Infinite loop: the Sinclair ZX Microdrive story
They would, Clive Sinclair claimed on 23 April 1982, revolutionise home computer storage. Significantly cheaper than the established 5.25-inch and emerging 3.5-inch floppy drives of the time - though not as capacious or as fast to serve up files - ‘Uncle’ Clive’s new toy would “change the face of personal computing”, Sinclair …
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The best...
...article I've read in a long time - Dale's - The Sinclair Story book is now going for £36 + on Amazon. I now regret selling this for 50p at a boot sale about 10 years ago.
Never had a microdrive, but my dad bought my brother and I an Interface 2 with some of the ROM cartridges. Why they didn't just go that way in the first place, I'll never know. Instantaneous loading of games, literally plug in the ROM, turn on the machine, and you were in the game - so one of the first "game cartridge" consoles, really, and they could have made a killing by pushing that. Spoiled only by high price on the cartridges mainly due to the rarity.
Still have it around somewhere, with the original ROM cartridges (Jet Pac, Hungry Horace, Planetoids, there were only about 2-3 other titles that ever came out on that format).
Even had the NES "trick" of blowing on the cartridges to make them work, though they were much less susceptible to handling and dust problems because they had a red rubber "skirt" which covered the exposed PCB contacts on the cartridge edge, which were pushed aside by the Interface 2 ROM slot.
If Sinclair hadn't spent the money on Microdrives but pushed to get the ROM prices down, or even make them EPROMs so people could use them to store their own programs, the gaming world would have been a very different place and they could have started to rival Nintendo almost immediately.
Ok your story is nice, but I have to rant about this.
"my brother and I" makes no sense in your sentence. It's an example of false grammatical correctness - you've learned the rule that "me and my" is incorrect and applied ot universally. "My and I" only applies when you are the actor. When another is acting on you, it is "me and my".
The test is to take your brother out of the sentence.
"my dad bought I an Interface 2"
See the problem?
You're right about eproms though. Imagine how different the world would be.
Though I have been known as a grammatical Nazi at times, it's an internet forum and my intention was clear.
That said, I often re-re-re-re-re-re-revise posts before I click submit, not for grammatical correction, but to rewrite the sentences to add bits (my memory is very odd and doesn't work properly). In this case "My brother and I" originally started the sentence before I later added the part about my dad actually doing the buying (I was just a sprog back then, and it seemed unfair to leave out that my dad actually paid the money for it, and people might think I was REALLY old if I don't).
Looking at my post history, you'll see that I also have a history of breaking sentences into complete gibberish when I do this, by inserting an additional note into a sentence and forgetting to clean up around it or rewrite the tenses, etc.
When something is unreadable due to poor grammar, I'm just as vehement as anyone else. But the pedantry applied when the intention of the sentence is clear really doesn't improve anyone's English. Actually, I use me and my a lot more often than anything else (Hell, I'm Cockney, and will even substitute 'me' for 'my' in conversation!), but I think you'll see that this is just an example of re-edit laziness rather than attempting to use grammar beyond my grasp.
I could probably pick out errors in this post too (comma overuse, possibly?) but unless it stops anyone actually reading the post and understanding what it means, then I wouldn't bother to try and fix it.
Me right
This error is second only in my list of annoyances to the polar opposite of people who say things like; "Me and <friend's name> went to the pub."
Take out the "and <friend's name> and you're left with "Me went to the pub." They sound like a self-centred 4 year old, in which case they shouldn't be getting served at the pub.
Just because I'm a Grammar Nazi doesn't mean I'm not right.
Bristol
Have you been to the west country?
My bristolian colleagues often construct sentences like "my dad bought I an Interface 2"
I had an Interface 2 as well and it was a great peripheral and made much more sense to me than buying an Interface 1. But, there was a very good reasons why the ROM cartridges were no alternative to Microdrives - they only held 16K! That is why the only games that came out on cartridge were the older 16K Spectrum games that you mentioned.
I had Jet Pack btw, great game. :)
.....applied ot universally....
Did you mean 'applied it universally' ?
Glass houses, stones.... and I...
Re: Me right
"Just because I'm a Grammar Nazi doesn't mean I'm not right."
Inevitably the Grammer Nazi will overextend themselves, fighting a grammar war on multiple fronts and eventually shooting themselves in the head in a bunker when it all falls apart.
Re: Bristol
I may be wrong, but I believe that this is because the original version was "my dad bought oi...", and oi is not some comical Bristolian mispronunciation of "I", but an earlier English word meaning "me". I used to know a young woman from a farm in rural Somerset who spoke real Somerset, with its own vocabulary and grammatical differences, and it was a pleasure to listen to.
