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SINCLAIR’S QL MICROCOMPUTER Prepared on behalf of the Course Team by Godfrey Boyle Design and Innovation The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK76AA This text consists of two case studies on the marketing First published 1986 of high-technology innovations. It forms part of an Copyright © 1986The Open University Open University course entitled T362: Design and All rights reserved, No part of this work may be reproduced Innovation, which examines the processes of design in any form by mimeograph or any other means, without and innovation under a variety of industrial, permission in writing from the publisher commercial, social and political circumstances. Designed by the Graphic Design Group of the A full list of aims and objectives for these case Open University studies, together with self-assessment questions Printed by Thomson Litho Ltd, East Kilbride, Scotland (SAQs) and references to relevant articles in the ISBN0 335 172725 Course Reader (Roy, R. and Wield, D. (eds.) (1985) This text forms part of an Open University course. A Product design and technological innovation, The complete list of units in the course is given at the end of this Open University Press) can be found in the Study text Guide for Block 2 of the course. For general availability of supporting material referred to in this text please write to: Open University Educational Enterprises Limited, 12Cofferidge Close, Stony Stratford, Milton Keynes, MK111 BY,Great Britain Further information on Open University courses may be obtained from: The Admissions Office, The Open University, P0 Box 48, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AB 1.1 CONTENTS
PREFACE 5 4.5 BUSINESS USERS 30 4.6 EDUCATION 32 BEGINNERS START HERE 5 4.7 PRICING THE OL 32 STUDY NOTES 9 4.8 LAUNCHING THE QL: MATCHINGSUPPLY AND DEMAND 32 1 INTRODUCTION 9 4.9 OVERSEAS MARKETS 33 1.1 AIMS 11 5 RE-LAUNCHING THE QL 34 2 SINCLAIR RESEARCH: A BRIEF 5.1 MARKET SATURATION AND PRICE WAR HISTORY 12 34 5.2 FINANCIAL DISASTER STRIKES 37 2.1 SINCLAIR RADIONICS 12 5.3 RE-LAUNCHING AND RE-MARKETING 38 22 SINCLAIR RESEARCH 15 5.4 THE MAXWELL‘TAKEOVER’ 40 3 DESIGNING THE QL 18 5.5 SINCLAIR GOES IT ALONE 41 3.1 CHOICE OF CENTRAL 6 BEYONDTHEQL 43 MICROPROCESSOR 19 3.2 MASS MEMORY STORAGE 19 6.1 THE ‘ONE-PER-DESK’ 43 3.3 OPERATING SYSTEM 20 6.2 WAFER-SCALE INTEGRATION 44 3.4 SOFTWARE PACKAGES 21 6.3 THE ‘FIFTH GENERATION’ 45 3.5 SUPERBASIC 22 6.4 EXPERT SYSTEMS 45 3.6 PHYSICAL DESIGN 23 6.5 SOME QUESTIONS AND CONCLUSIONS 46 4 MARKETING THE QL 26 REFERENCES 48 4.1 MARKET RESEARCH 26 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 48 4.2 TARGET MARKETS 27 4.3 MARKETING 28 4.4 THE HOME USER 28 PREFACE
In this block, the main emphasis is on marketing, and the product or service was conceived, designed and in particular on how companies try to assess the likely developed, how the likely market for it was market demand for their product or services. researched, and how it actually fared in the market The two case studies we have chosen lie in the place. information technology field. They examine how two Finally, in both cases, we provide some British companies, namely Sinclair Research and assessment of the success of the marketing strategies British Telecom, designed, developed and marketed, that were adopted; some comments on likely respectively, the QL microcomputer and the Prestel developments in the future; and some general information service. conclusions. These are explored further in the Block 2 Both case studies start with general technical Study Guide, which is intended to be read in introductions, outlining the basic technical background conjunction with these case studies. you will need. This is followed by an account of how
BEGINNERS START HERE
If you know little or nothing about microcomputers, writing the programs in a code known as a you should start here. And even if you do know computer language. There are literally hundreds something about micros, it might still be a good idea to of different languages around, the most popular read quickly through this preliminary section, because of these being Basic. Basic is an acronym of it should help to refresh your memory of some of the Beginners’ All-purpose Symbolic Instruction basic terms and concepts. Of course, if you really are Code. Although orginally intended as a simple a microcomputing expert, you can skip this section introductory language, Basic is now a powerful entirely. I should stress, however, that it is not and widely used language in its own right. necessary to understand fully all the aspects of Other common languages are Forth, Pascal, microcomputing that are touched on here. T362 is a Logo, C and Coma!, to name but a few. These are course on innovation, not computing, and the aim here known as high-level languages because they is simply to give non-technical readers a better ‘feel’ approach the sophistication of a human language. for the subject matter of the QL case study proper. You may also see references to low-level The rest of this section consists of an edited languages, assembly language and machine reprint of a ‘newcomers’ guide’ originally published in code. We’ll look at these in a moment. Personal Computer World in May 1985. The heart of a micro, the workhorse, is the processor or Central Processing Unit (CPU). The processor usually consists of a single silicon Micro Jargon chip. As with computer languages, there are a For those completely new to computing, let’s start number of different types of processor available, with the question: what is a microcomputer? We the Z80, 6502, 68000 and 8088 being just a handful think of a micro as: a general-purpose device in (literally!) of the types in common use. The contrast to a typewriter, which can only be used processor is nothing magical — it’s just a bunch of for typing; a calculator, for performing electronic circuits. It’s definitely not a brain. calculations; a filing cabinet, for filing The processor’s circuitry can be in one of two information. A micro can do all of these and more. states: on or off. We represent these two states by If it’s to be of any use a general-purpose binary (base two) notation, the two binary digits device needs some way of knowing what to do. (known as bits) being 0 and 1. It’s possible to We can tell a micro what to do by giving it a set of program computers in binary notation, otherwise logical instructions, called a program. The general known as machine code (or machine language) term for computer programs is software. Every programming. other part of a microcomputer system is known as Machine code is called a ‘low level’ language hardware. because it operates at a level close to that ‘understood’ by the processor. Languages like Programming Basic are known as ‘high level’ languages because they are symbolic, operating at a level Programs must be written in a form the micro can easily understood by people but not directly understand and act on — this is achieved by understood by the processor. 5 Between high level languages and machine Memory code is a low level language known as assembly language or, colloquially, assembler. This is a So far, we have a processor and a program. Since mnemonic code using symbols which the a computer needs somewhere to store programs processor can quickly convert to machine code. and data, it needs some kind of memory. There Since everything has to be converted into are two types of memory: Read Only Memory binary form before the processor can make sense (ROM) and the badly named Random Access of it, we need some sort of code to represent each Memory (RAM). ROM is so called because the character to be processed by the computer. In processor can ‘read’ (get things out of) its order to simplify communication between contents, but cannot ‘write to’ (put things in) it. computers, a number of standard codes have ROM is used to store firmware, the name been agreed on. The most widely used of these given to software permanently available on the codes is the American Standard Code for machine. An interpreter is a typical example of Information Interchange, ASCII. This system firmware (stick with it: it gets easier!). assigns each character a decimal number which RAM differs from ROM in two important ways. the processor can then convert to its binary Firstly, you can write to it as well as read from it. equivalent. This means that the processor can use it to store A program written in a high level language both the program it is running and data must be converted into binary before the (information). The second important difference is processor can carry out its instructions. We could that RAM needs a constant power supply to retain of course do this manually, but since this is its contents: as soon as you switch the computer exactly the sort of tedious job computers were off, you lose your program and data. designed to do for us, it makes much more sense There is a type of RAM, known as CMOS to write a program to do it. RAM, which requires only a tiny amount of power There are two types of program to do this to retain its contents. This is found in portable translation for us. computers. It is normally powered by nickel— The first of these is a compiler which cadmium batteries so that the program and data translates our whole program permanently into are retained even when the main power is machine code. When we compile a program, the switched off. At present, CMOS RAM is extremely original high level version is called the source expensive and is not likely to be used in desk-top code, while the compiled copy is called the object machines for a little while yet. (CMOS stands for code. Compiled programs are fast to run, but hard Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor.) to edit. If we want to change a compiled program, Memory is described in terms of the number we either have to edit it in machine code of characters we can store in it. Each character is (extremely difficult) or we have to go back to a represented by an 8 bit binary number. 8 bits copy of the source code. For this reason there is a make one byte and 1024 bytes make one kilobyte second translation program: an interpreter. An or 1k. 32k, for example, means that the computer interpreter waits until we actually run (use) the can store about 32000 characters in its memory. If program, then translates one line at a time into 1024 sounds like an unlikely number, remember machine code — leaving the program in the that everything is based on the binary system, original high level language. This makes it slower thus 1,2,4,8,16... 1024 being the nearest binary to run than a compiled program, but easier to edit. multiple to 1000. There are two unusual Basic words you’re While we’re on the subject of bits, you’ll often likely to come across: POKE and PEEK. When you see computers and their processors described in program in a high level language, you are terms of their bit power: 8-bit, 16-bit, 32:16-bit and normally unable to choose in which part of the so on. This is a means of describing how large a machine’s memory the processor will store binary number the processor can handle in one things. This makes programming easier because chunk. A binary number, incidentally, is known — you don’t need to worry about memory locations, confusingly — as a word. An 8-bit processor, for but slows down the program since the processor example can handle 8-bit words, that is, up to has to ‘look up’ addresses for you. Using the 11111111(255 in decimal). Anything larger than POKE command, however, you can ‘poke’ a value this has to be broken down into manageable directly into a desired memory address. ‘POKE chunks before it can be processed. 10000,56’ for example, puts the value 56 into A 16-bit machine can handle bigger chunks of memory location 10000. PEEK allows you to data at a time. This means that it can handle examine the content of a particular memory (address) larger amounts of memory at one time. address. It you were to follow the above poke with This is why most 8-bit machines have a maximum PEEK (10000)’, the computer would respond by of 64k RAM while 16-bit micros usually have 128k displaying the value 56. POKEing and PEEKing upwards. are normally done to increase the program speed, As 16-bit processors can handle larger words but may also allow us to do things that could not than an 8-bit machine, they ought to be twice as 6 be done through Basic. fast. In practice, however, there is a little more to
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a is STUDY NOTES
When you have read the previous section (or skipped The Study Guide also contains cross-references it if you are an expert) you should read the to readings in the Course Reader, together with a Introduction (section 1) and then go on to read fairly check list of objectives which you should be able to quickly through the rest of the case study to gain an achieve when you have finished this case study. overall picture of its main contents. As m Block 1, at various points throughout this text You should then read through the entire text technical background information will be provided in again much more carefully, pausing at the end of each passages set in bold type. These technical inserts are section to refer to the Study Guide to Block 2, and not intended to form part of the narrative of the case attempting the self-assessment questions that relate to study. The material presented in them will not be that section. assessed, and you are free to skip them if you wish.
1 INTRODUCTION
Quantum Mechanics, now one of the cornerstones of modem physics, was founded by Max Planck in 1900 when he suggested that atoms, when stimulated to emit radiant energy, do so not continuously but in discrete jumps’ of energy which he called ‘quanta’. Today, the phrase ‘quantum jump’, or ‘quantum leap’, has come to denote any dramatic improvement in performance or efficiency. But Planck could hardly have foreseen, and would hardly have approved of, his quantum concept being used as an advertising slogan. Early in 1984, however, that is exactly what happened. On January 12th of that year, Sir Clive Sinclair called a press conference to announce the latest in his company’s range of personal microcomputers. The name Sinclair had already become a household word in Britain following the success of his earlier low-cost microcomputers, the FIgure 1 Sir Clive Sinclair (right) and Nigel Searle announce the birth of the QL to the Press ZX8O,ZX81 and Spectrum, which had brought personal computing within the reach of millions. Sinclair’s new machine was, he claimed, so much Some reviewers, it is true, were a little dubious more powerful and cost-effective than other ‘micros’ on about Sinclair Research’s decision to use its own the market that it was being named the ‘QL’— short for ‘Microdrives’ (which employ an endless loop of thin ‘Quantum Leap’. magnetic tape) instead of the more conventional The initial press reaction to the new QL was ‘floppy disks’. Others demurred at the company’s highly favourable. Reviewers from both general and similarly unconventional choice of ‘operating system’ specialist publications were impressed by the ‘32-bit’ for the machine. A computer’s operating system microprocessor at the heart of the machine, potentially allocates tasks to the various microchips and other a much more powerful device than the ‘8-bit’ pieces of electronic hardware in the machine, and microprocessors used in most home computers. They generally does the ‘housekeeping’. Sinclair Research enthused about the machine’s ‘multi-tasking’ capability had decided to use its own operating system, called — its seeming ability to carry out several programming ‘QDOS’instead of one of the operating systems that tasks at once, displaying the results simultaneously on were by then becoming de facto ‘industry standards’. the screen. They were dazzled by the multi-coloured But these and other criticisms were relatively graphic displays produced by the QL’s four software muted, and the overall reaction in both the specialist packages, and marvelled at how Sir Clive’s company, and the general press was highly favourable. Sinclair Sinclair Research, could afford to give away software Research promised delivery of the first batch of QL’s of such quality free with each machine. in less than two months, by the end of February; so 9 public and press alike reached for their cheque any shortcomings can easily be forgiven [because] the books, placed orders in their thousands, and sat back QL offers so much more than any similarlypriced machine, to await delivery. and has the potential for very much more. But the end of February came and went, and no QL’s had yet become available. The technical press Towards the end of 1984, it appeared that Sinclair was becoming impatient that the machines it had been might just have pulled it off. Although pushing their promised for detailed evaluation had still not arrived. customers’ tolerance to its limits with the contrast The general public, too, was becoming suspicious that between the somewhat exaggerated claims for the the company, which had already gained a reputation machine and its poor initial performance, they had for late delivery with its earlier Spectrum eventually managed to deliver a product which more- microcomputer, was once again making promises it or-less lived up to the company’s promises. Production couldn’t keep. had begun to build up (though sales figures were a At the end of April, two months behind the closely guarded secret) and the QL was beginning to original schedule, a few QL’s (reportedly fewer than make its appearance in High Street chain stores. It 100)were delivered to the first eager customers. But, looked like Sir Clive Sinclair and Sinclair Research as most of these unfortunate purchasers soon would once again be successful in creating a large discovered, the initial machines seemed plagued by new market for a highly innovative microcomputer numerous hardware and software faults, together with product. serious shortcomings in the reliability of their But by early 1986, it had become clear that things Microdrives. Moreover, the sleek appearance of the had gone badly wrong. Christmas 1984,instead of QL was somewhat marred by the addition of an extra being another boom period for home computer sales, memory chip dangling out at the back of the machine. as the previous Christmas had been, turned out to be This addition (nicknamed a dongle’) had become the point at which sales began to level off. Luckily for necessary because Sinclair programmers still had not Sinclair Research, its cheap Spectrum machine quite managed to get the QL’s operating system and continued to sell relatively well, but sales of the new its Basic programming language to fit within the QL were far below what the company had expected. dedicated chips inside the case. So in March 1985,following a management When they finally got their hands on these early re-shuffle, some further hardware and software production machines, the verdict of the technical improvements and a careful re-appraisal of the QL press was a harsh one, reflecting the disillusionment of and its sales prospects, the machine was in effect many of Sinclair’s initial customers. As one technical re-launched with the backing of a £ million magazine declared: advertising campaign. Sinclair Research, whose image and financial standing had been hit hard by the QL early QL buyers were made to pay the price for the debacle in particular and by the down-turn in the premature launch and some contentious advertising claims. microcomputer market in general, began the slow and They received machines riddled with bugs of both the software and hardware variety ... (Electronics & Computing difficult task of trying to restore its credibility and Monthly,August 1984) profitability. But by May 1985 it had become clear that the And to add apparent insult to injury, Sir Clive Sinclair company had insufficient resources to carry out the himself was quoted as admitting not only the existence necessary re-structuring, and with its bankers and of the ‘bugs’ but that his company was using its trade creditors pressing hard for radical changes, it customers as guinea pigs: opened urgent negotiations with a number of larger companies to investigate the possibility of injecting we are getting our customers to find those bugs for us. substantial additional capital into the ailing concern. These negotiations culminated a few weeks later in an was how he put it. (Personal Computer News, 16June offer by the businessman and financier Robert 1984.) Sinclair Research did promise, however, that all Maxwell to take the company over. early QL users would receive upgraded operating However, by early August 1985,the proposed systems as soon as the final version was ready. This deal had fallen through. Maxwell claimed that the ‘finalversion’ began to make its appearance at the end prospects of Sinclair Research did not, on of May 1984,when Sinclair Research finally began to investigation, seem good enough to justify the £12 deliver QL’s in reasonable quantities, with most of the million investment he had originally offered. Sinclair faults of the initial batch apparently rectified, As Research contended, on the other hand, that sales of deliveries built up during the summer of 1984,and the the company’s products had improved, and that it queue of dissatisfied customers diminished, the press therefore no longer needed to be ‘refinanced’ in order softened in its judgement. Though there were to continue selling its existing microcomputer range — continued misgivings about the reliability of the though it did admit to needing extra finance to Microdrives, and users continued to find fault with the develop new products. Soon afterwards, the company machine’s keyboard, its operating system, its Basic announced substantial price cuts, including a halving language, its software and especially its Microdrives, of the price of the QL to £199, in preparation for what it the overall verdict appeared to be that, in the words of hoped would be a very substantial further increase in 10 QL User (October 1984): sales during the autumn of 1986.
