Re: Apple II plus clone?

[YourName@YourISP.com (Your Name)]

In article <alpine.DEB.2.02.1211041529050.12400@Ryou-VM1.yauncle.net>,
Steve Nickolas <usotsuki@buric.co> wrote:
> On Mon, 5 Nov 2012, Your Name wrote:
> > 
> > In England you mainly had the rubbish from Sinclair (which also made it to
> > America under the Timex name I think) - ZX80, ZX81, and Spectrum. Hopeless
> > things with disgusting keyboards that were really only toys rather than
> > real computers.
> 
> That sounds like a good assessment.  EW CHICLET KEYBOARDS.
> 
> And yeah, Timex sold them as Timex-Sinclair computers.

The early Sinclair machines had disgusting membrance keyboards (as found
on some microwave ovens, a printed plastic sheet covering the entire top
with buttons underneath) that quickly wore out. The Spectrum had horrible
rubber keys (like some calculators, but bigger). 

Worst of all was the "programming" where you couldn't actually type the
commands, but instead had to use the silly keypress codes - I can't recall
the exact ones, but for example pressing Function-G to get the Goto
command. Some of them were so ridiculous that you had to press three keys
to get a two letter command. In the UK Clive Sinclair was often called a
genius and even received a Knighthood from the Queen (personally I always
thought he was a looney). Later came up with an electric single-seat "car"
that failed and a couple of other even less useful "inventions", and then
he disappeared.    :-\


We looked very briefly at the Spectrum, but realised it was garbage and
got the Commodore 64 instead - the VW Bettle of the computer world, they
were still making them in Mexico and Russia for decades.   :-)

In terms of *real* computers in England, there was the BBC Microcomputer
machines, which were especially popular in schools. Later there was the
Acorn Archimedes (from memory the first computer to use a RISC chip - the
ARM chips) as a competitor to the Commodore Amiga.