Hardware: The Sinclair QL - a leap too far

Uncle Clive long harboured a desire to break into the business market, the Spectrum had failed spectacularly at this - would the QL make the difference?

#QLvember
Timestamps

00:00 Intro
00:19 Unboxing
01:04 History
16:25 Capture
17:35 Outro

Theme tune: Re-enthused by Onyapatto and Jonn Blanchard

[vanhetgoor]

It could have been so easy if the extremely clever Sir Clive Sinclair would have used his brains for a moment. From the start on all centrepieces of Sir Clive were into the business of beating Hong Kong in producing cheaper stuff. Everything you can imagine that can be made, can be made cheaper if you cut some lines, take a few short cuts and omit some necessities. 
 
The keyboards of all computers ever made by Sinclair were obnoxious, the flimsiest of the cheapest. A membrane keyboard is not to work with. It is not even reliable enough to be used doorbell pushbutton. The customers did not have a choice between cheap and hardly working or pay a little more and get something that could last a few months longer. 
 
What should have been done was the following: produce equipment with an internal standard bus. Make everything interchangeable. If the customer want the cheapest of the cheapest then he can use a keyboard made out of tinfoil and used plastic wrappers like the ZX's or the customer could get something that looks like a keyboard like in the Plus-series and the QL. You could also buy a real keyboard, but that would cost more then the complete Spectrum, or the QL for that matter.

If all computer parts were made interchangeable and with one standard bus and only standard connectors then you could simply disconnect the main processor and replace it with something more modern or bigger or faster!

If the clever Sir Clive Sinclair would NEVER have made a power supply, a keyboard or a memory expansion the market would have done it for him. It would have been in the benefit of the customer. Now millions of people ended up with absolute junk, it wasted time and money. Knighted by the Queen, but I can't see any reason why!

[matthews]

The sinclair QL was let down by not having proper serial ports, you couldn't use it i
with the coming bulletin boards and early computer networks !! followed by the micro-drives
HOWEVER, , in other respects it was much like the Atari ST, , , like a Spectrum but with 32bit cpu & more memory
I had 512KB add on Ram, twin floppies, Tony tebbys toolkit, mouse etc, , , it was a very usable machine

[ian_b]

The strange thing is Clive was always going on about the business market but he never seemed to understand that market. One of the main reasons IBMs won was that they just felt professional. This, with its little placky case and cheap keyboard and crappy microdrives exuded the exact opposite feeling.

[neozeed]

Imagine a business machine with no 10key keypad! No fixed disk either, nor any way to max populate ram. It was doomed.

[AGIMA]

Thanks so much for covering this. It's only in recent years that I learned it was ever a thing. Great detail in this video and it's certainly a special looking machine. Reminds me of a +3 but those were the Amstrad era of course.

[alanmacmillan]

I think QL might have succeeded more if they made the Microdrives just a peripheral only; and provide tape and floppy options. it looked damn good though.

[PondersRetroGoodness]

Even given everything else, the keyboard completely missed the mark for a business machine. I hope you can get that keyboard working because as big a failure as it was, it's still a fascinating machine!

[edism]

Operating System is usually pronounced "O... S...". I didn't know what you meant by OZ at first lol

[hans-jurgenstoffels]

I started programming on the Sinclair Spectrum and QL. Had two QLs in a network with an EPROM added (basic additions) and floppy drives as well as a printer. Full system. It worked in German because it was possible to peek and poke and insert an altered font set. I, too, used to create graphics for the software. Later I got software adding windows. Sadly it was not continued.

[SoulPoetryandOtherWorks]

Easel was not a paint package. It was a business graphics program which could be used for graphs, pie charts and so on.

[Harry-ueen]

Bizarrely I spotted a 'kit of ICs' for repairing old QLs yesterday on eBay.com ??

[WhatHoSnorkers]

I came across an advert for an adventure game set in a pyramid for the QL!
Membrane keyboards, oh yes. I remember loading Carrier Command on the +2 and waiting for "O" to start working. Reading a book while holding the key down until it started working again.
Good job sir.

[RetroBytesUK]

Fascinating bit of kid, so destined to fail. Still with Linus crediting it a being the reason he got into programming its turned out to be way more important for the modern world of computing, just not in the way Uncle Clive hoped.

[mrtiff]

Hope you get it all up and running soon. Be great to have another video showing what it can do. Thanks for the video. Oh and here's a sub 👍

[RobertPayne]

A Quantum Leap too far even.
I'll get me coat...