thing?"
  • The first computer I ever used was my Dad's ZX80, which is as old as I am (I was born in 1980).

    It had something like 2k of RAM, and could be attached to a tape recorder to save programs.

    I learned to code in BASIC on that thing. I wonder where it is?

    I think my dad still has a book lying around titled "build your own Z80 computer." Hey, it's the chip in TI's mega-selling TI-8x line of calculators...
  • "The reason why my machine will be cheaper is that it will use a lot less memory, a lower-cost processor, a simpler power supply and a lower-cost operating system."

    This is good... I will not buy a portable computer and use it as a portable computer until a few things happen:

    1. It must be cheap enough to easily replace if lost, stolen or broken.
    2. It must be durable enough that it won't be easily broken.
    3. It MUST have a long battery life. I mean 8 hours or more on rechargable cells. (not a bag full of battery packs)
    4. It must be versatile. With standard ports (IR RS232 etc)
    5. It must support files and features of a desktop (no pocket apps. older low-powered apps are fine, just not castrated pocket apps!)
    6. It must be easy to read from.
    7. It must make intelligent use of keyboard space or a good input device.

    I am very willing to sacrifice:

    1. colour
    2. power
    3. audio/video
    4. GUI. I don't need a GUI!!!
    5. Pointing Device!
    6. Multitasking!

    Zeos made a 286 clone palmtop which met most of these criteria. Very standard, long life, good keyboard etc. It ran DOS, and could run 1-2-3 and Wordperfect for Dos. 10 years ago, they had a palmtop with more features and longer battery life than modern WinCE machines.

    Compaq has a perfect example of WinCE garbage. I tried to load a 400k book. The font was unreadable, so I tried to load it into "pocket word", it used another 400k to load the document from the ramdisk into "memory", and it ran out of memory when it used another 400k to select the text of the document... I couldn't even change the font, or split up the document just to be able to make the font big enough to read!

    All the while I was being taunted by wasted screen real-estate in scroll bars telling me that the document had more than one page, a Start menu telling me that only pocket-word was running, and a status bar telling me that I could manipulate the window labeled pocket-word in various ways.

    To kick it all off, the unit was about 7" wide. 6.5" were keyboard. They wasted no space in placing a full-scale replica 'enter' key on the keyboard, and a full scale tab key... leaving less than 5" for the home row. Are they stupid?

    Hewlett Packard was crazy enough to put a numeric keypad on one of these things.

    and the industry wonders why there is such a small market for palm-sized devices?

    (Palm Pilot excepted from criticism.)

  • just go here [interport.net]
    i still have my ZX81 and 16Kb extension, my father built it in 1982, i was 12 and it was my first computer :), then i have had an Amstrad CPC 6128 (still a Z80), then PCs...
    --
  • In the last few months (ie not more than 6 months ago) a computer journalist asked uncle Clive what he thought of Linux.

    He had never even heard of it.

    *sigh*

    BTW my ZX81 has a multi-tasking FORTH ROM in it.
    8K ROM, 16K RAM and multitasking! In 1983!
    What did IBM have in those days...
  • It has 1k RAM, inkluding videoram. The whole Mainboard of the ZX81 consisted of about four ICs and we rebuild it for less than $20 in 1982. To be honest, I wasn`t impressed, my first CBM3032 at 1980 was much more powerfull and sophisticated - but also 50x more expensive (damnit, twenty years ago... I am getting old and I also feal like that :-)
  • About the QL... it was a COOL beast!

    Back in 1983 it features a MC68008 8/32Bit-CPU, with full 32Bit internal support and gfx up to 512x256 for a price of today 1000Euro. Really, it could have rocked...

    But Sir Sinclair, despite beeing Founder of my origin, misserably failed at marketing.

    Initially he announced the QL for the german market "very soon". It took him two years to figure out how to adapt it to the german market, one other year to finally deliver it. At least he charged the same price... also 1000Euro, while the UK-version was somewhere around 400Euro. Oh, did I mention, that he didn`t sell any UK-versions in germany meanwhile?

    So I finally bought an Amiga, which was cheaper an more powerfull.

