Sinclair and the 'Sunrise' Technology: The Deconstruction of a Myth (21 page)

In the months following its launch, one of the most frequently voiced complaints about the Spectrum was that it failed to provide users with an efficient method of storing data. Having written a program for the machine, the only way it could be saved for future use was with the aid of a cassette recorder and standard magnetic tape. Although cheap, the problem with cassette storage is that it is notoriously unreliable and impossibly slow. The most widely used alternative to cassettes is the floppy disc. Using a disc drive for the storage and retrieval of data is fast, efficient and reliable. It is also relatively expensive. A disc drive often costs more than the computer it serves.

At the Spectrum’s launch, Sir Clive alerted his public to the fact that he was developing a new breed of fast-storage device, which he referred to as the ZX Microdrive. Since he offered no further details about the product, the world was driven to speculation. To the ever optimistic computer journalists, it seemed a fair bet that the man who smashed the price of the home computer was about to do the same for the disc drive.

Although the Microdrive was announced in April 1982, a number of Research employees seem to recall that work on the project was started around the time of the ZX81 development. What is not in question is that the solution to the design problems posed by the new product took considerably longer than anyone had anticipated. While David Southward ultimately assumed overall responsibility for the Microdrive, it seems only fair to note that it was the tenacity and imagination of R&D staffer Ben Cheese that got the product to the market.

The Microdrive is more of an upmarket cassette recorder than it is a low-grade disc drive. Sinclair’s little black box is used in conjunction with especially manufactured miniature cartridges that contain a loop of 200 inches of magnetic video tape on which 85K of data can be stored. Although considerably slower and less flexible than a disc system, the Microdrive can nevertheless load a 48K program in about 4 seconds. As far as Spectrum users were concerned, its arrival made cassette storage an instant anachronism.

Whatever the merits or otherwise of the Microdrive concept, the device should go down in the annals of microcomputing as a minor miracle of engineering. The important point to bear in mind is that, even under ideal conditions, such a crude approach to fast-access data storage simply shouldn’t work. Given the speeds at which it travels, the cartridge tape ought to snap and the virtually standard audio heads miss more data signals than they catch. In the light of the crippling component economies constraining the design, Cheese’s achievement should be regarded as a work of genius.

According to frontline sources, progress on the Microdrive suffered from a curiously oscillating development. Engineers at Sinclair Research would, for example, complete the analogue part of the design, only to discover that their solution required prohibitively high component costs to get the digital end working. So they were forced to go back and modify the analogue design, and the process would start all over again. After a while, the entire Microdrive development took on the character of an endless loop.

Sixteen months after Sir Clive’s original announcement, Ben Cheese’s final design was at last immortalized on yet another Ferranti chip. The device was launched in July 1983 and retailed at £49.95. (One of the hidden drawbacks of the product was the high cost of cartridges, which initially sold at £4.95 each. In time, the tapes were reduced to the more realistic price of £1.95.) Given the incredible problems Cheese had overcome in the course of a gruelling three-year development, MD Nigel Searle’s explanation of the Microdrive’s delay sounds a touch churlish:

The delay on the Microdrives has been the result of mechanical difficulties we had not foreseen. These have now been solved along with an improvement in the performance of the drives. They are now much more reliable than we had hoped to achieve ... The designers would like to go on and on making improvements. But a line has now been drawn.’ (Microscope, 24 March 1983.)

In some respects, the launch of the Microdrive seemed to suggest that Sinclair Research was beginning to learn from its mistakes. The company made no attempt to pretend that initially the device would be produced in sufficient quantities to satisfy demand:

Sinclair’s long-awaited Microdrive will not go on ‘general release’ even when it is eventually launched later in the year. Instead, only 5000 Microdrives will be made available to the original mail-order purchasers of the Spectrum ... Sinclair managing director Nigel Searle said this measure was being taken to ‘reward’ original Spectrum customers who suffered long delays as Sinclair struggled to meet demand. However Searle agreed that the exclusivity of the launch would also enable Sinclair to test demand for the Microdrives and gear production accordingly, (ibid.)

