Sinclair QL - Was It Really THAT Bad?

[@roelsfotoos]

Coming from the Spectrum 48k in 1987, being able to easily expand QL SuperBasic with your own procedures and functions written in machine code were the most valuable (and time consuming😆) features of the QL to me. I still have the code for solving Mastermind with up to 9 colors in the blink of an eye, running the game of Life and lots of mathematical functions like PRIME, the Euler phi-function etc. All those extensions worked way faster than when written on a pc in almost any programming language, just from SuperBasic! Owned GoldCard and SuperGoldCard too, those were great expansion cards. Never experienced any QL hardware problems whatsoever by the way. Took me years to move from QL to pc because for me there were hardly any benefits to leave the QL. Thank you Sir Clive (and everyone at Sinclair!) for the joy you brought into my life!

[@greenaum]

Yeah but you could get alternative BASICs for the Speccy too, including compiling ones. Actually if you had an Interface 1, you could add your own BASIC functions to a Spectrum. IF1 caught error messages and redirected some of them, that's how it added it's own functions to BASIC, like the microdrive ones, that weren't coded for in the Spectrum ROM at all. When the Speccy was accessing a certain couple of ROM addresses, that's where the error routines were, so the IF1 paged in it's own ROM and handled them, providing the extra functions that otherwise just returned an error. It handled them through a vector stored in RAM, not ROM. This vector, you could change yourself, to add your own routines. Anything, say, starting with asterisk, as a keyword, would cause an error. So you patch your error-handling routine in, that checks for your own added keywords, and runs them if you want to. Then it can RET back, changing the error code to "0:OK 0:1".

[@bertram-raven]

The Sinclair QL actually came with a game built in! When you initially opened the box it contained a cool game of Scrabble as usually all the keys had fallen off in transit.

[@zezo-hg1cr]

japan made nec products of japan nec

[@robertbrown3413]

The number '8' key was missing on mine... so I nicked one from the demo QL in Boots... noticing several keys were missing from it already! The only shoplifting I ever did, honest guv!

[@desertfish74]

😂

[@decidedly_retro]

I never had any problems with Microdrives, well until the foam tape pressure pads on all carts all became dust in about 2015. They were all made with foam from the same batch. Technically the data rate is higher than 720K 3.5" floppy drives. However, if you miss a sector on a cartridge (or cart as they were always known, not "wafer". A "wafer" was the media for the Spectrum's wafer drive.) you had to wait for it came around the tape again. Oh, and the QL was/is an excellent 68000 development platform.

[@nuwanamarasingha1982]

My Fatha Gunadasa Amarasingha and brother Nalin Amarasingha (Late) has made Sri Lankas first computerized telephone electronic billing systems and satellite dish antena manufacturing calculations using this Amazing Sinclair QL in 1988-1992 Thank you Sinclair for your Amazing 🖥️ ❤

[@JohnCorrUK]

Brilliant work by your Dad and brother 👍Bravo to 🇱🇰genius

[@harry.flashman]

🙏

[@cybernenindia]

In India Sinclair spectrum and Amigas was used until year 2000 to run scroll ads and graphics by Cable tv companies. They used to run the scrolling ads or small gif files on their video channel line .

[@cybernenindia]

Courtesy a friend of mine, I got hold of a Sinclair spectrum, never got a chance to use is there was many accessories missing. I have used the Amigas of my cousin who stays in UK.

[@greenaum]

Actually I can see countries with poorer economies as being potential users of the QL. I suppose it's much cheaper price would make up for it's many shortfalls. Perhaps Sinclair should have concentrated on bringing computing to other countries cheaply, as he brought the Spectrum cheaply to kids in the UK. It might have made sense to sell them to places around India, Africa, and the Far East. Much respect to your dad and brother.

[@CZ350tuner]

Back in 1985, I was an electronics technician, working at a company called Lumic Ltd. The office computer was a Sinclair QL.

[@RetroJack]

How did you migrate your data when it was time to move on from the QL?

[@retrogamesandnewgames9854]

Poor you

[@andyhowlett2231]

I had a BBC-B and loved it to bits. My mate Pete later got a QL and never had any trouble with it but he did get irritated when it seemed to pause for no good reason. He only retired it several years later when it became almost mandatory to run a PC with Windows. In the late 80's at our company, I wrote (in BBC Basic) a prog to take the output of a smoke detector and plot its level over time. As it was meant to impress a client I incorporated multi-colour graphical displays and saved the results to disc. A fellow enthusiast brought his QL in 'to do the job faster' but he ended up depressed as it kept stopping to 'think' and ended up way behind the BEEB.

[@swadeyboy5675]

I ran my business on one of these in the 80's. Using the Psion software pack and an accounts package. Easel and Quill were brilliant.

[@blackterminal]

What printer did you use?

[@markusm.lambers8893]

​@@blackterminal I used a serial printer, (9-needle NLQ - "Brother") who had serial and parallel (centronics) ports! With a black and green Philips Monitor with BAS-input (Video-signal) This was my first 'real computer', until 1992 switching to an 'IBM-clone', ... ! (386SX 16MHz 625Mb RAM) I 'used' and abused my 'Sinclair QL' a lot in this time!

[@firsteerr]

@@markusm.lambers8893 nerd 😁

[@Parknest]

RIP Sir Clive Sinclair. I had a 48K Spectrum back in the day. It was the rich kids who had a BBC Model B at home.

[@AERVBlog]

I had a pair of these running at opposite ends of the building through the built in network. I also had a 5MB hard drive attached which was shared by both machines. The girl at the front desk liked it. She mostly used Abacus and Quill. I wish I still had it.

[@JustB3NJI]

Clive I hope in the end saw that the Spectrum did achieve what he hoped just not in the way he planned. It might not have been used for education in schools, but it did educate thousands of people in coding...And it might not have been used by businesses, but those coders who went on to make games created businesses and plenty of profit for existing ones.

[@mark12358]

Good video. However, to answer your question: it was not underrated, it was underpowered and too early pushed to market, against future 68k powerhouses like Mac, ST and Amiga

[@mmadmic]

I think, and I still have a QL, the main problems of this machines were its keyboard and its reliability. I got mine in the late 80s, for free from a friend of my father bored of the problems, microdrives failures, keyboard failures, unreliability of data storage, ... I still have it, I replaced all the not working parts, had a lot of work to finally have a working machine, nearly 1 year of work to fix all the problems and have a working machine, but after being fixed, it never failed again, and except the membrane and cleaning the dust in the MD, I never had any issue with this machine in more than 30 years. But at the time, I was a teenager, computer enthusiast with no real need of a computer, and I already had a ZX Spectrum and a PC at home, but if I'd have been a professional, I'd for sure trashed this machine, gave it to a friend's kid or replaced it with a PC, a Mac or even a C64.

[@Lukasz111xyz]

@@mmadmic had it also, I think my dad bought it for himself maybe, but it was me who took over, had issues with micros and keyboard, but after changing all was ok for many, many years till I sold it to someone. It was the first computer I tore apart because the keyborard failed, ordered the membrane and replaced it. I was 11yo at the time, and tho there was no internet there was zero trouble finding the fault and ordering the new parts.

