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The Sinclair QL is a personal computer launched by Sinclair Research in 1984, as an upper-end counterpart to the ZX Spectrum. The QL was aimed at the serious home user and professional and executive users markets from small to medium-sized businesses and higher educational establishments, but failed to achieve commercial success. While the ZX Spectrum has an 8-bit Zilog Z80 as the CPU, the QL uses a Motorola 68008. The 68008 is a member of the Motorola 68000 family with 32-bit internal data registers, but an 8-bit external data bus.
The Sinclair ZX80 is a home computer launched on 29 January 1980 by Science of Cambridge Ltd.. It is notable for being one of the first computers available in the United Kingdom for less than a hundred pounds. It was available in kit form for £79.95, where purchasers had to assemble and solder it together, and as a ready-built version at £99.95.
The ZX Spectrum is an 8-bit home computer that was developed by Sinclair Research. It was released in the United Kingdom on 23 April 1982, and became Britain's best-selling microcomputer.
The ZX81 is a home computer that was produced by Sinclair Research and manufactured in Dundee, Scotland, by Timex Corporation. It was launched in the United Kingdom in March 1981 as the successor to Sinclair's ZX80 and designed to be a low-cost introduction to home computing for the general public. It was hugely successful; more than 1.5 million units were sold. In the United States it was initially sold as the ZX-81 under licence by Timex. Timex later produced its own versions of the ZX81: the Timex Sinclair 1000 and Timex Sinclair 1500. Unauthorized ZX81 clones were produced in several countries.
Sir Clive Marles Sinclair was an English entrepreneur and inventor, best known for being a pioneer in the computing industry and also as the founder of several companies that developed consumer electronics in the 1970s and early 1980s.
Sinclair BASIC is a dialect of the programming language BASIC used in the 8-bit home computers from Sinclair Research and Timex Sinclair. The Sinclair BASIC interpreter was made by Nine Tiles Networks Ltd.
A peripheral from Sinclair Research for its ZX Spectrum home computer, the ZX Interface 1 was launched in 1983. Originally intended as a local area network interface for use in school classrooms, it was revised before launch to also act as the controller for up to eight ZX Microdrive high-speed tape-loop cartridge drives. It also included a DE-9 RS-232 interface capable of operating at up to 19.2 kbit/s. At hardware level it was fundamentally a voltage adaptor, the serial protocol being implemented in software by bit-banging. This led to problems when receiving data, but not when transmitting.
Sinclair Research Ltd is a British consumer electronics company founded by Clive Sinclair in Cambridge. It was originally incorporated in 1973 as Westminster Mail Order Ltd, renamed Sinclair Instrument Ltd, then Science of Cambridge Ltd, then Sinclair Computers Ltd, and finally Sinclair Research Ltd. It remained dormant until 1976, when it was activated with the intention of continuing Sinclair's commercial work from his earlier company Sinclair Radionics, and adopted the name Sinclair Research in 1981.
3D Monster Maze is a survival horror computer game developed from an idea by J.K. Greye and programmed by Malcolm Evans and released in 1981 for the Sinclair ZX81 platform with the 16 KB memory expansion. The game was initially released by J. K. Greye Software in December 1981 and re-released in 1982 by Evans' own startup, New Generation Software. Rendered using low-resolution character block "graphics", it was one of the first 3D games for a home computer, and one of the first games incorporating typical elements of the genre that would later be termed survival horror.
The ZX Microdrive is a magnetic-tape data storage system launched in July 1983 by Sinclair Research for its ZX Spectrum home computer. It was proposed as a faster-loading alternative to the cassette and cheaper than a floppy disk, but it suffered from poor reliability and lower speed.
The ZX8301 is an Uncommitted Logic Array (ULA) integrated circuit designed for the Sinclair QL microcomputer. Also known as the "Master Chip", it provides a Video Display Generator, the division of a 15 MHz crystal to provide the 7.5 MHz system clock, ZX8302 register address decoder, DRAM refresh and bus controller. The ZX8301 is IC22 on the QL motherboard.
Brataccas is a science fiction action-adventure game released in 1985 for the Amiga, Atari ST, and Macintosh. It was the first game published by Psygnosis. Brataccas is built on the remains of the much-hyped vaporware project Bandersnatch, which was partially developed by Imagine Software. The storied tale of the game's development led to close press attention in the UK computer market. When Brataccas finally shipped, this attention resulted in considerable coverage in the computer press. It was generally reviewed poorly due to significant control problems, although the graphics were widely praised.
Rick Dickinson was a British industrial designer who developed pioneering computer designs in the 1980s. Notable examples of his design work include the ZX81 case and touch-sensitive keyboard and the ZX Spectrum's rubber keyboard.
The Australian ZX Users' Association (AZUA) was an Australian computer users' group established in 1981 to support users of the Sinclair ZX80 and Sinclair ZX81 computers. It closed in 1986 after producing thirty-nine issues of its magazine AZUA and the Australian Sinclair Gazette.
Touch Typist Typing Tutor is developed by Sector Software.
The ZX Spectrum character set is the variant of ASCII used in the ZX Spectrum family computers. It is based on ASCII-1967 but the characters ^, ` and DEL are replaced with ↑, £ and ©. It also differs in its use of the C0 control codes other than the common BS and CR, and it makes use of the 128 high-bit characters beyond the ASCII range. The ZX Spectrum's main set of printable characters and system font are also used by the Jupiter Ace computer.
YS MegaBasic is a BASIC programming language interpreter for the 1982 Sinclair Research ZX Spectrum microcomputer, written by Mike Leaman. The interpreter was available by mail-order from Your Spectrum magazine, hence the name "YS MegaBasic".
The ZX80 character set is the character encoding used by the Sinclair Research ZX80 microcomputer with its original 4K BASIC ROM. The encoding uses one byte per character for 256 code points. It has no relationship with previously established ones like ASCII or EBCDIC, but it is related though not identical to the character set of the successor ZX81.
The ZX81 character set is the character encoding used by the Sinclair Research ZX81 family of microcomputers including the Timex Sinclair 1000 and Timex Sinclair 1500. The encoding uses one byte per character for 256 code points. It has no relationship with previously established ones like ASCII or EBCDIC, but it is related though not identical to the character set of the predecessor ZX80.
Wanderer is a 1986 action video game developed by Lankhor and published by Pyramide Soft. It was released on Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 64, Sinclair QL, and ZX Spectrum. The game was authored by Béatrice & Jean-Luc Langlois. It has the distinction of being Lankhor's first game. It was edited by Pyramid for QL and Atari ST, and then licensed to Elite. Wanderer 3D was released by Encore in 1990.
