firmware for the ZX80: “I quickly slotted into the ZX81 project and wrote the firmware and manual for it, then the Spectrum came on the horizon and I moved onto the team for that and did the firmware and the manual for that as well.” Altwasser was also relatively new, joining Sinclair
Research under Jim Westwood, the company’s most experienced technician at the time. After the launch of the ZX81, Westwood was assigned to work on Sinclair’s abortive flatscreen TV project. “And so I inherited the next computer project from him,” says Altwasser. “I had developed the printed circuit board for the ZX81 and then moved on to develop the hardware and the ULA (uncommitted logic array) and printed circuit board for the Spectrum, working very closely with Steve.” Success had made the Spectrum inevitable. Sinclair’s
first kit computer, the MK14, sold more than 15,000 units during the late 1970s, mostly to electronics enthusiasts. The ZX80 sold somewhere between 50-100,000 units and was therefore considered a huge success. The ZX81, with its 1k of memory (expandable to 16k) - went on to sell 1.5 million units. Working as a contractor, Vickers wasn’t privy to the
sales figures and had no contact with anyone at Sinclair outside of its small technical team, but he was impressed with how approachable Sinclair’s machines were and how they were being marketed: “I was astonished at the idea that you could just plug in a computer and it didn’t have to boot up, unlike subsequent computers. It was just a
technological marvel to me.” “I remember talking to
John Rowland, who was a senior marketing person at WH Smith,” adds Altwasser. “They were selling the ZX81 and a lot of computer programmes and computer magazines. And he said to me that for WH Smith, computer magazine sales had exceeded sales of women’s magazines. That sums up the success of the ZX81.”
CHIP CHALLENGE Vickers recalls the early days working on the Spectrum as more iterative and instinctive rather than feature-driven. “We didn’t know all the features that were going to go in and how they would work, or how Sinclair BASIC was going to be augmented. But pretty much from the start it was going to be a ZX81 plus extra stuff. You started off making the best, most sophisticated computer you could within the time scales,” he says. “There’s just a natural progression.” As an employee, Altwasser was more aware of
the market that Sinclair was aiming for: “Within the company it was recognised that there were two markets. There were the people that wanted to learn programming - and a lot of computer magazines had pages and pages of code that young people were just sitting and typing in, and of course there were the games.” To appeal to both, colour and sound were essential,
as were higher resolution graphics (256x193, versus the ZX81‘s 64x48 block graphics mode). What the team were up against was the imperative to keep costs low and to hit a very particular deadline, specifically the 23rd of April 1982, when the UK computer industry would descend upon Earl’s Court for the annual Computer Fair. “Clive had a formula that was sales price including VAT was four times the component cost,” sats Altwasser,
“The myth of Clive coming in and looking over an engineer’s shoulder and asking him, only slightly tongue-in-cheek, ‘So what would happen if that
component was removed?’ was very real” Richard Altwasser
June 2022 MCV/DEVELOP | 71
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