[@blahorgaslisk7763]

Having worked on these they were certainly not that bad. In my experience they were pretty reliable, and I worked RMA support for a distributor so I saw every return we had. The drives usually didn't break, but the cartridges were not all that reliable. The tape tended to stretch with use. I wrote a little program that just reformated the cartridge over and over, and after some hours the capacity had increased some due to the tape stretching. Once it stopped to increase the tape was pretty much stretched as much as it would and it would stay stable after that. ICL also used the QL as the base for their OPD or One Per Desk. It was a pretty interesting machine that I got to work with some years later when I worked service and support for ICL. It integrated a telephone, answering machine (kind of), mail system, serial terminal and normal computer functions. The phone part consisted of a handset and a modem with "speech" capability. You booted of a micro drive and there were a contact list, calendar, the "answering" system and mail system loaded. The contact list could be used to place a phone call, send a mail, book meetings or print addresses on labels and envelopes. The phone answering system was pretty rudimental. You had to enter the message as text and it was read back to the caller using a speech synthesizer. As I worked in Sweden the speech synthesis sounded even worse than for English, but you could code it using phonetics notation to get it understandable. As you might have guessed that wasn't used much where I worked. It also had some limited multi selection capability so you could make a kind of answering menu where the caller would enter number to select what they wanted. So you could get a log of who had called about say support, repair or other issues. The mail system as glorious, not. It wasn't email as we know it today as it was exclusively a ICL OPD thing. Sending a mail meant the OPD would call the recipients OPD and upload the message. So the receiver has to have an OPD, it ahs to be on and you have to know their phone number or at least have it in your contact list. I think you could send contact information, but I'm not sure anymore. So while advanced in it's primitive way, it was not as slick as email is today. The calendar also integrated with the phone and mail system to book to send and receive bookings for meetings and such. At work I used the OPD to burn BIOS for ICL computers onto E-PROM. Their PC line seriously sucked back then. Customers would call and tell me what machine they had and what program or peripheral they had a problem with and I'd dive into the PAPER version of the documentation and look up if there was a bios version for that machine that would allow whatever to work. Sometimes it was a case of "If you want programs X, Y and Zed to work you can't run Lotus 123. You will have to choose between X and Y. I've got BIOS that will work with either of them, Zed and Lotus, but not both at the same time." And yes these were supposed to be IBM PC compatibles. All techs at ICL hated them, but we couldn't say that in public at the time. Eventually ICL bought first a smaller PC server manufacturer I can't remember the name of, but their machines were infinitely better than what ICL had in the PC range, and then they bought Nokia PC. Yes that Nokia. This was when the mobile business took off for Nokia so they divested themselves of amongst other things their PC branch. And the PC techs as ICL were cheering! Well anyway, as you understand we were into the PC era, and yet we were still using the OPD at ICL back then. And it kind of made sense. It was pretty capable when treated as a phone and communication device. And if all you needed was a to write some mail, and I'm talking about the dead tree type snail mail, then it had you covered.

[@ncc17701a]

Now I feel old! My first job was working on ICL mainframes. The engineers had an OPD that we would use to log calls. Before that, back in school we had BBCs and a number of QLs. I used to service them (I worked part time in a computer shop). They were OK, but as you pointed out the microdrives were a bit problematic.

[@russ1669]

My Dad bought me a QL just after they came out. I learned super basic and spent 4 years writing all sorts of utilities for it. I backed up all my software (both shop bought and my own) and only remember getting the backups out once. I loved this machine, but did prefer the IBM with 3.5" floppy that I started borrowing from the shop I worked in a few years later. I remember sending 4 blank cartridges to a software house for 4 free games, and also the adverts for a game with a nasty looking crow or vulture that I could never afford (because I spent all my pocket money on blank micro drive carts to back up my software). Just remembered to add that the manual was fantastic. I had hand written notes on every page.

[@JimArnold-g6c]

The microdrives were first made as an addon for the Spectrum; at the time a great leap forward compared to tapes. They also offered Software houses some security - stop any kid with 2 tape recorders copying your programs

[@dewietze]

Hiho. Thanks for giving some attention to the sinclair ql system :). Im amazed to see our game conversion of Maziacs (Bugziacs) featured in your video. Kudos!

[@Kholaslittlespot1]

Respect

[@jon-paulfilkins7820]

The folk lore* is that the QL was massively discounted at the same time that rumours of the ST and Amiga started (and Amiga may have been seen at a trade show, but no internet/video capture of the day, only NNTP Newsgroups and Fidonet email meant it was definably a rumour mill. So a number of developers and coders purchased QLs to learn Motorola 68000 machine code to get a head start. It was suggested that this was why a lot of UK companies were producing very good games on the Atari ST/Amiga platforms so early on. * like most folk lore, probably a grain of truth, but we will never know for sure.

[@schrodingerscat1863]

More than a grain of truth in that, I knew a couple of devs that did just that. At the time it was by far the cheapest machine to get into 68000 assembler coding.

[@ashleywhiteman2684]

​@@schrodingerscat1863iirc there is a version of vrooom for the ql. Which is a very well coded st amiga megadrive game

[@CaptainDangeax]

When I was young, I had a C64 and of course, I stayed tuned to see what's new on the market. Amstrad CPC ? bumpy scrolling poor sprites and awful sound. Atari ST ? Yeah, but not impressed by the sound. Now you show the QL. Seriously, what was Sir Clive thinking ? Microdrive ? beeper ? I eventually switched my C64 for an Amiga 500

[@grantbanstead1971]

I visited a company that had 3 networked QLs but they spent so much time and effort trying to get them stable they went under. Sad as they spent hours working only to lose it all again and again. So many tears.

[@TheRealWindlePoons]

The problem with much new technology was (and is) the cost of the time to implement and maintain it. In my experience, reliable kit with a higher price tag frequently has a lower cost of ownership, particularly for a business...

[@6581punk]

The technology wasn't quite ready. ICL bought up the QLs and produced a product with a QL and phone integrated called One Per Desk which seemed to work fine. I guess they stabilised it.

[@CorkyMcButterpants]

Yikes! That ‘pacman’ is grim af

[@thomasrotweiler]

Interesting to see someone discovering the QL after all this time. Despite it's drawbacks - all too apparent to users, with time and a healthy bank balance you could upgrade it into a useful machine. A disk interface with extra RAM with a dual floppy drive was a good place to start - with 512K or 640K you could quite a lot more than the standard machine was capable of. Having the application software on floppies meant much quicker load times and a relatively secure storage medium. The Quill word processor and Archive database software could be programmed and customised - I used the database for magazine subscription data and address label printing. As time went on there were various GUI options available, you could have mice as well as joysticks. The price of the customisation though was a lack of standardisation - nightmare for software development. Games software was limited - the 128K QL wasn't a brilliant platform for arcade games but fine for adventures, puzzles, etc. If you needed speed you had to use machine code. These days if you're buying old machines you may need a new keyboard membrane - they fail over time and re-capping is also advised. Oh and check the power supply before plugging anything in. Enjoy :)

[@fogvarious2478]

I have a few that needs updates .. the microdrive choice was really the bad thing

[@TheRealWindlePoons]

You are quite correct but for similar cash outlay you could buy one of the CP/M alternatives which would be more reliable and had more commercial software. The fact that the CP/M alternative was entirely 8 bit didn't matter much as the QL's 8 bit data bus slowed it right down. I own a QL and have used CP/M kit professionally. The QL was sold as a business machine but it was actually no more than something for the keen hobbyist. The first affordable microcomputer I remember with a GUI included was the Amstrad (sold under the Schneider brand in Germany) PC which came with GEM. Personally, I found GEM a big disappointment and cheerfully went back to using the command line.

[@Kholaslittlespot1]

Are you allowed to say what magazine you worked for? Was it computer related? Very cool anyway!

[@Doug_in_NC]

There was also a more expensive and even less successful version of the QL that was sold by ICL (International Computers Limited) to business users called the OPD (one per desk). It had a proper keyboard and a built in telephone, and the idea was that it would be the only piece of electronics you needed on your desk (hence the name). I only remember seeing it reviewed in the computer press, unlike the QL itself, but I know it was actually released at (I think) 999 British pounds

[@terminaljunk]

At one point in the early 90's I actually had an OPD, no idea where it came from as I was only a kid but remember great times messing with the answering machine / voice synthesiser, me and my brother had something of a competition going as to who could come up with the most "creative" message. Pretty sure one of the stringy floppy tapes or possibly a ROM pack had some kind of terminal emulator to allow access to BBS', always wanted to try and dial something up but never got the chance. Dare say that for word processing, and everyday spreadsheet use one would still be usable today - have always said to people "a computer will never be obsolete all the time it can still do what it was designed / intended for"

[@johnsavard7583]

The Sinclair QL was an amazing and exciting product... but the Microdrive killed it. One can praise the computer itself, but there's no way to make excuses for the Microdrive. Or for the attempt to use wafer-scale integration as a replacement for the hard drive. Attempting to cut costs by using wildly unproven technology is just plum crazy, and he should have had enough sense to know that.