Similar things happen in Yorkshire English where apparent mispronunciations are actually from Norse words.
Jamaica Re: Bristol
Rastafarian dad's may even have "bought I and I an interface 2"
Re: Bristol
In any case if its proper Bristollian it would be "my dad buys ..." - none of these fancy tenses here please.
Re: Me right
English is an evolving language, and this case both forms are used, depending on the names of the people involved. Thus "Me and Tracy went to the pub" and "Elizabeth and I went to the pub" are both acceptable. But if the names were swapped, they would both be unacceptable.
Re: Me right
Not to mention awkward, when Elisabeth and Tracy find out about each other.
@NomNomNom Re: Me right
>"Just because I'm a Grammar Nazi...
>Inevitably the Grammer Nazi...
another excellent speccy article
ideal reading over my morning coffee.
I remember looking at these in boots/etc in 83/84 as a spotty 12yo (who'd just had his first speccy educational game published) with very envious eyes.
never happened though - I ended up moving to an Amstrad 6128 - which seemed relatively spaceage at the time - real colour (it even told you what they all were on the top of the disk drive), AND a proper disk drive. It was like scifi had landed in my bedroom (even though my budget didn't extend to a monitor - so it was still plugged in to the 1978 hitachi tv.
Re: another excellent speccy article
But Amstrad didn't sell them without a monitor, even if you asked really nicely. In fact the PSU was built in to the monitor and the 6128 required 5v for the main board + 12v for the disc drive.
I assume you had the MP3 modulator, which would have been the only way to get power + a UHF out. But I'm just interested how you got a 6128 without a monitor as Amstrad's policy was never to sell them separately.
Great article
I never had a speccy, but it was always obvious to me that they had style and marketing speak over their competitors. Hmm reminds me of a fruit based firm.
Re: Great article
My old man has never got on with his iPod- gets confused by connecting it to a PC- but he loves his Brennan JB7. He puts in a CD (of which he has hundreds) and three minutes later it spits it out, having ripped it to its internal HDD and compared it to its internal database for track titles. It's probably not of interest to Reg readers (some of you would use a RasPi and networked storage, I'm sure) but it really is a well thought out device for its intended market.
He has recently discovered Spotify, but stupidly it only works in 'portrait mode' on his tablet.
Good article!
Another good el-Reg exposé into old computer stuff! Ideal reading over my morning tea, not coffee! I am too young to know about stuff like this but its fun reading about it.
The real sinclair story...
A stupid idea, badly implemented and rushed to market.
how i miss the 80's
Re: The real sinclair story...
Sinclair were massively obsessed with price. Everything they did seemed to be very optimal to the point of being border-line usable at times. Just think of the dead flesh rubber keyboard or the earlier membrane jobbies.
The Microdrive is another example of how they decided to produce a simple, cheap design rather than look at ways of sourcing cheaper parts.
Commodore for instance lowered their costs on devices by purchasing MOS and vertically integrating, this is just another example of how businesses in the US behave differently to the UK at times.
Sinclair was doing the wrong sort of custom work, he should have been using off the shelf storage formats (like he'd done with the speccy using normal tape recorders) and actually saved the custom work for the important stuff like graphics and sound (which were both massively dire on the speccy compared with the C64).
Re: The real sinclair story... (@AC)
The difference between the C64 and Spectrum graphics are decent hardwired graphics semantics with a weak CPU versus a cheap-to-manipulate frame buffer with limited colour resolution and a speedy CPU. Trying to reduce it to one being definitively better than the other isn't really constructive. Both have been pushed much further now by enthusiasts without budget limits but for every Creatures there's a Knight Lore, for every Revs there's a Hard Drivin'.
Given that in 1984 (when I could most readily find prices via Google) a C64 cost £195.95 and Spectrum was £129, I don't think it's fair to make the blanket statement that Sir Clive's lot were optimising incorrectly.
Re: The real sinclair story... (@AC)
That's a fair point considering this instance in isolation, but taken on the whole 'for a ha'porth of tar..' should have been the sinclair family motto. He constantly cut corners, and most of the time it bit him (and his long suffering punters) on the arse.
Makes me chuckle to see comparisons with jobs/apple on this list.
In clive's case 'Don't you love it when things just work' maps to 'fuck me! it works! amazing!!... nope it's gone again'
Fascinating story
I really enjoyed reading this, although it could have done with being proofread.....
