Siclair Microvision (1977)

https://r-type.org/articles/art-452.htm

by joebig • 4 months ago

51 19 4 months ago

r-type.org

kgwgk• 4 months ago

Sinclair (currently it says Siclair)

avian• 4 months ago

I suspect the text comes directly from some poorly OCR'd article since it's full of such errors.

hbbio• 4 months ago

SINCLAIR!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_Sinclair

rwmj• 4 months ago

As you'd expect it was not a success in the end:

Supply exceeded demand, and 12,000 units were left unsold until they were sold off cheaply. This resulted in a £480,000 loss for Sinclair. Sir Clive Sinclair was certain that the TV1B model released in 1978 would be more successful, but sales were disappointing.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Radionics#Portable_te...)

His later TV was more interesting in design but not any more successful:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV80 http://rk.nvg.ntnu.no/sinclair/televisions/tv80.htm

stevekemp• 4 months ago

The one I remember is the TV80:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUYlS3HcC8s

davidwritesbugs• 4 months ago

I had one, hella cool. Had a funny flat battery I think? Regret not keeping it when it broke

ndsipa_pomu• 4 months ago

SINCLAIR

whobre• 4 months ago

Ironically , Clive Sinclair will be remembered for affordable home computers, but his real passion were small screens and electric vehicles. A true visionary - he was a couple of decades too early.

RIP Sir Clive…

MomsAVoxell2• 4 months ago

He was a crazy, inspired individual that is for sure. The Elon Musk of his time, replete with relevant temperament.

Sure is interesting to wonder where todays’ 21st Century Clive is, and what they’re up to. My guess is, somewhere way on the edge of the lunatic fringe, doing wild and kooky stuff.. and I think if I look close enough at the hardware hacking community today, I could probably spot a hundred Clives’ pretty easily.

TheOtherHobbes• 4 months ago

More of a UK Steve Jobs - similar marketing flair, filtered through British austerity.

He kept the same pitch throughout his career - make consumer goods as small and cheap as possible, wrap them in state of the art industrial design (superficially futuristic and memorable, but also as cheap as possible), and market them aggressively.

He did ok with his calculators, surfed a trend with his computers and (accidentally IMO) created a national ecosystem, but his other attempts were less successful.

He seemed to enjoy miniaturised downscale engineering for the sake of it, whether or not there was a market there.

sgbeal2• 4 months ago

The price of the black and white set has been fixed at £175 plus VAT. Sinclair says there is no prospect of a reduction. 'Firstly because it is such a complicated product and, secondly, we have a monopoly'.

At least he's honest about it.

adonovan• 4 months ago

It's not an illegal monopoly to be the sole entity capable of a technique. The problems come from manipulating the market to prevent competition.

sgbeal2• 4 months ago

There was no implying that it was illegal, only that it was balsy (or perhaps foolish) of him to openly declare it. It's not a great PR move, in that the word tends to have a negative connotation for consumers.

MomsAVoxell2• 4 months ago

I have a Sony TV8-301 in my retro collection, just waiting for me to build it a suitable power supply, give it a service, and wire it up to be used as a terminal for something powerful.

https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/sony_8_301_w8_301.html

The aesthetic of these old designs is really appealing. If you’re not familiar with the TV8-301, its been used as a prop in countless games and sci-fi movies .. and hasn’t the Sinclair Microvision also shown up in films in places? I want to say Bladerunner or Alien, but I’m pretty sure they just copied the aesthetic… Perhaps Space 1999 or The Tomorrow People or something like that?

In any case, its somewhat amusing to recollect just how fantastic it seemed, way back then, to have a portable television/video device to watch things on .. I used to lust after the toys in the Sinclair ads back in the day, it was a precursor to computing fever that hit me - and a lot of the rest of the world - on the cusp of the 80’s .. and it seems proper to notice that Sinclairs’ desire to give everyone the things that were being dreamed up by sci-fi authors seems to have been somewhat prescient.

We all have a TV in our pockets now, there’s no escaping it .. and what a world it has become, with literally everyone on the planet capable of starting their own channels, if they want to ..

joebig• 4 months ago

I need some help if you happen know your way around flybacks? I have a grime encrusted flyback transformer harvested from a crt set which I would like to hack around with, iff I had some inkling of the internal wiring of the coils, rectifiers etc. All it says is "FOK14A001 REV.0 ANYON T11520VO" and web searches refuse to surface an exact schematic; even though a lot of general information is available. But piecing together a schematic for this specific model is proving a drag from these nebulous floaters.

MichaelRo• 4 months ago

Kids today probably won't get what's the big idea with "just" some TV, no DVD playing capability, no computer games. But in the early 90s I would have sold a kidney for one of these, on a boring 8 hour train trip, they would have been the ultimate gadget. Not just for entertainment purposes, watching TV, but also bragging rights since noone even dreamt of having one of these in that time period and that place (Eastern Europe). At least I didn't see or knew anyone that had such a thing.

samesimilar• 4 months ago

[sic]

matthewsinclair• 4 months ago

“Siclair” or “Sinclair”?

Siclair Microvision (1977)

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