[@fischX]

It was 5 years to late for what it is.

[@RicardoBanffy]

The microdrive, the 8-bit memory bus, the lacking graphics and sound... Other 68K computers were the Mac (which had at least 8-bit PCM audio and high-res mono graphics), the Amiga and the Atari ST.

[@herrbonk3635]

@@RicardoBanffy It indeed seemed very slow, jugding from this demonstration (and from the 68008 data sheet and programming manual). But in what way did it lack graphics?

[@RicardoBanffy]

@@herrbonk3635 its graphics aren't comparable to either ST or Amiga - while the pixel count is OK, the palette is fixed, and screen resolution is lower than a base Mac or ST monochrome. I like it, but it was a hard sell back then.

[@herrbonk3635]

@@RicardoBanffy Yes, the fixed (and ugly) palette on the ZX-computers, as well as on many others of the time, always baffled me. It had been a pretty easy and cheap fix to make it variable. Just a small hardvare register the CPU could write to, in order to change the values of a simple resistor D/A.

[@jameslewis2635]

Sorry to be a downer but the QL was a textbook exercise in misunderstanding your customer base. At the time Sinclair was known as a manufacturer of hobbyist and gaming machines. As such any prospects of launching a product aimed at businesses was bound to be an up hill struggle from a marketing perspective alone. Add to that the low end specifications which hugely limits what this machine can be used for along with an unreliable storage medium (aimed at business customers for whom reliability is extremely important) and you have as near to a guaranteed flop as possible without releasing a product that simply doesn't work.

[@drramtop1576]

I remember seeing a QL in the local computer shop, back in the day. I owned a Spectrum+ at the time and was *really* interested in a 16-bit Sinclair system, right up till I saw it in the flesh and came away severely unimpressed by the poor graphics, horrible sound and the already meme-worthy Microdrives. There was nothing about that machine that tempted me at all. Even for 'serious' use, I recall thinking at the time that a BBC Micro with some extra RAM would have been a better buy. It's a real shame that Sinclair didn't target the QL as a Spectrum successor. If they'd given it at least 16 colours, a reasonable sound chip and a floppy drive it would probably have done quite well, even given the higher cost.

[@ru55ells]

Err Apple made hobbyist computers early on. Sinclair gained success through cutting the cost. Perhaps too many corners cut in this case however the idea of undercutting the cost of a PC in 1984 from 3 grand to 400 quid was a noble cause.

[@Error_4x5]

The QL wasn't a misunderstanding of the customer base, it was an intentional ignoring of the customer base. Clive wanted make serious computers for serious users and the QL was designed for those users. The problem for Sinclair was, those users didn't exist.

[@techkev140]

Really wanted a QL at the time. It had more processing power than my ZX Spectrum. By the time i had the money the 16-bit era had seriously arrived and i went with the Atari ST and a bit later the Amiga. I feel i kind of missed out on something. Microdrives... In the last years of owing a Spectrum (originally a Sinclair 48K, then an Amstrad made 128K +2) I bought a couple of Microdrives with the Sinclair Interface 1 (it did work with Amstrad built 128K +2). I had also heard these drive were unreliable, but... I copied a lot of my own (home written) software onto them and even a few commercial apps. I recall, The Artist an art package, when it loaded it clearly demonstrated the Microdrives unreliability and reliability. The loading screen which would appear in typical line by line loading from cassette tape, appeared almost at once. However parts of the image where missing, the drive would attempt to reread the data eventually retrieving it. I was astounded by the fact it kept trying again and again to load the missing data, in an almost patchy/random manner, but it was very quick so the tape must have looped fast. Anti piracy inspired custom tape loading, used by games of the day would likely translate poorly to such a system. Although inventive minds would likely have adapted, had it caught on. Amazing times.

[@TDax]

I had a QL.....well I actually had two QLs (I got a spare after the price drop). I mostly used it as a word processor, writing assignments for my degree and professional qualification. I was a big fan of quill ....my first WYSIWYG experience. Funny enough I later used quill on an early IBM PC.. I had the ????? Cub monitor (pretty sure it was a cub)....picture quality was awesome for the time. Only game I ever had for it was a cowboy adventure game (still played games on my spectrum). I eventually upgraded to an a strand 286 pc....the QLs are sitting in my loft ....after seeing this video I am very tempted to dig them out and have a play

[@magicknight8412]

My dad came home with one of these and we spent hours exploring the software and getting everything going. I think he did some home accounts on it. Sadly there was not much software available for it anywhere and we back to using my Amstrad 6128. Still have the QL somewhere :)

[@CyberhugTechnologies]

Definitely one of my ever favorites Dan, thanks for the video and the part of it as a tribute to Sir Clive. I couldn't get enough of its Super-basic back then as a teen, still today i do consider it as the best basic back then, along with the BBC basic of course. The micro-drives ruined the reputation of this machine over time. If one could get hands on the THOR machine (CST), would have the ultimate overview for the abilities of this machine - bottom-line is the original configuration ruined the future of this wonderful machine actually.

[@elbiggus]

The Spectrum 128 also had a phone jack (or more accurately, a BS 6312 socket) masquerading as an RS232C, presumably because an actual D-sub connector would have added a few pence to manufacturing costs; my friend tried plugging his into the phone line (we were dumb kids, how were we to know) and the 50V DC promptly killed the machine. Also, you *really* should've replaced the disintegrating sponges on the Microdrive wafers - they keep the tape pushed against the head so it probably would have solved the "Quill doesn't boot" problem, but even on the ones that work you're running the risk of sponge dust getting into the mechanism and causing some damage. Ounce of prevention, etc.

[@anderskarlsson9881]

I remember the QL very well. A local company where I live manufactured the case and keyboard. They also made the case for the ZX Spectrum, but the QL was supposed to be the really big thing. Lots of money was spent on tooling and equipment for high capacity manufacturing.

[@StarDustSid]

I've got very fond memories of my Sinclair QL. I enjoyed this trip down memory lane. Thank you very much.

[@talideon]

I think it's best compared with the ST: barebones hardware, lots of off-the-shelf parts, but one was actually a reasonably competent desktop machine, while the other had an awful keyboard and microdrives. Sure, there was a year and a bit between the launch of the two, and the ST was more expensive, but the QL was just engineered down way too much, and would've made more sense as a business machine if it at least came with the 68k version of CP/M or something.

[@ian_b]

That was always Sinclair's problem, he always engineered down too far while yearning, paradoxically, for the professional market.

[@talideon]

@@ian_b Which is fine if you're aiming at the bottom end of the market, which was the case with everything up to the Spectrum, but not with the QL. The funny thing is that it was salvageable in a lot of ways, like replacing the 68008 with a 68000 (which was still using a crippled, low-cost bus), replacing the microdrives with a 3" or 3.5" floppy drive, and a keyboard designed with typing in mind while keeping the general aesthetic of the machine. It was just so tragically close to being good...

[@ian_b]

@@talideon I think his mistake was thinking that he could push up into the business market from the bottom. To be fair, that did work for Amstrad with the PCW, which for a lot of businesses was their first word processor, because it was cheap by being engineered down. But thinking about it as I type this; they didn't know or care about it using a cheap old Z80 processor with the "roller RAM" bodge/stroke of genius to make the screen updates a reasonable speed, the didn't care the printer was completely empty and entirely slaved to the CPU. This did see something with a proper keyboard, floppy disks and a "real" printer. It did one job and did it well, at a low price with everything they needed included. Sinclair cut all the wrong corners with stuff that was visible and significant to the purchaser.

