Sinclair QL - Was It Really THAT Bad? 

The Sinclair QL actually came with a game built in! When you initially opened the box it contained a cool game of Scrabble as usually all the keys had fallen off in transit.

Coming from the Spectrum 48k in 1987, being able to easily expand QL SuperBasic with your own procedures and functions written in machine code were the most valuable (and time consuming😆) features of the QL to me. I still have the code for solving Mastermind with up to 9 colors in the blink of an eye, running the game of Life and lots of mathematical functions like PRIME, the Euler phi-function etc. All those extensions worked way faster than when written on a pc in almost any programming language, just from SuperBasic! Owned GoldCard and SuperGoldCard too, those were great expansion cards. Never experienced any QL hardware problems whatsoever by the way. Took me years to move from QL to pc because for me there were hardly any benefits to leave the QL. Thank you Sir Clive (and everyone at Sinclair!) for the joy you brought into my life!

Back in 1985, I was an electronics technician, working at a company called Lumic Ltd. The office computer was a Sinclair QL.

Good video. However, to answer your question: it was not underrated, it was underpowered and too early pushed to market, against future 68k powerhouses like Mac, ST and Amiga

I never had any problems with Microdrives, well until the foam tape pressure pads on all carts all became dust in about 2015. They were all made with foam from the same batch. Technically the data rate is higher than 720K 3.5" floppy drives. However, if you miss a sector on a cartridge (or cart as they were always known, not "wafer". A "wafer" was the media for the Spectrum's wafer drive.) you had to wait for it came around the tape again. Oh, and the QL was/is an excellent 68000 development platform.

I ran my business on one of these in the 80's. Using the Psion software pack and an accounts package. Easel and Quill were brilliant.

My Dad bought me a QL just after they came out. I learned super basic and spent 4 years writing all sorts of utilities for it. I backed up all my software (both shop bought and my own) and only remember getting the backups out once. I loved this machine, but did prefer the IBM with 3.5" floppy that I started borrowing from the shop I worked in a few years later. I remember sending 4 blank cartridges to a software house for 4 free games, and also the adverts for a game with a nasty looking crow or vulture that I could never afford (because I spent all my pocket money on blank micro drive carts to back up my software). Just remembered to add that the manual was fantastic. I had hand written notes on every page.

The folk lore* is that the QL was massively discounted at the same time that rumours of the ST and Amiga started (and Amiga may have been seen at a trade show, but no internet/video capture of the day, only NNTP Newsgroups and Fidonet email meant it was definably a rumour mill. So a number of developers and coders purchased QLs to learn Motorola 68000 machine code to get a head start. It was suggested that this was why a lot of UK companies were producing very good games on the Atari ST/Amiga platforms so early on. * like most folk lore, probably a grain of truth, but we will never know for sure.

I had a pair of these running at opposite ends of the building through the built in network. I also had a 5MB hard drive attached which was shared by both machines. The girl at the front desk liked it. She mostly used Abacus and Quill. I wish I still had it.

Clive I hope in the end saw that the Spectrum did achieve what he hoped just not in the way he planned. It might not have been used for education in schools, but it did educate thousands of people in coding...And it might not have been used by businesses, but those coders who went on to make games created businesses and plenty of profit for existing ones.

Hiho. Thanks for giving some attention to the sinclair ql system :). Im amazed to see our game conversion of Maziacs (Bugziacs) featured in your video. Kudos!

I visited a company that had 3 networked QLs but they spent so much time and effort trying to get them stable they went under. Sad as they spent hours working only to lose it all again and again. So many tears.

