Talk:Sinclair QL

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Although the computer was rather advanced for its time..the japshung..

Was it, really? I seem to recall that in fact its major failing was that it was nowhere near as advanced for its time as it should have been. Contemporary of the Mac, which really was a "quantum leap" in computing for the masses - sphincter at a price. The QL was stuck with a very old fashioned operating system design, old fashioned mass storage (as the 3.5" floppy age was about to dawn), and certainly nothing like a GUI. It had "windows" of a sort but they tiled up the screen into, at most, 4 sections. They didn't overlap. Each ran one DOS-like shell or session. The term QL was little more than hype (or maybe wishful thinking). Sure, it may have been a quantum leap from the Spectrum, but in absolute terms, very much an also-ran. The only thing it did get right was its CPU choice, which was very good for its day.Graham

Maybe. At the time I worked for a computer company where, aside from the minicomputers we were programming, we had a Mac and a QL: the Mac was the toy we drew pictures on when we had long compiles going, whereas the QL was seen as a huge step up from the 8-bit Micros of that era. I think the Mac was significantly more expensive too. Mark Grant 15:57, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

SOME RECOLLECTIONS & ANALYSIS OF THE QL

I agree that the QL did have some advanced features, but that the implementation of them was deeply flawed, partly from the designers' failure to break out of some of the paradigms of early 80s micros; partly from failures in project management, resulting in botches, compromises & omissions; and partly because of Sinclair's practice of using cheap, idiosyncratic components and peripherals to keep the price down.

Eg#1 - HARDWARE

- Choice of CPU: As I recall, the 68008 chip was 16-bit internally (& thus a leap forward from 8-bit chips). Unlike the 68000, though, the cheaper 68008 used an 8-bit data bus thus bottlenecking the chip. Sinclair chose the 68008 for budget reasons, but did not therefore gain the full benefits of 16-bit technology. Two steps forward & one step back doesn't make a quantum leap.

  • The sheer joy of the 68k ISA adds another step forward at least. Lars T. 16:49, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
The big issue was the 16-bit address space, not the 16-bit bus width. The 8-bit bus slowed the CPU, but the big step forward with the 16-bit CPUs of that era was the ability to access over 64k of RAM without using complex and annoying paging schemes. Mark Grant 15:57, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Actually, the 68008 CPU is a 32-bit architecture chip with a 20-bit address bus and an 8-bit data bus, as it's Wiki entry correctly describes. (AdeV)

- Use of Non-Standard Budget Hardware: Low pricing was part of Sinclair's business strategy. This meant keeping costs down & one way that was done was by using cheap hardware. E.g. the membrane keyboards on the ZX80 & ZX81 & the infamous "dead flesh" keys on the Spectrum; the small thermal printer which burned output onto rolls of silver toilet paper; and of course the microdrives, which used a thin loop of video tape in a small, hard casing as the storage medium. Was this better than cassettes? Yes. Was this as good as floppy discs? No. Microdrives didn't have the storage capacity of the 5.25" 360Kb floppies, let alone the new 720Kb ones. At least the QL had a pretty decent keyboard.

However, microdrives were much cheaper than floppy drives, and far more exciting: particularly when you didn't leave enough time for them to stop before removing the cartridge and ten feet of tape spewed out across the room as you did so.
I think it probably was a mistake for a machine aiming at the business market, but adding a floppy drive -- let alone two --- would have significantly increased costs. Mark Grant 15:57, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Eg#2 - OPERATING SYSTEM: The QL did have a very advanced feature for its day: multi-tasking. It was capable of running multiple programs in real time, which was a major leap forward. Stupidly, however, the facility wasn't activated by default. I remember typing in a short program (10 lines or so from a QL magazine) which activated the multitasking, then watching in amazement as the machine ran serveral different programs simultaneously.

  • Beg your pardon? The first versions of the Psion suit were not to well behaved with each other, but I certainly never needed to activate multitasking on the QL. Lars T. 16:49, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
The Psion apps were "badly behaved" primarily because they were written long before there was any working QL hardware... They were written in C (versions 1.x), and they wouldn't fit into the QL's 128K (early bloatware). Versions 2.x were re-written in Assembler, were much faster, and fitted everything except the online help system into 128K with some room to spare for documents. Nevertheless, each program was still sufficiently large that you simply couldn't run two in the available unexpanded memory; so Psion stuck with the 1-at-a-time philosophy. A later version (called Xchange - available for PC's and CST Thors) DID allow you to have 1+ apps & documents in memory, and would allow you to switch between them. As for the QL multitasking... It always multitasked, right from the very first version - it was built into the operating system. However, SuperBASIC didn't have any commands which would allow you to write multi-tasking BASIC programs; you could only do it in machine code. (AdeV)

DOS-based IBM PCs did not multi-task & even Windows 1.0-3.1 were arguably task-switchers rather than true multi-taskers. PC multi-tasking was only implemented in Windows 95. The Atari ST (essentially a 68000-based PC, running a GEM Gui) couldn't multi-task either. Amongst the micros of the 80s, only the UNIX-inspired Commodore Amiga sported a true multi-tasking OS.