[@Ylyrra]

@@ian_b The Amstrad worked because it LOOKED like a business machine. Sinclair never figured out that appearances matter more than functionality in consumer electronics (and office electronics too) when it comes to relatively uninformed people making a decision of what to spend their money on. People by and large are hugely risk-adverse when heading into unfamiliar territory, and they'll judge things by the only criteria that they know how to understand: does it look like it does the same job as the thing they want but can't afford, or does it look quirky as all hell?

[@ian_b]

@@Ylyrra I totally agree with that!

[@martinh4982]

"The QL doesn't have a delete key". Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. A very interesting episode in computing history, though.

[@Sergiovsousa]

Just like the C64GS console didn´t have a keyboard to start the T2 release game...

[@edism]

Neither does an Apple Mac

[@r0kus]

Thank you for the interesting and informative video. It's pretty clear Sinclair designed this 1984 machine for 1983 or '84, and by 1985, it was hopelessly outclassed by the Amiga, Atari ST, and IBM XT, and even the Commodore 128. Almost every feature seems designed with compromise in mind.

[@WarrenPostma]

Horrible sound, mediocre graphics, the worst mass storage. No power button. Crappy keyboard. No expandability to speak of. Basically trash.

[@jd9119]

Compromise is in everything engineered. If you want an affordable computer the average person could afford and considering most people didn't even know they wanted, compromises had to be made. They sold to people who couldn't afford C128s and C64s.

[@givenfirstnamefamilyfirstn3935]

Youngish people had less spare cash, I eventually miss-invested a month’s take home pay on a *serious* computer but it was an IBM Compatible or a _PC_ almost ten years after this box. I knew the bang for the buck was never good enough before that.

[@bobcarn]

I never knew of this system. My first computer was the Timex Sinclair 1000. I bought it to just play around with because I liked electronics and I could finally get a real computer (more or less). I worked in a department store at the time selling electronics and was previously a janitor and laborer. I learned from the Sinclair that I was naturally good with computers, upgraded to a PC, and eventually made IT my career. Sinclair jump-started what became a passion and livelihood. I'm sorry I never got to play around with this device. Once I moved to the PC, I stayed with that platform. I think I'll hook up my old Timex Sinclair and see if it's still working.

[@gertsy2000]

Your experience was the same for so many people.

[@givenfirstnamefamilyfirstn3935]

The ZX81 had a brilliant manual and taught me BASIC. I did a computer studies ‘O’ level in night class as a result. Wow where did 40 years go?

[@darkpoethd9913]

I remember standing in front of a Q L in Wh Smith in Manchester Arndale. I was only 21 and felt in awe as I touched the keyboard of the display unit... Crazy

[@Zadster]

I'm surprised there was no mention of the BT/Merlin Tonto or ICL OPD. They sold in relatively good numbers (it is difficult to find hard stats) are based on the QL hardware, and did a pretty good job. They weren't sexy games machines, just an all-in-one desktop+phone that did pretty much what the QL was intended to do from the outset.

[@MrUxbridge]

I worked for a company that was working with ICL back in the 80s and what I remember most about the ICL OPD was the fact the the two microdrives always had Sellotape over the top and pencil marks saying "not to be removed for any reason".

[@LoftBits]

I have one sitting on my desk (no pun intended) and I've even successfully used it for making phone calls - it uses a mobile network now, through a GSM terminal. My pastime project from the lockdown ;-) Alas, it won't run QL software as such.

[@laser31415]

My 1st was a ZX81 and then a TS2068 (still own). I remember reading about the QL and so wanting one. I completely fell for the sales hype. For my income level at the time even that was unobtainium. A few years later I read of the power supply issues etc and was grateful I hadn't spent my money to get one imported. I wonder what we could have gotten if he had set a price target x3.

[@thenortherner3890]

Just caught the video, The QL was my 3rd computer after the Zx81 (and ram pack) and speccy. I genuinely miss my QL even today. It taught me to program; I wrote a screen capture to print out on a dot matrix printer which I think was released on one of those CD's that came on the cover of magazines, I was then asked to write a printer review of my printer that paid £120 pounds which was more than two weeks wages. So when I was made redundant/sacked/released going to college and then uni as a mature student doing computer studies was the way forward and the rest is history as they say. Clive Sinclair may have had his flaws, but I'm sat here with a pretty neat laptop, three screens, wireless keyboard and mouse and a beer, thanks Clive for putting me on the path.

[@TechRyze]

The QL was like a half generation step. It couldn't really compete even with the Atari ST, while it was being positioned as a PC rival. It's a bit like the Atari Jaguar. Positioned as a leapfrog of its competition, despite it not being able to even surpass the previous generation in terms of interest. The QL STILL didn't even have a decent f'ing keyboard! It's a bit of a joke, trying to sell that to businesses who want a typist to knock out documents quickly from audio tapes.

[@CommodoreFan64]

Agreed, and that's just part of why IBM, and clones took over in most of the business world, as most of them came with very solid keyboards that would stand up to typist, and their demands. In the 80's 2 of my aunts were court reporters doing courtroom transcripts sometimes for big cases involving murder 1, and no computers could truly keep up with their typing speeds till the IBM 286, and clones came out, and even then they would wear out a keyboard in less than a year, and just buy a new one, instead of trying to repair them, as time was money, but before then with something like an Apple II they were using the whole computer would have been sent off for repair at a local shop just to fix a few worn out keys, which meant more time, and money lost.

[@another3997]

Just like today, the 'business' computer of the '80s had a far broader user base than typists. Most small business users didn't use them as typewriter replacements. The IBM PC and subsequent clone market were still in their infancy, and the machines were incredibly expensive, so weren't economically viable for many. It would take several years before the PC became the de-facto platform for business. Amstrad made a killing with their 8 bit PCW business range, running Locoscript and CP/M, selling well in to the '90s because they were cheap and capable of doing what many users needed. With a little bit more thought, the QL could have been a viable solution for many.

[@TechRyze]

A Nother Yep - the QL got most things wrong. The PCW was damn near a CPC crossed with a typewriter, bundled with a printer. 🖨 The PCW did loads right, while the QL was a mess. DOS & Windows software compatibility became more important as the 80s became the 90s, and CP/M was less central to desktop computing. Amstrad managed to sell PCs for unexpectedly low prices. They weren't amazing computers, but they were great for business purposes. QL wasn't.

[@beowulfsleeps892]

Perhaps harsh to compare it with the Atari ST. The Atari ST launched a year later and was more highly specified all around for a similar(?) price. I agree about Sinclair keyboards! I was lucky enough to have a BBC Model B that saw me through until I was to start work and purchase an Atari ST for myself. Another part of the business I worked for made the QL and I remember them being sold off but I still couldn't manage the interest to buy one!

[@TechRyze]

@@beowulfsleeps892 For £399 when they're trying to sell to business and call it a 32-bit computer, while it has limitations that make it more akin to 8-bit in some areas - it's going to get compared to the Atari ST. The ST is one of its closest competitor in that market, and people would have bought PCWs, PCs, STs and Amigas instead of this thing.

[@gogee8510]

Love the video. My first computer was the ZX81, then the ZX Spectrum. Then I bought the Sinclair QL for £399, when it was first launched. This was just a beautiful-looking machine, and in a way, a bit ahead of of' it's time. Love that big manual which it came with (don't see that anymore). Such great memories. Thankyou for this historical video.

[@SomePeopleCallMeWulfman]

I think Sinclair cut way too many corners: Microdrives instead of floppy; Basic instead of a GUI, crappy keyboard, no power switch etc. Pitching it against PC and Mac was also overselling it quite a bit. Still loved my QL though!

[@GeeseH]

It wasn't bad at all... However that keyboard 😬

[@DotArve]

@@GeeseH Sad thing is that the key profile of the Spectrum+/QL keyboards was really pleasant. The letdown was, as always with Sinclair computers, the worse than horrible membrane keyboards - after the zx80/81, the mechanical changes in the keyboards were basically all putting lipstick on a pig.