Interesting to see someone discovering the QL after all this time. Despite it's drawbacks - all too apparent to users, with time and a healthy bank balance you could upgrade it into a useful machine. A disk interface with extra RAM with a dual floppy drive was a good place to start - with 512K or 640K you could quite a lot more than the standard machine was capable of. Having the application software on floppies meant much quicker load times and a relatively secure storage medium. The Quill word processor and Archive database software could be programmed and customised - I used the database for magazine subscription data and address label printing. As time went on there were various GUI options available, you could have mice as well as joysticks. The price of the customisation though was a lack of standardisation - nightmare for software development. Games software was limited - the 128K QL wasn't a brilliant platform for arcade games but fine for adventures, puzzles, etc. If you needed speed you had to use machine code. These days if you're buying old machines you may need a new keyboard membrane - they fail over time and re-capping is also advised. Oh and check the power supply before plugging anything in. Enjoy :)

Having worked on these they were certainly not that bad. In my experience they were pretty reliable, and I worked RMA support for a distributor so I saw every return we had. The drives usually didn't break, but the cartridges were not all that reliable. The tape tended to stretch with use. I wrote a little program that just reformated the cartridge over and over, and after some hours the capacity had increased some due to the tape stretching. Once it stopped to increase the tape was pretty much stretched as much as it would and it would stay stable after that. ICL also used the QL as the base for their OPD or One Per Desk. It was a pretty interesting machine that I got to work with some years later when I worked service and support for ICL. It integrated a telephone, answering machine (kind of), mail system, serial terminal and normal computer functions. The phone part consisted of a handset and a modem with "speech" capability. You booted of a micro drive and there were a contact list, calendar, the "answering" system and mail system loaded. The contact list could be used to place a phone call, send a mail, book meetings or print addresses on labels and envelopes. The phone answering system was pretty rudimental. You had to enter the message as text and it was read back to the caller using a speech synthesizer. As I worked in Sweden the speech synthesis sounded even worse than for English, but you could code it using phonetics notation to get it understandable. As you might have guessed that wasn't used much where I worked. It also had some limited multi selection capability so you could make a kind of answering menu where the caller would enter number to select what they wanted. So you could get a log of who had called about say support, repair or other issues. The mail system as glorious, not. It wasn't email as we know it today as it was exclusively a ICL OPD thing. Sending a mail meant the OPD would call the recipients OPD and upload the message. So the receiver has to have an OPD, it ahs to be on and you have to know their phone number or at least have it in your contact list. I think you could send contact information, but I'm not sure anymore. So while advanced in it's primitive way, it was not as slick as email is today. The calendar also integrated with the phone and mail system to book to send and receive bookings for meetings and such. At work I used the OPD to burn BIOS for ICL computers onto E-PROM. Their PC line seriously sucked back then. Customers would call and tell me what machine they had and what program or peripheral they had a problem with and I'd dive into the PAPER version of the documentation and look up if there was a bios version for that machine that would allow whatever to work. Sometimes it was a case of "If you want programs X, Y and Zed to work you can't run Lotus 123. You will have to choose between X and Y. I've got BIOS that will work with either of them, Zed and Lotus, but not both at the same time." And yes these were supposed to be IBM PC compatibles. All techs at ICL hated them, but we couldn't say that in public at the time. Eventually ICL bought first a smaller PC server manufacturer I can't remember the name of, but their machines were infinitely better than what ICL had in the PC range, and then they bought Nokia PC. Yes that Nokia. This was when the mobile business took off for Nokia so they divested themselves of amongst other things their PC branch. And the PC techs as ICL were cheering! Well anyway, as you understand we were into the PC era, and yet we were still using the OPD at ICL back then. And it kind of made sense. It was pretty capable when treated as a phone and communication device. And if all you needed was a to write some mail, and I'm talking about the dead tree type snail mail, then it had you covered.

I had a QL.....well I actually had two QLs (I got a spare after the price drop). I mostly used it as a word processor, writing assignments for my degree and professional qualification. I was a big fan of quill ....my first WYSIWYG experience. Funny enough I later used quill on an early IBM PC.. I had the ????? Cub monitor (pretty sure it was a cub)....picture quality was awesome for the time. Only game I ever had for it was a cowboy adventure game (still played games on my spectrum). I eventually upgraded to an a strand 286 pc....the QLs are sitting in my loft ....after seeing this video I am very tempted to dig them out and have a play