and
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— 13 The digital wrist-watch, the Black Watch’, utilising a novel form of low-power integrated circuit technology called ‘FL’,was announced in late 1975, at the same time as a new, low-cost digital multimeter, the DM2. But in 1976 the company sustained losses of more than £300 000 due to difficulties with chip supplies for the Black Watch, As a result it was unable to provide sufficient internal funds for the final stages of development of the pocket TV project. The assistance of the Government-backed National Enterprise Board (NEB) was sought and in December 1976 the Board decided to back Sinclair Radionics, which it had earlier commended as the only genuinely British effort in the consumer microelectronics field’, to the tune of £650 000. The NEB later loaned another £2 million in return for a 73 per cent stake in the company, though Sinclair had a clause in the deal enabling him to buy back control if ‘his’company made enough profit over the next 10 years. Sinclair ceased to have overall managerial responsibility but remained in charge of research. In January 1977 the company’s two-inch screen ‘pocket’ TV, christened the ‘Microvision’ and claimed to be a world first’, was launched, but did not sell very 1 well. With NEB backing, the company persisted in its attempts to sustain its early success in the calculator market. The period 1977—78saw the introduction of the Sinclair ‘Sovereign’, an ‘executive’ calculator range, Figure 4 Sinclair’s ‘Black Watch’ which included a solid-gold model priced at £2750; the low-cost ‘Cambridge Programmable’ calculator; and finally the ‘Enterprise Programmable’ which sold, complete with a library of programs, for around £25. But Sinclair Radionics eventually found it impossible to maintain the brief dominance of the calculator market which it had enjoyed in the early ‘70s,and was soon eclipsed by foreign competition, from both American manufacturers like CBM, Hewlett-Packard and Texas Instruments, and Japanese companies like Casio and Sharp. In the instruments field, however, the company enjoyed moderate success, introducing three new digital multimeters which sold well enough to enable it to claim to be one of the world’s two largest producers, at least in volume terms. Meanwhile, a simpler version of the Microvision, costing just under £100 (less than half the initial price) Figure 5 The Sinclair ‘Microvision’ was introduced in late 1978. But although sales of the new TV were beginning to pick up, the National Enterprise Board had lost confidence in the project of Cambridge Limited, which he had set up in 1978as and decided in 1979 to withdraw its support, a vehicle for selling his continuing electronic kit ideas suggesting that the company’s future should lie in — products in which the NEB had no interest. Sinclair instruments like the digital multimeter. To Olive took with him the project that excited him most, an Sinclair’s horror the sales force was fired and even-smaller pocket TV set using a novel ‘flatscreen’ production stopped, with the loss of 300 jobs. tube. Olive Sinclair continued to believe that the The National Enterprise Board retained control company should remain in consumer electronics. of Sinclair Radionics, which thenceforth became In view of this seemingly irreconcilable difference exclusively an electronic instruments company. The of opinion, it was decided to divide the company’s NEB subsequently changed the company’s name to interests. In July 1979 Sinclair resigned all executive Thandar Electronics and under the new brand name responsibilities with Sinclair Radionics, and took over its range of digital instruments has continued to enjoy 14 the reins of another, much smaller company, Science considerable success,
Figure
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the
An
un-heard-of
such
at
form,
cassette
microprocessor-based
had
Design
1980
of
£70.
the
early
most
programmable
for
£50.
later
that
personal
to
Though
units
ordered
more
the
a
display
he
and
design
ready
only
obtain
package, which
The
£992
components
by
advertisement
popular
a
Within
Council
hunch
went
recorder
had
re-named
pnceof
in
the
cheap
christened
advanced
this
ZX81
in
price
RESEARCH
50
Sinclair
and
gambled
produced
price
into
big
enough
computer
assembly
on
proved
countries
success,
months,
products
award
he
was
‘home
to
first
a very
discounts
of
a
for
in
of
Sinclair
produce
small,
was
£99.
in
was
than
Basic
it
even
long-term
parts
the
for
little
such
most
correct.
the
computer’
in
computer,
Sinclair
pictures
language,
in
the
He
by
not
final
the
of
the
user-friendly
1982
March
more
and
‘ZX8O’.
to memory
and
Research,
large
of
the
first
launched
Science
the
the
ZXBO,
ZX8O make
his
product.)
and
used
end had
hence
program
complete
ZX81,
to
on
first
successful,
quantities
resources
would
True
1981
with
do
selling
was
which a
—
100
of
an
of
to
normal
it
so
but
was
which
to
1983.
a
to
put
000
in
sell
at
and
was
of
available
with
of
the
TV
Radionics yet
using
cassettes
which
designed
Science
many
of
—--J ‘peripherals’ ‘in-house’. people
however,
£14
that
company’s
soared.
Microdrive’,
worldwide
leader.
of
Spectrum’,
Research
Not
behind
subcontracting-out
1983,
incorporated
design
another
million.
In
the
of
In
content
Not
of
floppy
in
other
uses
Cambidge
addition, the
1983
directly
electron
kit
In
the
surprisingly,
for
it.
to
following
the
proceeded
previous
he
the
form
turnover
an which
and
Sinclair
activities
Despite
also,
But
Spectrum
overcome
disk
to
storage,
for
a
company
had
Ud
endless
financial
device
rest
due
had
September
(around
the
for
a
gun
the
drives.
sold
brought novel
NB
on
£79.95
his pocket
year,
Spectrum,
this reached
to
established
company
which
without
at
its
the
for
in
too
its
loop
production
alongside
the
break-up
still
year
the
very
manufacturing
50
miniature
1982
laurels,
program
with
fortunes
had
and
with
drawbacks
TV
in
side employed
of
other 1983
q. 4 0
to
incurring
£64.53
substantial
to
1982—83)
magnetic
pre-tax
sold
ready
most
launched
set,
lel:
March
him
launch
of itself
with saw
the
however,
companies
of
quality
or
cathode
the
a
a
from
notably milliOn,
TIC
made
Sinclair
development
million
ZX8
the
data
the
as
profits
relatively
of 1983,
h,,dg(L,d
screen
the
due
work
the
tape
a
the
turnover,
using
1.
Sinclair
launching
NEB. control
TOTAL
storage number
kit. for
11,1
expense
By
Sinclair
ray
‘ZX
to
the
double
its
units
UK
Research
and
of
and carry
its
£99.95
instead the
4
tape
tube,
The
over
market
few
policy
is
end
of
of
out
of
of 115 problems with the new tube at the Timex plant in Dundee, to which Sinclair Research had sub contracted the assembly work, insufficient quantities were initially available and the TV could not be distributed to shops until the end of the following year, Nevertheless, in spite of the lack of success of earlier versions, the company had an optimistic target to sell 200000 of the diminutive sets in 1985,and was promoting it in shop windows and in advertisements with the slogan Now you can take a little TV anywhere. However, back on the home computing front, Sinclair Research had spent 1983 working on yet another novel product, a microcomputer which eventually became known as the Sinclair QL’and in 1984. The QL is, of Figure 7 The Sinclair ZX81, a cheaper, but more which was launched early powerful, version of the ZX8O course, the main subject of this case study, and details of its design, development and marketing will be given in the sections that follow. 1983was a good year for Clive Sinclair, both personally and financially. Early in that year he was named both as ‘Guardian Young Businessman of the Year and as Computing’s Person of the Decade’, and was awarded a knighthood in the Queen’s birthday honours list. Financially, the success of his company enabled him to sell a small proportion of his holding in it, 10 per cent, to some 40 institutional investors for the sum of £13.6 million. Though retaining control of the company, as its Chairman and chief executive, he passed the task of day-to-day management on to Nigel Searle, who had been with the company since 1972 and whom he appointed its new Managing Director. Sir Clive Sinclair then went on to apply his considerable energies to the creation of two new innovative activities. The first involved using some of his newly Figure 8 Sinclair’s ZX Spectrum, with optional acquired personal fortune to set up a new company, Microdrive unit and Microdrive cartridge Sinclair Vehicles Limited, to bring to fruition another long-cherished Sinclair dream: the development of a range of low-cost electric vehicles. The company established offices for its staff of 25 at Warwick University’s science park, and sub-contracted production work for the new vehicle to Hoover’s factory at Merthyr Tydfil, in South Wales. It launched its first product, the ‘CS, an electric motor-assisted, pedal-powered electric tricycle costing around £400, in January 1986. The CS, although a very interesting and controversial innovation in itself, is rather beyond the intended scope of this block. Suffice it to say that the CS was not as successful as Sir Clive had hoped. The second was the establishment, in a converted country house at Milton, near Cambridge, of a new research centre called ‘MetaLab. Here, he planned to hire some of the brightest brains in Britain and abroad to help him conceive, research and develop the new technologies that would, he hoped, form the basis of the Sinclair Research products of the future.
You will find some self-assessment questions relating to the history of Sinclair Research in the Block 2 Study
16 I Figure 9 The Sinclair flat screen pocket television Guide. SinciairC5. A;: :sonal transporL £399j pdde
‘! I
hiul
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Figure 10 An advertisement for the C5 electric vehicle, made by Sinclair Vehicles Ltd. and launched early in 1985 18 when once be Sinclair; Spectrum’ Design recruited first systems
director; technical Karlin, 3 responsible United the machine wide better flat powerful, magnification built-in screen mass data display. trouble used machine contrast the the frequently. waiting technology, a since of developed an technique actually switched re-charges idle, operators, still announced a software, memory 16-bit low-power machine the the ingenious screen Spectrum. microcomputer tried employee The software-compatible There Initially, The services Then in a in image memory a the time keyboard, device a successor week States; work display modem, group most with the for programmers; his The performing to
DESIGNING young team should and and ZX83 is and director; a off, central version but as Zilog, enabled or technology the was using data they that few However, a ZX8O, managing to a was for large tryin; the ZX83 applications, some on to version, way system to Martin tested run a like or new could Tony of (see be working storage, It portable in Spectrum’s employing electronics program, general discuss Microdrive it months conserve the be to giving should are projection Sinclair ZX83 not the the it to microprocessor and faster normally lengthened of ZX8 of Prestel, enough was version David be called could to ‘Beginners greatly Tebby, the the batteries QL also the switched its Zilog then circumventing manufacturers Brennan, in early use using the built-in I input was director — also Jim and access microprocessing on which and what time before have Spectrum. began and was agreement Spectrum, though run people not to Southward, with available), power, Sinclair the it, Z80 for for the to 32k. Sinclair’s — to uses ‘Radionics’ Westwood, engineer superior to 64k development. one intended more or Spectrum give more consisted initially the the between have a kind only be need a Microdrives. Z80 use very make on the microprocessor the start the output) ZX83’, by bigger in from Nigel very bytes with of too Z800, earlier began a them (waiting the when advanced units team in as Z80 telephone address engineer of powerful Z80. microdrives Sinclair’s portable, with substantially, re-charging here’ of that this much newly the Fairchild to a in with computer large a a who summer or Searle; another to of would days the portable a before battery the memory, of instructions, computer form performance be This Olive of had it to limitation. incorporate 8-bit a more the tiny ‘Super- RAM, activities. THE Sir on was the micros built-in had for Z80 power meet Sinclair built percentage more developed and of senior meant new developed mainly 16-bit p. and Olive 2-inch ‘CMOS’ to be David software Sinclair’s their result it. technical in powerful, of chip, not been 5), chip, in should for around on-line too now a about But the 1982 more are (and flat but They that And or that the a as to a
QL ready-made operate announced developed the down’ Furthermore, Sinclair’s data data circuitry output, 68000 up be known internal chunks, data the as incorporating position Figure characteristics) architecture’ offered more Sinclair on the powerful. incentive machine employed. Semiconductor emerged original CMOS of demand tubes able tubes, Sinclair-Timex producing 16 to used a Apple Z800, fact At However, The registers are However, are 32-bit to 32 bit powerful uses version that at 11 as while about chip, meet by would processing) that at so portable bits for processed inside to normally microprocessors. for 68008 ‘power-down’ their if but to 32-bit that, Though MacIntosh. low would the fast, most the The for machine enable a this opt Acorn, the software long. it (despite new not the the consistently it anything it of (which the current both power be most could contrary other Sinclair a plant was than used Motorola chip) and 16-bit could purpose. internal for ZX83. of its QL by 68008 same be ZX83 a only 68008 But Z80, the Sinclair’s cheaper something 68000 a Sinclair’s the internally marketing accurate much. the this (based can required problems at CMOS still gave little hold to drain circuitry in its In 68008 be Nor state like so manipulated concept. ‘power time has technique. Dundee 68000 to 8-bit attract chip, would both ‘architecture’ both in slow, MC68008 be advertised microprocessor, giving the earlier faster the did Its the the fact slower without of on 8-bit technology, was used (mid- competitors. arch-rivals, or way the high the and in main a to development, that binary down’ 8-bit it one: for Sinclair were a number customers. make handle simpler, would 16-bit In seem 16-bit it meet as not National peripheral 68000 68000 projections, in 1983) to 68008 data microprocessor an 8-bit resolution would mid-1983 advantage a the a input/output internally a a describe as undermining technique processor it new numbers ‘instant’ because portable machines low-power the chunks, likely not binary team input seem need Motorola of having and and input/output have enabling ‘stripped- were Moreover, seem ‘flat-screen’ expected computer be as 68008, 68008, chips an would that it and standards for much used base capable what numbers the in them to working but ‘32-bit their during equally added was than being 16-bit the it the to in the of in is be to is
data
speedily
though still very
the
already
68008’s
not
rapidly
bytes) should machine.
be and ability
amounts
in
with
They
can
minicomputers only
home
Microchips
(IBM
particular since
dropped,
use
programs. use
enabling system
3.1 still
thousands this concept
Microcomputer’) using
operating device, little for
MICROPROCESSOR was
should
difficult concept, the
opposition
Having required
reluctantly
incorporating
any
able
fact
so
uses
serious
process
more
machine
have
The in it,
CP/M.
input
The
much an
the
argued
When
point
PC),
are
in
computers,
much
the
microcomputer
to
of
And
turn
CHOICE
in
the
main
than
that, be
8-bit
mentioned,
compatible
to
decided
but decision
a
of
an
within
main
16-bit
of
memory.
use
disadvantage
theory
also
it
the
to
for
sophisticated
trusty
and
the
and
machine
need
address
system,
data
of
faster
chosen
in
Random
Alternatively,
would
users. to
the
to
when
the
with dropped,
8-bit
plug
that
an
that
despite
data
advantage,
that
device,
larger
a
ready-made
look
having
design
the
built-in
usually run
advantage
output
a
the
chips
microcomputer
ZX83
and
8-bit built-in
the
can
Z80 for
flat
enable
it
it
16-bit
data
at
a
to
it
of
more to
flat
the
such
the
enable
too
OF
would
This
has
32-bit
for
small,
CP/M’
over
into
68008
data
which
the
with
abandon
this
what
large
amounts
Access
be
be screen
were
chip
its
a
team as
being
which
still screen
modem
designed portability
In
thousands
much
the
bus’.
of
portable
a
and
CENTRAL
of flat
as
processed
used
32-bit
extra
quickly modem
a
a
relative programs
it
because
a 32-bit any
processing
that
processors
which
enable
central
it
of conventional built-in
portable
takes
than
the
can,
mainframe
the
machine.
(short
to the
megabyte
not is
applications
was
screen
32-bit could
employed
The
display
contrasted
the
Memory
like
process
not
case,
of
in
on
of
memory the
Z80
machine
data
was
IBM
only
but
within
data
still
memory
display.
just
the
the
than
they
to
68008 to
microcomputer
effect
marketing
lack
for portable
of
a
requirement
the
microprocessor
original
display
in use
internal
chip
enable
to
that
be was
dropped
‘toy’
internally there
went
registers,
Personal
that
existing
faced
new
Spectrum,
as
into
register,
‘Control The
practice
than
8-bit used
form
equally
be
of
(one data machines.