[@SoulPoetryandOtherWorks]

SuperBASIC was excellent but a GUI would have been a very useful addition. Microdrives were always a compromise too far for serious use. The keyboard was poor and the use of non-standard connectors for ports limited connecting other peripherals. Those additional feet were an overly cheap solution to a design flaw on a professional machine. Still a good machine with 32-bit capabilities.

[@linuxretrogamer]

I think for the time it was releases the SuperBasic was the right call. The microdrives I believe were more reliable than the Speccy ones and something we could've forgiven if the Speccy ones hadn't already given it bad press. However the 68008 instead of full 68k, 128k instead of 256k, and unfinished buggy rom supplied as an external cart - where all unforgivable when PCWs, STs, and early cheap PC XT clones existed.

[@owaing]

@@linuxretrogamer The earliest model Atari ST computers also came with TOS on floppy, because the ROMs weren't finished. This was even worse than shipping as a cartridge, because it took up RAM. You could fix it later by installing ROMs in the empty sockets, though.

[@nightbeast8105]

Sir Clive in chasing the electric car dream. Was basically blinded to the fact he'd inadvertently created the first mobility scooter and just failed to realise it. Look at that market today, its a Mint.

[@coolvideos8864]

Why dont you have over 500k subs yet? Your video's are always entertaining and well produced.

[@shaunbebbington6411]

I'm pretty certain that the Sinclair QL was the first personal computer that could do pre-emptive multi-tasking. Even better, it could do this from SuperBASIC. The QL is a nice machine to use unless you're a gamer.

[@ZaPpaul]

The sinclair C5 didn't fail because it was electric. The streets of the UK at the time were used by electric vehicles on a daily basis in milk deliveries. The problem of its design still persists today, this is why you dont see modern versions. The low profile is dangerous and they are not that nice to use. They are practical nightmares. They were supposed to be commuter vehicles, but no regard to how you were supposed to store them once at the office, or even at home. They would fail as bad today as they did in the 80's.

[@TheRealWindlePoons]

Same reason you see so few recumbent bicycles today. Riding one makes you feel doomed.

[@Kholaslittlespot1]

But they look so cool! xD

[@deanolium]

Also, it's the UK. It rains here the vast majority of the time. You'd be soaked in a C5

[@Le_Petomane]

I knew Clive personally a close friend of the family. He was a very complicated man but certainly amazing at times.

[@6581punk]

He was the sort of man who it seems would have loved to have been working in research at universities except he never went and I also think he probably enjoyed having more money than he would have got in a university. In a way he set himself up to be a bit like Xerox Parcs, selling things to fund research and invention.

[@edwardgrabczewski]

I owned a Sinclair ZX Spectrum and later a Sinclair QL. The QL's keyboard was better but the built-in microdives were unreliable. Tape cassettes were much better and I managed to learn many more programming languages on the Spectrum (Assembler, Pascal, C, Forth, Lisp, Prolog, Logo), which also had many more games. The QL had a multitasking operating system but I didn't benefit from it. In the end I stuck with the Spectrum, finishing my final year project in Pascal for my BSc in Electronic and Electrical Engineering and for my MSc in Computing Science I did a final year project exposig the internals workings of the MINIX operating system on a PC terminal. Thanks Clive Sinclair. You managed to educate a whole generation of computer programmers. I spend the next 28 years working as a software engineer for BAe, BT, Oracle, Computer Associates, Logica, Novell, Psion and STFC (for CERN). P.S. I am a retro fan, with two vintage PCs (one with an original MIDI card) running DOS and Windows operating systems on several hot-swapping hard drives.

[@TheStuffMade]

Nice video, thanks. I remember seeing the QL in magazines and lusting over it, but it was only on the market for like 2 years and then the Amiga 500 came along and I jumped on that instead.

[@coolvideos8864]

I think we were looking to be around at that time, when the Amiga came on the scene it was a revolution.

[@a1white]

crazy the speed of advances during that period. I remember seeing an Amiga 500 at the time and being blown away.

[@leftgrrl]

As you dig into the design tale of the hardware and firmware it's seems that the QL was a good machine in every aspect that Clive didn't intervene in, but all the bits he cared about he got the call atrociously wrong. He wanted the microdrives, which didn't work well until ICL pointed out the value of adding a capacitor over the motor in 1985. After that they were a lot better but their reputation was established and 100,000 or so QLs were out there with duff drives. He wanted the flat screen, which never worked but making the circuitry compatable with it meant the graphics didn't display properly on a normal monitor or TV of the time with the left and right of the image falling off the screen. The fixation on launching before the Mac meant that couldn't be corrected when the screen was dropped from the plan. His poor business skills meant he negotiated too high a price for the 68008 early on rather than waiting and getting what by the time of the launch would have been a cheaper 68000 chip that would have made for a faster machine - seems he'd preferred the idea of sticking with a Z80. Around him he had a team who built SuperBASIC as an extensible, structured BASIC interpreter, and entwined it with QDOS as a pre-emptive multitasking OS with background cache of files on slower devices by default and so forth. The design aesthetic was award winning at the time though Clive went with the membrane rather than proper key switches. Whose decision just 128K of RAM was on a machine with 32K needed for video was I can't quite tell, though Apple were making the same obvious mistake just a little way behind Sinclair. In short: Clive's hardware, and Sinclair's "look and feel" firmware. The heart of a computer is the OS - hence all the Mac vs Windows, iOS vs Android etc - and in that sense it was a great machine, massively let down by the crappy hardware Clive saddled it with. His poor judgement duly brought down the company.

[@nidjcopi]

In the Late 80's early 90's the office I worked from had an ICL OPD (one per desk) which was nothing more than a re-packaged QL built into a monitor, it was used for word processing and producing weekly/monthly figures and graphs for our department. The microdrives I were reliable but were slow at reading programes so I amended a spectrum trick that allowed multiple copies to be written to the cartridge so that you didn't have to wait until it went to the beginning of the tape to start to load, The OPD was still in use when I left in 96.A service manual for the QL in pdf is (was) available online as I had to reapair one in 2000.

[@leftgrrl]

ICL had spent a lot of money finding out how to fix microdrives so they worked properly before manufacturing the OPD - hence the later production runs of QLs had much better drives (I think D17 / D18 designations on the underside from memory?)

[@RussellBaker]

Used a Merlin Tonto for five years back in the day, basically a phone with a QL, at the time a brilliant desk phone complete with an internal modem and handling two phone lines, years ahead of its time, and I don't think there's a desk phone that still matches it now

[@peterhurn4045]

Having had a Spectrum 16K upgraded later to 48K, I saved up to buy a Sinclair QL, I later worked for the shop where I purchased the QL from and this led to a life in IT, in various roles. I never purchased the QL thinking it was a games machine.

[@fiat500enthusiasts]

Me too. The excellent version of Basic that was built-in was the major attraction for me, much better than BBC Basic.

[@ZaPpaul]

It always confused me at the time that Clive Sinclair wasn't happy with the ZX Spectrum being purchased primarily as a games machine, when it sold around 5 million units. I am not sure how many small business units he would have wanted to sell, but it would never have been close to 5 million at the top estimates. To then disregard this userbase to develop and sell such a business focussed next gen computer was as baffling at the time as it is today. People say he was a genius, I am not convinced. He threw a lot of mud and some stuck. He also didn't invent much, he had teams that did that kind of thing, he was a visionary for sure though, but his visions were not that great. His biggest success was despite him, not because of him.

[@alanguile8945]

I bought one and loaded up 3D Chess. Wow hadn't seen anything like it before on something I could afford! Took it in to work, set it up in the lab and lost to everyone! Those micro drives though🤣.Just listened to the interview, Sony actually showed Clive their new invention the 31/2 floppy! What a difference that would have made!