When I was young, I had a C64 and of course, I stayed tuned to see what's new on the market. Amstrad CPC ? bumpy scrolling poor sprites and awful sound. Atari ST ? Yeah, but not impressed by the sound. Now you show the QL. Seriously, what was Sir Clive thinking ? Microdrive ? beeper ? I eventually switched my C64 for an Amiga 500

There was also a more expensive and even less successful version of the QL that was sold by ICL (International Computers Limited) to business users called the OPD (one per desk). It had a proper keyboard and a built in telephone, and the idea was that it would be the only piece of electronics you needed on your desk (hence the name). I only remember seeing it reviewed in the computer press, unlike the QL itself, but I know it was actually released at (I think) 999 British pounds

My Fatha Gunadasa Amarasingha and brother Nalin Amarasingha (Late) has made Sri Lankas first computerized telephone electronic billing systems and satellite dish antena manufacturing calculations using this Amazing Sinclair QL in 1988-1992 Thank you Sinclair for your Amazing 🖥️ ❤

Really wanted a QL at the time. It had more processing power than my ZX Spectrum. By the time i had the money the 16-bit era had seriously arrived and i went with the Atari ST and a bit later the Amiga. I feel i kind of missed out on something. Microdrives... In the last years of owing a Spectrum (originally a Sinclair 48K, then an Amstrad made 128K +2) I bought a couple of Microdrives with the Sinclair Interface 1 (it did work with Amstrad built 128K +2). I had also heard these drive were unreliable, but... I copied a lot of my own (home written) software onto them and even a few commercial apps. I recall, The Artist an art package, when it loaded it clearly demonstrated the Microdrives unreliability and reliability. The loading screen which would appear in typical line by line loading from cassette tape, appeared almost at once. However parts of the image where missing, the drive would attempt to reread the data eventually retrieving it. I was astounded by the fact it kept trying again and again to load the missing data, in an almost patchy/random manner, but it was very quick so the tape must have looped fast. Anti piracy inspired custom tape loading, used by games of the day would likely translate poorly to such a system. Although inventive minds would likely have adapted, had it caught on. Amazing times.

My dad came home with one of these and we spent hours exploring the software and getting everything going. I think he did some home accounts on it. Sadly there was not much software available for it anywhere and we back to using my Amstrad 6128. Still have the QL somewhere :)

The Spectrum 128 also had a phone jack (or more accurately, a BS 6312 socket) masquerading as an RS232C, presumably because an actual D-sub connector would have added a few pence to manufacturing costs; my friend tried plugging his into the phone line (we were dumb kids, how were we to know) and the 50V DC promptly killed the machine. Also, you *really* should've replaced the disintegrating sponges on the Microdrive wafers - they keep the tape pushed against the head so it probably would have solved the "Quill doesn't boot" problem, but even on the ones that work you're running the risk of sponge dust getting into the mechanism and causing some damage. Ounce of prevention, etc.

I think it's best compared with the ST: barebones hardware, lots of off-the-shelf parts, but one was actually a reasonably competent desktop machine, while the other had an awful keyboard and microdrives. Sure, there was a year and a bit between the launch of the two, and the ST was more expensive, but the QL was just engineered down way too much, and would've made more sense as a business machine if it at least came with the 68k version of CP/M or something.

Definitely one of my ever favorites Dan, thanks for the video and the part of it as a tribute to Sir Clive. I couldn't get enough of its Super-basic back then as a teen, still today i do consider it as the best basic back then, along with the BBC basic of course. The micro-drives ruined the reputation of this machine over time. If one could get hands on the THOR machine (CST), would have the ultimate overview for the abilities of this machine - bottom-line is the original configuration ruined the future of this wonderful machine actually.

My 1st was a ZX81 and then a TS2068 (still own). I remember reading about the QL and so wanting one. I completely fell for the sales hype. For my income level at the time even that was unobtainium. A few years later I read of the power supply issues etc and was grateful I hadn't spent my money to get one imported. I wonder what we could have gotten if he had set a price target x3.

I knew Clive personally a close friend of the family. He was a very complicated man but certainly amazing at times.

