In the beginning there was the Sinclair QL

[The_Unbeliever]

Interestingly, without the Sinclair QL things would have been totally different.

I found this little gem on Planet Sinclair when browsing about the Sinclair range of products :

The QL, however, had a much more lasting legacy in a wholly unanticipated way. In the mid-1980s, a young Finnish programmer named Linus Torvalds upgraded from his VIC-20 to a Sinclair QL to learn advanced programming. Years later, he recalled:

was eventually able to get a Sinclair QL and get some real programming done under a multitasking (albeit somewhat weird) system.​

On the Sinclair QL I continued to program in assembly (the QL BASIC (SuperBasic) was ok, but I wasn't interested), and I wrote various more-or-less useless programs (ranging from a FORTH compiler and an editor-assembler system of my own to Pac-Man to a MSDOS compatible floppy disk driver). The QL was a fun machine, but there weren't very many of them in Finland, and although I was generally happy to write my own programs (still am), it did teach me to buy hardware that actually is supported.​

[Linux News issue 3, October 18-26 1992]​

In March 1991, Torvalds upgraded to a 386 PC, using the programming knowledge which he had gained on the QL to produce a cut-down version of the UNIX operating system which he nicknamed Linux. The rest, as they say, is history.

the QL's page on Planet Sinclair.

 

[Other Pineapple Smurf]

I dreamt geek dreams about the QL and always wanted one.

Those where the days.

 

[The_Unbeliever]

I dreamt geek dreams about the QL and always wanted one.

Those where the days.

Now you can have a QL emulator : http://terdina.net/ql/q-emulator.html

 

[ponder]

I dunno, the Sinclair machines never appealed to me, same goes for the Z80 but the 68000 series processors (also used in the QL) were a dream to program on, in assembly anyway compared to the other kuk on the market.

 

[Other Pineapple Smurf]

Had to do some googling to remember them but we where a real geek nerd herd in my area in the 80's. We had the following:

* ZX 48K (me and a couple of other friends, can think of 5 so far)
* Tandy TRS-80 (my brother)
* BBC (school)
* Acorn (friend)
* C64 (friend)
* Amstrads (2 friends )

Not to mention the tapes doing the rounds ... beeeeeppp

 

[The_Unbeliever]

Had to do some googling to remember them but we where a real geek nerd herd in my area in the 80's. We had the following:

* ZX 48K (me and a couple of other friends, can think of 5 so far)
* Tandy TRS-80 (my brother)
* BBC (school)
* Acorn (friend)
* C64 (friend)
* Amstrads (2 friends )

Not to mention the tapes doing the rounds ... beeeeeppp

and the inevitable round of tape copying

 

[Other Pineapple Smurf]

Yeah, our place was a real tape copying hangout joint over weekends - my dad had an awesome component HiFi system that worked over time. Remember tweaking the equaliser for some of those dodgy tapes

Dreamt of a Micro Drive - 5 seconds to load a 48K game.

 

[Valis]

I had a ZX80, ZX81, ZX Spectrum and a QL

 

[The_Unbeliever]

I had a ZX80, ZX81, ZX Spectrum and a QL

Lucky you.

 

[ponder]

Yeah, our place was a real tape copying hangout joint over weekends - my dad had an awesome component HiFi system that worked over time. Remember tweaking the equaliser for some of those dodgy tapes

I used to record a know frequency to tape and then play it back while adjusting the head to find the best setting by ear.