[@danyoutube7491]

When Nigel Searle was speaking @2:56 he mentions that Clive Sinclair was aware that the business market he was targeting were prepared to pay a high price as long as the product didn't include compromises, and my first thought was those microdrives. A shame, but he did know of course that 5.25" floppy drives existed. They were of a higher quality than the microdrives in every way, and something that was established and familiar to businesses, so the microdrive was a really poor choice even if the 3.5" was not on his radar during development of the QL.

[@Petertronic]

The combination of repeated launch delays, bugs in early versions, and the terrible microdrives are what killed it. The non-standard ports also didn't help. I had one and it was a very capable system, spent quite a lot of time with it. Borland made excellent programming packages for several languages eg C, and Pascal, it was great for learning to code. There was a text adventure called The Pawn which seemed huge and expansive compared to Spectrum adventure games. I made a cable that allowed it to exchange data with a BBC computer. Fun times.

[@jacquesmertens3369]

The first batch had faulty microdrives. By the time it became clear how bad the situation was, it was too late to save QL's reputation. I'm one of many who picked up a QL at less than half the recommended price. The machine was worse than a ZX Spectrum for gaming, and much worse than a pc for serious tasks. The Marketing Dept. got it totally wrong, and it wrecked the company. Surely the microdrives did play an important role in the downfall of the QL, but even with good microdrives the machine was destined to fail. I did enjoy the manual a lot.

[@MarkPickavance]

Worked for a software company in Liverpool that received the first QLs in late 1984; as reported by others, the glue holding the keys on was ineffective. And, those had external power supplies that were live if you touched them, delivering a decent jolt. These things and the ability of the tape drives to eat tapes made for a less-than-impressive start. Once the Atari ST appeared, the QL's goose was properly cooked.

[@6581punk]

What killed it was the early release. Case flex causing microdrives to go out of alignment, OS not finished and having a cartridge sticking out of the back, forgetting even the basics of electronics and not having decoupling capacitors on the power lines to the chips (see google images for a QL interior with capacitors soldered over chips). In fact, microdrives shouldn't have even been used for a serious machine. Also a cheaper variant of the 68000 with an 8-bit bus. Penny pinching on a "business" machine when businesses could afford to pay £2,000+

[@LordRenegrade]

I wouldn't worry about parts being 'proprietary'. Everything was, back in those days ;) . Most of the 'standards' were just companies ripping off other companies' designs (which would get them sued out of existence today), like PC clones ripping off the PC-AT 5170 design, or Atari's DE-9 joystick ports, or IBM"s PS/2 ports, etc. Later on, some of these things were retroactively written into standards, but they didn't start out that way. There was only a handful of actual standardized parts: - the IEC 60320 C14 and NEMA 5-15-P power cable that PCs (and some other machines) used...er, plus regional variants of the mains end of the cable. - RS-232/422 ports. - The parallel port - er no wait that wasn't actually a proper standard until later. - The parallel version of IEEE 488 (yes, the CBM PET drives used a cable that was from the 60s and standardized in '75).

[@petermcilroy1176]

I bought a QL to replace my speccy. I only used it for a few years before the Amiga bug got me. I was a member of the QL Users and Tinkerers Association and that is where my hatred of all things PC was born

[@speedbird737]

you can see @ 13:19 the QL-Quill wafer is damaged (the pad is missing to push against the read/write head) so no wonder it didn't load!

[@chuckwagon7354]

I remember the ZX80 and the ZX81. And I was an owner of the Spectrum 48k. If time travel is ever perfected, don't go back to witness the Titanic sinking, the eruption of Mt Etna, the Kennedy murders or other such historic events, go back and buy a Spectrum 48k and any of the plethora of the Basic programming magazines that sprouted up during this period. I remember my cousin's husband used an IBM for his work. It had 8 meg memory. I thought that was serious overkill! What people refer to now as desktop computers we called 'big box' computers, because of the base unit.

[@renecaps-swift2112]

Hi Dan, Great video! It made me playing with a QL again, as I also have the vDrive from Charlie Ingley. You mentioned in the video, that you couldn't quite get all the images working from the vDrive. I had the same problem, but now sorted. What I also didn't do, is use VMAP to assign the vDrive as MDV1 (MAPV2), instead of MDV3. What some software does, is starting to boot wherever you load it, but will always look for the software in MDV1. So with the external vDrive assigned to MDV1, that problem is gone. Cheers, and regards from the Netherlands, René

[@occamraiser]

Within months of starting work, and within a few months of the release of the QL I had integrated several QLs into a real-time stock control docketing system in a crisp (chips - to our American cousins) factory because it had an unheard of TWO RS232 ports, and could run a printer simultaneously.

[@silverstreettalks343]

Microdrives were one of the things that turned me off the Spectrum when I was first thinking about computers. Even before rumours of their unreliability started emerging, they struck me as a clever but limited idea. Eventually, though, the need for DTP software combined with a limited budget directed me toward PCs

[@jezz2k]

Between 1983 and 1991 I owned a 48K and later a +3. I recall seeing adverts in Sinclair User for microdrives but wasn't interested in getting them, and they didn't come included with the Spectrum, so I don't see how they would have put you off buying a Speccy. The overwhelmingly vast majority of software was on tape and some on 3" disks for the +3.

[@jezz2k]

@De Rekarts After the two Spectrums I owned, I upgraded to an Amiga 500 and later an A1200 and fitted a hard drive. Made the switch to PCs in 1996. The point I was trying to make is that Spectrums didn't come with a microdrive as standard. They were very rare indeed. I never saw one outside of the magazine adverts. So why would they turn you off from buying one?

[@jezz2k]

@De Rekarts Yep. If he meant QLs, that would make more sense. Considering the topic of this video however, and how the QL was marketed, its a bit difficult to confuse the two.

[@SlowMenThinking]

Back in the day 14~15ish I remember the Spectrum I remember the first and only program I wrote (for dealing with matrices addition subtraction multiplication and division) as I thought the math was a waste of over the top repeating procedures. Most of all I remember the QL watching some vector graphic demo of a game in the shop and the price tag. The Apple II was a thing in the school computer labs (was not special enough to get invited to do classes) 2 years later in the workforce the PC(IBM and clone) was king and shortly after (years) I had an Amiga 500 then a 1200 and was playing the same game as the demo in colour with filled in vector lines. Now I write this on my Raspberry Pi4 after watching this from that same machine. Memory's not sure I would go back oh and as for the Spectrum I still have it with non functional microdrive that lasted about a year or so.

[@TheRealWindlePoons]

I used both the Apple II and the Beeb. They had significant differences but similar capabilities. The Apple was more costly. I only ever saw the Apple at college and at work.

[@GSimpsonOAM]

I had a QL and was my everyday computer for word processing and spreadsheets for 6 years. I had no trouble with the microdrives in that time. It was a good value computer and did what I wanted at a fraction of the price of a IBM PC compatible. I used Win95 & then Win98 but since have used Linux

[@iggysfriend4431]

The QL was a fine machine of it's time but the Micro drives were dire, like a warmed over mini 8-track player. They should have stick a 3.5" floppy drive in it.

[@Lorfarius]

Nice, clear and concise. Had no idea it even had games so def tempted to have a look at one now.

[@TheRealWindlePoons]

I am confident you will be disappointed. If you want game nostalgia from that era and genuine antique hardware you would do much better with a ZX Spectrum or BBC Micro. The games I had for my QL were no better than those for the Acorn Atom (the BBC's predecessor).

[@markbanash921]

I was in graduate school in the 1980s and one of my fellow students had a ZX81. They were very interested in the QL, and when they showed me the advertisements the first thing that caught my eye was the microdrive cartridge. These look very similar to cartridges that Texas instruments sold for their programmable calculators, and which had software installed on them. It probably was a bit unfair but the first thing that then passed into my mind was that this was just a souped-up calculator and not a computer in its own right.