I used to love the rigmarole that went with buying QL games. When you tried to run them from the microdrive that came in the box, it would force you to make a backup to an empty microdrive (another couple of quid to Sir Clive!) and then you'd need to boot from your copy and keep the original MD in the second drive to pass the copy protection they'd put on the game. It seemed that even the publishers knew how fragile they were!
I worked with an ex-ICL chap who insisted that they almost deconstructed and reconstructed the microdrives and drives for the OPD system. I'd love to have known more about that!
Also have great memories with the AmSoft 3" disk format. Used to be impossible to find them for a reasonable price - used to regularly raid the bargain bin at the local computer shop and buy unwanted CPC/+3 games as they would be cheaper than buying blank media!
Re: Fascinating story
One of my most satisfying bits of hackery I did on my QL was reducing the number of cartridges required to load The Pawn from three (two "working copy" carts plus one original for copy protection) to one - I worked out I could squeeze the the contents of two cartridges onto one, which I formatted with the same magic ID code as the original cart using some Microdrive "utility" software. Playing the game was almost as much fun...
Must power up my QL again and see if the Microdrives still work - they did about 4 years ago...
Re: Fascinating story
A quick scan of a 1988 issue of ACU reveals 3" discs retailing for £2.50 each or £23 for 10. This tallies with my memory of them being about 3 quid each.
Part of the cost was the fact they were manufactured like brick outhouses. They were designed to be tough enough to be able to be sent through the Japanese postal system with no protection other than their case. I have one on my desk and they are tough beasties. Had loads and I can say I never had one fall apart, but I have had 3.5 inch discs have shutter mechanisms that have gone wrong or got damaged.
Sinclair, what was that all about ?
Not long after the QL was announced (though it notoriously actually came out much later) there were already fairly affordable computers like the Sirius and, later, the Apricot.
Unlike the QL, these actually, seemed usable in business due to a decent keyboard, software like Wordstar and floppy drives -- the Apricot even had Sony 3.5 inch 720k drives which were, as promised, entirely reliable and could be fed for as little as £2 a disk.
When the Amstrad PCW materialised at the Sinclair price point , it used small floppies. Aside from hobbyists, that seemed like the end of Sinclair computers to me.
My experience of Sinclair products was, anyway, mixed. The small Sinclair hifi amp was not known for reliability and according to legend the hifi kits included Plessey modules repackaged with a mysteriously 'uprated' output. Any "breakthrough" in storage based on what looks like 8-track cartridges, but shrunk, seems a bit batty at this remove.
Re: Sinclair, what was that all about ?
RE Sinclair reliability. First thing Sugar did was to move production out to the Far East. Costs of using the Timex factory in Scotland were very high due to very high faulty return rates and stock going "missing". Rumour has it everyone in Dundee had a Spectrum, mostly bought from a man in a pub.
A story is told by an Amstrad engineer that when they got the circuit diagrams through from Sinclair, the Spectrum was so over complicated that they were scratching their heads about how it actually worked. When they figured it out they integrated everything down into a few IC's vastly reducing the component count.
Here's the 128k Spectrum circuit boards. The Sinclair version is at the top and the rest are as Amstrad developed them. Look how they reduce the component count.
http://www.nvg.ntnu.no/sinclair/computers/zxspectrum/spec128versions.htm
Re: Sinclair, what was that all about ?
I think you are being a bit harsh on Sinclair. The QL was actually a very good computer - once you had added external drives (of which there were several tto choose from). Also it was expandable, several companies (most notably Miracle Systems) made sub-assembles that would plug into the expansion port on the left-hand end.
Mine had a Miracle Systems Gold card that upped my RAM to 2MB and gave me an interface to 2 Mitsubishi ED floppy drives (2.88MB each).
I had an Epson Laser printer (EPL something or other) that cost more than the entire QL set-up!
With that (and later the Cambridge Z88 portable) I ran my part-time photographic business, learned database development and generally got on the road to becoming a trainer and support bod.
With regard to their amplifiers, I still have a Sinclair System 2000 amp (although I don't use it) but I would really like a Neoteric 60 amp (if I could find one).
Re: Sinclair, what was that all about ?
Anybody willing to help my dementia here?
I seem to remember buying a chip, with an aluminium 'armadillo' heatsink stuck on its back (It actally worked very well, but got extremely hot!). IIRC, I stuck it on a board, with the tracks carved out by a scalpel I "purloined" from my mother - who was a nurse at the time. Holes 'drilled' by knocking a nail through carefully marked holes. (Oh, Veroboard! Where would we be without you!)