(RAM)
an
an
built-in.
over
capability in
long.
is
it was
—
to
TV
unfavourably
abandoned,
programs
it
speed
So
the
machine
run
enables with
8-bit advantages
was
is
that,
not
operating
the
might
a was
ZX83
run with
there
devices
much
a
in
more ‘architecture’
million
screen
designed
the
Z80.
grounds:
the
that
Spectrum
part.
ZX83
with
on
Program!
Computer
something
to
most
latest
more which proven
the
it
it:
some
the
even
device,
a
was
so
the
is
idea
is
portable
be
Z80
the
make
proven
it there
is
As
if
larger
due
68008
is
larger it,
not The many
—
was
was
that
you
no
to
used
can.
the
is
and
the
of
it
of
to
to
is
head
precision
only metres
floppy
circuitry drive
Microdrive stretching.
in
on using
Sinclair
problem
standard jamming,
causing
coating
solved
heads,
tape
(sometimes
Spectrum. initially
developing
a
Microdrive Part
did
other
floppy new
in 3.2
The
earlier
the
promise
with
the
around
were
There go
addressing
32-bit’
Z800
Sinclair with
quantities
doubt
would
giving
and
lot
such
the
deciding
for
they
The
a
price
QL
One
of
Sinclair
exactly loop of
computer’s
motor, But
Motorola
What
memory-addressing
a
The
existing
disk was
microcomputer
disks
priced
tape,
long. MASS
this
leading
disks
the
a
then
the as
money
machine,
low-inertia
claimed that computers,
as
have
would the
timing
one
and
main
is
designers
way not
videotape, there
of
major
‘stepper
and
usually
to
down Z800,
simply
an
drive
answer,
problem
that 68008.
sufficient
needs
finally
very added
was
known
the
makes
and
is
to
a
ensued
potential.
By
whether
dollar
above opt
a
which
designers
had
improved
at
that
this
tape advantage
Z80
that
loop turn
adopt
and
errors
in
was
to
tape
contrast, difficulty
MEMORY
Microdrive’s
however,
$20
to to
by
‘invented
for
motor, mass
large
coupled
which
requires
almost
data
its
gave
only
motor’
they can
software.
it
drive
advantage
have
eight
for
lubricant
technical
as
read/write out
with
of
had
were still
the
of
encoding
floppy
apiece,
by
which
some
loops
is
market
for
the
the
which
course,
company
thin
‘floppy
storage
accumulate
the
So
errors.
orders
very
a
to
are
track
seem
using
the
the
to
in
storage
Sinclair
the
sales
beaten
dollars
as
fairly mechanism
a
with
to
Sinclair
of
Z800
they
be
in
with
with
rotate
here’:
humble
potential
nerve-wracking
mind.
tend
(2mm
floppy
a
disks
has
not
position
68008
problem
good
tape
mass-market
use
much
However,
compared
lead
appeal
lubricant
unnecessary.
as
STORAGE
tape
commitment
at
tape
high-quality,
to
the storage
—
of
is
Sinclair
in
simple
head,
medium, decided
would
so
its its
a
successful
which
to
on
in
this
have
in
that by
finally
medium
the
the ‘upward
the
like
special
ioop
wide) Microdrive
a
to
signals
disk the
affected
superior
16-bit
loop
stretch
cheaper.
the
drives’) return but
in
the
processing
virtually
as
the garbled
as
problem,
millions.
company
disk,
for
some
that
to
the
everyone
be
edge
had
and
storage
using
to
claimed
world.
the
plentiful
drive there
the
assumption
managed
a
technology,
with
minimise
provisionally
read/write tape
instead
Sinclair
capability,
avoid
available
low-friction
read/write
‘powerful,
for
68008
on
compatibility’
for
machine
over
but
little
user into
inexpensive
as
68008,
by
is
broadcast-
Another
electronic
memory-
negotiations
over
A
tape
every
a
the
needs
the
was
data.
about
the
that
as
Sinclair’s
But
a
too, price
over
had
to
speed
time,
difficulty
wishes
else?
Z80.
chips
high
the
of
the
tape
the
to
loops why some
strain
the
while
have
by
the
in
that
put
the
5
not
get
of to access a short file in a second or so, whereas a Microdrive takes about seven seconds to do the same thing. However, Sinclair arques that accessing long files takes no longer using Microdrives than it does on many of the slower floppy disk drives. Floppy disk drives, however, can at present hold considerably more data than can Microdrives. A Microdrive can store up to 100k bytes of data, whereas a double-sided, double-density 80 track floppy disk drive can hold as much as 800k bytes of data. In the end, Sinclair’s choice of the Microdrive seems to have been dictated largely by cost considerations. By using Microdrive cartridges, it could give customers a mass-storage medium which was much cheaper than the floppy disk, although somewhat inferior to it in performance. Moreover, the Microdrive had a much better performance than the audio-cassette which, until the Microdrive came along, was the only form of mass storage Sinclair could offer. There were other commercial considerations, too. Sinclair Research had invested considerable sums of money developing the Microdrive. These would have appeared to have been wasted if it had not been used — and the company would either have had to buy ‘floppies’ from another manufacturer or paid royalties to have them made under license for Sinclair. Such a situation would have been both costly and embarrassing for a company which prides itself on its ability to innovate. However, adopting Microdrive technology still represented something of a gamble. Despite the company’s claims to the contrary, the reliability of the Microdrives and their associated Microdrive cartridges still left a lot to be desired when the machine was launched — though their reliability was Figure 12 The Microdrive mechanism and cartridge improved substantially later. In addition, Sinclair had to persuade software suppliers to provide their software on Microdrive cartridge, rather than floppy disks: this faced the suppliers with additional costs which many were unwilling to bear until they were more certain of the potential market for the QL.
3.3 OPERATING SYSTEM
Having decided to use the 68008 as the QL’s central microprocessor, and to use the Microdrive as its mass storage device, the Sinclair design team was faced with another, equally-important decision: what operating system should they use for the machine? They could opt for one of the operating systems Figure 13 A floppy disc drive mechanism already developed by other manufacturers of 32-bit to transfer data. The precision and solidity required of 68000-based micros — such as the Apple Macintosh — these mechanisms, together with the extra or they could go for Digital Research’s ‘CP/M 68K’ sophistication of the electronics required, make a operating system, written for general use with the floppy disk drive much more expensive to Motorola 68000 series of microchips. They could write manufacture than a tape ioop storage device. a similar operating system which would be compatible On the other hand, floppy disk drives usually with one of the established systems, or they could enable a user to access files much more rapidly than write their own. [Incidentally, the reason why it is with tape-loops. Typically, a floppy disk drive can possible to have several different kinds of operating system for use with any given microprocessor is that In short, the potential rewards of writing a new there are a number of different ways in which the task operating system for the QL were many, and the risks of managing the microprocessors various appeared to be relatively few. bousekeeping’ tasks can be approached. Each However, Sinclair ended up developing not just operating system has its strengths and weaknesses — one but two operating systems for the QL. tasks which it performs quickly and efficiently, and Tony Tebby, the systems programmer others which it performs slowly and inefficiently — responsible for the QL’s operating system, had depending partly on the skills of the systems commissioned the Cambridge software house GST to programmers who have written it, and partly on the write it. The OST operating system eventually became exact mixture of tasks which the system has been known as ‘68-KOS’(meaning an operating system for designed to perform.] the 68000 series — with the letters K.0. S. implying a The Sinclair team decided to write their own, and mild pun on the word ‘chaos’). But as a form of they decided to call it ‘QDOS’.The title is a pun: insurance in case OST failed, for any reason, to operating systems frequently have the abbreviation develop 68-KOS on time, Tebby decided to write his DOS in their titles, as shorthand for ‘Disk Operating own operating system, and this was the one eventually System’. Sinclair wanted to imply the superiority of its christened ‘QDOS’and used in the QL. QL DOS by calling it ‘QDOS’,because it rhymes with But ‘68-KOS’was written on time and was in fact kudos’. (Another, half-serious title for the operating the operating system use by Sir Clive Sinclair to system which was bandied about for a while was impress the Press with the QL’s ‘multi-tasking’ ‘Domes-DOS’ — a pun on the name of the well known capabilities at the January 1984 launch (QDOS being household cleaning fluid ‘Domestos’, which is used to demonstrate the QL’s other,capabilities). advertised on the basis that it ‘killsall known germs’. Moreover, in addition to QDOS and 68-KOS, there is a ‘Domes-DOS’ was therefore reckoned to be a good third operating system available for the QL, namely name for an operating system, free of all the known Digital Research’s ‘CP/M-68K’(mentioned above), the ‘bugs’ that bedevil domestic computers.) world-wide rights to which have been acquired by the The main reason for the decision to ‘go it alone’ UK firm Quest Electronics for use with the QL. But by developing QDOS was that Sinclair Research, as in although CP/M-68K is similar to Digital Research’s the case of its Microdrives, prefers as a matter of earlier and enormously successful 8-bit operating policy to carve out its own market rather than compete system CP/M-80, there is as yet very little software directly with other manufacturers. Adopting an available that uses this system. established operating system for the QL would also have meant implicitly acknowledging the superiority of the competition. And of course the Sinclair design 3.4 SOFTWARE PACKAGES team felt confident that QDOS would be a better operating system, for the QL, than the others that were At an early stage during the QL’s evolution, the available. Sinclair team decided that it would adopt the But adopting a unique operating system is risky: increasingly popular marketing ploy of giving away apart from the possibility that it may not turn out to free software with the new machine — a practice work quite as well as others, there is the added known in the trade as ‘bundling’. problem that unless software houses have confidence The advantages of ‘bundling’ are considerable. It in it (and in the machine to which it relates) they may offers the customer better value for money, in that he not be willing to write, or rewrite, their software to or she does not have to pay extra for applications suit it. software. It helps the manufacturer to overcome sales On the other hand, the benefits can be great if a resistance amongst users who already have another new operating system does succeed in gaining manufacturer’s computer and may be tempted to acceptance. Software houses, and customers, then ‘upgrade’ it by buying another ‘compatible’ machine in become committed to software packages written using order to be able to run their existing software. It also the system, and become reluctant to switch to other helps software houses because, if the machine is peoples’ operating systems. successful, they will have a large income in royalties, Sinclair went some way towards solving the even though they may have to offer the manufacturer problem of software houses’ wariness towards new large discounts on their normal software prices. operating systems when it decided to ‘bundle’ (i.e. to Sinclair decided to commission the software give away) four free software packages with the QL company Psion, which had already written several (see below). In effect, Sinclair was ‘pump-priming’ the best-selling programs for the Spectrum, to write the market by commissioning its own QL-compatible software ‘bundle’ for the QL. It commissioned four software, in the hope that this would encourage others packages, covering the four most popular business to follow suit. Also, the huge potential sales of the QL, microcomputer applications: a word processor, which could be guessed at by examining the sales a spreadsheet package, a database and a graphics figures of its predecessor, the Spectrum, were package. The packages were eventually entitled probably enough to convince many software houses ‘Quill’,‘Abacus’, ‘Archive’ and ‘Easel’ respectively, that an investment in producing QL-compatible and all are QL versions of software in an ‘integrated software could be worth-while. software package’ written by Psion for the IBM 21 Personal Computer, entitled the Psion Xchange Suite, User reaction to these was much more favourable: Initially, users were impressed by the power and sophistication of the four Psion packages, although this With this upgrade Psion have put right all the major bugs enthusiasm in many cases gave way to irritation at which marred the early versions, speeded up and compressed the code to improve performance significantly, their many bugs and documentation errors. (To be fair and improved the already substantial documentation that to Psion, however, much of their software had had to accompanies them. Version 2.00,unlike its predecessor, is be written in haste and in the absence of a final worthy of the title ‘professionalsoftware’.What a shame it version of the QL and its operating system.) wasn’tthis version that arrived with the machines this time Quill, in its original version, was not only last year! (QL User, April 1985) unreliable but occupied more memory space than the machine had available; it therefore had to be read from Microdrive into the memory in segments which 3.5 SUPERBASIC were automatically called up as required, Though this technique works (and is used on other word QLjusers were not, of course limited to using only the processing programs) it is slow —particularly when four software packages provided free with the using Microdrives. machine. On the QL, as on most computers, users can Abacus was described by one early reviewer as write their own programs, and Sinclair decided to provide ‘SuperBasic’, its own version of the well-known a run-of-the-millspreadsheet which.., contains a number Basic programming language, to enable them to do so. of good features and some unattractive ones. Its use of At one stage, however, of memory is profligate, and this probably stems from the fact the option not providing that the QL itself and the operating system were not Basic or any other high-level programming language available to the software designers when they designed this as a standard feature was seriously considered. Some package. (...) I can’thelp making comparisons with members of the design team argued that the QL spreadsheets operating on 8-bit computers with only 64Kof should be aimed mainly at people who would want memory available which have vastly greater memory simply to ready-made applications capacity than Abacus and indeed operate just as quickly. run software, such (QL User, August/September 1984) as the Psion packages, on the machine: such people would not be interested in writing their own software The reviewers’ verdict on Archive was somewhat in Basic, so there was no need to provide it. Others kinder: argued that a significant number of users would want Basic provided on their QLs, either to write programs QLArchive is potentially a very powerful database program, straight away if they had programming experience, or equal in many respects to the well-knownmarket leader, simply to learn Basic programming. dBase II. In the event, those in favour of built-in Basic prevailed, mainly because the inclusion of Basic was On the other hand, its initial version was apparently thought likely to improve the machine’s educational ‘filled with fascinating fauna of a bugs’, and the sales prospects. But it was decided that the version of manuals judged to not were be very ‘accessible’. Basic incorporated into the QL would only be a ‘shell’, (QL User, August/September 1984) providing many but not all of the features of the language that could be provided. The idea behind this Of all the packages, Easel was received with the was that experienced programmers require a lot more greatest degree of enthusiasm: features in a Basic interpreter than those which a novice would demand. The ‘shell’version would All in all Easel is an extraordinarily comprehensive business provide a core of essential features, whilst graphics package like of which the has yet to be seen on experienced programmers would buy an extra any computer remotely near the same price. (...) Deceptively named, Easel is not the tool of the artist but of a ‘Toolkit’,on a ROM cartridge, which when plugged businessman, being both cosmetic and functional.Byitself it into the machine would give them the additional provides a useful analytical tool,providing graphic insights programming ‘tools’they required. intorelationships between different sets of figures. As part of The task of writing the QL version of Basic, an overall package it is the icing on Psion’scake, by far the ‘SuperBasic’, was given to Jan Jones, another easiest to use, and some remarkable effects may be achieved with a minimumof effort.Ideally it should be used programmer on Sinclair’s staff who worked closely to add the finishingtouches to a report or forecast generated with Tony Tebby, author of QDOS. with the help of Quillor Abacus. (QL User, October 1984) The original Basic was developed at Dartmouth College in the United States in the 1960s, with the aim In view of the substantial criticisms which greeted the of making programming easy for beginners. (There is initial versions of Psion’s QL packages (with the still considerable controversy about whether or not exception of Easel) Sinclair promised that new, Basic is in fact a good programming language for improved versions would soon be available, These beginners, but I don’t intend to get involved in that finally arrived in early 1985,when Version 2.00 of controversy here.) Since the 1960s, numerous
Abacus, Archive, Easel and Quill became available as companies have added ‘enhancements’ to Basic — free upgrades to early purchasers of the QL. They often borrowing features from other, more
were also sent out with all new QLs after the sophisticated languages such as ‘Pascal’ — in order to 22 beginning of March 1985. improve Basic’s performance and make it even easier to use. The main enhancement has been the creation and pointed out that complicated applications of various forms of ‘structured’ Basic. In these versions programs (such as accounting packages) can be, and of Basic, programmers can create what are called have been, written in SuperBasic. ‘procedures’ which carry out specialised sub-tasks Sinclair’s defence of SuperBasic’s structure is within the overall program. These procedures can be supported by Allan (1984) for example, who argues ‘named’ and then simply ‘called’, by name, whenever that the program needs to perform the specific tasks to which the names refer. This avoids the cumbersome the most important feature of the QL is its programming business, necessary in ordinary versions of Basic, of language, SuperBasic, which is so sophisticated in conception that it makes many other versions of Basic writing numerous commands telling the computer to seem absurdly constricting. (...) In a very real sense it can be said ‘GO TO’ a particular numbered line in a program (at that SuperBasic is more powerful than Pascal. which point are written the instructions relating to a specific sub-task): the proliferation of ‘GO TOs’ and associated line numbers makes the resulting program very confusing to read — especially if it is a long one. 3.6 PHYSICAL DESIGN It also makes the task of finding the almost-inevitable ‘bugs’ very difficult. The designers of the QL had little trouble in choosing SuperBasic offers structured programming and a colour for their new product: it had to be black other features to make Basic programs easy to write. because Sinclair’s policy, like that of Henry Ford, was However, while writing SuperBasic, Jan Jones kept that all products should be black. The overall styling of being asked to add extra features to what was the machine was the responsibility of industrial originally intended only to be a ‘shell’ Basic. This designer Rick Dickinson, who worked with David pressure, together with delays in finalising the Southward, a mechanical engineer and one of hardware for the machine, meant that SuperBasic was Sinclair’s technical directors. still not, by the January 1984 launch date, able to fit An important feature of the QL, one which alongside QDOS into the on-board ROMs in the QL. dominates its physical appearance, is its keyboard. On the first machines, therefore, SuperBasic and Earlier Sinclair computers, such as the Spectrum and QDOS were accommodated on three 16k EPROMs, the ZX81, were widely criticised for the inadequacy of one of them occupying the ROM expansion slot. But their keyboards. The company was determined to on later machines, by re-writing the machine code give the QL a keyboard that looked and felt ‘real’ — in more compact form, they were able to be i.e., similar to a conventional electric typewriter incorporated into the two ROMs, one of 16k and one keyboard. But it was not prepared to abandon the of 32k, originally allocated to them. endless Sinclair quest for cost saving, so the QL User reaction to SuperBasic, at least in the form in keyboard, though it looks ‘real’,is not of the kind found which it appeared in early QL machines, was mixed. in most home computers, in which each key rests on a small spring. It has a keyboard of the ‘membrane’ SuperBasic is powerful and extensive, offering a wide range type, in which the keys rest on ‘blips’ in a sheet of of control structures and affordinga wide range of control rubber. The keyboard is also integrated with the case via QDOSof the machine’svarious functions.Despite all this, however, the QL’sBasic appears to be a tool without a top. Such a keyboard is much cheaper to manufacture definite application, (...) than one using springs, but it has a ‘feel’which most For the beginner.., the language is hardly ideal: its users still find slightly ‘spongy’. syntax is idiosyncratic, characterised by long and After the new QL keyboard had been designed, cumbersome commands and ambiguous error messages. the company was offered a similar low-cost keyboard It is also slow’ Shortcomingsin the QL’sSuperBasic indicate that the by the Japanese firm Mitsumi. The Mitsumi keyboard machine was never intended to run serious applications in had a better ‘feel’than Sinclair’s in-house design, and that language. (QL User, October 1984) cost almost the same. But Sinclair decided to stick with its own keyboard, presumably because it had invested However, many initial critics of SuperBasic were considerable resources in developing it. Subsequently probably unaware that it was not intended to be a fully the in-house keyboard was improved a little further, fledged implementation of Basic. But in any case, to but although it ‘feels’ much better than earlier Sinclair provide many of the features that were said to be keyboards, it still compares unfavourably (except on lacking, Sinclair made available its ‘Programmer’s price) with a ‘conventional’ design. Toolkit’, written by Tony Tebby, in late 1984. The keys on the QL keyboard lie flat, rather than Sinclair Research, unsurprisingly, disputed such sloping slightly upwards in successive rows as they do criticisms. The company contended that criticisms of on most keyboards. Professional keyboard operators SuperBasic’s speed of operation arose from the use of find this feature a little off-putting — though it saves ‘benchmarks’ (standard programs used for comparing money in manufacture by allowing the keyboard to be one machine with another) that were designed to suit integrated with the case top. To compensate partially other machines. It also maintained that the language for the flat keyboard, Sinclair provides some small was in fact very easy to program in and superior in plastic ‘feet’which can be used to prop up the rear of some respects not only to other versions of Basic but the computer and make the entire case slope gently also to many other supposedly superior languages, downwards. 23 Expansion port on the right allows up to six Microdrives to Two RS232 serial ports be added hidden behind UHF
Central processing unit (CPU). 7.5 MHz Motorola 68008
Custom gate array chip Rows of slots under the Microdrives provide ventilation and conceal a piezo-electric speaker 16 chips make up 128k RAM: of which 32k is used by the display An 8049 processor Two built-in, controls the keyboard 100k per cartridge
The QLfirmware is held in 16k EPROMs which contain the operating system (ODOS) and SuperBasic.