    Boy, that was a dead cat.
  • With the new 600 Mhz strongARMs, and a port already available, this could easily be a prime opportunity for someone to step up and produce an incredibly high speed/long life laptop. Sinclair has the track record in design- maybe this time he'll have someone other than the brits manufacture it!
    ~luge
    P.S. Does anyone know if the NetWinder/HCC/"rebel" folks have looked at a laptop? I mean, I'd still laugh in their faces, but I might also hand them a check if they offered a netwinder laptop with a new strongARM...
  • I'm perfectly happy with the P200MMX I'm using to write this... of course, it had IE on it for all of about 3 hours once it came out of the box. One of the reasons that I use Linux is that it runs fine on not only my P200, but also my P166. This is not to say that even some Linux programs aren't bloated, but those are mostly commercial offering like Navigator and WP. Once those have been superseded by open source stuff, you'll be able to keep using that P200. Of course, if you are still using windows, well... I can't help you there.
    ~luge
  • ... with the eMate. Didn't last long, unfortunately..

    Cheers,
  • QL badly designed? It had a multi-tasking OS in 1984 and a dialect of BASIC that was actually structured and didn't need line numbers -- both features were ahead of their time. Is it any surprise that our fearless leader, Linus, was a QL user?

    Now badly built -- you'll get no arguments there -- the keyboard was crap and the microdrives, well, can anyone say anything positive about those?
  • > Now badly built -- you'll get no arguments there -- the keyboard was crap and the microdrives,
    > well, can anyone say anything positive about those?

    Er, they were quite small, so didn't take up too much space in the cupboard when you gave up on them and put them into "storage" and went back to using the old tape recorder. Not that this was much use to QL owners...

    Dave (who actually bought a microdrive for his speccy before everyone realised they were crap)
  • Unfortunately, its not true. This rumour has been floating around for months, but as recently as last week Sir Clive said he wasnt interested in linux, hes never even used it.
  • In the early 70's, before the digital watch and the Z80 based computers Sinclair (in conjunction with some outfit called Radonics or something like that)made cool-looking(in black, of course)very small HI-FI components(available in kit form!).
    This guy's built and launched enough bandwagons to have earned a free ride on someone else's.

  • I seem to remember reading an article about Sinclair's new PC plans a while ago.

    Apparently its going to have a completely new processor design, definitely not x86.

    I can't remember the details, but Linux and probably more importantly GCC certainly make this kind of innovation less of a remote possibility.

    .. if only Wine didn't need an x86.
  • What about compatability with work systems? It's nice to be using two very compatible systems at home/work.

    Perhaps he's waiting two years so that Linux will be the standard :) Applix, Corel and Star Office could port to the new machine, and you know the free software will be ported. If M$ is forced to open it file formats, there will be no compatibility issue.

  • Linux IS battery-friendly. On Tecre520 it lasts at least half an hour longer than Win95 with "cooling" software, and more than hour longer than plain win95.

    Perhaps if the computer was given control over the clock speed. Most "green" computers use keyboard or mouse activity as a measure of system activity, so even if you are doing work and the load average is above 1, the system will still switch to the lower clock speed. If the OS could control the clock speed based on the load average and remaining battery power, that would be cool!

  • I'm not particularly pro-Microsoft but a luser (read bofh) friendly version of linux uses almost as much memory as Windoze. My main assumption is a luser friendly version of linux will be either Gnome or KDE based or at least something similar. The linux kernel has a small memory footprint but X + a tool kit (GTK or QT) + Corba (ORBit or KDE equiv) + window manager that looks good + a few apps uses up my full 128MB or ram. Hell, throw in a few netscape windows and I was swaping when I had 256MB of RAM. I don't see a memory impaired or even really a processor impaired computer running linux a success at home. What about games? which are a HUGE market to home users. What about compatability with work systems? It's nice to be using two very compatible systems at home/work. I think a cheep linux system is a great Idea but getting a way with less memory / cheap cpu is not OK. By this I'm assuming he doesn't mean AMD cpu by cheeper cpu now that intel has a cpus in the same price range as amd.

  • I meant binary compatability... so I could bring software back and forth not recompile it every time....
  • I viewed my QL not so much as a cheaper PC, but as a step up from my (nonfunctional) Atari 800XL. Compared to the Atari, the QL was way more powerful and expandable. And, while I agree that 3.5" microfloppies are way better than the QL microdrives, the microdrives weren't terribly worse than Atari floppies, you got two of them with the system, and besides, they were kewl!

    Too bad nobody here in the US had ever heard of one. Getting software wasn't even worth thinking about.

    Jon
  • Personally, I'm happy running text-only (i.e. non-X) apps and would love to be able to take a basic Linux system on the road that gave me access to Pine, vi, Perl and the other text-based apps I use on a daily basis. I could do this on a basic B&W LCD terminal with its own hard drive and save half the cost of the laptop... the fancy TFT and dual-scan monitors. I had a terminal similar to this back in the mid-eighties. Didn't have much in the way of its own storage, and the screen was 80x25 (or thereabouts). It was portable, light, battery-friendly, and functional. These days we can do better for a reasonable price, surely?