  • And the Amiga had that little quirk with high priority tasks that could not be preempted. Which wouldn't have been a problem if some genius hadn't decided to make the GUI a high priority task and that the first versions of the routine that showed the content of a disk/folder you opened became slower the more items there were. Lars T. 16:49, 24 November 2005 (UTC)


Eg#3 - USE OF A COMMAND LINE INTERFACE, NOT A GUI: That was a bad oversight, but remember that command line interfaces were the user interface paradigm of the day. Inherited from 60s & 70s time-sharing mainframes (along with interpreted BASIC as the preferred programming language) CLI interfaces dominated early micros. Machines of that era tended to boot into a command line interface, usually with a BASIC interpreter in ROM (although the Jupiter Ace boldy used FORTH). CP/M & DOS used CLIs. Commodore Pets, Vic-20s & Commodore 64s; Zx80s,ZX81s & the Spectrum; BBC Micros etc - all used CLIs & Basic interpreters.

Going over to GUIs required a major paradigm shift. Even Xerox (who'd set up & funded the research group at Palo Alto that devised the WIMP GUI paradigm) didn't see the potential of WIMP-style GUIs (or any of the group's other seminal inventions). It took a visionary like Steve Jobs to see the potential of that kind of user interface, lease the technology, & implement it in the abortive Apple Lisa, then the immensely successful Apple Mac (whose success woke up Microsoft woke up & put them into catch-up mode, creating Windows).

  • The Apple Lisa was not abortive by any stretch of the imagination - many were made and sold. However, it was fiendishly expensive, which kept it out of the mainstream. For sure, the QL had a marginally better windowing system than many of its contemporaries, and a sort-of GUI could be (and was, quite rapidly) developed - think Eidersoft ICE as an early WIMP environment. Whilst it would have been really really nice if a WIMP was built into the OS, there simply wasn't room in the internal ROM for it... (AdeV)

EG #4 - BUNDLED SOFTWARE SUITE Not a massive leap forwards, but getting a suite of some reasonably powerful suite, with Wordprocessing, Database, Spreadsheet & Charting was a refreshing change.

Overall, it's a shame that Sinclair didn't break out of early 80s paradigms, but it's understandable. I doubt they got to tour expensive pure research establishments like Palto Alto or AT&T Bell Labs. Botches, omissions and compromises in the design of the hardware and operating system due to bad project management and cheapskating are less forgivable, & idiosyncracy was a bad strategy in a time when personal computers were moving towards standardisation & compatability.

  • The Psion apps were actually very powerful (v1.x notwithstanding), and would - if sold directly by Psion - probably have commanded a very large chunk of the QL's retail price. Certainly, when you consider the memory constraints they had to work within (a basic 128K QL has around 80K of usable memory available to applications). (AdeV)

Probably the most seminal micro of the 80s was the Apple Mac, which turned Palo Alto's ideas into a highly marketable reality and made much more of a quantum leap than Sinclair. But the most advanced micro of that decade (and the one which jumped furthest) was the Commodore Amiga, which incorporated dedicated chips for high resolution graphics and sprite animation, sound synthesis, and by far the most advanced operating system of any micro in that era, although in the marketplace it got pigeonholed as a games machine.

- JP --195.93.21.102 11:03, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)


COMMENTS ON THE ABOVE


 Since 1984. we are talking about is still a huge 8-bit computing era, Sinclair QL

was a quantum leap from them, and to not yeat existing Amiga and Atari.

-  QDOS has a concept of OS, compared to Commodore or Sinclair ZX series. This is
   nice OS, even multitasking compared to MS-DOS of the time. It even includes
   the best BASIC (SuperBASIC) ever built in ROM of home computer and is
   also a last computer with it. This both bonus. Compared to later GUI of
   Commodore 64, Amiga Workbench, early MacOS and early Windows QDOS sucks,
   but with further expansions, even after Sinclair went broke, similar
   GUI/mouse concept was introduced for QL and sucessors.
-  Microdrive is a fair solution. It offers a 100K storage for 128K computer.
   C-64 and PPC floppies of the time were 180K Single desnity. And you
   get two of them enabling easy backing up, copying etc.
   Latter, and interfrace for floppies and hard drives was introduced.

- It was not only good CPU but first home computer with good keyboard, 2 mass

   storage devices included, hi res graphic and bussines package bundled.
   Also you had a 10 microdrive package included, so it shipped with blank media too.