FIgure 14 The physical layout of the QL
24 The keys themselves are of continental’ design, used, it is not capable of reproducing text or graphic with circular dished key-tops sitting on square bases. images with very good definition, especially if the To the right of the keyboard is the housing for the computer is operating in the high-resolution 80-column Microdrives, together with a connector for adding mode (i.e. with 80 characters per line on the screen). more Microdrives externally; to the left is a large For this users need a ‘monitor’ — essentially a TV set multipin connector, the ‘expansion port’, for adding up without all the complicated circuitry which detects to 512k of extra memory chips, a disk drive interface, and decodes ‘off-air’TV signals. or other accessories. Fitting extra circuit boards at the The QL produces extremely clear and steady side like this adds considerably to the width of the pictures on monitors designed for it. But most of the machine, and means that connectors and cables monochrome or colour monitors designed for other protrude in an ungainly fashion from the side, computers cannot be used to display the full occupying more usable desk space than necessary. 80-column wide screen generated by a QL. This is One of the designers subsequently admitted informally because in the QL the electronic timing circuitry, that it would have been better to have placed the controlling the ‘electron gun’ which paints the picture expansion port at the back, with the other sockets, on the screen, is designed to operate with a slightly where cables and connectors would have been less different ‘line flyback time’ to that adopted by many obtrusive. other manufacturers. (‘Line flyback time’ is the time The QL’s power supply is not contained inside the taken for the electron beam, having ‘painted’ a line of main casing. It is housed in a separate small case the picture, to ‘flyback’ to the beginning of the next which can be tucked away out of sight near the user’s line.) This has the effect that not all of the 80 columns mains socket. This enables the main casing to be can be seen on a ‘normal’ monitor, and most users will smaller and neater than it would otherwise be and have to buy a monitor especially designed for the QL avoids some problems such as overheating or mains — which is fine for the many companies eager to interference that might occur with a built-in power supply QL accessories, but irritating to many supply. purchasers. Since the QL does not have a built-in monitor screen, it needs an external monitor. Although a You will find some self-assessment questions relating standard black-and-white, or colour, TV set can be to the design of the QL in the Block 2 Study Guide.
25 26 to such products pays been distributors, the buying reports, magazines observes example, directly, to conscious versions. whether relies specification manufacturers expensive hardware storage; money, the unwillingness see detailed what desires, so the and conventional would been — of research sophisticated, company pay products who he should that It
4.1 4 yet aim seek has the rapidly designed top-selling possibilities QL As in However, by for companies, Of Sinclair’s One But as close their people set the mainly ‘driven’ the become QL, a have MARKET IBM a carry course is the the the or certain noting new such and Clive by or opinions up have
result MARKETINGTHEQL But market ZX8O they might Sinclair effort. that had of QL or potential for that like machines, attention and views design Spectrum. not carrying Personal and for been the software they for want, when computer. market on his out as at mainly faster microcomputer explanation to grown the to Sinclair want, software in like lay lay for that was the journals, it of features, users have But are. people a needs its the through before carry first say, detailed may spite trends Research this of on do preceded new conception users example people team’s conventional Sinclair rather of engineers it a customers RESEARCH this processing to the desire what what research. out by offer microcomputer, comes runaway much imagined Computers which through of its process, be that what out did of and computer, packages designing who was particular man They and or the can predecessors, and its the this worth qualitative than price market cannot formal for useful is features none in Research for wishes larger own what claims the imperatives can to not already and statistics, various would by so or apparent publicly the its simply and technology and success. are, more by drawing the that or woman bringing buyers on. they considerable of the wisdom help market dealers comments do and kinds market company’s be research Sinclair the in and microcomputers, software new more design these to company of they what like by case. express the power ‘clubs’ perceptions available expected are don’t to be its why, mass-market the results as available more unwillingness of products, 1983, of seems in up decide to would surveys customers. USA. mass kinds things of very in and prepared published out research ZX80, people is its The of Research the have know or a technology, business to that specialists. for on advancing the when decided existing general cheaper detailed of what find market It street memory design to on of like less to when have fri the also QL for what have are of offer out 1980 for his are to to in It were software found use features programs memory in data such an power hundred Figure computer Figure many Apple of Thus processing machines tailored on Microdrives) 16 and 15 respects are (RAM) packages, much pounds MacIntosh, the and The facilities TV achieved QL to data. advertisement more cost. Apple capacity perform potential, rather offers (and Abacus, they And of expensive but Macintosh ‘on an superior colour than are although most and who the IBM large Archive, the nevertheless for cheap’ built-in could of graphic Personal in machines. random few the the some a few) afford IBM functions thousand (notably mass Quill displays, Computer, of access personal to comparable these only Its storage and those by four featured which a Easel, fast the few for or
performance
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TARGET
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micro,
machine
to
these
the
QL segment
worth
clearly
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risk
who
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on
it
short,
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represented
was machine,
copy,
in
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not
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might
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MARKETS
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have
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to
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pickings about
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wishful
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for
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research
categorisation
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May
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people
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market
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work,
at Sinclair
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of hoped
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out
into
user
microcomputer,
Simon
or
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the
claim
concerned
home
his
price,
Sinclair
the
1985)
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that
Others
BBC
Bigfoot
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thousand
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be
expensive
for
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64
or
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user,
users
than
semi-mythical
sections:
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in
species,
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believe the —
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of
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tasks
with
the
own
would
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although
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and
like
with hoped,
quoted
As
the
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normally
and
actual
home
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before
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computing
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put
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expectation the
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pocket.
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and
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exists
own
like
set it
—
if
if
or
of
of 27
28
fun
the
The was
computing’.
and
emerged
about
advertisements
time),
itself
These to as
already
BBC already
recruited.
had
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4.3
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to
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press.
and
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off-putting.
influence
64);
encouraged
because
shown
in
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to
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them.
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form.
convey
not
users
to
QL
to
a
specimen
was,
and
with
impression
impressed
1984,
formal
sold
best
had
computer find
people specialist serious
—
computer
on
the
available be
users
exempt
which
in
people
buyers,
users much
engineers who
Sinclair
it
public:
the
of
conclusions
in
But
nevertheless,
were
which
whilst
the
eliminating
to
out
people can
better
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by
the
computer
to
an
section
such
but built-in
to
was
maximise
design
market
the
did
knew
osition’
roughly market,
and
mail-
at
who
more
bedevil
image
best
talk
run
who
from who
would
the
a not
them
(such
that
as
at
aim
initially
not
able
who
much
non
had
and
the
4.1.)
a
little
of
QL
this
of
of
in
to
give
usually considerably.
manufacturers
machines
substantial
mail-order outlets professional
percentage
such
first,
consumer
cheapest considerably
4.4 information.
The store the
are
drives
loaded
‘enthusiast’ stressing the
since
suspected
be
point
cartridges
this
reassurance
understandable
advertisements
not
RAM’ display
‘massive’ where
black,
advertisements
machine,
‘real’
unorthodox
emphasise
software
Sinclair
advertisements
understand
(graphic
‘database’
as
fact
much
Microdrive’s
really
was
obvious
Following
the
the
In
The
as
It
Most
Some
the
by
keyboard.
they
slow
THE
and
like
(though also
more
advertising,
it
as
possible,
Boots,
that
retailers
home
capability.
also
computers
many
was
equivalent
Microdrive
floppy
for
that and
slower packages
images)
is
quickly
it
understand
potential
profit
selling,
they were
use
‘32-bit
market,
these
package
and
emerged users
profit
the
a
(This
was
via
user.
keyboards,
route
HOME what,
instance
than
of
featured
less
decided
Overall,
cartridge’s
can
W.
to ‘powerful’.
user,
the
it
a
potential
the
fact
inconvenient
might
the
these
disk
and
margin, benefits
Also,
to
physically
decided
omitted
tape
cut relative
their is
to
for
also
processor’
H. sounds
outweigh
involved
than
as
be
to
were
since
QL’s
for
clarify
not
Sinclair’s QL’s
the
emphasise
large
customers,
were
that
and
were.
of
Smiths
their
short
actually
selling to
on
cartridges
drives.)
that
sold
that
USER
loop,
had
not
example,
although
these prominently what
profits. features
about
the
to
as
company emphasise
initial
some
the
the impressive-looking devised
like
second,
purchasers.
the
to speed
use
a
by
100k-capacity
High
customers
very
unit
to
great
hold
a
what
files).
in
the
capacity
in
lot,
very
some
mention
the
and
large technical
QL
computers
use
retailer
production
meant;
adding
huge
next
High the
did:
40
as
full-colour
selling
release
of
production
impression
but
very
were
small
Street
the
it
discounts
the
the
as
was
A4
of
tape were a
Dixons. Also
large,
the
small,
Spectrum.
the
was
for
therefore
users
so
90k
target
‘spreadsheet’
Street
numbers
access
that
in
the
machine’s
in
pages functions
machine
of
so
much
slower adjectives
creams
a
that
use
a
liked
business!
through and
turned
Since
cassettes;
fact emphasised
retail
advertisements. terms
discovered,
to
program
seen
all proper,
series
fact
in
full-page
achievable
users
felt
to
means
cost
Although
advertisements
the
markets
in
Microdrives
shops
but
had
required
it
costs
that
the
to
of
information.
the
that
the
highlighted they
outlets,
is as
So
floppy
of like
computer
into
manual,
off
data,
itself
savings
of
of
the
retail
colour
domestic
all
a
full-size
to
it
like
it
can
enable
very
these
a
‘icons’
and
or
weak
would
‘128k
more-
can
had
were,
the
was
was
did
by a
disk
to
be
so a stock satisfy almost went to two smaller the newsagents Blood Figure earlier major distributors: Sinclair into the
128K
The Distribution, various 18 any retailers machine, Sinclair receivership High retailer, Advertisement chain, sold conditions Street Prism had QLs computers (Prism part These QL
Sinclair
most to directly chain Microproducts, early retailers buy of
to before for Microproducts, conditions the stores, their in which the John to 1985,) were they
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computing. particularly additional four to memory, domestic the trained have company sell QL findings built-in Though demonstration to would staff, non-enthusiast 32-bit and hoped software
introduction Computer stringent: software in business be the processor that what short that package serious one never ment represents computing will times approachable, tant high now facilities, orreringrn,smuestoneincomoucerarcriirecwu’ the packages, shops learn looking would This “In Press “Once microcomputers street markets, the in would users dared that It destined term for quality hardware business computers is that is a Sinclair and reviews tremendous £399 sum the stores. lot in again, the to to needed easy would from learn give and Sinclair serious mainly Sinclair touch elsewhere become ultimate Microdrives, to Evening the applications Qt terms in Sindair reach have and Because be priced What a about cost Your QL to QL” a is ever the it QL. computer one computer value available been the — have the offers quantity Standard, for in you Micro, on is computers Computer, at even in The .. expected
£399 of long QL ahead technical it £400.” the available for outstanding. getting example the suddenly edge the and most of Soft, the currently of October money.. ever adequately market in before.” those most term of January’84 serious sort the basis its affordable, leading March’84 in July1984 on of the achieve in general puts who’ve impor of place.” 128k for the QL 1984 the field, any And the the for to of 70 QL its 29 was capable of running games and entertainment The reaction to ‘QL Integrated Accounts’, written for software of much greater sophistication than most low- Sinclair by Sagesoft, was similar: cost machines were at that time capable of handling, ‘Scrabble’ on the QL, for example, was planned to Sagesoft’saccounting software is something of a have a built-in dictionary of 26000 words, compared breakthrough on the QL. The ease with which accounts may be maintained and reports extracted belies its with only a few thousand in its Spectrum equivalent; sophistication.Priced at £89.50,it represents exceedingly and games like ‘Flight Simulator’ could be made much good value, especially against other dearer packages. more realistic. Eventually, Sinclair hoped the QL’s (P. Bacanello, QL User, July 1985) software catalogue would match that of the Spectrum, which has 5000 titles. So although the QL could not To increase the QL’s appeal to business and compete on price grounds alone with machines like professional users still further, a number of hardware the Commodore 64 and the Electron, which cost less enhancements for the machine became available in than half as much, Sinclair expected to convince a 1985—most of them supplied by independent substantial fraction of the market that by paying just a companies. These included additional RAM packs, bit more (in fact, twice as much) they would get much a hard disk drive, floppy disks for users who disliked better value for money. Microdrives (or wanted more than 100k of storage) and modems giving access to Prestel and electronic mail services. 4.5 BUSINESS USERS Selling to the business/professional user can be undertaken in various ways. A company can employ a In software terms, the business and professional travelling sales force, as do large computer firms such market represented a rather greater challenge in as IBM and Digital; or it can concentrate on selling at many respects than the domestic market, businesses exhibitions, conferences and trade shows; or it can sell being more conscious of quality and reliability (and through specialist dealers and retail outlets. Sinclair less concerned with initial price) than home users. chose the last of these three options, in order to take In 1985, a selection of business-oriented software, advantage of a relatively new development in including the ‘QLCash Trader’ package and the ‘QL computer retailing.
