Found this cool article

[bwinkel67]

I found this article today titled "Fallen giants - comparing the '80s second-generation home computers."

https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/46833.html

It covers the Amiga, Atari, Mac, QL, and Archimedes. Initially I thought the author had an Atari bias but he then finished up with Sinclair and Acorn...an interesting take.

[stevepoole]

Hi Bwinkle,

The article insists that the QL failed through the lack of a GUI. But Sinclair insisted that the QL could be programmed by buyers, where GUIs get in the way.... We had the powerful and user-friendly PSION suite though, which the author does not mention !
The QL got a bad press, mainly due to such statements as : 'keys fall off if you turn it upside-down'. Mine never did, in fact the machine was very reliable for my work, coming as it did with a complete course on SuperBasic programming.
My employer preferred a PC. Nobody new how to use it, and 6 months later it was costing plenty to get technicians in just for pay slips !
The QL could do it all, secretarial work, accounting, archiving, calculations and drawing plans etc. No need to fork out for third party software !
People had fallen for mainframe-style arguments about the need for so-called 'professional' computing consultants.
Small IS beautiful.... Steve.
_____________________________

[tofro]

Hi Bwinkle,

The article insists that the QL failed through the lack of a GUI. But Sinclair insisted that the QL could be programmed by buyers, where GUIs get in the way.... We had the powerful and user-friendly PSION suite though, which the author does not mention !
The QL got a bad press, mainly due to such statements as : 'keys fall off if you turn it upside-down'. Mine never did, in fact the machine was very reliable for my work, coming as it did with a complete course on SuperBasic programming.
My employer preferred a PC. Nobody new how to use it, and 6 months later it was costing plenty to get technicians in just for pay slips !
The QL could do it all, secretarial work, accounting, archiving, calculations and drawing plans etc. No need to fork out for third party software !
People had fallen for mainframe-style arguments about the need for so-called 'professional' computing consultants.
Small IS beautiful.... Steve.
_____________________________

I think the QL failed for a lot of reasons, but not for lack of a GUI. It mainly failed because of its way too poor hardware specs, the launch that presented a half-baked computer, the "28-days"-chaos, and, mainly, because Sinclair produced a computer that couldn't decide whether it wanted to be a Super-Spectrum (which it wasn't because of lack of software) or a professional, modern, 16-bit computer (which it somehow wasn't as well, at least not early days-also because of lack of software) and didn't have a single piece of killer-app. All the software that you could have in the early days, was, at most, mediocre (but, on average, rather worse than that - maybe except the Psioon stuff). The Atari had cool games and, on the other hand, a professional-looking GUI like the Mac with professional applications, the Amiga was, at least early days, too ambiguous in that Commodore was adamant to state "it's not a games machine" (had they accepted it was, things could have been very different) and was (again early days) way too expensive and lacked applications that people really needed. And the Mac did only survive because of its software.

The PC didn't lack any application - everything was there to choose from, and the backing through IBM convinced people that "it can't be that wrong", even if the thing wasn't actually that hot.

The QL was somehow stuck in the 8-Bit-computer era, while the others were bold enough to make bigger leaps into the future (except the PC, but that was the one that could afford it because off IBM). As such, it's maybe today the only 8-Bit-computer with a 16-bit CPU.

[Derek_Stewart]

Hi,

Interesting article, it implies that the Amiga would of killed off Apple, but due to books I have read about Commodore, it seems that Jack Tramiel had the chance to buy Apple, but due mistake on his part did not swallow up the small Apple company. Clearly a missed chance.

Also looking at books about Charles Peddle, who designed the 6502 CPU, he had to got to see Steve Wozniak, to debug the 6502 CPU on the Apple 1, Apple not not as clever as the later period of Jony Ive/Tim Cook, would really accelerated Apple to where it is today.

The Sinclair and Acorn, gave low cost computing to normal users, and gave the rest of the computer world a kick, to get moving on development.