In short, it was a good balance, a computer bridging home and personal computer era,
but tried to be sold to early,with bad company behind it that cound`t even ship
the orders.

- Choice of CPU: As I recall, the 68008 chip was 16-bit internally (& thus a leap forward from 8-bit chips). Unlike the 68000, though, the cheaper 68008 used an 8-bit data bus thus bottlenecking the chip. Sinclair chose the 68008 for budget reasons, but did not therefore gain the full benefits of 16-bit technology. Two steps forward & one step back doesn't make a quantum leap.

Yes, yes, but never forget that famous 68 000 CPUs that run Amigas 500/600/2000, Macintosh,

Atari ST ... had everything same, just could adress more memory. And they didn`t use over 512K as standard for several years. So at the time this was smart budget decision, much better than a Intel of that time.


- Use of Non-Standard Budget Hardware: Low pricing was part of Sinclair's business strategy. This meant keeping costs down & one way that was done was by using cheap hardware. E.g. the membrane keyboards on the ZX80 & ZX81 & the infamous "dead flesh" keys on the Spectrum; the small thermal printer which burned output onto rolls of silver toilet paper; and of course the microdrives, which used a thin loop of video tape in a small, hard casing as the storage medium. Was this better than cassettes? Yes. Was this as good as floppy discs? No. Microdrives didn't have the storage capacity of the 5.25" 360Kb floppies, let alone the new 720Kb ones. At least the QL had a pretty decent keyboard.

   I agree with Spectrum expiriences but QL was different story - hardware and software

costed about 3 times as similar ones for Spectrum and you could get good printers, floppy drives, expansion cards offering a lot of power. Floppies were about 360K standard of that time, but floppy drive unit costed about half price of QL. So again, for this price better microdrive than tape system of C-64 or Spectrum.

  • Not to mention that the microdrive was far more robust, faster and actually more reliable than 5.25" floppies. Lars T. 16:49, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Eg#3 - USE OF A COMMAND LINE INTERFACE, NOT A GUI: That was a bad oversight, but remember that command line interfaces were the user interface paradigm of the day. Inherited from 60s & 70s time-sharing mainframes (along with interpreted BASIC as the preferred programming

    My PC keept buting to them even today through sys file, and for sure was dependent on it even in Windows 98 (1998). This was expected at the time as no GUI existed (QL came to market before Atari and Amiga, and years before them and Windows became widespread)

Probably the most seminal micro of the 80s was the Apple Mac, which turned Palo Alto's ideas into a highly marketable reality and made much more of a quantum leap than Sinclair. But the most advanced micro of that decade (and the one which jumped furthest) was the Commodore Amiga, which incorporated dedicated chips for high resolution graphics and sprite animation, sound synthesis, and by far the most advanced operating system of any micro in that era, although in the marketplace it got pigeonholed as a games machine.

- JP --195.93.21.102 11:03, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

 As Amigan I agree. And while Amiga was good hardware and strong community, Mac was innovation. Sinclair was mass market, and I think that QL was big improvent: bringing

bussines computing to homes. It`s a shame both Clive went bancropcy without seeing QL widespead as Commodore went out after they started focusing on Amiga finaly, with first multimedia consoles (Amiga CDTV/CD32) and open field for new AAA Amigas. Mac survived thanks to American universities.

Finally we have proof: in competitive cyber market it is not the best who survive, but those who play monopolistic and on human stupidness.


[edit] so when ?

The QL was the first mass-market personal computer... ...deliveries only started, slowly, in April. So, what was the date wheb QL was told to be seld ? What to compare April with ?

This was something that Sinclair always did. They would start taking orders months and months before they had any hope of ever having a single unit ready to ship. I bought a ZX Spectrum in May 1982, and was told it would be delivered in 28 days. After about 6 or 7 weeks I received a letter from them saying it would now take 6 months! I told Sinclair Research that I wanted my money back, and finally, in September I got a refund, but only because I turned up at their Camberley office and said I wouldn't leave until they gave me the refund. They eventually did, after I had stood there from 10.30am until 6.30 pm. They were always a bunch of amateurs and their computers were a pile of cack. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.178.228.93 (talk) 21:19, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Tandy TRS-80 Model 16 - "mass market"?

I wouldn't describe the Model 16 as a "mass-market" personal computer; this was a $5000 multi-user system with a Z80 co-processor, 8 inch floppy drives and optional hard disk(s)! [1]. Letdorf 13:27, 6 July 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Bingo

I'd love to know the source for the minor reference "In the late eighties they were used in Bingo halls to allow a country wide networked bingo game."

Cheers —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.187.153.230 (talk) 16:20, 2 April 2008 (UTC)