Integrated Accounts’ package, was announced. Much In Britain in the mid- 1980s a considerable number of this software was written and sold by ‘third parties’, of specialist business computer shops opened up, but some (like Cash Trader) was commissioned and mainly located in prime city-centre sites and aiming to sold by Sinclair Research itself. In order not to sell ‘serious’ machines to ‘serious’ users. These jeopardise their desired image of the machine as one businesses traded under names like ‘Computerland’, intended for ‘serious’ users, the company concentrated ‘Interface’, ‘Businessland’ and ‘First Computer’, and its efforts on bringing out business software as rapidly most of them were run on a franchise basis. Under the as possible — even to the extent of delaying the franchise system a local business buys from a larger introduction of games software that might give too (often American) company the right to market certain frivolous an impression. computer products in a particular locality; in return, it In its pricing policy, the company was aiming at gains the advantage of the large company’s ability to business software priced in the £50 to £90 range — negotiate big discounts from manufacturers, and its substantially lower than the several hundred pounds expertise in nationwide advertising and marketing. being charged for business software for machines like Such operations had become successful enough to the IBM-PC, but substantially more expensive than the encourage at least one large High Street retailer, £6 to £20 price range of the company’s games W. H. Smith, to open a few of its own similar specialist software. However, included in the cost of Sinclair shops, called ‘W. H. Smith Business Centres’, business software was some ‘software support’ — The emergence of these new business computer advice available by telephone or letter if a user has stores reflected a change in the use of computers in software problems —to reassure potential buyers that, business. No longer was it a company’s ‘data despite the relatively low price, the software was of processing manager’ who alone decided what high quality, Certainly, the initial reaction to QL Cash computing facilities a company would buy — usually Trader suggested that this policy could well prove choosing a large, expensive mainframe machine successful: to be accessed by users from terminals in their offices. With the advent of low-priced microcomputers, the As the first piece of true business software for the QL, Cash purchase of computing power could be authorised Trader is likely to take the market by storm. The product is within the budgets controlled by middle managers. of a particularly high standard (. .).Furthermore, it entirely supports the notion of the QL as the affordable small Such executives were increasingly buying the business computer, even without disk drives (though we equipment they themselves wanted, often regardless look forward to a disk version), Targeted at the sole trader of the policies of their company’s data processing or small concern where business is for the most part run on management, and it was to the specialist computer a cash basis and record-keeping is haphazard, it finds its stores that they increasingly turned for advice, sales mark precisely, The bane of fly-by-nightbook-keepers, it willbe welcomed by accountants and auditors alike and and backup. should pay for itself within a month. (R.Vernon, ‘Cash The market for the QL at the small-business end Trader, QL User, May 1985) of the market should have been very substantial since, TheAcornElecfronSystem - the bestmicroinitsclass.
* Styled to match the Electron. * Motor control and signals on one cable. * Automatic record level. * Playback matched to the Electron or BBC pansion Unit
Microcomputers. Joystick connector — accepts * Battery or mains. two fully proportional joysticks * AC bias for accurate recordings. The Acorn Electron Microcomputer or can be used as a four input *32 Kbyte RAMand 32 Kbyte ROM as analogue to digital converter. standard. * Centronics type parallel * Monitor RGB and high quality TV outputs. interface for printers. * Outstanding colour graphics. * TwoROMcartridge slots for * BBC BASIC,compatible with the BBC instant loading of software, Microcomputer. languages and applications packages. The Acorn Electron Plus 3 Disc * Full professional keyboard. * Ten user definable function keys. * Cartridge slots will take Epansion Unit hardware extensions * Single key entry of important keywords. such as RS423serial interface. * 3.5inch disc providing over * Introductory cassette with 15demonstration * Easy assembly, forms a rigid 300Kbytes of storage. programs. * Uses compact and robust hard single unit. * Comprehensive user guide. * No additional power cased discs. * BASICprogramming course. * Connects quickly and requirement. securely to the Electron, Acornsoft software for the forms a single rigid imit. Acorn Electron * User guide and introductory * Home education * Games disc. A .,,d d,.I,,b,,.d b A,,.,, C.,’p,’.,s U,,,jI.d. E.,,,,rk,i, .d,,,,,,.th., Ibi, * Business * Graphics ,,F,,,,,,.(i,.,j.,,,,,.,. A,, A,,,,, * Connection bus for Electron ,,,,,.k,.II.,,Ih,.,-.,€,,, * Languages Plus 1. 1 Figure 19 Advertisement for the Acorn Electron as I have already mentioned, a complete system for a by small business users was its lack of floppy disk small business user could be purchased for less than drives. £1000, including a printer and colour monitor. Although such drives were beginning to appear However, because of the machine’s initial on the market by 1985, from third-party’ suppliers reliability problems and software defects, by mid-1985 such as Quest, Computamate, Micro-Peripherals and it seemed doubtful that the QL would prove successful Silicon Express, they were not available from Sinclair in establishing a sufficiently strong reputation for Research itself, which gave the impression that the hardware and software quality to attract sales to machine (and Sinclair) did not support the use of customers in small businesses, for whom quality and floppy disks. To correct this impression, the performance are just as important as price. In company was by mid-1985 considering making particular, it seemed clear from user reactions that available QL floppy disk drives carrying Sinclair’s one major stumbling block to the machine’s adoption own label. 4.6 EDUCATION
Another important market for the QL was in education. Sinclair’s competitors Acorn had shown with their BBC microcomputer, the most popular machine in UK schools, that having a machine which has the seal of approval of the educational authorities not only leads to substantial sales in itself, but also helps boost sales to home users who feel they are buying a computer which will assist their children’s progress at school. In 1986 Sinclair was developing ‘packages’, including education-oriented languages such as Logo and Prolog, aimed at ‘targeting’ the schools market Figure 20 A breakdown of the percentage costs of the various elements in the final price of a typical later that year. microcomputer Equally important was the higher education sector, which includes universities, polytechnics, technical colleges and other institutions of advanced error (remembering that a £10 error in costing means learning. Here Sinclair discussed with various a £30 error in final price) and the final £399 selling universities (including the Open University) the price of the QL thus emerged. possible adoption of the QL as a ‘standard’ or However, the problem with this simple approach ‘recommended’ microcomputer for students. For to pricing is that it ignores one of the crucial variables: example, the University of Strathclyde was in 1985 production quantity. When the Sinclair team originally reported to be discussing an ambitious plan for a estimated the ex-works cost of the QL, the calculation campus network of up to 7000 QLs, all linked to the assumed that the machine would be produced (and university’s main computer, and Sinclair had offered to would sell) in the very substantial quantities that were contribute £250000 to the project. typical of previous Sinclair microcomputers. And of Eventually, Sinclair (like many other course if a company is buying microchips and other manufacturers) is hoping that personal computers will components in their hundreds of thousands, or even become as common amongst students as pocket millions, the prices it pays for such parts will be very calculators are today — or slide rules were yesterday. substantially lower than if the order is in the tens of Some American universities are considering making it thousands, or thousands, range. mandatory for students to have their own computer, As we shall see, sales of the QL fell far short of just as they now have to buy textbooks. And even if the company’s optimistic expectations. But in later UK institutions of higher education seem unlikely to go production runs the company was able to off-set the that far, it seems probable that one or two machines, tendency for unit production costs to increase by which could include the QL, may be ‘recommended’ transferring production of the machine to the Far East, for use by students studying certain subjects. where labour costs are much lower than in the UK, and by taking advantage of the rapid fall in world prices of memory chips and similar components during 1986 — a drop in price largely caused, 4.7 PRICING THE QL ironically, by the slump in microcomputer sales.
Many manufacturers catering for the mass market carry out sophisticated market research and computer modelling exercises to determine what is the correct 4.8 LAUNCHING THE QL: MATCHING price at which to ‘pitch’their products. SUPPLY AND DEMAND But Sinclair adopted a much simpler, seat-of-the- pants approach. The price of the QL was essentially Having overcome the formidable obstacles of the lowest price at which the company thought it could designing and developing a microcomputer, and be sold at a profit, in the quantities in which it was having estimated who the likely customers for it are expected to sell. The calculations were not difficult. and how they might be reached by various forms of An expert assessment of a UK-assembled QL publicity, how do firms like Sinclair Research decide in 1985 put its likely ‘ex-works’ cost at around £120. how many machines to produce and when to produce The rule-of-thumb in the industry is that you have to them? In the mass-marketing of consumer products, multiply the cost price of a product by a factor of when sales of hundreds of thousands or millions of approximately three to arrive at the minimum selling units are in prospect, the financial survivial of a price — which gives a minimum QL price of £360. company can depend on whether it gets such (A breakdown of the various factors that make up this calculations right. And, as we shall see, Sinclair did 300 per cent mark-up is shown in Figure 20, generated not get it right. on a QL using the ‘Easel’ package.) This figure was Calculations of market size and timing are usually 32 then rounded up to allow an additional margin for based on a mixture of careful calculation and shrewd but crude ‘guesstimation’. In assessing the demand for the Spectrum had been followed by a now-known the QL, Sinclair’s marketing people used the retail demand, it was possible to assess what the likely experience of the Spectrum as their guide, They knew magnitude of High Street sales of the QL would be, not only the annual sales figures for the Spectrum, but and to plan production schedules accordingly. also how sales varied, month-by-month and season- Of course, since all these calculations are based by-season. As one might expect, roughly 50 per cent on assumptions of varying plausibility, and since it of the sales of Spectrums occur in the last 3 to 4 would be unwise to plan production solely on the basis months of the year, in the ‘run-up’ to Christmas. In the of a single method of market estimation, Sinclair tried following months of January, February and March, to assess the likely market demand for the QL in other demand is still strong: people still buy computers to ways. Statistics from national market research help while away the long, cold winter evenings. But as organisations enabled estimates to be made of the spring approaches, sales start to decline, reaching a overall size of the UK home computer market, and of trough during the summer months of June, July and the share of the market accounted for by various QL August. Then once again, when September comes, the target groups — domestic consumers, businessmen, weather begins to turn chilly and the children go back professional people, educational institutions, and so on. to school, sales begin to pick up again and the cycle Such statistics also revealed the annual rate of market repeats itself. growth and the share of the market held by the main It seemed reasonable to assume that the pattern microcomputer suppliers. Then, on the basis of (though not necessarily the magnitude) of sales of the plausible estimates of the potential sales to new target QL, month-by-month, would be similar to the sales groups, together with estimates of the ‘market share’ pattern of the Spectrum. But how could the likely likely to be achieved by the QL in competition with magnitude of QL sales be estimated? In other words, other machines, it was possible to calculate the although the shape of the sales curve over time could machine’s likely sales figures. be assessed with reasonable confidence, its size could Taking all these factors into consideration, Sinclair not. initially estimated that it should be able to sell some One of the main reasons for selling the QL initially 750000 QLs in the UK during 1984 and 1985.But even if by mail order through advertisements in the specialist these calculations proved to be substantially computer press was precisely to try to overcome this inaccurate — and, with the benefit of hindsight, it is problem. It is relatively easy to assess the demand for clear that they were extremely wide of the mark — the a product when it is being sold by mail order: the company was confident that it would be able to sell orders are clearly visible, on paper, and it is a simple any surplus QLs in the rapidly expanding overseas matter to calculate precisely what the demand for the markets. product is. (In selling a product through High Street retailers, by contrast, there can be very long delays before manufacturers discover whether their product 4.9 OVERSEAS MARKETS is selling well or badly.) Of course a manufacturer will still have to guesstimate what should be the size of the Although the country with the largest number of home very first production run, even for mail-order sales, if computers per head of population is Britain, the customers are not to be kept waiting more than the second-largest market is the USA, followed by Japan customary 28 days for their machines. But such a and West Germany. On the other hand, the use of production run can be relatively small (in the QL’s microcomputers in business is much more advanced case, around 50000 units) and it is easy to estimate, in the USA than in Britain, Japan or Europe. from the rate at which the initial orders are building Sinclair planned to enter the US market with the up, whether or not it will be necessary to bring QL in 1985. Previous Sinclair products had been additional production rapidly on stream to meet marketed in the USA by the watch company Timex, demand. A firm like Sinclair Research, which sub- under the ‘Sinclair-Timex’ label. But following the contracts all its production, will have to have made withdrawal of Timex from its marketing agreement arrangements with its sub-contractors rapidly to with Sinclair, the QL was to be marketed by Sinclair increase (or decrease) production volume once the itself in the US, using its own brand name. magnitude of demand becomes clear. Details of how the QL fared in America are given When the initial level of demand for the QL, towards the end of the next section, which tells what by mail order, had become evident (some 15000 happened when the QL, after its initial failure, was machines had been sold between February and re-launched. August 1984) it was then possible to compare these initial sales figures with those for the Spectrum during its similar launch period some years previously. Then, You will find some self-assessment questions on the on the knowledge that the initial mail-order sales of marketing of the QL in the Block 2 Study Guide.