[@DrewSwenson]

Thanks to Micro-Men, whenever I think of Sir Clive... I immediately think of "Jet Set fucking Willy!"

[@PrivateSi]

QL Users and the QL media never called Microdrive Cartridges 'wafers'.... Wafers were an abandoned, permanently powered Ram Disk module designed to compete with the crappy hard drives of the day, with much, much greater speed at the expense of memory robustness (contents lost when power to the drive is turned off (they were powered separately to the computer, obviously)... -- Called 'Wafer Drives' as they used an entire, discarded memory chip die wafer with 100s of memory chip dies on each wafer thin disk (still used in fabs today)... Problem is, the chip industry found ways around the fact an entire wafer had to be discarded if a few faulty dies were found. Sinclair lost their source of cheap discarded memory chip wafers... Consumers benefited from cheaper memory though. -- The only way The UK / Europe could have mixed it with the US Cabal (sorry, US PC Giants) was to agree on a standard MULTI CPU bus architecture (like the BBC Micro had), and for all UK / Europe computer designers to (BE FORCED to !?) adopt it... Had to Z80, 6502, 68000 but NOT X86 (initially, for at least 2 years). This would have given the UK / Europe much leverage over the 3 main rivals to Intel, which would have been great for our PC makers.. Standard IO and peripheral interfaces... A NON-MONOPOLISTIC COMPETITOR to the IBM PC standard.. -- The QL should have adopted this standard, but disregarding it for now, it should have been SPECTRUM COMPATIBLE at the very least.. Z80 + 68008 with a slightly better graphics chip to handle ZX and FULL QL modes ++.. QDOS never fully supported the graphics chip it had. 32kb of graphic memory was used by the OS as a corner cutting measure. 64kb can be used and after the QL was discontinued 'Dithvide' shows, giving many more colours. -- Can switch between 512x256 4 colour and 256x256 8 colour each screen frame as well as stay in the same mode and show a different colourised version every other frame, mixing the two frames colours to the viewers eyes... Colour interlacing does not produce flicker (resolution interlacing does)... -- QL should have had a bolt on, matching SEPARATE DRIVE UNIT (Tape, Disk or 2x Microdrive at various price points), + extra memory available on board from the start, no expansion card needed (there's a lot of empty space inside the QL case., could have easily provided up to 32 chip sockets if the mobo was as big as the case - or 8 memory chip sockets and 2 co-processor sockets, in my IBM beating Euro-PC standard that never was..)..

[@philogden8204]

I think that there's a thing about the QL that slips under every retrospective reviewer's radar which is that it inherently multitasked, we're so used to multitasking these days that we don't really think about a time when that wasn't the norm. I remember writing a very simplistic bouncing ball program where each ball was just an instance of the same code with just the location and direction data being unique to each instance and the scheduler managing all the instances fairly transparently - you just couldn't do that on anything else at the time (well, not on anything that was within the financial means of a home user).

[@dustojnikhummer]

What I find interesting that despite it being a British machine, it uses pretty much a bog standard US ANSI layout. Even @ is on 2, which is where Pound is on modern UK keyboards (I'm not british btw)

[@Ylyrra]

Close, but UK "standard" layout has double quotes on 2 and @ where double quotes are on US keyboards. Pound-sterling sign is on 3 where the hash/pound-weight sign is. (Hash usually moves to where backslash is under the right pinky midrow and backslash moves to bottom left pinky left of Z where backtick usually is, and backtick moves up to left-of-1 where tilde ~ is usually, which moves to shift pound sign. Pipe/vertical bar then swaps back up to the tilde key as alt-mode/supershift/whatever to finally stop the ridiculous game of musical chairs.) Apple of course does something different.

[@richardmoore4194]

I used QL's to teach a load of young people and the integrated software suite hit the nail/ I still have several microdrives :)

[@fradd182]

Unfortunately, 32kB of frame-buffer was too much for QL, if there is any fast action game for it, with smooth scrolling and some sprites, it struggles probably more than CPC. Even ST has a problem with 32kB, and it was a powerhouse compared to QL.

[@oisnowy5368]

Which is why the Archimedes is the most underrated. It did fast action games in 256 colors with 80kB screen modes fluidly. It was insane how much faster it was. And it had normal drives.

[@thehighprotondiet3127]

@@oisnowy5368 The Archimedes was a BEAST in its time - two or three times more powerful in software than even the Amiga with all its hardware. It failed mostly because the games companies didn't see Archimedes games as a viable market and nobody bought them without any games. Catch-22.

[@leftgrrl]

@@oisnowy5368 the Archi had much better hardware, but then it was 3.5 years later - at a time when the tech innovation was moving pretty fast. If Sinclair had weathered the computer sales slump of 84/85 I guess there would have been a QL/2 in 86 and a QL/3 about the time of the first Archimedes to compare like with like.

[@richbuilds_com]

I had a QL. I wrote a few business packages for private companies back in the day for it, along with some encryption stuff. It was the last "home computer" I coded for before I moved onto PC's and eventually big back end systems.

[@Slarti]

I am a software engineer in my mid fifties and my first computer was a ZX Spectrum in 1983. The computer games for the Spectrum are what launched many of us into careers in software. It's interesting how Sinclair didn't see how important the games were for early home computing. I remember writing a database application in BASIC back in 1986 which could load and store all of 12 records 😂

[@linuxretrogamer]

I've looked over the QL a few times (never a real physical model, alas) and there's alot to commend with the QL. Alas there's also infamously a few things that was sonewhat misguided. It failed for good reasons, budget being one. Couple of minor changes and it'd be an amazing bit of kit.

[@DailyCorvid]

I think the QL is pretty amazing! Even though it never took off, as a collector I would kill to get my hands on one now but even at the time when I was a kid - I would have gone fairly far maybe manslaughter lol. The other one I like but can't find is the Atari 1200XL or the 600 with expanded RAM. Wicked little machines, pure joy if you manage to find one! I'd probably start a KZbin channel just for videos about them. Lol. No murdering or slaughter of any kind, it's for education XDDDD

[@joefish6091]

@@DailyCorvid Amiga 500 did everything way better. not much more expensive. Sinclair had to make the QL look the same as the toy Spectrums to encourage brand loyalty, but yhat told everybodyou else that QL was just an overpriced toy. Lack of backward compatibilty to the Spectrum hindered peoples upgrade to the QL, they should have put a Z80 cpu inside too.

[@joefish6091]

@@DailyCorvid Buy an Oric and scream at how nasty they are were. Teletext GPU only graphics that were 10 tens years obselete in the mid 80s..

[@p0k314COM]

Sinclar like many other brands from 60-70' eg RCA or Atari did not understand how market changed in 80 and especially 90. Users asked about quality, and received cheap obsolete products. And oldies died. Fast. And literally no one care about it.

[@danh5637]

I’ve never found a better feeling keyboard as the QL type spectrum one. The way it curved to the fingers is perfect.

[@Johnsormani]

I remember walking along the computer department of the local department store as a kid . They had the zx81, Philips msx, Commodore 64, apple II ( I think), acorn atom on display . It all looked very fascinating .

[@Couchflyer-NY]

Looking back at 1980’s computing, I appreciate that it’s not beige. By 1984 business users began asking about upgrades and expand ability. The all in one form factor became less attractive. Stores used up selling and cross selling terms like “future proofing” and “compatibility”.

[@siriusmicromaniac]

I had a long love affair with Sinclair computers reaching from the MK14 to the Spectrum. Given all this steadfast affection and loyalty, I might reasonably have been expected to progress to the QL, but when I learned it was going to be equipped with microdrives, that was the day I finally broke up with Sinclair. As a 'serious' Spectrum user I couldn't have done without the microdrive because some form of high-speed mass storage was essential, but I almost couldn't live with them either. I ended up defecting to Atari and the ST and never did own a QL, although I often regret that. It's a case if 'if only'... imagine the QL, but with a proper 3" or 3.5" floppy drive as standard. Nowadays I understand there is a version of the 'Vdrive' which replaces the mechanism of the microdrive with an SD card drive, for the QL. That combination is probably very decent.

