I program my home computer, beam myself into the... past

[lovingboth]

Did I miss the posts about Micro Men, the BBC drama about the rivalry between Sinclair Research and Acorn Computers?

I wonder how many complaints they've had about Amstrad CPC's being 'at' the show where they launched the Acorn Atommmmm *.

(And when did Sinclair User start? Ah, 1982 apparently. Ooops. No Camputer around then either, surely. And that's not wire-wrapping, that's soldering.)

It would be interesting to see a drama done on the UK bi community...

(*) The Atom's keyboard 'debounce' didn't work very well, and pressing a key once would often lead to multiple characters appearing on the screen, hence its nickname of 'Atommmmm'. Early TRS-80s had a similar problem, but it was so much easier to call those 'Trash-80s' than TRS-800000s :) and Radio Shack / Tandy did at least release a software fix for the problem.

Comments

[barakta]

No, no one has posted about it, even though we all watched it, giggled at it, pointed out the fail, ARGHed at the fake-sinclair-mask (a lot) and were too young to know the actuality of the inaccuracies that I am sure you are correct about pointing out :)

Drama done on us lot would only be interesting to us I am sure. I wonder who would feature in where though! Who is our Clive Sinclair?

[softfruit.livejournal.com]

I'm sure I was going to get round to writing about it soon! Mr Acorn seemed to be playing it straight as the suspiciously flawless hero while Mr Sinclair played the comedy bad-guy: surely he can't have been that successful and that persistently an arse? (or can he...)

[lovingboth]

I don't know about flawless: look at the business incompetence that never said 'this rate of growth is not sustainable' and instead spent the money on too many staff, too flashy offices, and too many E..l..e..c..t..r..o..n..s.. - they were never in the 'cheap and nasty' market, so why do it?

It did lightly skip over Acorn being like almost everyone else and coming up with strange new definitions of '28 days'. They seriously underestimated the demand for the BBC B, and (wrongly) expected people to buy the BBC A that they wouldn't have bought themselves (erm, some clue there guys).

Sinclair is a classic example of someone whose vision wasn't entirely compatible with reality. Often first, some brilliantly clever designs, but built down to a price and often with quality to match.

The calculators could add/subtract/etc, but for anything else were only accurate to a couple of significant figures. I can't remember if that's because the better equations wouldn't quite fit in the ROM and it would have cost a bit more to have a bigger one or if it was something else equally typical.

That pocket TV was the one actually released. They were supposed to do, and had announced, a completely different design, involving bending the electron beam 90 degrees.

[lovingboth]

My other moan is that it skipped over the equivalent designers at Sinclair, including someone who's now at Birmingham University. I wonder if he autographs stuff he wrote back then?

Pass, but when people are being annoying I have been known to think, in the style of Bob 'oskins in The Long Good Friday, "I treated you lot well even when you was out of order!" :)

It could be a murder mystery: who sporked her? (Answer, almost everyone.)

[tenlegspider.livejournal.com]

I had to look closely at Sinclair to check that he wasn't being played by David Mitchell. It was so weird.

[barakta]

Yeah it was very much Curry and Sinclair with the others being mere bit parts who might be lucky enough to have been named.

I like your description of the atommmm bounce bug, that sounds immensely irritating. My n800 (tablet thing) does that with button presses occasionally and that's stabworthy enough. Saying that, I couldn't imagine typing on some of those awful keyboards at all. I don't know what you think of the BBC Micros but one thing they had was fantastic keyboards, I've been spoiled for the rest of my life I think.

Have you been watching the electric dreams series? They apparently cut so much of the footage entirely cos they had so much in the 90s.

As for the bi community drama, I want it on record that I have never sporked another member of the bi community... yet... :)

[barakta]

I asked djm4 about this at the weekend and he reckoned Sinclair was possibly quite as bonkers as portrayed. He was certainly well known for a serious temper and being bonkers! Of course djm4 might be biased there having been an Acorn geek.