33 5 RE-LAUNCHING THE QL
Market, fought a losing battle to quash rumours of 5.1 MARKET SATURATION AND PRICE imminent bankruptcy. Eventually, the company was WAR forced to have dealings in its shares suspended and to appoint a new acting chief executive, Alex Reid Christmas 1984was crunch’ time for the home (whom you will meet in the accompanying Prestel computer industry, in both Britain and America. It was case study), as part of a scheme to re-organise and then that the exaggerated claims and expectations of re-finance the ailing firm, A few weeks later, Acorn those who had predicted continuing massive growth in was rescued by the Italian multinational company the home computer market were confronted with the Olivetti, which acquired a 49 per cent holding in cold fact that the market was not an unlimited one. Acorn from its founders, Chris Curry and Hermann The previous Christmas, by contrast, home Hauser. (Later in 1985, when the company computer manufacturers had been unable to deliver encountered further cash flow difficulties, Olivetti took enough machines to keep up with what seemed like over the majority of Acorn Shares.) an insatiable demand. So as Christmas 1984 In America, meanwhile, the Apple corporation approached, UK retailers, anxious to have enough shut several of its factories for a few weeks in an machines to meet the enormous projected demand, attempt to cope with the over-supply of its MacIntosh
I placed very large orders. In retrospect, it is clear that computer, and virtually the only healthy company in they over-reacted to the previous year’s undersupply, the microcomputer business seemed to be the and as New Year 1985 dawned, they were left with enormous IBM Corporation, with its best-selling IBM- thousands of unsold machines. PC — though even here there were rumours of For example Acorn, Sinclair’s main UK unhealthily large numbers of unsold machines. competitor, had anticipated selling some 300000 of its However at least one major US microcomputer Electron and BBC computers during 1984,but in the manufacturer provided a contrast to the prevailing event only 200000 machines were sold. Other mood of pessimism and retrenchment. The Atari manufacturers, such as Commodore, took a similar corporation, which had had substantial success in the beating, with only the Commodore 64 model early l980s with its games-based microcomputers but continuing to sell in reasonable numbers. However, in had suffered severely in later years mainly due to one respect Sinclair fared relatively well during the competition from Commodore, had recruited a new Christmas 1984 period. The Spectrum, enhanced a few chief executive as part of an attempt to revive its months previously by the substitution of a better flagging fortunes. His name was Jack Tramiel, a keyboard and dubbed the Spectrum PLUS, continued legendary figure in the US microcomputer business, to sell in large numbers, mainly because of its low who had founded the spectacularly successful price and the vast range of software available for it. Commodore Business Machines Inc., but had left the Without the benef t of these Spectrum sales, indeed, it company after a boardroom row in 1982.Tramiel soon is doubtful whether Sinclair would have survived the made it known that he was out to repeat his earlier Christmas ‘84down-turn — for sales of the QL, on which success. He then proceeded to trim the Atari work the company had pinned such hopes, were little short force by firing a sizeable proportion of its staff and of disastrous. announced that Atari would soon be producing a The immediate reaction of the major range of machines which would, it was claimed, microcomputer manufacturers to the 1986 New Year surpass in hardware and software performance the glut was to cut prices sharply. Over Christmas 1984 Apple Macintosh, but would sell at less than half the the Spectrum Plus, Acorn Electron and Commodore 64 price. had all been priced at around £199. In February, The cries of disbelief and disdain which greeted Sinclair moved first by cutting the price of the the announcement began to ring a little hollow, Spectrum Plus to £129; Acorn responded (the following however, when the first Atari machine, the 520 ST, was day) by reducing the price of the Electron to £129. unveiled on schedule at the Las Vegas consumer This price pressure then forced the trade to reduce electronics show early in 1986.As Tramiel had the price of the Commodore 64 to £149 — though it was predicted, the 520 ST offered hitherto-unrivalled value subsequently increased again to £199. for money — ‘power without price’, as his advertising But the price war was only one symptom of the slogan put it. The machine was based on the Motorola deep trouble in which many micro manufacturers now 68000 chip of which, as we have seen, the 68008 chip found themselves, Commodore laid off a substantial used by Sinclair is a ‘stripped-down’ version. fraction of its work-force and eliminated several At the UK price of £750, it came complete with models from its range. And Acorn, which only the 612k of RAM, a 360k floppy disk drive, interfaces for a previous year had been one of Britain’s high-tech hard disk, a music synthesiser and various other glamour companies, raising over £100 million when peripheral devices, and a high-resolution 34 launched on the Stock Exchange’s Unlisted Securities monochrome display — though the 620 ST, unlike the _
AL520 ST
GRAPHICS COMMUNICATIONS icanaaesnedw,aeeateran se-macred elareosoral oenoeaa — eedare or ere raoser ar.oirioa inod.a: edoterc or nroaere eareba. dmrpd/ooreiar news wwaas eusis e isooieare lice reaeowOOl enteec wrel eodseirrwrwawmre Priorlnoladao 5Nr rdouror nrea I aawmaeoean aeoOoes load reavloaoel neorearer noeur.aoessrneare ILoDeOf sw,dm wel, a inoroorirene Inlet real ataursire e.ed Ma. ante ra,aoe Kerboerdelaaee 15ev weed new ear ne.d.oa Icerteerd ales ice fLoDe Of nsrrraawewee.r eaa.m metal Isw’DiOdes Iderororan.d) eleoeew new era rora store cereal Mel eradeoe tar merrea esaclaarrreieauera ISA”WDdm leormarsadl ARCHITECTURE IwIrdelolnaonr, Iron, Mouse .1 4iceor GEMWIMFENVIRONMENT Ieea-nee cloce ocue Coin-razorewrerntderewi cod ewe-vendor, icon coma Poe-down reeve esou carworiar- oimc,cs Proa.aare ow Ieolorbonlo gourd Generator sir be aermoen eroo..awaas*o — on wNon lesasa Serial Pod rOsasO dew snJOes ueraum - rbraa Oedeeirtsrr.o. Cmtreriea Parallel Prerer ron .çnrflsa.ddreeerester.re flea ore-aaeeo.em eostrnss.nirssrdo.e I 5.l PlonepDies Controller iabd acre srisiad 50 edoreee bus ass, ear - en Now Tr.reesn Ie.aloar.a r iersworirnurnaearuraow ff.nd ala. DMa lnr.rr.ca iu.ddrs.sine nronelr rca itraa trail sliosa carsoard SOFTRE of on eayboerd DATASTORAGE sea cnsasrnreri I500ser 0’n’ dfleed — — wmdcc. eec c’ nairpe enred ante aeererloi Numeric c.ne.d elr.otrrarern aecewi as c*ea per aserd dos. rranaer Oe.rstina srsterr Icuraor coetru K.ypad CO IConnee Gel ion,. ui_s own eretern Oeaed en Ceie wit eio Oafs ear acarnlaea.e uarareewar.rre’yL we .Os’rrcee rude lear000r on,Na tepndwno ner aOan pooe cnioewisrr.rd.rraetae.. I’e-eir er000aaor ‘sea 5-mae onarecs srman lerocemar runnIng speed DISKDRIVE Dna toy a.na.ra sun Oreereee ereerwra rarerladaeiratdl ae arc saner walle flea etoe aa ows waeadl awewcaeaenr friiihioTsrapsire codas Namber or colours SOUND AND MUSIC P—renal eoslc end re cao Mao screen e.aolurion friosle) oupereay ‘wan erpieirasr.e.rrrloel Moser included nia,suaerpronaafrorn set r,os. .aa,sie awneed is. — arc- reeruree riwma leteoraal a see .riaeloa ersad ie ire eoreneoe lee aiecd corer, eepl.ee.bl. Eotmr& rower Pack eaam we— ..raraer .irr caddi5e soccw swans rrssceeeo end ‘aura reeoaa — 01Th0US Joraicc Pairs —sara lanaeu. 0mm.. 5.5-al reel eae — aflme swc-wwnn4’twera wi.etmacirewr nrwwnmama seooi.ed.A KEYBOARD cc sewred aeeae caM ert asses - Nsasd den, Era )reratraerl Priee or basic cup 5-naer —eaten breeder .triaa aa resO 5 draPed eras INodI ensien lena swaeee wse ad cant nseedaoeesb 1001cc? a s. isaudana rot,eot,00 cars Nsoneebrwne aoniior — esnae rri.reoc t.w.a i.c.r. irali.wna Enp.nelee or Starr Rca ir One ret O.’.ar veenu canned floSs nlwcsi,Gen,sncsea MONITOR t’,esraeoor see,erduwrs re-warm- °a° re eoeourimra earaer C,Coast, cerwe.d LSp raon.d eyed
aaeu.r ai.i reed PesaaaCratnrs PRESSCOMMENT -nt. .i.orronic. in Ore nerrare .r. snrc or err., no. sad -n nra so re rim inter rudwr i.ooroioon u.i is ne onb eersorai rwresi.rirnoe cr oci orm oi ire swan is a taoroou. eme, One ornra ‘roar eoasdd esoruesre. in. eaorae. me alma • rrot...ional rmpreasoo7 .ruui inr.rrere as .rc-dad re.sr emma-as around end in rent r.m.os iii. alma to race .srd tees paecs,va 005wranesaweser,n 555 P , et,eer n.e rnarcira sense. in ice arotia. e.r.r arigni aeon tart.. ceer aweere tor. ui.d sire one vi ire noer elen.or cowan. i cnn. .ye -nra local ewo, raieerg on me icc. moOr n,acraoe eir e.rer Jars 5.5 eeaearsac sewanree we—vs Oieii irs. med enoriurner .rd eies.nr n.nind or weoarr rise ire .ddluon.i .assniaae or senioe in. Pu rare,orr 5nren n.raaee.ni anion .noua n.seira sn rai.r men err other nate aerree ma eeesaeaa. Owners saws re ren r,orenos.d 0 sir PC rote rania so rrdesr.oa ret. to lae.l oaei.rrne -o scald ..e, nar usa ares oe srsi.ir’ d- Man rric rest Peaeeraar.eesanee eews tar ire mm cresrer is ‘Try endsum mar” tacrrr norma Peetouaa cesntse eseol,n Jon, caesar Join rye ecro’rsowrce 5 omaerrns.a ‘iss ue. orunra n.k.e In.. me rena. oruuu rrrnesters -i round d bed eur.rr.ar ease to cm .rd rae .ern eo aria’ 0 me 5o.oirioac leo n.e .ddsd cnrarrar or “tore sway i. i.ccrric.tn acoelisni ,,, Pt. Morn narrissi. rr.erseead err ne ofl in se-pr a adecuee we arinendre rolosml. roar men ci..irc.ar saris oalsd ‘aeckloioecae’ - n.e rare e.ndea 1-onion oem,, rid eelvdaed. rerawere.rd one.i.ni .rse’ri. idc.ne ,orw roe codes- and LSLZ u.n rees es.rrsse Jab test nerve ewsrnee Paereugro oat iNs Paeeaesac osretss wows SILICA SHOP LTDr1-4 The Mews, F4atherley Road, SIdCUPrKent, DA144DX 1SEND FOR FREE ATARIST LITERATURE :::jJJJj !1iiw — — — — — — — — — — — — — — aTo: SIlIca Strap LId, Dept LOC 0115, 1-4 The Mews, Netheetey Read, Stdcs.p, Kent, DA144DX WEARETHEUK’s101ATARISPECIALISTS b Ar Silica we have been successfully dedicated to Atari ever since their products first appeared on the UK market, We can attribute out success largely to the Atari specialisstioo which we practice and to the user PLEASESENDMEFREELITERATURE back-up we provide Rent assured that when you hope piece ot Atari hardwsre at Silica yourwill be tally : supported Oar mailings giving news ot software releases and developments will keep you up to date with I OlDIENEWATMI521STCOMPUT3 the Atari market cod our technioal sopport team and sales statt ate at the end of the telephone line to and eoery With our specialist bias, we aim to keep stocks ol deal with your problems supply pour need M,/Mrs,RIg Irdtlalco Ssrnsassw. all the available Atari hardware. software. earipherals and accessories. We also stock a wide range of I Atari dedicated books and through us, the owners on oar list can subscribe to seneral American Atari dedicated magazines Wa can provide a toll seroice to all Atari owners and are now Ii’.mly established as the liE’s NUMBER ONE Atari speoiatrsts. Here are lost some of the things sap can otter to our customers, I * FREE POST & PACKING ON MAIL ORDERS ft pee teaald lfke ta be regfatened en ear rnadtfng w NEXT DAYSECURICOR DELIVERY flat aa en Atari oenspeter area a perswn I FREE en,, * INFORMATION MAILING SERVICE lrsieeeekd In buying an Atari wsachbw let ae I I * TECHNICAL SUPPORT TEAM knew. We reStbe pteeeed te keep yearup Ladate * HIGHLY COMPETITIVE PRICES with new Atari des’eleprnenta free at charge. Se, * AFTER SALES SUPPORT SERVICE return gre oesrpers teday cad begin eaperianctwg I ‘‘I JCTS a eeeoleilet Atari aaretoe I I Depart already awn a censpsetee I It aa, wIrIstsone depart awn? 01-3091111 — — — — — a — — — — — ‘ — —>
The Amiga is a multi-tasking micro (it can run several programs at once). It runs them very, very fast. It has graphics animation in colour, not just high-resolution pictures. It has sound capabilities the match of most
synthesisers (...).It can have more useful memory than anyone will plug in for a couple of years, and it will be expandable. a1 And, to cap it all, it isn’texpensive. (.. .)As an optional Figure 23 The Amstrad CPC 644 home computer, 36 peripheral, a 54inch disk can be plugged in (which pictured with Amstrad’s managing director Alan Sugar The long initial delays between the 5.2 FINANCIAL DISASTER STRIKES announcement of the machine and its availability led to further disillusionment amongst a public that had Financially, Sinclair Research was estimated to be already grown cynical following Sinclair’s previous losing about £1 million a month during the first few exaggerated claims. months of 1985, and some £30 million worth of unsold Furthermore, the poor performance of the first stock was reported to have accumulated by the machines, with their numerous hardware and software middle of 1985, faults, led to yet deeper scepticism about the QL’s Although only 10 per cent of shares in the claimed performance. company were held by outside shareholders (the And even when production had begun to settle 10 per cent which Sir Olive Sinclair had sold to down, and machines were being produced which institutional investors in 1983) these shares were performed a lot better than their predecessors, a reported to be selling to whoever would buy them at a number of faults and short-comings remained to fraction of the price at which they had been irritate prospective customers. The Psion packages, in purchased little more than a year earlier. Sinclair’s their Version 1 form as supplied with all machines plans to float his company on the Unlisted Securities during 1984, were very slow and often awkward to Market of the Stock Exchange, in order to raise use, and contained a number of bugs. It was only additional capital to fund continued expansion, had to when Version 2 of the packages became available in be abandoned. early 1985 — unfortunately, too late to boost Christmas To add further to Sir Olive’s troubles, his own sales — that Abacus, Archive, Easel and Quill began to personal pet project, the 05 electric vehicle, which be usable with the ease and power originally had been launched in January 1985, also seemed to be intended. faring badly, with only about 9000 vehicles sold in the Moreover, until 1985,a year after the QL’s launch, first half of the year — about one fifth of the sales the four Psion packages were virtually the only predicted at launch. The CS had encountered adverse software available for the machine. This must have public reaction to its apparent safety shortcomings and been a considerable deterrent to purchasers, given poor performance, and licensing difficulties in that BBC Micro users, for example, have hundreds of overseas markets. software packages to choose from, and even Sinclair’s As a result, the production line at the Merthyr own Spectrum has, as we have seen, a software Tydfil factory was slowed to a trickle in the vain hope catalogue stretching to thousands of titles. In the early that the summer weather would bring a resurgence in days after the first announcement of the QL, several demand. And although Sinclair Vehicles was a totally software houses expressed interest in writing separate company from Sinclair Research, the packages for it, but a number of snags slowed this misfortunes of the former inevitably reflected further process enormously. discredit on the reputation of the latter, since both One was that not many systems programmers were obviously controlled by Sir Olive Sinclair. were familiar with the machine code and assembly It was hardly surprising, therefore, that in the language programming necessary to write fast, spring of 1985 Sinclair Research undertook a total efficient software for the QL’s main 68008 re-assessment of the QL and of the company’s internal microprocessor. Another problem was the initial organisation. scarcity of the Microdrive cartridges which, coupled The QL’s premature launch in early 1984 was now with their initial high price and the fact that the acknowledged to have been a major blunder, not Microdrive was (to put it mildly) a controversial merely an error of judgement. And Nigel Searle, who storage medium, led many software houses to have as Managing Director had been mainly responsible for second thoughts about writing new software, or the early launch, was sent off not to Siberia but to the adapting old, to run on the QL. And of course as it rather more agreeable climes of the United States, to became clear that QL sales were not going to be quite spearhead Sinclair’s planned attack on the US market. as enormous as Sinclair had predicted, software firms Searle was replaced as Managing Director by David became even more nervous about investing in the Ohatten, formerly Production Director. A new production of software for the machine. executive, Hugo Davenport (another alumnus of Sinclair Research itself therefore had to go to Cambridge Consultants) was also brought in to considerable efforts, both in encouraging outside strengthen the technical side of the company’s publishers (by offering them free software duplication management. on Microdrive, for example) and in setting up its own The company had already begun the task of in-house software publishing activity, to counter these analysing exactly why the QL had not sold well, and of problems and build up an adequate software base for working out a new marketing strategy to revive sales the machine. of the machine in order to help rescue Sinclair At the time of writing (mid-1985) there is still not a Research from the imminent peril of bankruptcy. large amount of software available for the QL, though So why exactly had the QL not found favour with the catalogue now includes small business the buying public? accountancy packages and a sophisticated chess Some of the reasons did not, of course, take any playing program from Psion. It also includes three great insight to discover. ‘personal software’ packages, written for Sinclair by 37 Triptych Publishing, entitled ‘QL Entrepreneur’, ‘QL the 40000 mark, and that in March 1985 QL production Project Planner’ and ‘QLDecision Maker’: the trio is was temporarily suspended to avoid adding further aimed at people interested in setting up their own surplus stocks. businesses, and clearly represents an explicit attempt Jack Schofield provides a useful list of the factors to help the QL cater for the ‘home professional user’ which are necessary for success in the competitive market —if it exists. microcomputer market, against which the QL can be The QL’s Microdrives were, or course, another judged: continuing source of scepticism. The main problem here is that to perform to their specification, In my view, the criteria for success are six, as follows.A Microdrives and Microdrive cartridges have to be micro needs (1)the support of the specialist computer