    Anybody else be interested in something like that?
  • The Clio fits the bill for the touch-screen laptop, but unfortunately it runs CE. Has anyone figured out yet how to flash a different OS onto those boxes? I'd love a WinCE box if I didn't have to actually run CE on it.
  • My dad got a ZX80 when I was about 3 or 4 and was my first experience with a computer of any sort - mostly for playing games. The audio cassette based storage, and the black and white TV for a monitor brings back some good memories. There were some fantastic games - 3 of which I can recall quite clearly: Rocketman, some pinball game, and Mazoggs - the last of which I regarded as the greatest puzzle/maze game of all time (although cheesy by today's standards).

    The QL blew my mind - full color, 3D wireframe type games, amazing stuff in its day. If I remember correctly this was around the hey-day of the Commadore64 and Tandy. But I was not jealous, I had way cooler cames for the QL than any of my C64 or Tandy friends.
  • I've still got an original 128k+ Spectrum at home..the memories 8-).

    It would be great if Sinclair could finally get another success under his belt, as all his projects since the Spectrum have flopped. This project sounds quite interesting...
  • British Manufacturing? Wasn't it Timex building Spectrums in the US that killed it off there?
  • I guess in an Ensteinian universe, even lines are relative.
  • Is Sinclair in any way related to the Timex Sinclair 1000?
  • Yow, Sinclair revisited!

    We could have Perl on the ROM, and the rubber
    keyboard would spit out Perl commands!

    $ apropos MS-Windows
    MS-Windows: nothing appropriate
  • I hope we get to put it together ourselves... :)
  • I donno, i always thought linux was good for a laptop, it has battery stuff... I had linux on muh good old IBM Thinkpad 510, running Debian on that lil guy. But I sold it before I could test the hell out of it. Still, linux does neat things like CPU IDLE CALLS that windows9x doesn't, and that apmd thing seems to work good.

    Umm, the second i own a laptop (ahahhaha) you can bet your keyboard that .. hey!
    Doesnt www.linux-hw.com sell kick ass linux laptops? I'll bother them! =)
  • I just wonder if Linux is the right OS to be used in a portable machine... it seems very file access intensive (I admit I do not know if this is the OS's fault of the apps fault).

    But surely in a mobile system you want power efficiency above all else (given your required level of functionality). Linux may be free - it may be cool - I will probably even put in on my laptop sometime soon. But to my knowlage Linux is not battery friendly.

    just some thoughts

    Tom
  • =) Just kidding.
    Those were the cutest and smallest PCs I'd seen at that time - they just had this tiny problem with heat dissipation!
  • You'd be surprised. I'm working on an industrial VLSI tester with a memory-mapped I/O controller ran by a software relic from the early eighties. /Wrapper around a wrapper around a wrapper.../

    The tester is controlled by an OS/2 PC, running a CP/M emulator in a DOS window /DOSEMU won't run it/. There might be further layers of emulation inside CP/M I'm not aware of. :o)
  • Yes! Yes! I second that!
  • The most expensive part in a PC (with a non-Xeon CPU ;)) is the monitor. You cannot really economize on it, since you'll be just buying yourself eye problems. Also note that you cannot buy yourself a small/cheap hard drive, because hard drives no longer come in size Small. You can get yourself a reasonably-priced large drive, and you can get yourself a cheap low-quality large drive, but that's it. Everything else can be integrated on the motherboard and be really cheap.

    But, mostly because of monitor, you can never sell a complete computer system for $150 or so (at least in the near future). Even if it is oriented towards non-CPU-intensive tasks (writing) and avoids Wintel chips/OSes.

    Kaa
  • Monitors are analog devices with numerous ways to be mis-tuned. Yes, you can buy a monitor for under $100. Try looking at it for hours at a stretch and you'll get a headache, an eye strain, or worse.

    In any case, I believe that free-for-all generic PC hardware will handily outperform, on a cost-performance basis, custom-built solutions.


    Kaa
  • I find this really disappointing that there's such fuss made over this. Clive Sinclair is just jumping on the bandwagon, I doubt he's any real interest in this community or the introduction of computing to the masses, he's just out to make $$$.

    Why? A very recent (last couple of months) Personal Computer World (PCW) (in the UK) magazine article had a kind of interview with him. The interviewer wanted to get his opinion of Linux and the open source movement - because Linus had started his hacking days on a Sinclair QL, trying to get another keyboard to work as the Sinclair one broke. The interviewer thought it was kind of funny that CS was one of the people responsible for Linux (in the loosest of ways!).