The Sinclair QL was an amazing and exciting product... but the Microdrive killed it. One can praise the computer itself, but there's no way to make excuses for the Microdrive. Or for the attempt to use wafer-scale integration as a replacement for the hard drive. Attempting to cut costs by using wildly unproven technology is just plum crazy, and he should have had enough sense to know that.

Hi Dan, Great video! It made me playing with a QL again, as I also have the vDrive from Charlie Ingley. You mentioned in the video, that you couldn't quite get all the images working from the vDrive. I had the same problem, but now sorted. What I also didn't do, is use VMAP to assign the vDrive as MDV1 (MAPV2), instead of MDV3. What some software does, is starting to boot wherever you load it, but will always look for the software in MDV1. So with the external vDrive assigned to MDV1, that problem is gone. Cheers, and regards from the Netherlands, René

Thank you for the interesting and informative video. It's pretty clear Sinclair designed this 1984 machine for 1983 or '84, and by 1985, it was hopelessly outclassed by the Amiga, Atari ST, and IBM XT, and even the Commodore 128. Almost every feature seems designed with compromise in mind.

I remember the QL very well. A local company where I live manufactured the case and keyboard. They also made the case for the ZX Spectrum, but the QL was supposed to be the really big thing. Lots of money was spent on tooling and equipment for high capacity manufacturing.

I'm surprised there was no mention of the BT/Merlin Tonto or ICL OPD. They sold in relatively good numbers (it is difficult to find hard stats) are based on the QL hardware, and did a pretty good job. They weren't sexy games machines, just an all-in-one desktop+phone that did pretty much what the QL was intended to do from the outset.

I've got very fond memories of my Sinclair QL. I enjoyed this trip down memory lane. Thank you very much.

I still have a Boxed QL, along with a Miracle Systems Super Gold Card which has a 68020 CPU and 4mb RAM. Sadly I sold my double Density ED disc Drives. I also have an Aurora, a hybrid QL/PC which currently houses that Super Gold Card. Quite rare now I suspect.

Nice video, thanks. I remember seeing the QL in magazines and lusting over it, but it was only on the market for like 2 years and then the Amiga 500 came along and I jumped on that instead.

I never knew of this system. My first computer was the Timex Sinclair 1000. I bought it to just play around with because I liked electronics and I could finally get a real computer (more or less). I worked in a department store at the time selling electronics and was previously a janitor and laborer. I learned from the Sinclair that I was naturally good with computers, upgraded to a PC, and eventually made IT my career. Sinclair jump-started what became a passion and livelihood. I'm sorry I never got to play around with this device. Once I moved to the PC, I stayed with that platform. I think I'll hook up my old Timex Sinclair and see if it's still working.

I'm pretty certain that the Sinclair QL was the first personal computer that could do pre-emptive multi-tasking. Even better, it could do this from SuperBASIC. The QL is a nice machine to use unless you're a gamer.

Thanks to Micro-Men, whenever I think of Sir Clive... I immediately think of "Jet Set fucking Willy!"

Why dont you have over 500k subs yet? Your video's are always entertaining and well produced.

Used a Merlin Tonto for five years back in the day, basically a phone with a QL, at the time a brilliant desk phone complete with an internal modem and handling two phone lines, years ahead of its time, and I don't think there's a desk phone that still matches it now

I’m loving the Plus/4 datasette and the god awful Plus/4 Joystick on display during the unboxing. My first system was a Plus/4 I got as a present at Christmas 1985! Happy days!

I bought one and loaded up 3D Chess. Wow hadn't seen anything like it before on something I could afford! Took it in to work, set it up in the lab and lost to everyone! Those micro drives though🤣.Just listened to the interview, Sony actually showed Clive their new invention the 31/2 floppy! What a difference that would have made!

Sir Clive in chasing the electric car dream. Was basically blinded to the fact he'd inadvertently created the first mobility scooter and just failed to realise it. Look at that market today, its a Mint.