Although there was general disappointment that Sinclair had not attempted to come up with a cheap solution to industry-standard disc drives, the overall critical response to the Microdrives was positive:

In some ways [the Microdrive] could be more important than the Spectrum itself. That has done well because it is so cheap, not because it is technically special. The Microdrives on the other hand are very different to anything on the market and could start a whole new trend with other companies copying them. Let’s all hope so. (What Micro?, October 1983.)

Curiously enough, none of the initial spate of reviews predicted the most likely reaction from the software houses to a device using a non-standard medium like the Microdrive’s cartridges. Indeed, some of the reviews anticipated that the software houses were likely to back Sir Clive all the way:

Sinclair seems to have done it again. The Microdrive should have a major impact on the Spectrum software market, not only for games but for sophisticated personal/business software like spreadsheets or database applications. (Personal Computer News, 4 August 1983.)

As it turned out, the majority of software producers decided that by the time the Microdrive was launched the Spectrum was coming to the end of its commercial life. This, coupled with the high unit price of the cartridges, ensured that very little software was retailed for the Microdrive. In the final analysis, however, although the Microdrive was hardly a revolution in data storage, it was a massive improvement on cassette recorders.

Spectrum owners who thought they were getting their hands on a Microdrive for a mere £49.95 were dismayed to discover that you couldn’t simply plug the device into the computer, but required an additional interface. The Interface I was released at the same time as the Microdrive and, as long as you bought the pair as a set, cost an extra £29.95 (or £49.95 as a separate item). Unlike the precarious RAM packs for the ZX81, the design of the new interface was professional and stable. It simply plugged into the back of the Spectrum and was secured by a couple of screws to the computer’s underside. Apart from controlling the Microdrives, the Interface I facilitated two other functions. The device offered ‘standard’ RS232 facilities, which allowed Spectrum users access to a wide range of printers and modems. It also offered a simple ‘local area network’ option, which essentially means that up to 64 Spectrums can be connected together, communicate at relatively high speeds and share Microdrives and printers. The Interface I was praised by users and reviewers alike, and was generally considered to be a well-designed and efficient addition to the Spectrum’s hardware.

The ugly sister of the Spectrum peripherals was released in September 1983 with little in the way of fanfare and to about as much interest. The Interface II was designed to allow users of the machine to use joysticks and ROM software cartridges. The device disappeared without a trace within twelve months. The reason for such a riot of indifference was that independent peripherals producers had been selling joystick interfaces almost since the day the Spectrum was released, and that the Interface II allowed the use only of ‘switch-type’ (rather than potentiometer) joysticks. Owners rightly decided that the ROM-cartridges simply weren’t likely to be produced by a sufficient number of software houses to make the device worth their investment. Furthermore, at a cost of £19.95 the cartridges offered software at three or four times the price of a tape. So why bother? And very few did.

Before moving on to discuss the next major Sinclair product development, it seems sensible to depart from our chronological sequence to record the company’s efforts to extend the commercial life of its most popular product in the face of increasingly sophisticated competition. As we have seen, the long-term appeal of the Spectrum was significantly constrained by the economies imposed on its development. Although the machine’s sluggish software and dubious hardware were no impediment to success as long as the machine stood alone in the market, the first sight of organized competition forced Sinclair to rely on the cheapness of the machine to provide the main thrust of his promotional strategy.

For an interim development that sought to exploit the paucity of product in a hungry market the Spectrum’s quick-‘n’-dirty development was both appropriate and necessary. Had the company followed through with its original plans and completed the development of a medium-price advanced colour micro, there was a good chance that such a Super Spectrum would have replicated its forerunner’s success and ensured domination of a new section of the market. Ironically, it was the Spectrum’s apparently unstoppable success that convinced Sir Clive that the creation of a SuperSpectrum was unnecessary. In spite of its relatively advanced stage of development, the project was abandoned.