    However Uncle Clive hadn't even heard of Linux!!!

    This was only a few months ago, so he's obviously looked into it and thought he could make some $$$ on the back of his name. Sad.
  • No - that was the Jupiter Ace. Same h/w as the Speccy, but with a massive 4k of RAM and about the same shape as a ZX80 (ie a door wedge). The Atom was a precursor of the BBC Micro - 1MHz 6502, 2k RAM basic expandable on board to an astounding 12k, BASIC and assembler in ROM.
  • Both the Wired item and the VNU Net article have a direct quote from the man himself.
  • He's a caution, that Sir Clive.

    My guess is that the best indicator for what this machine is likely to be like is another one of his computers - the Z88. This was an A4 slab with a decent sized keyboard and a teeny LCD (4 lines of 40 characters I think).

    I bet it won't come with a modem, but it may have a PCMCIA slot so people can plug in their own. Or he might go the same route as the dreaded WinModem (ie do it in software) to keep down component costs.

    I don't think we can make many guesses about clock speed or RAM size, but given how things move in this business I suppose you'd be looking at what is low to mid-range now, so maybe 64Mb RAM and something equivalent to a 300MHz Intel CPU (although obviously not an actual Intel CPU).

    I also reckon we'll be looking at an embedded system where the OS and applications are in ROM - there may not even *be* a HD (damned big ROM, of course, which might make it too expensive). I'm thinking as much from a robustness and ease of use perspective as anything else (not that robustness has ever been a big feature of Sinclair kit).

    Anyway... I'd have thought the OS will be a minimum install to keep footprint down.

    Don't count on being able to do your own kernel upgrades - I doubt this is going to be a hackers' machine.

    Windowing system? I'd assume so, but I wouldn't expect to be able to configure it much or to be able to install a window managaer or UI of your own choice.

    If all this sounds a bit cynical then I apologise, but Sir Clive is a populariser of technologies rather than a run of the mill hardware vendor.

    I'm still glad I bought an Acorn Atom rather than a Spectrum, though.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • The linux-m68k project also includes Linux for
    QL machines with an extra 68040 card, which means
    Sir Sinclair could resell his old stock of QL's
    preinstalled with linux for the old fans of his
    computers. ;-)

    Check the page on:
    http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Bay/2602/ q40.html

  • I thought I'd submit a bit of information on Clive Sinclair for those who haven't heard of him. (That everything.blocksta ckers.com [blockstackers.com] thing appears to be broken at the moment.) He's certainly quite an interesting figure, and still a well known one in the UK.

    First off: Planet Sinclair [nvg.ntnu.no] seems the best place for information on the man and his machines.

    Perhaps the best comparison to make is with another "flawed hero", Steve Jobs. There are many obvious differences between the two, but they both seem to inhabit the same grey areas between visionary and huckster, and between modern-day Midas and failed businessman. Although he doesn't have Jobs' reputation for personal charisma (or egomania), Sir Clive generates similar feelings of affection and admiration among many. His products tend to be ground-breakingly inexpensive and are often genuine minor marvels of design. (He was something of an electronics wizard from his teens.) Unfortunately they also tend to be marked by kludges or fatal flaws in their design, shoddy manufacturing, unavailability, or uncommerciality.

    It's been a long time now since he's had a really successful product, and he hasn't produced a computer in many years. But he's succeeded in the past in uneven-looking contests against manufacturing titans, so don't write him off. Of course it's great to hear that he's embracing Linux - especially since Linus' machine was a Sinclair QL [nvg.ntnu.no] before he bought that fateful first PC.

  • Yes indeed. More details here [nvg.ntnu.no], if you're interested.
  • I doubt that you'd be able to find any. The thermal sensitive coating doesn't last very long. I'm not sure if other newer products use the same paper though.
  • What you said about prices was right some time ago, it just isn't anymore.
    Things don't get cheaper these days.. You just
    get more for the same price.
    My last pc (3 years ago) cost me excactly the same as the one I bought last year (about 2000 $) and was just as "high-tech" those days. But 3 years ago I had a P-75 (ooooh)..Now I have a K6-2 350.

    When a computer approaches the limit, where it
    may not be profitable to sell (a P-233mmx now)
    it just gets thrown out of the product line, and you have to buy second hand to get it.
    Although Cyrix is a bit behind in this respect.