Love the video. My first computer was the ZX81, then the ZX Spectrum. Then I bought the Sinclair QL for £399, when it was first launched. This was just a beautiful-looking machine, and in a way, a bit ahead of of' it's time. Love that big manual which it came with (don't see that anymore). Such great memories. Thankyou for this historical video.

I used QL's to teach a load of young people and the integrated software suite hit the nail/ I still have several microdrives :)

Nice, clear and concise. Had no idea it even had games so def tempted to have a look at one now.

The QL was like a half generation step. It couldn't really compete even with the Atari ST, while it was being positioned as a PC rival. It's a bit like the Atari Jaguar. Positioned as a leapfrog of its competition, despite it not being able to even surpass the previous generation in terms of interest. The QL STILL didn't even have a decent f'ing keyboard! It's a bit of a joke, trying to sell that to businesses who want a typist to knock out documents quickly from audio tapes.

As you dig into the design tale of the hardware and firmware it's seems that the QL was a good machine in every aspect that Clive didn't intervene in, but all the bits he cared about he got the call atrociously wrong. He wanted the microdrives, which didn't work well until ICL pointed out the value of adding a capacitor over the motor in 1985. After that they were a lot better but their reputation was established and 100,000 or so QLs were out there with duff drives. He wanted the flat screen, which never worked but making the circuitry compatable with it meant the graphics didn't display properly on a normal monitor or TV of the time with the left and right of the image falling off the screen. The fixation on launching before the Mac meant that couldn't be corrected when the screen was dropped from the plan. His poor business skills meant he negotiated too high a price for the 68008 early on rather than waiting and getting what by the time of the launch would have been a cheaper 68000 chip that would have made for a faster machine - seems he'd preferred the idea of sticking with a Z80. Around him he had a team who built SuperBASIC as an extensible, structured BASIC interpreter, and entwined it with QDOS as a pre-emptive multitasking OS with background cache of files on slower devices by default and so forth. The design aesthetic was award winning at the time though Clive went with the membrane rather than proper key switches. Whose decision just 128K of RAM was on a machine with 32K needed for video was I can't quite tell, though Apple were making the same obvious mistake just a little way behind Sinclair. In short: Clive's hardware, and Sinclair's "look and feel" firmware. The heart of a computer is the OS - hence all the Mac vs Windows, iOS vs Android etc - and in that sense it was a great machine, massively let down by the crappy hardware Clive saddled it with. His poor judgement duly brought down the company.

I think Sinclair cut way too many corners: Microdrives instead of floppy; Basic instead of a GUI, crappy keyboard, no power switch etc. Pitching it against PC and Mac was also overselling it quite a bit. Still loved my QL though!

The QL was a fine machine of it's time but the Micro drives were dire, like a warmed over mini 8-track player. They should have stick a 3.5" floppy drive in it.

I bought a QL to replace my speccy. I only used it for a few years before the Amiga bug got me. I was a member of the QL Users and Tinkerers Association and that is where my hatred of all things PC was born

I remember standing in front of a Q L in Wh Smith in Manchester Arndale. I was only 21 and felt in awe as I touched the keyboard of the display unit... Crazy

you can see @ 13:19 the QL-Quill wafer is damaged (the pad is missing to push against the read/write head) so no wonder it didn't load!

always wanted to add one of these to my collection! what a beautiful example you have there Dan

In the Late 80's early 90's the office I worked from had an ICL OPD (one per desk) which was nothing more than a re-packaged QL built into a monitor, it was used for word processing and producing weekly/monthly figures and graphs for our department. The microdrives I were reliable but were slow at reading programes so I amended a spectrum trick that allowed multiple copies to be written to the cartridge so that you didn't have to wait until it went to the beginning of the tape to start to load, The OPD was still in use when I left in 96.A service manual for the QL in pdf is (was) available online as I had to reapair one in 2000.

The QL was also rebadged by ICL as The One Per Desk units (OPD) and was used in bulk by the original incarcation of the National Bingo Game so there was one in every Bingo Hall in the Country that took part in this game,.

Great video Dan :) loved it!

