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UK retail computers in the beginning & forwards

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odysseus2000
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UK retail computers in the beginning & forwards

#443194

Postby odysseus2000 » September 17th, 2021, 11:09 pm

This is an interesting little story of how things were done in the early days of the retail computers and how Amstrad dominated the UK computer market after Sinclair got into financial trouble and Lord Sugar bought all the Sinclair Intellectual property.

For those who do not know the story, Clive Sinclair was one of the first folk to bring electronic devices like calculators to the masses. His calculators were often not as fast as Japanese competition, but he sold a lot of stuff and finally became so focused on the tech that he lost control of the financials.

Seems almost like a fairy tale compared to the social media days that we all now know with near instant communication and the likelyhood of keeping things confidential as was done then now small.

https://www.amshold.com/social_media/th ... _story.htm

Once Amstrad had removed this competitor they began a huge expansion, offering machines at about 1/5th the price of US competitors with Lord Sugar using components that were the cheapest he could find. Around this time Lord Sugar bought Spurs football club and was distracted by the problems there. This all went wrong when Amstrad bought a load of hard drives from Seagate and Western Digital with all of them failing in the field. Amstrad sued both hard drive makers, got a good settlement from Seagate but got nothing from Western Digital when the jury sided with Western Digital.

Some have suggested that if this had not happened that Amstrad would now be comparable to Apple in turnover. Personally I doubt it as Amstrad was always considered cheap whereas Apple were always focused on a quality experience, at least according to their PR, whilst with Amstrad it was usually price, price, price, but who knows what might have happened.

In the end Amstrad was sold to Sky and perhaps some of the ethos of Amstrad is still in Sky hardware.

There is now far more competition and money for developing new technologies into consumer products in a market that is (was?) dominated by Silicon Valley where the vast wealth has spawned many angels who are prepared to invest in ideas and people. Whether this is how things will happen in the future is being challenged by the move to cyber space where investors, capital and inventors can be anywhere with strong sectors in China and India. One can now have an idea, commission someone found on the internet to design what ever you want and then have some other outfit make the device from the PCB through to a commercial product. Even this is now challenged as more and more manufacturing kit drops in price so that high wage countries can now offer competitive prices. Adafruit based in New York being an example of how one person (Last Ada) has overcome the supposed cost advantage of places like China. Even the price advantage is falling and Sandy Munroe argues that there is no Chinese low cost advantage compared to the States and although Tesla are not selling as many Tesla in China as they were, the market for these sophisticated and relatively expensive machines is buoyant in China.

Some have called the 21st century the age of gearing, where there are a great supply of folk to produce what someone wants to sell creating a gearing of idea to production and then a gearing of capital from small to large via a percentage sales going back into making more widgets. These abilities have driven down the cost of everything as manufacturing is now much cheaper and there is soon lots of competition so the idea is to flog as much as possible at a low price and low margins to make it hard for competitors to move in.

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Re: UK retail computers in the beginning & forwards

#443236

Postby Urbandreamer » September 18th, 2021, 9:22 am

Hummm.

If we are to talk about "UK retail computers" shouldn't we consider the BBC computer made by acorn? Before the BBC the company did hobby self assembly "computers".
After making the BBC they wanted to extend the product and created a clag-on unit that had a "reduced instruction set cpu". That part of the business was spun off as "Advanced Risc Machines" or ARM. Anyone heard of them?

Of course eventually they got sold to Softbank, but that was fairly recent. Softbank are/have sold them to NVidia, though I understand that there is a competition enquiry currently underway.

Meanwhile someone got nostalgic about the old hobby days of the BBC when every kid learned about computers, rather than what they could be used for. This lead to the Raspberry Pi model A and B. The BBC computer also had A & B models. Very quickly the Pi dropped the A & B designations, but they were there to form the link.

Your post however seems to move beyond the shores of the UK. If we are to do that then we should possible mention the Framework laptop.
https://uk.pcmag.com/laptops/134632/framework-laptop
Like Sinclair's ZX81 there is a DIY option, though unlike the ZX81 no soldering is required.

Your post also seems to consider small groups offering things rather than "retail" ie stocked in shops. The Framework laptop is intended to be mass market, but it's small as yet. I doubt that Curries will ever stock it.

