Talk:Sinclair QL

To be confirmed before inclusion: As this was an advanced computer for Cold War times, embargo was imposed on its exportation to the countries of the Soviet block.

It didn't really work as the Soviets just smugged the computers in then cloned superior versions of them.

Although the computer was rather advanced for its time....

Was it, really? I seem to recall that in fact its major failing was that it was nowhere near as advanced for its time as it should have been. Contemporary of the Mac, which really was a "quantum leap" in computing for the masses - at a price. The QL was stuck with a very old fashioned operating system design, old fashioned mass storage (as the 3.5" floppy age was about to dawn), and certainly nothing like a GUI. It had "windows" of a sort but they tiled up the screen into, at most, 4 sections. They didn't overlap. Each ran one DOS-like shell or session. The term QL was little more than hype (or maybe wishful thinking). Sure, it may have been a quantum leap from the Spectrum, but in absolute terms, very much an also-ran. The only thing it did get right was its CPU choice, which was very good for its day.Graham 06:15, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Since nobody has added comments here on this, I've changed the article, removing the above claim with a more balanced critique.Graham 02:32, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

As you've done that I'll comment. It had networking and portable media, it just that the actual implementaion was rubbish. In 88 I worked for GST and as I had a QL asked lots of questions and grabbed the old hardware. The drives used in the ST where available but Sinclair refused to use them. GST was commisioned to write the OS and produced 68KOS, then dumped it all for QDOS written in house by Ton Tebby, who was a satelite TV engineer.--Jirate 19:21, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I agree that the QL did have some advanced features, but that the implementation of them was deeply flawed, partly from the designers' failure to break out of some of the paradigms of early 80s micros; partly from failures in project management, resulting in botches, compromises & omissions; and partly because of Sinclair's practice of using cheap, idiosyncratic components and peripherals to keep the price down.

Eg#1 - HARDWARE

- Choice of CPU: As I recall, the 68008 chip was 16-bit internally (& thus a leap forward from 8-bit chips). Unlike the 68000, though, the cheaper 68008 used an 8-bit data bus thus bottlenecking the chip. Sinclair chose the 68008 for budget reasons, but did not therefore gain the full benefits of 16-bit technology. Two steps forward & one step back doesn't make a quantum leap.

- Use of Non-Standard Budget Hardware: Low pricing was part of Sinclair's business strategy. This meant keeping costs down & one way that was done was by using cheap hardware. E.g. the membrane keyboards on the ZX80 & ZX81 & the infamous "dead flesh" keys on the Spectrum; the small thermal printer which burned output onto rolls of silver toilet paper; and of course the microdrives, which used a thin loop of video tape in a small, hard casing as the storage medium. Was this better than cassettes? Yes. Was this as good as floppy discs? No. Microdrives didn't have the storage capacity of the 5.25" 360Kb floppies, let alone the new 720Kb ones. At least the QL had a pretty decent keyboard.

Eg#2 - OPERATING SYSTEM: The QL did have a very advanced feature for its day: multi-tasking. It was capable of running multiple programs in real time, which was a major leap forward. Stupidly, however, the facility wasn't activated by default. I remember typing in a short program (10 lines or so from a QL magazine) which activated the multitasking, then watching in amazement as the machine ran serveral different programs simultaneously.

DOS-based IBM PCs did not multi-task & even Windows 1.0-3.1 were arguably task-switchers rather than true multi-taskers. PC multi-tasking was only implemented in Windows 95. The Atari ST (essentially a 68000-based PC, running a GEM Gui) couldn't multi-task either. Amongst the micros of the 80s, only the UNIX-inspired Commodore Amiga sported a true multi-tasking OS.

Eg#3 - USE OF A COMMAND LINE INTERFACE, NOT A GUI: That was a bad oversight, but remember that command line interfaces were the user interface paradigm of the day. Inherited from 60s & 70s time-sharing mainframes (along with interpreted BASIC as the preferred programming language) CLI interfaces dominated early micros. Machines of that era tended to boot into a command line interface, usually with a BASIC interpreter in ROM (although the Jupiter Ace boldy used FORTH). CP/M & DOS used CLIs. Commodore Pets, Vic-20s & Commodore 64s; Zx80s,ZX81s & the Spectrum; BBC Micros etc - all used CLIs & Basic interpreters.

Going over to GUIs required a major paradigm shift. Even Xerox (who'd set up & funded the research group at Palo Alto that devised the WIMP GUI paradigm) didn't see the potential of WIMP-style GUIs (or any of the group's other seminal inventions). It took a visionary like Steve Jobs to see the potential of that kind of user interface, lease the technology, & implement it in the abortive Apple Lisa, then the immensely successful Apple Mac (whose success woke up Microsoft woke up & put them into catch-up mode, creating Windows).

EG #4 - BUNDLED SOFTWARE SUITE Not a massive leap forwards, but getting a suite of some reasonably powerful suite, with Wordprocessing, Database, Spreadsheet & Charting was a refreshing change.

Overall, it's a shame that Sinclair didn't break out of early 80s paradigms, but it's understandable. I doubt they got to tour expensive pure research establishments like Palto Alto or AT&T Bell Labs. Botches, omissions and compromises in the design of the hardware and operating system due to bad project management and cheapskating are less forgivable, & idiosyncracy was a bad strategy in a time when personal computers were moving towards standardisation & compatability.

Probably the most seminal micro of the 80s was the Apple Mac, which turned Palo Alto's ideas into a highly marketable reality and made much more of a quantum leap than Sinclair. But the most advanced micro of that decade (and the one which jumped furthest) was the Commodore Amiga, which incorporated dedicated chips for high resolution graphics and sprite animation, sound synthesis, and by far the most advanced operating system of any micro in that era, although in the marketplace it got pigeonholed as a games machine.

- JP --195.93.21.102 11:03, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)