Was that a C16 tape deck i seen in this video, was more a commodore fan boy but i did enjoy a game or 2 on the ZX Spectrum back in the day. Great stuff as always.

I'm a hardcore Texas Instruments fan. I had, and still support the TI-99/4A. Good again to see a machine full of Texas Instruments chips. In this case all the TMS4164 RAM chips 🙂

Once again, another video to download and watch later with plenty of beer and no ads. Tell ravi to also get he's arse in gear and do more videos the lazy little sod 🤪

I'm sure it was the microdrives and the keyboard that did in for the QL as a serious business computer. I remember in 1985 when the QL was being activaly marketed, I worked for a small firm that was looking for its first computers, and they bought a couple of Amstrad PCW256s in the end. And those had a good keyboard, used floppies, and had a monitor and a printer as part of the package. Which the QL didn't.

I would love to get one of these, as well as a Sam Coupe. That would be a good video. I'm sure the Sam Coupe was supposed to be the successor of the Spectrum. Even some of the speccy mags put some games on their covertapes for it too.

I think that there's a thing about the QL that slips under every retrospective reviewer's radar which is that it inherently multitasked, we're so used to multitasking these days that we don't really think about a time when that wasn't the norm. I remember writing a very simplistic bouncing ball program where each ball was just an instance of the same code with just the location and direction data being unique to each instance and the scheduler managing all the instances fairly transparently - you just couldn't do that on anything else at the time (well, not on anything that was within the financial means of a home user).

Never knew the QL was a thing. Never remember seeing one here in Ireland. It was all ZX's and C64's before friends jumped to consoles (though I remember 1 friend had an Amstrad).

Was interested in it and ended up with handheld devices. Psion 3, 3c and 3mx became my ZX-Spectrum replacement(s) later on and I skipped some with what I had to do in real life.

The microdrives had pretty much the same problems as the 8 track cartridges. Pinchroller, pressing pad (pressing the tape on the head) and the tape lubrification (as the windings move between each other on a single spool) as well as tape deterioration and thinning the tape due to the use. As the tape width is super small it's a mess to respool the tape after relubifrication. I got a QL "Business Suite" tape running after two hours of work.

I had a QL. I wrote a few business packages for private companies back in the day for it, along with some encryption stuff. It was the last "home computer" I coded for before I moved onto PC's and eventually big back end systems.

Flippant thought: did the name also kill it? Imagine its marketing as the "Sinclair One Per Desk", a much more office sounding brandname that worked for the ICL variant and would have helped more clearly distance it from the two-letter ZX styling of the 80/81/Spectrum.

What I find interesting that despite it being a British machine, it uses pretty much a bog standard US ANSI layout. Even @ is on 2, which is where Pound is on modern UK keyboards (I'm not british btw)

Wow true walk down memory lane for me. I still have 2 machines one with a memory add on and yeah it falls out all the time lol. I used to play Tank Busters for hours.. mainly as that was all I had till I learned to mess with Touch Typing then I had access to space invaders as the ‘Reward’ lol

On no delete key - yes. But functionality is there: CTRL & arrow left - Delete the character to the left of the cursor CTRL & arrow down - Delete the character under the cursor etc. You can also delete lines and even words. So reading manual is essential. e.g. SHIFT & CTRL & left - Delete the word to the left of the cursor SHIFT & CTRL & right - Delete the word to the right of the cursor

Microdrives were one of the things that turned me off the Spectrum when I was first thinking about computers. Even before rumours of their unreliability started emerging, they struck me as a clever but limited idea. Eventually, though, the need for DTP software combined with a limited budget directed me toward PCs

"The QL doesn't have a delete key". Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. A very interesting episode in computing history, though.

Psion Office suite actually made it onto the PC; we ran it on 286 and 386s in my first computer role.

Really wanted one as a kid. Used to look at them upstairs in whsmiths, checking the keyboard for loose keys.

I winced every time you used the word wafer. They were cartridges to those of us who used them. The Rotronics Wafadrive was a completely different and competing system.