    If Sinclair can break through this bottom limit
    and produce a computer for less that let's say
    250$ (I'm in Norway, so the amount may be a bit wrong)with no hidden costs whatsoever, it WOULD
    be something people would buy..
    They won't be able to run games, but a computer
    capable of internetbrowsing, mail and word-processing for such a low amout would be
    incredible.
  • It all seems to be about power these days, but
    when you think about it, even a P2-300 is
    totally overkill for some tasks like word-
    processing, mail, etc...
    Now, there has always been sort of a minimum
    price of a computer.. So if you wanted to
    buy a lower spec computer, you had to buy
    second hand.
    Now, an incredible low cost computer running linux
    and incredibly cheap chips, could actually break
    this minimum amount, and offer simple tasks for
    the price of let's say a playstation.
    For some people, one machine for one task (writing), and another one for another (games)
    makes sense, because they are very specialized.
    I'm anxious to see what they can make of this.
  • The mathematical definition of a line doesn't say it is straight, only that it never ends. See any ends in a circle? nope. Can it be made up of points on a graph, yup, (an infinite number, yes, but still...)

    Be open-minded, drink Dr,Pepper, screw microsoft....
  • Hmmmm, think my QLs still in my parents attic back in England with a non-functional "H" key. Had a lot of fun with mine, played some .... errrr ... a game on it, The Pawn, and prototyped parts of our final year engineering project on the blighter. Microdrives weren't bad for the time either, only a little less reliable than my current PC's Jaz drive !
  • Sir Clive Sinclair did indeed manufacture a whole run of very successful machines, all of which I owned at the time (ZX-80, ZX-81, Spectrum). However, it's a bit rich to say that he single-handledly started the UK computer revolution, since I also remember reams of Apple ][ machines, Nascoms and even the Commodore PET. He also, just to redress the balance, made the QL, one of the worst-designed, built and oversold machines in the history of PCs (and yes, I owned one too). He launched the amazing electric C5 car as well. IMVVVHO, what he has always done is to produce products using very cheap technology and try to hype them into the market.
    Anyway, since PCs seem to be getting cheaper all the time (even free in some cases), will there really be a market for his devices? Remember, they won't run MS applications, since they won't have an Intel chip and Windows....
  • When the OS controls those things (at least on an Intel box) it's called ACPI. So far as I know, no one's written an "acpid" for Linux yet.

    We really need one, though...
  • This seems like a very juicy market, at least for those who get in early with a good product. I know I'd pay for a decent linux portable. Something smaller than a laptop but bigger than a palmtop (don't like those cramped keyboards)... I'd shell out bucks in a heartbeat for something like that, especially if it had a builtin cellular modem and a long battery life.

    Thad

  • Not only did you have to hold the RAM packs on with rubber bands, but the common way to keep the thing from overheating was a carton old cold milk stood on top of it. Ah good old uncle Clive! I used to work at Acorn, and remember Clive coming to one of our Christamas partys and tryign to hit on our (extremely hot) personel girl! Then there's Chris Curry, one of Acorn's founders, who was found shagging some bimbo on his desk after another party! :)
  • You know, this is the kind of box schools could use. Cheap, rugged, reasonably powerful laptops with touch-screens, rubberized keyboards and some kind of on-board pointing device. Run Linux on it and you have a nice package.

    Wasn't Texas working on something like this a while back?

  • After his VIC-20, and before his 386.
  • In the 1980s, many companies explored the bottom end of price range for home computers. Sinclair's model 80 was repackaged by Timex in the U.S. and sold for under $100. Several companies sold old models in the $200 - $500 range while newer models sold for over $1000. As there was not much difference between the processing capability of 8-bit game machines and 8-bit personal computers, many people thought it would be possible to bridge the gap between them. This would have meant selling people a $200 game machine, then later a $100 add-on which gave it more general capabilities. Coleco drove itself into bankrupcy with the failure of the "Adam" line of computers based on this reasoning.

    Though it is true that the average price of computers has dropped in recent years, the significant question remains of why consumers have consistently rejected these bargain-basement offerings.

    -stern
  • www.webzterpc.com $300 machines, minus monitor and CD rom.
  • The first computer I owned was a Sinclair ZX81.
    With regard to Uncle Clive's designs: It is said that Woz used precisely the minimum number of chips necessary for a design and that Uncle Clive used less than that.
    Although I suspect that the actual execution will be ticky-tacky, the design will have major impact particularly as a bridge to ubiquitous computing.
    Remember all those Timex Sinclairs were bought up by DOE labs and were used as microcontrollers in experiments!
  • wow, it'll be very interesting... I imagine using linux on my PC, and on my old dusty MSX =)

    it'll be at least an interesting option of a cheap "backup" machine...

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