press, (2)lots of cheap software, (3)about the ‘goingrate’ of RAM, manufactured to very exacting production tolerances. at (4)a fairly competitive price, plus (6) an acceptable And initially Sinclair’s quality control (as implemented keyboard. Finallycomes (6),timing—it must be delivered by its suppliers) was simply not good enough. This at the right time and on time (...) problem was compounded by the fact that the The support of the specialist computer press is initiallya Microdrives are located inside the casing of the crucial factor. (...) This is partly because the early buyers of new machines are stillthe cognoscenti —or, ifnot, those machine (in contrast to the Spectrum, which has early buyers take advice from friends and dealers who are. external Microdrives), and in this location the heat Also,the dealers and software writers are stillkeen given off by the chips can cause slight mechanical readers of the fan magazines, and this influences what they deformations in the Microdrive machinery of sufficient want to sell and write software for. (..,) magnitude occasionally to cause serious errors in When it begins to reach a wider —but less sophisticated — reading and writing data. market, a micro is judged mainly on how much RAMit offers for a given price. In the sophisticated technical jargon of the Gradually, during 1984, Sinclair engineers tried to trade, this is known as bits per buck’. sort this problem out, aided by some high-speed As for the keyboard, the market really does require photography of Microdrives in action, carried out by something of reasonable quality. (...) International Computers Ltd. (ICL) who had decided Buttiming is perhaps the most difficultthing of all. Micros have an optimum lifespan of about six years — three years on to use Microdrives in their new ‘One-Per-Desk’ the way up, and three years on the way down. On the way business microcomputer (see section 6). up they sell on their price/performance ratio and technical By the beginning of 1985,when a number of small advantages. On the way down they continue to sell because but important modifications had been carried out of the advantages of having a large software base. (...) (including strengthening of the Microdrive casing) Timing is certainly the hardest thing to get right and it may, in the end, be the single most important factor. (Jack Sinclair claimed that the technology was now ‘99.5 per Schofield,the Guardian, 7th March 1986) cent’ reliable. However, as a significant concession to those who had all along been suspicious of The QL clearly fails on Schofield’s criteria five and six Microdrives, the company was beginning to stress by —keyboard and timing. It also fails on his third mid-1985 the ease with which users could, if they criterion, because of the unavailability of ‘lotsof cheap wished, attach conventional floppy disk drives to their software’. On the other hand, the QL passes on QLs. Schofield’s criteria three and four because it has a Another apparent shortcoming of the QL, to those substantial amount of RAM and is priced who had hoped to use it for Basic programming, was competitively. On his first criterion, however, the that its SuperBasic language, though very verdict must be mixed, because the QL initially had sophisticated in some respects, lacked a number of the strong support of the specialist press —but lost it features (such as a ‘screen editor’, to it make easy to because of the poor performance of early machines. correct faults in programs) that in some other implementations of Basic are provided as standard. The reason for this, though most customers could hardly be expected to know it, was that SuperBasic 5.3 RE-LAUNCHING AND was only intended to be a ‘shell’version of Basic, to RE-MARKETING which various ‘Programmers’ Tool Kits’could be added, depending on the particular features wanted Despite the disappointing level of QL sales and the by particular programmers. early teething troubles, by March 1985 Sinclair felt Finally, another feature of the QL that seemed reasonably confident that the technical problems irritating to many customers was its keyboard — the had largely been sorted out. So the company then feel of which one reviewer contemptuously compared announced what amounted to a re-launch of the QL, to ‘dead flesh’. together with a package of new products, new However, following minor adjustments to the services and price adjustments, all backed up by a flexibility of the rubber membrane beneath the keys, £ million press and TV advertising campaign. the company claimed that in all machines from the This re-launch was to be followed up by further beginning of 1985 onwards, the ‘feel’of the key-boards market research to assist in the ‘re-positioning’ of the had been considerably improved. QL in the market. In other words, to try to discover But with this formidable list of problems, both real what features of the QL appealed most to the potential and imaginary, to contend with, it is hardly surprising customers in various different markets, and what 38 that sales of the QL for the whole of 1984only reached features were not appealing. The promotion of the machine (and, where possible, the machine itself) packages. To add to users’ confidence in the QL, and would then be adjusted to minimise its shortcomings in its bundled software in particular, Sinclair modified and maximise its advantages. the rules of the QLUB (QL Users’ Bureau), the users’ This market research involved two main activities. group it had formed on the launch of the QL and One was quantitative research, involving which by 1985 had 10000 members, Membership, promotion of the QL using TV advertisements in the which originally cost £35 per annum but entitled south of England only, and then comparing the sales members to free software upgrades, now became free figures for the QL in various southern markets with to all QL purchasers — though software upgrades sales in the north, where no advertising had been would in future be charged for. In addition, QLUB carried out. members were offered a new free ‘help-line’ service The other was ‘qualitative’ research, and involved by the software company Psion, enabling them to setting up ‘clinics’ where several groups of a few obtain advice by telephone or letter if they were people were asked to assess their perceptions of the having any problems with Abacus, Archive, Easel QL, after using the machine and/or watching the TV or Quill. advertisements. These exercises were similar to those The new software packages (like QL carried out by Sinclair just after the initial QL launch, Entrepreneur) that were becoming available were except that in this case the subjects were given access also stressed in advertisements which appeared to the machine itself— and had, of course, been during this period. exposed to all the bad publicity which the QL had Another new hardware addition for the machine, received during the previous year. called ‘Q-COM’,featured prominently in the spring When the results of this quantitative and 1985 advertising. Q-COM was a series of three small qualitative research had emerged, Sinclair hoped that black boxes which stacked on top of one another. it would be able more accurately to position the QL The first, called Q-CON, enabled the QL to become within its various target markets, and hence to tailor its a ‘terminal emulator’ — to mimic the behaviour of advertising to maximum effect. a standard (Digital VT100) computer terminal, when But even before all the results of this research had connected to a conventional main-frame or mini emerged, Sinclair had decided that the initial image it computer. The second, called Q-COM, was a modem would create for the QL in 1985was that of a ‘serious which, in conjunction with Q-CON, would give users machine for people who are price-sensitive’. access via telephone to Prestel and other electronic Specifically, the company was aiming at people who data services. The third, called Q-CALL, was an were paying for a micro out of their own pockets, or at automatic telephone dialling and answering unit, small businesses like the corner newsagent who which would allow data to be entered into and would find it difficult to afford the capital outlay retrieved from electronic databases (such as Prestel) normally required to purchase a business micro, even entirely automatically. though it might save them time and money by making But unfortunately for Sinclair, the company which it easier, for example, to prepare accounts or VAT had been developing Q-COM, namely OEL Ltd. of returns. Cumbria, went into receivership just as the product The re-launching of the QL also involved adding was being launched, thus inevitably adding a small various additional features and refinements to make amount of further discredit to the already tarnished QL the machine more attractive to business and image. However Sinclair, recognising the importance professional users. As we have seen, the reliability of of a product like Q-COM to the QL’s future, undertook the hardware had been substantially enhanced, and to try to ensure that Q-COM would be taken up by the performance of the software much improved another manufacturer. A few months later the modem following the introduction of the Version 2 Psion manufacturers Tandata agreed to take over the rights
TANDATACOMMUNICATIONS FORTHESINCLAIRQL Q-C0NNECT .rO..Orflr i!! I CCfl ri WUJ CIl D,ltact et BS23 p’A o. ‘—‘—— Th*tln.SM. modolesh. b.e. & for V% 5 6od o,h ete—oh’.O,r - .1 flr,br.,eo-,.oKod.,oetowppc.’l&I3,,,od*,Th. t,.dtho...,05Cfldebb.n,.rddedroe. on. I mo.. Oetetg None I do: r°°’ - Themod.deo aea ..op.ntefo Addret______QMOD Taqdata
TandataMarketinglJmited TNO I QCPLL ‘—‘ ,.r.rp.o.nen,.,.,.e.,. r’e’,’.’n ,r’,op T.ndodd MrkeOng Ltd. I UbedRo.dNo,thMofoer, IL 1-_ — Figure 24 Communications equipment for the OL, originally designed by OEL Ltd., now manufactured by Tandata Ltd. 39 to manufacture Q-COM from the receiver of GEL Ltd. As we have seen, to improve the appeal of the QL 5.4 THE MAXWELL ‘TAKEOVER’ to those who, despite Sinclair’s protestations, remained sceptical of Microdrives (either because of their unreliability or because they could only store 100k But in spite of the relentless public optimism of Nigel bytes), Sinclair encouraged the provision by ‘third Searle and Sir Clive Sinclair, and the slightly improved party’ manufacturers of add-on floppy disk drive units. sales figures for the QL and the Microvision, the By mid-1985 there were at least five such packages financial tide was still running strongly against their available, from Quest, Computamate, Micro- company. Peripherals, Silicon Express and Medic Data Systems. The London firm of stockbrokers Wood Later in the year, Sinclair decided to endorse Micro- Mackenzie, for example, was in May 1985 forecasting Peripherals’ disk drives and inter-face as the a down-turn in UK home computer sales from £350 recommended add-on disk system for the QL. million in 1984 to only £220 million in 1985.Sinclair Additional RAM memory was another add- itself was by then forecasting that UK home computer on-extra which Sinclair encouraged third party sales in 1985would be around 1.2 million units, manufacturers to provide, and by mid-1985 various compared with around 1.5 million the previous year — ‘RAMPacks’ were available. not too serious a drop, perhaps. But the British Radio Adding extra RAM and disk drives to the QL Equipment Manufacturers Association (BREMA)
presents a problem, however. The QL’s expansion was less optimistic, predicting sales of 1 million to port, at the left-hand side of the machine, can only 1.1million. And to make matters worse, most (around cope with one extra device at a time. So several 65 per cent) of the reduced sales predicted for 1985 manufacturers began to make available ‘expansion would of course come in the last three months of the boxes’ — units which, when plugged into the expansion year — and there were many lean months to go until port, enable up to four additional units (such as extra the autumn. (Reported in the Guardian, 29th May RAM, a disk drive interface and a couple of ROM 1985.) cartridges) to be used simultaneously. By the end of May 1985, Sinclair admitted that it Other peripheral devices which became was running into financial problems too severe for it to available for the QL during 1985 included interfaces to solve with its own inadequate reserves. Initial help enable the machine to read and control laboratory had been obtained from the company’s main bankers, instruments, and a ‘second processor’, made by PCML Barclays, who had agreed to extend the firm’s Ltd., running the long-established CP/M operating £5 million overdraft limit, and from its main suppliers, system and enabling QL users to gain access to the Thorn-EMI, AB Electronics and Timex, who had many thousands of 8-bit CP/M programs. agreed to grant an additional two months’ credit. But Still on the horizon in mid-1985 was a ROM these were just temporary measures, aimed at buying cartridge (a small box with one or more ROMs inside) time while a much more substantial injection of cash containing the four Psion programs. This, when was sought. plugged into the expansion port of the QL, would Sinclair’s financial advisers, the merchant bank enable the programs to load and work together N. M. Rothschild, were reported to be seeking extremely rapidly. assistance for the firm from a number of large Also promised, but not yet available, was a electronics companies, including not only Thorn-EMI radically new ‘silicon disk’ (see Section 6) which and AB Electronics (who were already in effect would, it was claimed, provide over 500k of RAM on financing Sinclair by extending credit to the one ‘wafer-scale integrated circuit’. Earlier in 1985,Sir company), but also GEC, STC and Philips. Clive Sinclair had announced his intention of floating a Concern about the plight of Sinclair extended into £50 million company to manufacture such wafer-scale high places. The Prime Minister was reported to be integrated circuitry. But despite attracting to the board anxious to ensure that the company, which had of the proposed new firm Rob Wilmot, Chairman of the hitherto been extolled as a leading example of the large and prestigious computer firm ICL, it seemed kind of adventurous, entrepreneurial, high-technology very unlikely that Sir Clive would be able to raise the business which the Government wished to encourage £50 million he required, due to the down-turn in the in Britain, should not be allowed to go under, Even the microcomputer industry and the increasing scepticism Bank of England’s industrial finance division became about Sinclair Research and its products. involved in the rescue talks, by providing a chairman However, by mid-1985, despite all the bad for negotiations between Sinclair and its creditors. publicity, it appeared that the sales prospects of the Finally, in mid-June a deal which few had been QL were improving slightly. Sales had edged up to expecting emerged. It seemed that Sinclair was to be around 5000 a month, and the QL had crept into the rescued by the flamboyant financier and businessman bottom of the UK top 10 sales charts. And although UK Robert Maxwell, owner of the Daily Mirror and production of the machine had been suspended in Chairman of the British Printing and Communications March 1985 this was presumably partly in anticipation Corporation, Pergamon Press and numerous other of the planned start-up of QL production in South companies. Maxwell and Sinclair were not unknown to Korea by Samsung Electronics for the US market, each other. In the l960s they had both been directors 40 where the QL was scheduled for launch in June. of Cambridge Consultants. announced
Figure pictured
would Pergamon and some Maxwelrs Sir and continuing developing Research place. over pending Executive Sinclair communications Metalab’s rights which state or the circuit integrated complicated to But central of Attempts Sinclair ‘fifth on ‘megachip’. continued 5.5
create
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recruited resolve this after
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Maxwell
single
to
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for
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prospects the bankers, conclusions its proposed be He considerably recent mooted. computer high Over quoted Kingdom Research
appeared, been increased relatively What the over confound Microvision, cash hardly had High products needed as Microvision, similar produce continue it Blood during injection company company’s Christmas survival back 160 means
(September
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market
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had were poor.
therefore
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weeks crucial successes
long-term
a
were Olive additional
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chain
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and cent.
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of Research 1985) not
as new
unit. since
hard
longer Sinclair,
sceptics.
some company’s
Sinclair
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products
prove
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he and
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of
prices
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UK
its
successful. future. was
mainly its
now
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dramatically.
stock
what has
the takeover Sinclair had,
million. disaster,
admitted United
Coopers
not,
retail
resources,
price
deal
Sinclair’s period proposed —
sales to
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existing
strategy
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on the commissioned
still become
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50000 distributors improvement
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41 SUPERB QUALITY GRAPHICS High-resolution colour display makes screen text much easier to read and enhances game graphics. (Monitor extra).
PROFESSIONAL KEYBOARD Massive 128K Personal Computer Power Brilliant high-performance Sinclair QL features twin built-in
microdrives—each cartridge has ( - 100K capacity. The 128k RAM I Software of the Year 1985’ memory is expandable to 640K. British Microcomputing Awards 1985 Full networking capability allows several QL computers to be linked for office or college use. FREE -‘ FL 5-GAME FOUR ADVANCED CARTRIDGE BUSINESS PROGRAMS Challenging gi Word Processing Database Management high-performance QL. All the facilities alan QL Archive —the powerful • Pirate advanced word- filing system that’s easy to
• Hunt processing package — use. Handles card indices • Breakout QL Quill. like magic. • Gun Spreadsheet Business Graphics QLAbacus for High-resolution colour y simultaneous calculations program that handles and ‘what if?’ model anything from lines to pie .J construction. charts.QLEasel.
