Sinclairs' badging?

[Wicksy]

At launch there were several hardware items intended to made available to add-on.
0.5 MB RAM and external microdrives were on provisional price lists.
An expansion card module was talked about in the QL user and technical guide.
The launch brochure listed future developments. such as a modem, printer inf, hard drive inf, IEEE 488 itf, etc.
When Tandata rescued the modem after OE went under, they are quoted as having declined a badging deal as the fee was too high.

Later in '85, in QL User Clive was asked about the hard drive interface, but said as the the wafer ram expansion was progressing well, they would leave that to 3rd party suppliers to bring out.
Rumours of a badging deal for an expansion module appeared in the news section (QL User or World, am not sure now).

Did SR change it's mind and turn to badging hardware as an easier option?
Or was the money worries affecting Sinclair by now?

The monitor, floppy drive and printer are a different matter, as SR never intended to produce their own versions.

[swensont]

> The monitor, floppy drive and printer are different as SR never intended to produce their own versions.

Sinclair did sell a badged printer and monitor. Both were OEM and not made by Sinclair. I know because I bought them when I got my QL in April 1986.

Tim

[Wicksy]

As my post says Tim, I know , but they weren't developed and made by Sinclair (via contractors) as the ZX Printer, etc were. They were Kaga, Seikosha and Micro Peripheral products that were given the Sinclair branding, in 2 cases they were existing products with little change.

I think the memory and external microdrives would have been the bare minimum for me to consider the QL "finished" if based on the Spectrum output. It therefore feels unfinished.

[bwinkel67]

I think the memory and external microdrives would have been the bare minimum for me to consider the QL "finished" if based on the Spectrum output. It therefore feels unfinished.

I'm guessing, despite what Clive was saying in interviews, that the writing for microdrives was on the wall pretty early, and as soon as disk interfaces came out for the QL (mine was from 1985) they likely punted on the idea of further pursuing microdives. Were external ones actually sold? I know we have vDrive with the original housing idea, but I don't know if any original ones were sold in 85/86.

Memory was an easy add-on to manufacture so in that sense the QL was finished before being finished by the sale to Amstrad :-/

[dilwyn]

I think the memory and external microdrives would have been the bare minimum for me to consider the QL "finished" if based on the Spectrum output. It therefore feels unfinished.

I'm guessing, despite what Clive was saying in interviews, that the writing for microdrives was on the wall pretty early, and as soon as disk interfaces came out for the QL (mine was from 1985) they likely punted on the idea of further pursuing microdives. Were external ones actually sold? I know we have vDrive with the original housing idea, but I don't know if any original ones were sold in 85/86.

Memory was an easy add-on to manufacture so in that sense the QL was finished before being finished by the sale to Amstrad :-/

In 1984 or 85 I got an order form from Sinclair (I think I was trying to order an RS232 lead or something similar at the time) and on it was the external microdrive units. Don't remember the price. So I tried ordering a couple and got a letter back from a nice lady at Sinclair saying "you're not meant to be able to order those!" and went on to explain that they were a concept, but not expected to become available.

Which was how I ended up using external ZX microdrives for a while on the QL and running into two snags. They worked for reading and writing to QL cartridges, but they could not format cartridges for use on QL (if you formatted a cartridge on one of the internal QL drives, they worked fine with the ZX microdrives, though). And with a regular long microdrive cable, the cartridge slot ended up facing away from you on a QL with the ZX drives.

[bwinkel67]

Which was how I ended up using external ZX microdrives for a while on the QL and running into two snags. They worked for reading and writing to QL cartridges, but they could not format cartridges for use on QL (if you formatted a cartridge on one of the internal QL drives, they worked fine with the ZX microdrives, though). And with a regular long microdrive cable, the cartridge slot ended up facing away from you on a QL with the ZX drives.

I couldn't get mine to even read and write when I tried this recently (video link below). I did get about 85K formatting on the Spectrum, which seemed about right for the used cartridge I was using. And yes, facing backwards is sad :-/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UZa81FZG2I

[swensont]

Wicksy said:
>It's implied in the launch brochure that the listed add-ons would be Sinclair one's, by them.

When I got my QL I had a ZX81, T/S 1000 and T/S 2068. I knew that the Timex printer was an OEM from Alphacom since the ZX printer failed FCC testing. When the QL came out, I saw nothing in the brochure that led me to believe that Sinclair was making the monitor or the printer. Heck I knew that Sinclair did not manufacture anything and contracted it out (the QL to Thorn EMI and to Samsung).

I've been working in Silicon Valley for almost 30 years and OEM hardware is very common. A lot is rebranded and some is not. At my last job, we resold Supermicro servers, which had LSI branded disk controllers (like the ones I supported when I worked at LSI).

Tim

[Wicksy]

Bwinkle67, they seemed to have given up right at the start, re Dilwyn's experience.

Dilwyn, I always wondered if someone had tried to buy one. That answers that. I read the idea of an external mdv was floated for the Thor to make QL software transfer easier.