By the middle of 1984, the Spectrum was looking tired; Sinclair Research had no product to satisfy a growing section of the market, and the only indication of the company’s future in microcomputing came in the shape of the multiply flawed QL (see next chapter). At this stage, the full-scale development of an appropriate product seemed out of the question. In June 1984, the company pondered its options and concluded that the lightning development of a stop-gap product seemed to offer the simplest, most economic solution to its dilemma. The result of these deliberations was eventually marketed as the Spectrum+.

Once one has explained why the Spectrum+ was produced, it’s difficult to know what else to say about the machine. Rumours of a Spectrum upgrade began to circulate in September 1984 and, encouraged by the company’s elaborate denials of such a development, the computer press made a meal of building on its own speculations. To everyone’s surprise, the Spectrum+ was never actually launched, but simply became available in October, priced at £179.95. The machine’s sudden appearance infuriated the chain-stores, since most had already stocked up for Christmas with standard Spectrums. However, a presumably forewarned W. H. Smith was able to take advantage of its privileged position as the leading Sinclair stockist by making the most of seasonal sales of the new product.

The reality of the Spectrum+ caused its own problems for reviewers who had got so much mileage out of speculation. How much could you say about a standard Spectrum 48K with a new keyboard? Most writers opted to be out front about their disappointment. The general consensus seemed to be that the machine looked like a sawn-off QL, and that considering the price rise the minimal improvements simply were not good enough:

Sinclair Research could have taken a bit more time and effort to produce a machine it’s worth upgrading to. Of course Sinclair Research couldn’t do a very enhanced Spectrum (say, with CP/M ability) as the product would more than likely knock spots off the QL. So what we get instead is a rather limp marketing ploy and a return to old Spectrum prices. And while I’m on this tack, you’ll notice that the idea of a 16K colour computer for under £100 has been quietly dismissed. (Your Spectrum, December 1984.)

It was not as if the consumer was being presented with a choice between the old and new machine, since in an interview in Your Spectrum (December 1984) Nigel Searle inadvertently let slip that the company intended phasing out the standard Spectrum. To add insult to injury, the new packaging for the computer seemed to owe more to economy than any real attempt to improve an old product. A number of reviewers noted that the keys of the so-called ‘professional keyboard’ tended to fall off, and with the passing of time the Spectrum+ track record regarding quality control was less than impressive. Statements from major retailers such as Boots seemed to indicate that the putative upgrade was more trouble than it was worth:

Return levels for the Spectrum+ are still high, according to a Boots spokesman. ‘It seems to take one person to sell a computer and three to deal with the complaints. The acceptable returns level is 5 to 6 per cent. Returns are running at four or five times that amount and 90 per cent of those faults are genuine.’ (Sinclair User, September 1985.)

Far from breathing new life into an old product, the release of the Spectrum+ seems to have drawn attention to the weaknesses of the old machine and reinforced suspicions about the low standards of quality control at Sinclair Research.

In view of its limitations, it’s hardly surprising that the Spectrum+ turned out to be the answer to no one’s problems. Faced with rising debts, enormous stocks of out-dated product, and little in the way of revenue to finance developments for the future, in June 1985 Sir Clive opened negotiations with Robert Maxwell in an effort to raise some capital. When ‘Cap’n Bob’s’ rescue package fell apart, Sinclair finally put his name to a deal with Dixons that had been pending for some while. The chainstore gained an enormous volume of Sinclair stock, and Sir Clive a much-needed £10m of revenue.

If things weren’t exactly looking up for Sinclair Research, at least the situation wasn’t getting any worse. However, it seems that one of the drawbacks of the deal with Dixons was that it meant that Sinclair could not release any kind of new Spectrum upgrade until 1986. The effect of this clause was that Research was unable to take full advantage of another deal that it had recently finalized with Investronica, the company’s Spanish distributor. While the Spectrum was on its way out in the UK, sales of the old warhorse were going from strength to strength over in Spain, although overall the micro-market was considerably less developed than in Britain, and Research product faced little in the way of competition. Presumably mindful of the consequences of Sir Clive’s complacency about the product’s position in the UK, Investronica decided to plough back some of its profits into the development of a genuine Spectrum upgrade.