Put a 'skeleton' gramaphone into a wooden chess-box I had, connected to the speaker of a defunct wooden wireless we had. It worked. Powered by a 6V? motorbike battery I found on the local rubbish tip.
Envy of my friends. Think I was about 13 at the time. Would that really be 44 years ago?
Was it a Sinclair? I bought quite a few bits'n'bobs from Sinclair in my yoof, starting withe the MK14.
Re: Sinclair, what was that all about ?
The chip with the armadillo heatsink was the Sinclair Super IC12 power amp. It was actually a remarked Texas Instruments device. I soldered all 5 of mine into matching PCBs also supplied by Sinclair. I cannot recall if the PCBs were an extra purchase or bundled with the chip.
The earlier IC10 audio power amp, with metal heatsink bar running through it, was a rebadged Plessey device.
Re: Sinclair, what was that all about ?
"Apricot even had Sony 3.5 inch 720k drives which were, as promised, entirely reliable"
No. Just no!
We had 10 Apricot F1 computers. The likelihood of any one drive being able read a disk formatted in another drive was depressingly low. No problem with the supplied, mass duplicated discs but locally formatted blanks was another story. Our solution was to work out which people needed to swap data most often and "pair up" the computers to minimise read errors.
On the other hand, if you needed to format a lot of discs at once, placing up to four F1s side by side and using one infra red linked keyboard to run all four computers was quite cool!
Re: Sinclair, what was that all about ?
Mr C Hill "The Sinclair version is at the top and the rest are as Amstrad developed them. Look how they reduce the component count."
Not a likely account. If you look more closely the component count could be said to have been increased with Armstrad, barring perhaps the availability of cheaper higher density RAM in those days (and decrease of discrete IC's). If you'd compare the Sinclair motherboard with most of the competition at the time, it would be Sinclair having the most reduction done in space - or just leaving out "luxury". Including decent capacitors!
What is more likely is the story about the complications. To cut corners some odd constructions could be found in the circuit diagram. But in my experience they were all cost-saving at a time the price per component was high enough to justify those added twists.
Re: Sinclair, what was that all about ?
@ John Brown
The Apricot F1 was an unloved cheap bastard offspring. The Apricot PC and hard drive Xi were pretty good. The two Xi models I have used could occasionally trip up and fill the screen with a particular weird character. The cry would go up: "the screen's full of penguins again" and it would be time to reboot.
Kept my Apricot PC for nearly 8 years, only replacing the keyboard and adding extra memory and a modem (a rarity then). This was only the second computer I'd used and the first I owned -- I had to send away for a Wiley book about DOS and learn to program the dot matrix printer I'd added but the Apricot was otherwise a complete working machine rather than the desk full of boxes and cables that Apple and BBC offered.
Re: Sinclair, what was that all about ?
I disagree, having the advantage of having actually spoken to an engineer who worked at Amstrad at the time.
The first +2 was rushed through as Amstrad has to get stocks in ready for Christmas. They didn't do much re-engineering at that stage. It was a rush job, so rushed in fact that in his book Sugar reveals that he was already committed to the tooling required before he had even signed on the dotted line. In fact the book also reveals that before Amstrad had the plans, they went down to Dixons and literally bought a 128k Spectrum to dissect. They had less than 6 months to get the machines into the shops which is less time than you'd think when you factor in production lead times and how long they'd be on the boat.
The real changes came with the +3 where you can easily see number of components has dropped significantly. They've also managed to engineer out the ridiculous heatsink.
Remember ZX Net?
As well as the microdrive interface, the Interface 1 also had a 'proper' RS232 socket and a ZX Net socket for Sinclair's proprietary Spectrum (and later QL) LAN setup. Me & my Dad once networked about 10 Speccies together, mostly to see if we could - there was hardly any software available that actually used ZX Net. I believe the limit was 64 nodes on the LAN, probably someone once did that many for a laugh.
What happened to the innovation of the 80's
Did Thatcher's policies suck the money out of technology to buying houses and city fat cats' Porsche? Discuss.
Re: What happened to the innovation of the 80's
Probably, although even by 1980s standards this wasn't particularly innovative. Back then there were already systems like the LINC/DEC-tape, which provided random access with ridiculously simple drives. Those drives didn't even have a capstan. The system was designed so tape speeds were largely irrelevant after it was formated at a controlled one.
