On Oct 9, at 22:21 | Oct9, Stephen Usher wrote:
> On 07/10/2011 19:48, Malcolm Cadman wrote:
>> With, the QL, at the time of manufacture, it was the lack of a floppy
>> disk drive (in favour of the micro drives).
>
> Erm, yes, there was the lack of a floppy drive, but then there was the
> foolish decision of make the over-worked keyboard controller chip also do
> sound and RS232 receiving. It wouldn't have cost much more per unit to put a
> proper DART in the machine to handle the serial communications.
Nope - all they needed to do was to program it better.
Laurence Reeves proved with Hermes you could get working code with the 8049.
It's only issue was it was not fast enough to get a true 19200 input throughput.
Ok it was a relatively slow serial port but perfectly good enough at the time
when BBSs were V23.
It even coped with V22bis perfectly well a few years later (at 2400).
>
> Basically, Sir Clive wasn't like Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was a perfectionist
> with an eye for detail. Sir Clive has lots of ideas, most of which involve
> either making things smaller (even to the detriment of their function) and
> electric vehicles. He gets bored quickly and wants to move on and sell things
> before they're properly ready for market.
>
> Steve Jobs also had his flaws, we all do, but putting half-baked ideas into
> market wasn't one of them.
>
>
… but his philosophy with *all* his products was not to aid tinkering.
Iphone especially is very very difficult to modify at firmware level.
He even up to recently made it a puzzle even to *open* the products.
It is a great step forward that not only are the Macbooks now openable, but
there are official instructions on how to replace RAM and HD.
Battery though has dire warnings not to meddle, even if one removes the screwed
on back.
The QL was quite the reverse - it was so trouble-prone it *demanded* tinkering
at every level.
That is what made (and makes) it so attractive, and gave Quanta its name -
Isn't QL Users and Tinkerers Assocation?
Tony
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