Figure 26 Dixons’ newspaper advertisement for the now cut-price QL of was Although seemed would lay with machine and medium Amstrad. 6.1
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43 had become considerably dearer than RAM chips, (using processes like chemical diffusion and which had dropped dramatically in price. This meant photographic etching which have already been that it would be much cheaper for a manufacturer to referred to in Block 1) on thin, circular wafers of provide a suite of software on disk, to be loaded into silicon about 10 centimetres in diameter. Because RAM (where it would be instantly available, as if on minute imperfections, caused by dust and flaws in the ROM) than to provide it on ROM. silicon crystal, inevitably find their way into the For Sinclair, however, this option was unattractive material, a high proportion of the chips made from any because the software (all four packages of it) would single wafer are found on testing to be defective, and have to be loaded into RAM from microdrive — a have to be rejected, tediously slow process. Of course if the expected It has long been the ambition of chip ‘Super’ version of the QL included more RAM (a fairly manufacturers to create much larger integrated cheap option considermg the low price of RAM chips) circuits than those usually made at present. This would and a disk drive, the Psion programs could be loaded avoid the obvious disadvantages of the present system en bloc and used as an integrated package. in which lots of small chips have to be laboriously The OPD used Sinclair’s SuperBasic as its built-in wired together on a printed circuit board to make a programming language. But the ICL designers, instead complete computer. If WSI could be achieved, the of using Sinclair’s QDOS operating system for the new electronic circuitry for an entire computer, complete machine, opted to write their own. This was partly due with microprocessors, large amounts of RAM and to the additional complexity of the tasks performed by ROM, and various input—output devices, could be the OPD (which include telecommunications and contained on a single 10 centimetre wafer, making automatic telephone dialling and answering), but it possible very substantial reductions in cost and size, was probably also because ICL wanted to be sure of and improvements in speed of operation. having a reliable system. Previous attempts to achieve WSI, notably those ICL priced the OPD at around £1400 (a figure of the American company Trilogy, have ended in claimed to be half the price of the nearest equivalent failure and huge losses. But Sir Clive Sinclair product) and aimed to sell no less than a quarter of a appeared confident that his approach, based on million machines in 1985, not only to large and techniques patented by a British inventor, Ivor Catt, medium-sized businesses, but also direct to small would be successful. businesses and home computer users — a market new The Catt—Sinclairtechnique apparently involves to ICL. creating perhaps as many as 10000 tiny ‘blocks’ of Although it seems unlikely that the One-per-desk computing power on each 10 cm wafer, each ‘block’ will be quite as successful as ICL’s ambitious sales equivalent to a very small conventional chip and targets suggest, partly because of the adverse effect of consisting of a small microprocessor and a modest the controversy over the QL, nevertheless the OPD amount of memory. Inevitably, imperfections would managed to notch up quite respectable sales figures of exist in a substantial number of these blocks, but the around 5000 units a month during the first half of 1985. blocks themselves would be programmed to [ICL’s approach to the marketing of the One-per- ‘interrogate’ adjoining blocks to find out whether they desk is compared with the marketing of the Atari were working properly. If so, each working block 520ST in the television programme which would connect itself with its neighbour; and if not, the accompanies this block.] block would try again with another neighbour. Eventually, all the ‘good’ blocks in the wafer would join themselves up with similar ‘good’ blocks to create a 6.2 WAFER-SCALE INTEGRATION single, very large, wafer-scaled chip. Another advantage of having many thousands of Perhaps the most ambitious of the technological blocks of microcomputing power on a single refinements predicted by Sinclair for the QL was an megachip is that it facilitates designing a computer in add-on 512k byte random-access memory (RAM) which data are processed in many parallel streams pack, which was due to become available at the end simultaneously, rather than one-byte-at-a-time (in of 1985. This in itself did not sound particularly so-called serial form), which is how most computers innovative, since various other companies had already today operate. Parallel processing is similar in some made available add-on RAM packs for the QL. respects to how the human brain operates, and is However, these used conventional 256k bit RAM likely to be a feature of advanced computers in which chips, no less than 16 of which (stacked on two the aim is to achieve ‘artificial intelligence’ (see double-sided printed circuit boards) are needed to Section 6.4). provide 512k 8-bit bytes of RAM. If it works, the Catt—Sinclairapproach would What was claimed to be new about Sinclair’s indeed represent a major breakthrough in computer RAM pack was that all 512k bytes would be crammed technology, though it must be said that many in the on to a single, very large ‘mega-chip’, employing a industry view Sinclair’s chances of success with technique called Wafer-scale integration (WSI) which considerable scepticism, pointing out that Catt’s ideas no other company in the world had yet perfected. have been tried over the past decade by large Conventional silicon chips are about half a companies like ICL, STC, Burroughs and Plessey, and 44 centimetre square and are fabricated by the hundred have been found wanting. Moreover, the UK Governments Alvey Directorate, which funds research into advanced, so-called Fifth generation’ computers, has refused to contribute funding to the Sinclair WSI project, presumably because it believes it will be unsuccessful. Nevertheless, it is just possible that Catt and Sinclair have found a new way of getting Catt’s techniques to work. If they do prove successful, although in principle it would then be possible to construct almost an entire computer on one chip, the first commercial WSI product will be the much-more- modest 512k RAM pack for the QL, described above, In June 1985, Sir Olive Sinclair and his team announced that they had indeed successfully achieved this first WSI objective, and demonstrated a working prototype 512k WSI RAM chip to the press. However, the economic obstacles to the success of the 512k WSI RAM may prove to be more formidable than the technical problems. Firstly, Sinclair needed to raise a reported £50 million to construct his proposed WSI fabrication plant — a tall Figure 28 Sir Clive Sinclair demonstrates a working order in view of the lack of City confidence in the UK prototype of his wafer scale integrated 512k ‘silicon disk’ to the Press in June 1985 microcomputer industry, and in Sinclair in particular, during 1985. Secondly, in view of the sharp drop in the truly be said to think as we do is a highly controversial price of conventional 256k bit RAM chips, which were matter, which we do not have space to discuss here, reported to be selling as cheaply as £2.50 apiece (in Suffice it to say that Sir Olive Sinclair not only believes large quantities) from manufacturers in the Far East, that a new generation of ‘rnetacomputers’, as he calls Sinclair’s proposed 512k wafer-scale RAM would have them, can indeed be created, but that such machines to be very cheap indeed to be able to compete with will soon outstrip in intelligence their human its equivalent, namely sixteen 256k RAM chips priced designers. As he put it in an address to a US at only £40. Congressional committee:
I think it certain that in decades, not centuries, machines of siliconwillarise first to rival and then surpass their human progenitors. Once they surpass us they will be capable of 6.3 THE ‘FIFTH GENERATION’ their own design. In a real sense they willbe reproductive. Silicon will have ended carbon’s long monopoly. (Address to Sinclair’s 512k RAM pack will, if successful, be a fairly USCongressional hearmg, March 1983,quoted in the Sunday modest example of what WSI technology could Times, 4th November 1984.Also quoted in the introduction to Section 6(b) of the Course Reader). accomplish. But the company had set its sights on very much more ambitious goals for the future. Sinclair was Time will tell whether or not such bold predictions are aiming, in essence, to beat the Japanese and the realistic, or merely a skilful blend of science-fiction Americans in the race to develop a new generation of fantasising and marketing hyperbole. But even if the super-computers, the so-called ‘fifth-generation’, even promised ‘artificial intelligence’ of the fifth generation though it has only a tiny fraction of its competitors’ of machines falls far short of Sinclair’s expectations, it resources and does not have the backing of the UK seems very probable that such machines will Government’s Alvey programme, which is funding and incorporate ‘intelligent’ software of a more modest, but directing much of Britain’s effort in this area (Alvey still very useful kind. Committee, 1982). Ultimately, the goal of fifth-generation computer research is to produce machines that are not only very much more powerful, in terms of memory and 6.4 EXPERT SYSTEMS computing speed, than most of today’s computers, but are also able to communicate with their human users This software will take the form of so-called ‘expert in a manner that closely resembles ordinary face- systems’. An expert system is a computer program to-face communication with a human being. Moreover, which attempts to emulate the behaviour of a human fifth generation computers will exhibit, it is hoped, a expert when faced with a problem. The program considerable degree of ‘Artificial Intelligence’ (Al) — contains, firstly, a database of information about the that is, they will be able to reason for themselves, subject in question, compiled in collaboration with a make deductions and inferences from available data, human expert. Secondly, the program contains and perhaps even exercise some creative powers routines which enable it to infer conclusions about the (see Feigenbaum and McCorduck, 1983). likely solutions to specific problems, with the aid of the Whether such machines, if they can be built, can various items of information contained in its database 45 and using the responses made by the user to a series of questions asked by the system. 6.5 SOME QUESTIONS AND For example, an expert system for simple medical CONCLUSIONS diagnosis might have a database of information on common ailments such as colds, influenza or The story of Sinclair Research in general, and the QL headaches, which would enable the program to ask a in particular, raises a host of difficult questions about patient a series of simple questions about the ailment: the innovation process. For example: ‘do you have a high temperature?’; ‘do you have a • What are the main problems encountered by small, headache?’; ‘asore throat?’; ‘a chest cough?’ ... and so technology-based firms like Sinclair in their attempts on. Then, given the responses to these questions and to achieve successful innovation, and how might these using the information on the symptoms of common problems be overcome? ailments contained in its database, the expert-system • What are the strengths and weaknesses of small software can calculate the most probable diagnosis firms compared to large firms in the innovation indicated by a given set of symptoms. It can also process? suggest some possible though less probable diagnoses, together with further tests or questions that • What is the role, and what are the limitations of, could be used to determine with greater certainty market research and marketing in general? which ailment the patient is actually suffering from. • What role should Government play in encouraging This type of simple expert system is not very innovation? sophisticated: all it is doing is making logical • And how can the social benefits of technological deductions from a set of pre-determined rules innovation be maximised and the costs minimised? provided by an expert — rather as you might use a fault-finding chart to help you to discover the cause of These and many other questions will be raised in the a problem in your car. Study Guide to this block, where you will be asked to But more sophisticated expert systems have been consider the numerous academic and theoretical created in which the software itself can deduce some issues about innovation which are raised by this case of the problem-solving rules, given only a set of study, and by the companion case study on Prestel. examples of problems and their solutions provided by However, at the time of going to press human experts. So even in a situation where the (September 1985) the future of Sinclair Research still experts themselves are not clear that they are seemed precarious, so it is a little early in our saga of following rules in deducing a solution from a set of Sinclair and the QL to draw any final conclusions. complex symptoms (they may say that they are simply But for the moment, to suggest some preliminary following their own intuition) an expert system can in conclusions, and to stimulate some initial thoughts, some cases deduce the inner logic which probably let me conclude with the following Editorial from the motivates the experts’ conclusions. Guardian Uune 11th 1985),written at the height of Most expert-system software at the moment Sinclair’s crisis: requires fairly large computers, and is used by large Too many chips for the chop companies to aid in tasks like geological prospecting. But microcomputer-based versions are now becoming Two years ago Britain’shome computer industry seemed to available, and Sinclair Research has stated its intention be rising like a phoenix from the ashes of industrial decline. The falling cost of microchips spawned an unusual (for of ‘mini’ making available expert systems, such as a Britain) breed of inventor—entrepreneurs, able successfully simple medical diagnosis package, for use with its to challenge the divine right of the USand the Japanese to future microcomputer products — perhaps including make such machines. It happened nowhere else in Europe. the QL in a later, augmented version. Now, as micro-mania both here and in America gives way to Future Sinclair products, like those of other the new flavour of the year (compact discs and video cassettes in America) the fledgeling industry is counting the advanced microcomputer manufacturers, are also wounded and wondering what went wrong, Companies like likely to include voice synthesis (a feature already Oric, Dragon and New Brain, each with home computers incorporated, as we have seen, in the ICL One-per- which could have made it big, fell by the wayside or were desk, where it performs an automatic telephone taken abroad by foreign predators. Of the big two, Acorn answering function) and eventually voice recognition (makers of the BBC computer) ran into financial difficulties and was rescued by an Italian group, Olivetti: now Sinclair devices, although the latter are much more difficult to (with 40 per cent of the UKmarket), laden down with unsold perfect than voice synthesisers. These facilities will stocks, is the subject of rescue talks involving the Bank of enable future microcomputers to talk to their users in England, with Mrs. Thatcher’sapproval. Althoughone or two something approaching natural language. One of companies, like Amstrad and ACT (makers of smaller Sinclair’s more fanciful suggestions is that future business machines) are still very much in the market there is no doubt that something has gone badly wrong. Butwhose machines might incorporate a face to make fault is it? conversation with them seem more natural. In general, Partly the companies themselves. Limited resources were the future Sir Clive foresees is one in which: thinly spread among dozens of companies instead of being concentrated on a few capable of making a concerted attack Each ofus will have a personal computer which, when on world markets in order to reap economies of scale. artificialintelligence has fulfilledits promise, willinformus, Worse, nearly all of the computers have incompatible guide us, entertain and educate us, minister to our ailments. software (you can’t run Sinclair programmes on a BBCor 46 (Quoted in the Sunday Times, 4th November 1984) Dragon machine). And (nearly) all of them now admit that they didnt have the management skills to match their— Nor can the Government escape censure. It has extremely impressive — [inventive] ability. Sir Olive Sinclair stubbornly refused to talk about national strategy, or picking said at the weekend that it was not the fault of the inventors, winners. Instead it is cutting support for civil research and but of the managers who should be recognising and selling development and encouraging the worst form of shareholder our bright ideas. Why then is Sir Olive, who has tasted capitalism by offering double-your-money gains from failure before and ought to know better, not hiring better privatised monopolies (like British Telecom). Why risk managers? He says they are ‘extremely difficult to find’, putting a penny piece in a risky situation like Sinclair when a chronic indictment of the past two decades of business you can hang on for a safe gain in British Gas, none of the school expansion. But the Acorns and Sinclairs of this world proceeds of which will be ploughed back into developing won’t yield to the business managers. They are still finding Britain’s eroding technological base? markets for products instead of products for markets. Yet fund the likes of Sinclair we must, even if only half of The City is part of the problem, with its short term their products succeed. Information technology is the horizons and inability to provide sufficient long term risk fundamental industry of the future. Smclair is a microcosm capital. Having ignored computers and hi-tech for a long of the British disease, strDng on innovation, weak on time, the City suddenly ‘discovered’ its potential three years development. If its problems could be solved a lot else ago and went overboard, Now, at the first sight of red ink, might follow. it has withdrawn. What the punters want is short term profits performance. Long term potential is strictly for the birds. The City had better beware. If it cannot provide the money to finance high risk projects with long term returns then it You will find some self-assessment questions relating will have only itself to blame if something like Labour’s to Sinclaiis future prospects in the Block 2 Study National Investment Bank rushes in to fill the gap. Guide.
47 REFERENCES
Allan, B. (1984) The Sinclair QL companion, Pitman. Kewney, 0. (1985) ‘Commodore Amiga’, Personal Alvey Committee Report (1982), A programme for Computer World, August. advanced information technology, HMSO. Lambert, J. (1985) ‘The Atari blueprints’ Electronics Bacanello, P. (1985) ‘Sagesoft Accounts’, QL User, July. and Computing Monthly, July. Brown, M. (1985) ‘Sinclair looks to electronics giants QL User (1984) ‘Bugs Out’, QL User, October. for £15m rescue’, Guardian, 29 May. Schofield, J. (1985) ‘There’s blood on the keyboards’, Cornelius, A. (1985) ‘Maxwell pulls out of Sinclair Guardian, 7 March. rescue, Guardian, 10 August. Segal, Quince and Partners (1984) The Cambridge Craven, S. (1985) ‘Business or pleasure’, QL User, May. phenomenon, Segal Quince, Cambridge. Eiloart, T. (1984) Un-published article on Clive Sinclair, Sinclair, Sir Clive (1984) quoted in Personal Computer Personal Communication. News, 16June 1984. Electronics and Computing Monthly (1984) ‘Diary of a Sinclair, Sir Clive, address to US congressional QL user’. hearing, March 1983, quoted in Bird, J. (1984) ‘Sinclair’s fifth symphony’, Sunday Times, 4 November. Feigenbaum, E. A. and McCorduck, P. (1983), The fifth generation, Pan Books. Vernon, R. (1985) ‘Cash trader’, QL User, May.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I should like to record my grateful thanks to the Finally, I need hardly say that whilst I repeat my following individuals who helped in various ways in thanks to the above-named people for their assistance, the preparation of this case study: they are not responsible for the overall content and from Sinclair Research: Jane Boothroyd, UK Marketing approach of the case study. and Sales Manager; Nigel Searle, Director, and David Karlin, Chief Design Engineer. Tony Tebby of QJUMP; COPYRIGHT ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Tim Eiloart of Green Deserts R & D, Cambridge; Leon Heller of the Independent QL Users Group; Text John Langrish, Dean, Institute of Advanced Studies, ‘Beginners start here’ is reproduced by courtesy of Manchester Polytechnic (external assessor). Personal Computer World. Much of this material has been derived from a series Illustrations of interviews conducted with many of the people Acknowledgement is due to the following for named above during 1984 and 1985. Where the source illustrations used in this text: of a specific item of information is not referenced in Sinclair Research and Kinnear Limited for Figures 1, 3, the usual way, therefore, it probably originated in one 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 18 and 28; Cambridge Consultants of these interviews. Ltd. for Figure 2; IBM (UK) Ltd. and Saatchi and The microcomputer business is a highly Saatchi and Compton Ltd. for Figure 15;Acorn competitive one, as this case study confirms, so it is Computers Ltd. for Figure 19; Silica Distribution Ltd. not surprising that I was occasionally not given access for Figure 21; Commodore Business Machines (UK) for to information which was considered commercially Figure 22; Electronics Engineer for Figure 23; Tandata confidential. Consequently, I have sometimes resorted Marketing Ltd. and Market Link for Figure 24; to informed speculation in an attempt to fill obvious Syndication International for Figure 25; Dixons Ltd. for gaps — though I hasten to add that all conjectures are Figure 26; and International Computers Ltd. for clearly labelled as such. Figure 27.
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& SINCLAIRQL Preservation Project (SQPP)
On January 12th 1984 Sir Clive Sinclair presented the SinclairQL Professional Computer in a Hollywood-style launch event at the Intercontinental Hotel, Hyde Park Corner, London. This was exactly 12 days earlier than Steve Jobs presented the Apple Macintosh.
The QL still is a very good example of an innovative, stylish, powerful and underestimated product. On one hand it failed in thc market in the long run but on the other it influenced many developments which ended in today’s products.
In its 25th anniversary year 2009 every month a surprise will be unfold
Jan th12 — Congratulation to the QL’s 25th birthday. Message I spread to VIP, community and media. htto://www.glvsiaguarhomepage.bluewin.ch/SinclairQL 25th anniversary 1984 to 2009.h Ii tnil
Check out this th25 anniversary presentation... http://www.cowo.ch/downloads/SinclairQLis25-compressed ppt
Try QPC, a virtual QL running under Windows... http://wwwcowo.ch/downIoads/QPC a virtual QL.zip th Feb 19 — Massive coverage (11 pages) of the QL in the April UI Issue of Personal Computer World (PCW) magazine. http://www.pcw.co.uk
New-da f399 12 f Mar th — SINCLAIRQL Preservation Project (SQPP) launched, starting with Documents/Publications from Sinclair Research Ltd and various computer magazines of the years 1984 to 1986. http://www.glvsjaguar. homepage.bluewin ch/SinclairQLpreservationproiect.html
I_____
Happy th25 anniversary and QL forever! Urs Konig (aka cowo) http://www.clvsiaguar.homepage. bluewin .ch
ISBN 0 335 17272 5 The Open University Press