[@kimiOfDieLinke]

I think with a more honest timeline and better quality control the QL would have been a solid computer for its time. It ticked all the boxes (like 80+ column mode in colors, RS 232 serial). However I think Dan you're right - Business people would have payed anything. I would add "as long as IBM is written on the box" ;) Anyway, being the "cheapest" wasn't a factor for business customers. To my knowledge, a lot of QL users first got a disk drive + controller. So much for the microdrive. I think, a lot like Commodore, accepting that you aren't the business company, could have done a lot for Sinclair.

[@hartoz]

The Sinclair QL was a great big compromise from the very beginning. Awful keyboard, awful Microdrive, awful OS, poor performance compared to the Atari ST and the Amiga (yeah I know it was about 18mo ahead of Atari). It was too quirky for use as a Business computer, and was never targeted by Sinclair as a games Computer. Meaning that nobody bought them. And seriously did I mention the awful keyboard? I'm pretty sure that 3rd parties made real keyboard for the QL, but they cost almost as much as the computer at the time. The Microdrive was not much better than using a Cassette Tape, and because the tapes were so thin, they would stretch like crazy. If it wasn't for the Psion suite, the QL would probably have never sold at all. If you want to review a Sinclair QL, have a look at the "ICL One Per Desk", it's a QL with all sorts of built in software, a phone, a monitor, and a decent keyboard. It also runs quite a lot of QL software.

[@Andrew_dot_pls]

I had one of the first QLs (having been a Spectrum user since I was 14 years old). Microdrives failed after a week so it went back and i got a different version that worked well for a couple weeks then the drives failed again and I got another one. Once again the drives failed me and I gave up. The strange thing was, I never had an issue with microdrives on my Spectrum. Worked flawlessly. The 68008 was a big mistake (I assume to cut costs). 8 bit address bus meant it was about half the speed of a 68000. I think the 68008 was mainly used in washing machines and suchlike. Why that decision was made I'll never know especially since the price of the QL was reduced so quickly. I can remember being able to program with 32 bit instructions (internally) but then everything communicated with RAM at 8 bits. Like what was the point of that?

[@richardtwyning]

I'm a hardcore Texas Instruments fan. I had, and still support the TI-99/4A. Good again to see a machine full of Texas Instruments chips. In this case all the TMS4164 RAM chips 🙂

[@greggv8]

Have you seen the Don't Mess With Texas 99-4/A demo?

[@richardtwyning]

@@greggv8 I don't think I have, but I'll have a look for that, thank you 👍🏻

[@stonelaughter]

Psion Office suite actually made it onto the PC; we ran it on 286 and 386s in my first computer role.

[@SpeccyMan]

I winced every time you used the word wafer. They were cartridges to those of us who used them. The Rotronics Wafadrive was a completely different and competing system.

[@DavidHembrow]

Me too. No-one ever called microdrives "wafers". They were always called cartridges.

[@TheRealWindlePoons]

@@DavidHembrow Wafers weren't microdrives. Wavers were silicon memory and though promised never materialised for the QL. Microdrive cartridges just contained a loop of magnetic tape.

[@DavidHembrow]

@@TheRealWindlePoons there were two things called wafers. First the waferdrive released by a third party for the spectrum which was a microdrive competitor using similar cartridges with a loop of tape. Those were called wafers. Then there was Ivor Catt's wafer scale integration which Sinclair was at some point supposed to sell as an accessory for the QL. A neat idea which never made it as a product.

[@TheRealWindlePoons]

@@DavidHembrow Yes, you are absolutely correct. Sorry I wasn't more specific in outlining my context of referencing a QL-specific Sinclair product.

[@ActionRetro]

I always thought this computer looked so cool

[@stuartbruff8786]

I was lucky enough to get a QL after the price had dropped and the Microdrives became more reliable. I don't recall the Microdrives giving me any problems, but I still thought it was a mistake not to include a 3.5" floppy. However, I really loved the software environment. I recall chortling with pleasure upon running my standard test program (a fast Conway's Life) in 4 windows, each running a different programming language (eg, SuperBasic, Lisp, Pascal, and C) and watching them race, or seeing the difference a change made to a program's efficiency in the same language (I was too impatient to sit around waiting for a program to finish evaluating, much better to see progress in near real-time!). The QL was the computer that gave me the most fun as a programmer, and I've laid my software paws upon quite a few machines over the years, from the early SC/MP and NASCOM 1 to my i9 MacBook Pro and sundry incarnations of microcontroller/SBC.

[@CasperLabuschagne]

If only the QL was released with two floppy drives and an OS like C/PM it would have been a hit. Those tape drives were why I did not buy one back in the 1980's.

[@samcadwallader2899]

I remember going to my local computer shop when it launched. My take on the QL was that the BBC B covered the serious user with it's massive expansion capability and this was far too lightweight in terms of it's hardware quality and software library. That said I reckon SINCLAIR could have had similar success as the Spectrum if they had made a gaming machine of the QL as the reliability of the microdrive woudn't have mattered to people who were just playing games.

[@leftgrrl]

They'd have had to make the cartridges a lot cheaper than the £5-a-time for a blank one though.

[@SuperRetroGamer]

Lovely video, thanks for producing and sharing.

[@ChrisHopkinsBass]

I’m loving the Plus/4 datasette and the god awful Plus/4 Joystick on display during the unboxing. My first system was a Plus/4 I got as a present at Christmas 1985! Happy days!

[@cybernenindia]

In India Sinclair spectrum and Amigas was used until year 2000 to run scroll ads and graphics by Cable tv companies. They used to run the scrolling ads or small gif files on their video channel line .

[@amnril]

I still have a Boxed QL, along with a Miracle Systems Super Gold Card which has a 68020 CPU and 4mb RAM. Sadly I sold my double Density ED disc Drives. I also have an Aurora, a hybrid QL/PC which currently houses that Super Gold Card. Quite rare now I suspect.

[@Sergiovsousa]

I other words, if you´re not a computer colector, I can get a pretty sum for that...

[@petermcilroy1176]

You actually have a Gold Card? I could only afford an ordinary 896k expansion (I can’t remember who made it) and also upgraded the ROM to the Minerva ROM

[@amnril]

@@petermcilroy1176 yes, at one point I had a gold card and two super gold cards. I sold the GC and one SGC but have kept the other. I haven’t used it in years, it’s currently installed in the Aurora and is sitting in the loft.

[@michaelturner4457]

I'm sure it was the microdrives and the keyboard that did in for the QL as a serious business computer. I remember in 1985 when the QL was being activaly marketed, I worked for a small firm that was looking for its first computers, and they bought a couple of Amstrad PCW256s in the end. And those had a good keyboard, used floppies, and had a monitor and a printer as part of the package. Which the QL didn't.

[@Ozymandias1]

It was called the Schneider Joyce in Germany and here in the Netherlands. A very popular product with small businesses which couldn’t afford a PC (even the clones were very expensive).

[@sambagogo777]

Cool video. Viewing it in light of the news that the QL core for the Next is finally done.

[@claycassin8437]

Was it really that bad? I sure thought so at the time. It was shoddy cheap plastic, just like everything Sinclair made was. I was the proud owner of a Sinclair digital watch...for a few months, anyway. I played around with a QL in a store for just the few moments it took me to think "Uh, hell no". I had already sampled their products, and found them wanting.

[@SharpblueCreative]

I was given a whole load of Sinclair computers. Including 5 spectrums, 3 QL’s with micro cassettes and a few Spectrum 128’s. I had no use for most so they were donated to a computer museum in Swindon. I’ve kept a few mostly for display as they don’t appear to work well. May have to re visit these.

[@CaptVirtual]

My very first computer was Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K. I later had the QL, but continued to use my specturm for my games. I remember my school had Acorn BBC Micros, couple Apple IIe