Even smaller and also not UK, is the likes of 51nb or even XY Tech.

The hobbyist group 51nb commissioned a laptop motherboard based upon modern hardware. Just a motherboard? Well they love the ergonomics of the Thinkpad laptops. XY Tech is a one man band who will build one for you.
https://bmdiethelmv.wordpress.com/2021/ ... 00-review/

Isn't the "Story" that HP started as a two man team in a garage? What's the story behind Apple? Every big company has to start somewhere.

Were you talking UK,Mr Sugar, computers, big business, small business, innovation? I'm trying to understand your post.

If it's regarding gearing/investment, then Linus explains the concept and how he has created difficulties for himself by investing, while assembling the Framework laptop. He normally does computer/gaming videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSxbc1IN9Gg

odysseus2000
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Re: UK retail computers in the beginning & forwards

#443281

Postby odysseus2000 » September 18th, 2021, 11:54 am

Hi Urbandreamer,

Great points!

I was trying to give some kind of back ground to events that were triggered by Clive Sinclair and later carried forward by Amstrad before this UK based retail computer business went away.

Sure one can say that Arm via the BBC computer and its spin off carried forward the business theme but they became a RISC (reduced instruction set computer) designer and although their RISC are everywhere there is no identifiable, as far as I know, Arm computer available to buy in Curry's.

One can certainly buy Raspberry Pi machines, I have one and for some application like motion detection cameras I find them fabulous, but the ones I have although capable of running an operating system are just not fast enough and the last time I looked they seemed not to be innovating.

I did not mention the Arduino platform which is just a fabulous tool for making stuff at very low cost via lots of Chinese clones, all programmed in their version of C and I have used quite a number of their cards and my CNC work is all with Arduino based machines.

There are as you mention lots of other small platforms and a number of competitors to Arduino, some with strengths in IOT applications, most with very low power consumption and most being very easy to use.

The old model of someone or a couple of folk starting in a garage and building hardware is no doubt going on, but a lot of stuff is now being done by contractors both for design and manufacture rather than over a hot soldering iron in a garage. Adafruit though have build a business in New York with all manufacturing there.

I was also making the point that a relatively small amount of money can now get you very high quality components. Once I used to etch my own PCB, but now I have things made in China and shipped to me as the quality is much higher than what I can do, delivery times are fast etc. This is what I was suggesting about gearing: small amount of money gets you very high quality in a way that was impossible before.

Clearly one can expand and expand on this and that is fabulous as it creates a bigger and richer information source for anyone interested in perusing it and particularly for folk young enough to have no experience of the electronic products of Sinclair and Sugar. Both of them launched a lot of products, Sinclair the engineering innovator went bust, Sugar the business man innovator became a billionaire even though his computer business fell apart.

Regards,

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Re: UK retail computers in the beginning & forwards

#443382

Postby dave559 » September 18th, 2021, 7:07 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:although their RISC are everywhere there is no identifiable, as far as I know, Arm computer available to buy in Curry's.


That depends on how you look at it: Arm are sort of the equivalent of the Motorola or Intel processors that you might find or might have found in some other computers, except at a further level of abstraction. Arm no longer make CPUs themselves, instead they license the CPU design to other companies who design their own chipsets around that technology.

And today you certainly can go into Curry's (or another technology shop) and buy an Arm-powered Apple Mac, with Arm technology forming part of Apple's custom chipset designs, and likewise for iPads and iPhones, or most other tablets or smartphones (connect a Bluetooth keyboard to these and they really are just slightly specialised computers to all intents and purposes). I suspect it will only be a matter of time before Arm CPUs start becoming commonplace in the "PC" computing world as well.

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Re: UK retail computers in the beginning & forwards

#443395

Postby Urbandreamer » September 18th, 2021, 8:18 pm

dave559 wrote:I suspect it will only be a matter of time before Arm CPUs start becoming commonplace in the "PC" computing world as well.


Well... Anyone know of "Chromebooks"? Many are ARM based. That of course ignores all your previous words about tablets etc. I am of course assuming that PC means "Personal Computer", rather than Microsoft based machine (excluding Apple products etc).

TBH, I suspect that odysseus2000 has some idea that the Raspberry Pi is based upon a ARM processor design. To some extent that was the cause of my post. Was his post about the UK? Some aspect of looking back to a golden age (ie of railway barons and investment)? A comment upon the benefits of a global market for both buyers and sellers? There was an answer, though it raised other questions.

