Sinclair at 60

[ppppenguin]

The Register has posted a report about 60th anniversary of the original Sinclair Radionics company: https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/30/s...ionics_60/

Perhaps I'm fortunate that I've never owned any Sinclair products. I certainly remember the ads in Practical Wireless etc for things like the Z12 amplifier and the scams that were the IC10 and IC12 amplifier chips. These chips were bouhgt from Plessey's reject bin (I think one of the Plessey parts was the SL403), given an inflated power output and an unconditional replacement guarantee. I wonder how many worked at all.

One of my classmates at university had a Sinclair Black Watch. It almost worked. The Sinclair Scientific calculator had very dubious accuracy. I think the trig functions were worse than the usual 4 figure tables we used at the time.

[peter scott]

As a boy I bought the Sinclair Micro FM an FM radio kit the size of a match box. It worked but tuning was rather difficult because when your hand was near the set it altered the tuning so it was a bit a trial and error to tune in a station.



In other words complete junk.

Peter

[Crackle]

Everyone has their own oppinion of Sinclair products.
I had the Micro 6 and Micromatic and they both worked well.
I built many of the amplifier projects and won a hobies prize at school and an offer of an apprentiship.
Brillient items that caught the imagination of a young boy and hooked them into the hobby.
I think a lot of the bad press and issues around the items were down to the inexperience of the boys using them.

Mike

[Crackle]

As a boy I bought the Sinclair Micro FM an FM radio kit the size of a match box. It worked but tuning was rather difficult because when your hand was near the set it altered the tuning so it was a bit a trial and error to tune in a station.

In other words complete junk.

Peter

But was there anything better on the market at the time?
I bet you had fun and learned lots trying to improve it.
Mike

[Nick]

For various odd reasons, I have Sir Clive's old Quad 405-2 amps plus his Quad ESL 63s (which are in disgusting condition!)

I have a Sinclair Scientific calculator still in working order that I bought new back in 1974 whilst still at school - I seem to recall spending 49 quid on it - a fortune at the time, especially for a school boy. Horrid reverse polish notation plus dreadfully slow and energy-hungry (4xAAA), but way ahead of its time...

..and, hey, still working (just!) 45 years later - that's only a quid a year, so cheap really...

   

[ppppenguin]

Reverse Polish notation is great, provided it's implemented properly, like on the HP35 and its successors. ISTR the Sinlcair implementation was poor.

My Texas SR50 Scientific calc cost me £47 in 1975, during my first year at unit. Still a lot of money for a student.

[peter scott]

But was there anything better on the market at the time?
I bet you had fun and learned lots trying to improve it.
Mike

Hmmm! I did learn something but more about advertising than electronics.

Peter

[peter scott]

Reverse Polish notation is great, provided it's implemented properly, like on the HP35 and its successors.

Absolutely! Fewer keystrokes and it appears to know exactly what you want to do next and has everything correctly in place. Totally unlike four function which is a tedious mess for anything more complex than 2 + 2 = 4 or 3 x 3 =9.

Peter

[Craig]

HP have always had RPN at least as an option. The later calculators were (and still are with the Prime) astonishing machines.

But I too bought a Sinclair Scientific back in the day. You could fool it by asking it to find the root of a negative number, or the arcsin of something greater than 1. And it tried valiantly, with the display flashing fitfully, for several minutes before it returned a wrong answer. I replaced it with a TI SR56, which was great for the next three years, then went HP through several generations to the modern day. If you do something daft on a Prime it just says "Error".

I even converted my wife to RPN; she's an accountant, and uses her HP12C daily.

Craig

[peter scott]

On all my laptops and phones I use Free42 Decimal with the realistic calculator skin.

Peter