I remember all this at the time. Basically I always said...too little, too late and too kludgy. I remember in the late 80's seeing these being sold off in bulk in Dixons or similar for like £100. Sad to see. But yeah back in the day...the delays...the delays...

I was given a whole load of Sinclair computers. Including 5 spectrums, 3 QL’s with micro cassettes and a few Spectrum 128’s. I had no use for most so they were donated to a computer museum in Swindon. I’ve kept a few mostly for display as they don’t appear to work well. May have to re visit these.

Hiya - I always wanted the C5!!! My late Dad bought the QL. It had the Microdrive's & Cartridges - which I also used with my Sinclair ZX Spuctrum + 🙂🚂🚂🚂

I remember the ZX80 and the ZX81. And I was an owner of the Spectrum 48k. If time travel is ever perfected, don't go back to witness the Titanic sinking, the eruption of Mt Etna, the Kennedy murders or other such historic events, go back and buy a Spectrum 48k and any of the plethora of the Basic programming magazines that sprouted up during this period. I remember my cousin's husband used an IBM for his work. It had 8 meg memory. I thought that was serious overkill! What people refer to now as desktop computers we called 'big box' computers, because of the base unit.

I was living in Perth, Western Australia and a friend's flatmate (?"Julie Johnson"?) had a QL with the microdrives and that was early-mid 1987. (They were a wholly unreliable person, so had probably purchased it, price no matter, with a worthless cheque.) I recognised it's Sinclair-ness as I had a Spectrum 48k back in the day (and I still do, and it is still "as new" in original box. Although my box was plain brown cardboard NOT the glossy printed boxes I've seen on RU-vid videos). Colleagues at my prior workplace, in Christchurch, New Zealand, had built for me (a clone) of a Kempston Joystick Interface, using circuit info in, then Christchurch based NZ Computer Magazine "Bits and Bites" around 1984. Yeah I've still got that Joystick and fakeKempston interface also. Not sure how all my audio cassettes with the programs will be nowadays.

I remember going to my local computer shop when it launched. My take on the QL was that the BBC B covered the serious user with it's massive expansion capability and this was far too lightweight in terms of it's hardware quality and software library. That said I reckon SINCLAIR could have had similar success as the Spectrum if they had made a gaming machine of the QL as the reliability of the microdrive woudn't have mattered to people who were just playing games.

Amazing machine for its time which I nearly bought, but the lack of a 3.5" floppy drive and monitor put me off.

I remember Dr Ian Logan wrote a book all about the Microdrives for the earlier Spectrum. I don't think it was ever updated for the QL though.

I had a Speccy and my dad had a QL - I did my very first digital art on the QL, a silhouette of Alice Cooper. Took me longer to do that one small piece than it does to do my current work!

Unfortunately, 32kB of frame-buffer was too much for QL, if there is any fast action game for it, with smooth scrolling and some sprites, it struggles probably more than CPC. Even ST has a problem with 32kB, and it was a powerhouse compared to QL.

I was very much interested in QL when it was launched. Too bad it didnt work out for Sinclair. Very promising platform it was.

Wasn't interested in the Sinclair QL computer myself. But the machine had a fairly memorable advertisement for it. The Quantum Leap indeed.

I used one in my writing business. The keyboard was very poor and the microdrives lost me a lot of data. Why didn't I backup? It happened when I was TRYING to back up. My printer was an electric typewriter with a home-made interface.

I had a QL and was my everyday computer for word processing and spreadsheets for 6 years. I had no trouble with the microdrives in that time. It was a good value computer and did what I wanted at a fraction of the price of a IBM PC compatible. I used Win95 & then Win98 but since have used Linux

I think with a more honest timeline and better quality control the QL would have been a solid computer for its time. It ticked all the boxes (like 80+ column mode in colors, RS 232 serial). However I think Dan you're right - Business people would have payed anything. I would add "as long as IBM is written on the box" ;) Anyway, being the "cheapest" wasn't a factor for business customers. To my knowledge, a lot of QL users first got a disk drive + controller. So much for the microdrive. I think, a lot like Commodore, accepting that you aren't the business company, could have done a lot for Sinclair.