Many of us have investments in such providers world wide. It's as easy as owning a index tracker, or as difficult as buying many emerging market funds. Many hold either Samsung or Taiwan Semiconductor TSM, one of the most prolific producers.

Meanwhile old school investment trusts such as Foreign and Colonial IT (over 150 years old) invests in many of the tec companies, Ie Microsoft, Apple, and of course TSM are among their top 10.

Of course there are great examples of UK companies offering something great. I.E, please don't take this as investment advice, but Craneware or Kromek.
Hill and Smith does relatively boring stuff, but it's in demand. Hell even Shell and Unillever sell world wide. I love computers, but does that make them more special than Marmite?

Ps, I owned ARM from the start. I confess that I sold in the Dot-com crash.

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Re: UK retail computers in the beginning & forwards

#443416

Postby odysseus2000 » September 18th, 2021, 9:46 pm

ARM is an interesting case. If one subscribes to the picks and shovels thesis then ARM ought to be a fabulous investment, but the picks and shovels analogy of the gold rush days does not seem to apply to commodities in the computer space. Some time ago I looked at the investment return on several apple suppliers, most had greatly underperformed Apple.

This commodity pricing seems to be the Achilles heal of Arm. The original business could not make huge profits in the way that say Apple has, SoftBank bought it and couldn't make money or didn't see it as important and is selling it to Nvidia (Politicians need to agree) and meanwhile Softbank has sold Boston Dynamics to Hyundai. One can argue that Softbank is a pure buy it and sell it operation, rather than the long term holding business it sometimes portrays it self as. Or perhaps it believes that Arm and Boston Dynamics are likely to face competition that will force down margins.

Nevertheless if Arm was the cash cow that folk have portrayed it has, such sales would not make much sense, but it does not seem able to convert its large IP portfolio into serious cash. Dunno ARM has long troubled my sense of what is and is not a great business. Given its vital position in so much technology it seems that if they had someone at the helm focused on profit that it could become a great business, or is it that it is never going to be more than a rounding error in the huge capex of the semi business and that the decision long ago to be purely IP was a bad idea.

Regards,

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Re: UK retail computers in the beginning & forwards

#443420

Postby dave559 » September 18th, 2021, 10:12 pm

Yes, by "PC" I did of course mean the generic "standard" personal computer hardware platform. I intentionally made no reference to MS-Windows for good reason.

Linux distros have had ports to Arm processors for ages (including, of course, for Raspberry Pi's, which, although they work as perfectly adequate low-power desktop computers (amongst many other things), don't really come under the "available in a high street shop" category, unless you happen to live in Cambridge), and if/when "mainstream" manufacturers start making Arm PCs, Linux will presumably be ready pretty much from the start for such hardware.

However, MS-Windows, the current driver of the majority of "PC" sales is, as yet, only taking baby steps in the Arm direction. If I were Intel or AMD I would still be getting quite nervous just now, however! A good point about Chromebooks, I was unaware that there are Arm Chromebooks as well as x86 ones.

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Re: UK retail computers in the beginning & forwards

#443455

Postby Urbandreamer » September 18th, 2021, 11:37 pm

dave559 wrote:Yes, by "PC" I did of course mean the generic "standard" personal computer hardware platform. I intentionally made no reference to MS-Windows for good reason.


Sorry I may pre-date you (or not).

For those who don't know, PC meant personal computer in my day. It was before what many regard as "standard". Indeed it was NOT regarded as standard. Computers were not dedicated to a person. The IBM PC introduced a "standard" based upon MSdos, An operating system that was bought, originally called "quick and dirty operating system" or QDos.

Apple computers pre-dated that and they had the "killer-app". Yes you needed an Apple computer if you wanted to run Visicalc. A spreadsheet app, worth paying for a computer to run.

To be blunt "PC" didn't mean "political correctness" back then, Nor did it mean a specific platform / os (chromebook windows apple linux) but the fact that it was your computer.

Of course the likes of the BBC, spectrum or ZX81 were PC's, but none of them ran Msdos, or in many cases what we would regard as an operating system at all.
Instead a boot-loader often jumped into a BASIC interpreter or simple "shell". Indeed this was true of early MSdos.
From there you could take control of the entire machine.