Re: What happened to the innovation of the 80's
Sadly I think the scope for such a large range of products which enabled all this innovation has gone. Computer means PC or perhaps Mac now, games machine means PS3, Xbox or perhaps Wii etc. Suppose RaspberryPi is a sort of throw back to that era. Similarily games now have teams of 100s working on them - back in the 80s a teenager could write a game in their bedroom and get it published (I did) ... again, I suppose "apps" are an area where that may just about be possible again - though my latest game app - RealRacing - is clearly way way beyond the small scale innovation level. Even in hardware everything is become increasingly commoditised - IP providers like ARM may be a great success but it means that to some extent they handle all the innovation and the rest of us just use digital allen keys to bolt flat pack designs together.
Re: What happened to the innovation of the 80's
We were busy paying back a huge loan to the IMF and living under the austerity demanded by the IMF as a prerequisite for that loan, following the disastrous Labour and Lib/Lab Pact governments of the 1970s. Many seem to have forgotten that inflation peaked at 26% in Harry Wilson's second term and the resultant pay demands of 30 - 40% ultimately lead to the IMF loan and the Winter of Discontent.
Re: What happened to the innovation of the 80's
In all industries the early days are marked by lots of little firms doing things differently but, in the end, the market and economies of scale whittle these, away leaving major brands (which often then crash ingloriously).
The British car industry. Riley, Morris, Austin, Wolsley -- Standard, Triumph, Alvis -- Hillman, Humber, Singer, Talbot, Sunbeam. All were absorbed into three majors, then two, then one, then none. And that's not counting the tens of brands which disappeared before those mergers -- Lea Francis, Armstrong Siddley, Jowett, Lanchester.
I still have a couple of Microdrive cassettes at home that I was given by a family member in a bin bag full of speccy games, thing was I never had the drive to run them, did have the interface 2 with the rom catridges which was so much faster than loading off an audio cassette.
Great memories
I never owned a Microdrive, but I knew people who did.
Each time you formatted a cartridge, it would report a slightly different number of sectors. So they would format a few times in a row until they got a slightly higher capacity.
Thanks for mentioning the Wafadrive.
Don't forget Exatron
Exatron invented the "Stringy Floppy" continuous tape in 1979. I used one on a TRS-80. Very nice too. And reliable unlike the Sinclair thing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBfNy021K2Q
Re: Don't forget Exatron
Yep, I had one too, it worked very well.
BBC Micro Hobbit drive
I was in the BBC Micro camp and remember seeing an advert in one of the computer mags for a new "floppy tape drive" called "the Hobbit" which was "faster than tape, cheaper than disk". Wasn't a continuous loop but wsa a high speed "cassette" which I think had "random access". Anyway, as it was ~1/3rd price of a floppy drive I decided I'd get one and persuade my parents to go via a shop somewhere in North London on our way somewhere. Went into the shop and said that I wanted to buy a Hobbit drive and the person in the shop basically replied "no you don't - they're not really worth the money - you want to save up the extra to get a floppy drive"!
A bit later I did get a floppy drive ... drove myself to N London that time to find this company that was advertising cheap floppy drives in the mags ... it was called "Viglen"! Got there to discover it was basically a company that had been making plastic boxes that seemed to have discovered that they could get a lot more money for their plastic boxes if they put a floppy disk drive in them.
Re: BBC Micro Hobbit drive
I owned a Spectrum (48K) myself (though if I'd had a snowball's-chance-in-Death-Valley of affording a Beeb, I'd have jumped at it), but in 1983 my primary school held a series of fundraising events to buy a BBC Model B with (intake of awed breath) a 5.25" floppy disk drive. Oh, how I wanted one... from waiting 3-4 minutes to load a Speccy game off cassette, to just a few seconds on the Beeb - "this is the future", my school-age self thought...
Back on-topic: no, I never owned a Microdrive (too pricey), but I could swear I remember seeing one in WHSmith - still can't believe they ever sold computers - and more recently, in the computer museum in Swindon.
Oh, and after all these years, I finally own a Model B... Raspberry Pi. I'll settle for that :-)
(where's the icon for "misty-eyed middle-aged nostalgic", Reg?)
More reliable microdrives
The microdrive to have for the Speccy are the ones with a little raised strip running front to back on the left in front of the pinch wheel. It aligns the cartridge better to the rollers and these drives are more reliable than the older ones without it.
When I went through a short nostalgia phase of buying microdrives a few years back, I'd always peer down the slot or ask the ebay seller to check the drive was one with the bump. Speccy nerd eh ;)
The last QL's also had more reliable drives made by a 3rd party. These often still run without problems today and so are the more sought after QL's. The drive manufacturer? An unheard of company at the time called Samsung :)
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