I had one of the first QLs (having been a Spectrum user since I was 14 years old). Microdrives failed after a week so it went back and i got a different version that worked well for a couple weeks then the drives failed again and I got another one. Once again the drives failed me and I gave up. The strange thing was, I never had an issue with microdrives on my Spectrum. Worked flawlessly. The 68008 was a big mistake (I assume to cut costs). 8 bit address bus meant it was about half the speed of a 68000. I think the 68008 was mainly used in washing machines and suchlike. Why that decision was made I'll never know especially since the price of the QL was reduced so quickly. I can remember being able to program with 32 bit instructions (internally) but then everything communicated with RAM at 8 bits. Like what was the point of that?

If only the QL was released with two floppy drives and an OS like C/PM it would have been a hit. Those tape drives were why I did not buy one back in the 1980's.

Dan - have you got a copy of Qdos? It would be nice to see a bit of that. How useful was its multitasking?

I have a picture of me using a Spectrum when I was 3 years old. Really set me on my career path.

I had QL and loved it. It was before its time and the micro drives was a missstep for this product. But It was my fave of the Sinclair I had

Having had a Spectrum 16K upgraded later to 48K, I saved up to buy a Sinclair QL, I later worked for the shop where I purchased the QL from and this led to a life in IT, in various roles. I never purchased the QL thinking it was a games machine.

Back in the day 14~15ish I remember the Spectrum I remember the first and only program I wrote (for dealing with matrices addition subtraction multiplication and division) as I thought the math was a waste of over the top repeating procedures. Most of all I remember the QL watching some vector graphic demo of a game in the shop and the price tag. The Apple II was a thing in the school computer labs (was not special enough to get invited to do classes) 2 years later in the workforce the PC(IBM and clone) was king and shortly after (years) I had an Amiga 500 then a 1200 and was playing the same game as the demo in colour with filled in vector lines. Now I write this on my Raspberry Pi4 after watching this from that same machine. Memory's not sure I would go back oh and as for the Spectrum I still have it with non functional microdrive that lasted about a year or so.

I wouldn't worry about parts being 'proprietary'. Everything was, back in those days ;) . Most of the 'standards' were just companies ripping off other companies' designs (which would get them sued out of existence today), like PC clones ripping off the PC-AT 5170 design, or Atari's DE-9 joystick ports, or IBM"s PS/2 ports, etc. Later on, some of these things were retroactively written into standards, but they didn't start out that way. There was only a handful of actual standardized parts: - the IEC 60320 C14 and NEMA 5-15-P power cable that PCs (and some other machines) used...er, plus regional variants of the mains end of the cable. - RS-232/422 ports. - The parallel port - er no wait that wasn't actually a proper standard until later. - The parallel version of IEEE 488 (yes, the CBM PET drives used a cable that was from the 60s and standardized in '75).

FWVILIW: With the benefit of hindsight one wonders is the C5 might has been more successful as a scooter, although those are illegal on UK roads and the whole idea might simply have been before it's time.* (suitable batteries?) The QL? Not a bad machine, once customers actually got production models! But I think Sir Clive misread the market when speccing it, compounded by the QL being horribly outclassed in comparison to other 68k machines that were appearing. *I have very mixed feelings about electric scooters: On the one hand mine is my main transport when I'm in Greece - I live on a Greek island part of the year. On the other hand the purveyors of e-waste who claim to hire the darn things really should be banned worldwide, and far too many e-scooter owners are dangerous and inconsiderate twats. Maybe the UK is better off continuing to make their use illegal?

18:18 I guess it works basically like an AUX to Compact Cassette adapter, which where popular in the 2000s to connect mp3 players to car stereos, except with added electronics like an SC controller and a signal generator that generates the signal, that the tape would also generate. So I guess it isn't faster.

I mean. No, but also yes. It was so demonstrably NOT what any segment of the market wanted, but taken on it's own merit, it's actually quite an interesting machine.