I am not sure that the QL influenced Linux, I thought this was, Minix, but also the Amiga OS looks like a UNIX system.

Strange no mention of Tony Tebby....

[XorA]

I am not sure that the QL influenced Linux

Linus has said he was driven to work on Linux because QL was so badly designed

[bwinkel67]

All fun things to speculate. I liked and shared the article because it wasn't the usual dribble on the QL that you see anyone that doesn't know the machine write. I don't know how many cookie-cutter retrospectives I've seen of the QL (video or otherwise) that regurgitate the same thing.

I think the author alludes to there being a paradigm shift in the 80's with this next generation 16-bit line of computers powerful enough to host GUI's and that being a big change (I do recall being in school and seeing both the Mac and Amiga interfaces the first time, learning what an icon was). But agree, a lack of GUI wasn't the primary factor, more of a perception of reliability. I'm also glad none was added because I'd hate to see what Clive would have forced onto the OS development. I'm happy with ICE as an early (1985) offshoot. I did a video on it recently and lots of positive "wow" comments of "I didn't know the QL could do that." I realize ICE is very archaic as the PE is the thing today, but I was focusing on the mid 80's for GUI's for that. Plus, ICE is what I used in 1990.

I use my QL today with microdrives and it works pretty well, though it's nice to have an SD card backup (had to use them for a few months when my vDrive unit wasn't working). I think Sinclair's strategy may have looked a bit too far in the future likely thinking their wafer technology might supplant the microdrives eventually. Did they also bet wrong on the new 3.5" floppy which ended up being extremely successful? I remember when I got the QL promotional flyer, before buying it, reading about throughput vs seek times and how micrdrives had an upper hand on that. The real issue with QL's failure was lack of support from Clive. Had he owned Commodore the Amiga 1000 might not have made it to a second model...that's the real root of its demise IMHO, when you have someone that didn't think product cycle but just wanted to come up with new things -- which, btw, I also liked about him; it's a love hate relationship

Not sure about Linus and the QL. He certainly got to use the machine and learned how to program it. His pet peeve was he didn't like ROM-based operating systems for one. Did he learn about multi-tasking on the QL? Hard to say...if he didn't have TK2 then it would be difficult to play with its benefits from a user perspective, but we know very little about his experience with it. It is still nice to connect him to the QL and speculate (he certainly didn't own an Amiga or Atari). I think his comment is he learned how to code on the QL because of its lack of software support. I haven't heard him trash the QL, at least not the way he has the Amiga (well its Exec kernel).

But the article was a surprise to me on how it twisted and turned. Initially I thought it would be the usual "QL failed because of lack of reliability and those micrordives, Amiga was best" article and then it seemed maybe he was an Atari fan, but it ended postulating how the QL and Archimedes could have had the biggest impact on today (again, not clear if that's all that true, but at least the author's take and not a bad light to shine on the QL).

[Peter]

As such, it's maybe today the only 8-Bit-computer with a 16-bit CPU.

The sad thing is: Using a 68000 instead of 68008, while abandoning the coprocessor and the second serial port would have simplified development, and not even increased overall costs. Both RAM and ROM were dual banks, suitable for 16 bit anyway. And the PCB space saved was sufficient for the extra data lines and buffers.

[bwinkel67]

David Karlin was actually asked this questions on one of the general tech QA forums, with similar sentiment that it wouldn't have cost extra. He said it would have been a significant increase and that Sinclair research, at the time, had gotten a huge discount on the 68008.

[Derek_Stewart]

Hi,

If there was an interface to fit a 68000 CPU in to 68008 socket, what problems would occur?

This is what the Gold Caerd does, with its own CPU and RAM.

[dex]

But according to Tony Tebby, Motorola changed its pricelist and 68000 was then cheaper than 68008.
(Q Today, vol. 14 – „QL Firmware Bugs Myths“ and „25 years“)