Why was the QL never successful?

[Dave]

I think the QL was successful. It was not a D-list celebrity of 80s computing, but a B-list celebrity. Everyone recognizes it and knows what it was, it moved the art forward in a way many other machines didn't, and we're STILL talking about it 18 years later!

[RWAP]

1/ have you kept your QL, and does it still work ? Which one ? My original went back to John Menzies for repair after 11 months (in 1985), then I had a new one because they lost the original. After about 5 years, I had it put into a PC tower case, with dual disk drives, Trump Card. I then sold that unit off and built an Aurora QL with Super Gold Card, twin ED disk drives, QubIDE and hard disk. That has since been sold off, but I still hoid stock of about 40 QLs - with 3 I use regularly with Trump Card or Super Gold Card for testing and preserving software

2/ did you expand it (more RAM, floppies...) ? See above

3/ did you use other programming tools than SuperBasic ? C68, Metacomco Assembler, DEAssembler, Turbo, Q-Liberator, C1 Assembler, QD98, The Editor ......

[polka]

My own version :

1/ have you kept your QL, and does it still work ?

I bought my first QL end 1984 in France like Steve Poole, and of course it was a QWERTY model ; it still works. Then a few years later, I found another one in Brussels for bargain price - just in case the first one would crash. It still works too.

On the first one, the only mod. I did was to output +5V beside the video plug, to complement signals for a SCART cable (see other post). On the second, I did no mods.

After a while, I had to change the keyboards on both and bought a couple of Schön keyb. with red function keys.

2/ did you expand it (more RAM, floppies...) ?

Indeed ! I soon bought a Sandy SuperQboard with STK2, 512K RAM, floppy and parallel interfaces, but fisrt, without a mouse -> I had it installed afterward (in one afternoon by Sandy HQs. while touring in England).

3/ did you use other programming tools than SuperBasic ?

FORTH (!!!), Lattice C, C68, some machine code (with FORTH), a public domain PROLOG (Edimburgh syntax), some Lisp (a deception - I diskike counting ((((((())))))). When I switched to PCs, I tried much more...

Bye Paul

[Mr_Navigator]

Least not forget guys, hindsight is a wonderfull powerful thing, remember the ZX Spectrum was just as fraught with design flaws, overheating, poor sound, rubbery keys I could go on. Look at the whole history of how CS went about things and you will see his style and approach rarely wavered.

I don't think it was the QL itself that was the main problem, I think it was two things;

Clive by this time was a household name and at the top of his game riding the wave of Conservatism in the Thatcher years (look how that ended) and being at the top there is always someone waiting to topple you.

Second was the media, at this time they had a major influence on public opinion, if they didn't like you, they went for the jugular. I think the media had had enough of Clive and the delays and so that was it. There was no Internet to speak of at the time so everything came through the media, especially newspapers and magazines.

[steps off soap box]

[polka]

Yes, very righth your last point !

In those times, I often desagreed with the opinions of the "magazines", but indeed, without Internet, had no way to forward MY point of view. But I don't mind that the QL was or was not a success, for me, it was anyway a very interesting machine... more than the primitive DOS/PCs that we were beginning to use at work.

Bye, Paul

[vanpeebles]

I think it's a great point too, not just in computer terms but in all kinds of industry. Where are all those computer mags that slagged the QL to bits now not to mention the journalists?

In this country we allow a foreign owned press to publish what they want in the pursuit of their own interests at the expense of ours. The C5 was also an example of this.

[Dave]

2. Which idiot thought of using one-way transport with one reel and moebius loop ? It's obvious that this kills you big time. There is no backward search. Once you miss the data for whatever reason, you have to go one whole round to get to it again. Which means VERY HEAVY load for that miniscule tape.
And big increase in access times. And very low limit to amount of tape you can stuff in there, so tehre can be no 200k or 500k "fat" microdrive.

Incorrect.

The microdrive places far less load on the tape than either of your alternate suggestions. Firstly, it only ever pulls the tape through in a single direction at a single speed, as opposed to shuttling tape back and forth, and overcoming the inertia of the reels for a direction change. Secondly, the load is exactly the same wherever you are on the continuous loop, not varying like on a cassette mechanism.

The tape is not a mobius loop - data is only written to one side of the tape. They did try mobius loops but the print-through issue was too severe.

At the time, there were three or four standard designs for continuous loop tape mechanisms - however, all were too large for the requirements of the QL. The smallest cartridge was 3/4" high and 5" deep, and required a complex and expensive mechanism that would have blown the budget for most users. Sinclair was always about trying to deliver a specification for a price-point - it was almost their sole competitive advantage until Amstrad came along.

[Dave]

Isn't that what I am doing, except 28 years late?

[adev]

1/ have you kept your QL, and does it still work ?

2/ did you expand it (more RAM, floppies...) ?

3/ did you use other programming tools than SuperBasic ?

1) Yes, I have; and sadly, no it doesn't. And it's not a plug-in chip that's flaked, because I've swapped them all with known good...

2) Yes - added FLP interface first, then 512K RAM. Those were the only upgrades my initial machine got. It also had a replacement keyboard memory at some point.

3) I dabbled with assembler, once, but not really. SuperBASIC was what I got good at.

[adev]

I forgot one:

- I would offer open system. By this I mean, I would publish minimum base specs for any other participant so that we could have some compatibility, but would not insist on licence fees etc.
If anyone thinks he can do better component XY, he would be welcome to compete.

I think it's fair to say, the computer market in the middle 1980s was very very different to how it is now. Firstly, "open source" barely existed - the closest thing you got to it really were the magazines with program listings.

You also have to remember, in 1984 when the QL was announced & launched, there wasn't really such a thing as the "small business computer"; the IBM PC did exist, but to be usable and useful you needed almost 10x the money the QL cost. There was no such thing as an IBM clone in those days. "Business" computers all ran CP/M (and there was much debate at the time as to why the QL didn't run it, and how it ought to run it, etc.); but CP/M was firmly 8-bit, in a 16-bit world. The QL, of course, has the distinction of being the world's first 32-bit "home" computer (the Apple Mac was announced a day later - and it's obvious why Sinclair announced the QL when he did).

As to why the QL "failed" - I think it basically comes down to the same problem almost all new Sinclair products had:

1) They were ahead of their time: The QL was aimed at small businesses, at a time when small businesses didn't need, want, or more importantly understand computers. By the time they did, the PC already ruled the roost.

2) The "kludge" and a number of bugs (many reported in the QL User magazine, as well as in the wider press) certainly did the QL no favours.

3) Microdrives, even then, were seen as a bit of a comedy storage system. Even though, I have to say, many of my now 30-year old mdv cartridges still work, unlike any of my much newer 1.44MB PC floppy disks. The big problem for me is those little fuzzy pads behind the tape, as they're failing, the cartridges also fail. I'm sure when I get replacements, they'll work again.

4) 28 "days" for delivery (but how long is a day...?) Our QL was ordered the day after it was announced, but didn't arrive for around 4-5 months. Mine was an "AH" machine, which IIRC was the first variant after the notorious "FB" (reportedly that stood for "Full of Bugs") ROM.

What has surprised me, with the rise of eBay, is just how many QLs are/were actually out there. I must have been 11 when our QL arrived, and for many years I never met anyone who'd also had one. And yet there must have been thousands changed hands in the last few years on eBay...

Maybe the old QL wasn't quite the failure we always thought it was?