PS, the Pi, is a "PC". But it's not a "standard personal computer hardware platform". People HAVE managed to get windows 10 to run (badly) upon the latest hardware. Normally people run a version of Linux. PC, means that it's yours to do with what you will.

The fact that it's unusual to be able to do what you want is the strongest argument that the term "PC", has changed what it means. The fact that I have to flash the bios in my computer with software not authorised by the manufacturer in order to get the new WiFi to work seriously calls into question the "Personal" aspect of the term PC. Sorry, off topic for the board, but I'm irritated by the term "PC" and what it has come to mean. (the bios has a list of internal authorised Wifi cards that the manufacturer has not updated).

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Re: UK retail computers in the beginning & forwards

#443811

Postby gbjbaanb » September 20th, 2021, 12:27 pm

Urbandreamer wrote:If it's regarding gearing/investment, then Linus explains the concept and how he has created difficulties for himself by investing, while assembling the Framework laptop. He normally does computer/gaming videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSxbc1IN9Gg


Linus Tech Tips's first video is much better: he got one to review, and ... its a joyfull video that will enrich your day with happiness just watching it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rkTgPt3M4k

Don't forget the Raspberry Pi too - is it retail, or is it enthusiast? The lines are starting to blue with computer hardware, i think its becoming more of a commodity and less of a retail package. Times change!

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Re: UK retail computers in the beginning & forwards

#443819

Postby odysseus2000 » September 20th, 2021, 1:03 pm

gbjbaanb wrote:
Urbandreamer wrote:If it's regarding gearing/investment, then Linus explains the concept and how he has created difficulties for himself by investing, while assembling the Framework laptop. He normally does computer/gaming videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSxbc1IN9Gg


Linus Tech Tips's first video is much better: he got one to review, and ... its a joyfull video that will enrich your day with happiness just watching it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rkTgPt3M4k

Don't forget the Raspberry Pi too - is it retail, or is it enthusiast? The lines are starting to blue with computer hardware, i think its becoming more of a commodity and less of a retail package. Times change!


Interesting video, thanks for sharing.

It kind of appeals to me, but I wonder how big the market is. At $700 for the diy version it is not that much cheaper than the base MacBook air (aprox $1000) and then one gets MacOS, iCloud etc both of which I like.

It will be interesting to see how they do going forwards with a repairability model that was ditched by mainstream along time ago, to generate a repeat business from endless sales of new machiness.

I do find it vexing when something fails and I have to buy another, but often the performance of the new machine is so much better than the old that I don't feel too badly done by. Perhaps that will one day cease to be the case, but for now newer machines do seem a lot better in ways that one sees as a user.

Notwithstanding that I upgraded the SSD in my MacBook from 128gb to 1000 gb a week or so ago, but the newer MacBooks and the mac mini have the ssd soldered in so this upgrade will soon vanish, unless I want to solder which is possible for me, but not for that many other users I would guess. For what I want the 2015 MacBook air is good enough and the massive ssd increase for about £120 is far cheaper than the £1000 price for a new MacBook with much less memory.

Regards,

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Re: UK retail computers in the beginning & forwards

#443845

Postby Urbandreamer » September 20th, 2021, 2:24 pm

gbjbaanb wrote:
Urbandreamer wrote:If it's regarding gearing/investment, then Linus explains the concept and how he has created difficulties for himself by investing, while assembling the Framework laptop. He normally does computer/gaming videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSxbc1IN9Gg


Linus Tech Tips's first video is much better: he got one to review, and ... its a joyfull video that will enrich your day with happiness just watching it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rkTgPt3M4k

Don't forget the Raspberry Pi too - is it retail, or is it enthusiast? The lines are starting to blue with computer hardware, i think its becoming more of a commodity and less of a retail package. Times change!


Better? Well certainly more enjoyable and a better review of the Framework PC. However I picked the video that I did to fit with this thread and it's views on the industry, hence arguably more appropriate.

Re the Pi. I couldn't agree with you more. It has very many competitors, which people interested will know about.
"Retail" doesn't mean what it did now that people routinely buy obscure things over the internet. Or form Kickstarter groups to get things made. As you say, "Times change".


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