Alternate Realities: The Super Spectrum

[TL]

So here is the first thread I am going to do on some what if's / alternate realities.

My first one is what if Sir Clive hadn't sold Sinclair to Amstrad and the Loki project or "Super Spectrum", by the engineers who went on to develop the Konix Multi-System and Atari Jaguar, had been released in say 1987.

How would it have changed the market?
Would the Atari ST have been such an early success?
Would it have lived on to stay ahead of the Amiga?
Would Sinclair have then made consoles?
Would Sinclair still be with us today?

Thoughts?

[zapiy]

Awesome thread.

I would like to think had Sinclair not been sold to Amstrad that it would still be doing business but probably in clocks or alarms.

[Carlos]

Good Question!

Although at the time the Loki and super Spectrum were pipe dreams of the marketing department that kept the favorites of publishing in with exclusives, that other publications pooped probably because they did not get them first, we can speculate that there must have been plans to nurture a new breed of computer, the exercise may have been a sign to any potential suitors to the company that it had plans worth buying.

So lets look at the reality of what came out after the spectrum.

Sam coupe was the closest thing to resemble the Sinclair User spec of the Loki, with a superior colour pallete, a sort of Super BASIC and Disc drive.

The crux being that it was still an 8 bit!  even with our American Cousins using and manufacturing 16 bit computers with the likes of the Atari-Amiga-Stacy being made in various forms since 84.

So the first answer is no, but maybe if he did not sink his money in a shit car we would be using a Sam Coupe type Sinclair in 1987, but as the Schools contract went to Acorn, how many of these units would have shifted?

So over saturation would have killed the Sinclair Position, the likes of Dixons and Currys and boots having way too much 2nd generation Sinclair Brand in stock, would they commit to 3rd gen so early too? certainly not!

The 16 bits emerging were sold by the specialist to test the market, and also promoted by Mail order- this would be a regressive step an commercial suicide to a company like Sinclair whose main competitor was at this time? ....... no one really.

So what did Clive make when he had the freedom to build a new computer.

16 bit? Colour? Disc interface?

I give you the Z88.

I suspect the first and last he really new of the reality of the Loki was in the same issue of Sinclair User we read! the team obviously thought there was a chance for it, took it on but in reality the only thing that would have kept Sinclair and UK 8 bits going into the Mid 90s would have been an Embargo on US computers, and I thought Maggie and Clive were friends! that would have worked!

[TL]

Actually its been confirmed by Martin Brennan and the team that became Flare that the Loki project was well under way, as was the console version too codenamed Janus. Here is a picture in fact:



When Sinclair was sold to Amstrad they only bought the name and the rights to the Spectrum so the engineers carried on on their own and formed Flare. The work they had done at Sinclair went on to become the unreleased Konix Multisystem, which like the Spectrum originally used a Z80!

[Carlos]

Thanks for the reply,

I dont doubt that the Loki was underway, and the rights only to the Spectrum Being sold fits in nicely with a Loki not coming out of Amstrad, but it still begs the Question on why Clive did not use this research that still belonged to him, I suspect he was out of touch.

Slightly deviating, but relevant perhaps, if Sinclair did not release the first Sub £100 machine so quick, I think Sinclair would have been around longer, maybe by another 4 years.

The Chain of events that the zx81 started forced the competition to up their game, and ultimately damage themselves.

[TL]

Clive let the engineers take it with them because he was no longer interested in computers, all he cared about then was crappy electric cars and selling Sinclair gave him more capital to follow his fantasy.

He only went back and released the Z88 to gain more money for his "real" projects, the machine was just an upgrade of a computer that Sinclair had previously worked on.

Back to my point anyway which is more about having controlled the 8-bit market it would have been interesting to see if he had gone on to control the 16-bit market. I know from my own experience that all the Speccy owners I knew upgraded to the ST while all the C64 owners I knew got an Amiga. If Sinclair had a 16-bit machine around the time that people were upgrading would they have got that machine over an ST?

I think most of them would have given how loyal the Spectrum userbase was and still is.

[TL]

Came across this great article on the Loki from Crash magazine:

http://www.crashonline.org.uk/31/loki.htm

[Rogue Trooper]

Clive let the engineers take it with them because he was no longer interested in computers, all he cared about then was crappy electric cars and selling Sinclair gave him more capital to follow his fantasy.

He only went back and released the Z88 to gain more money for his "real" projects, the machine was just an upgrade of a computer that Sinclair had previously worked on.

Back to my point anyway which is more about having controlled the 8-bit market it would have been interesting to see if he had gone on to control the 16-bit market. I know from my own experience that all the Speccy owners I knew upgraded to the ST while all the C64 owners I knew got an Amiga. If Sinclair had a 16-bit machine around the time that people were upgrading would they have got that machine over an ST?

I think most of them would have given how loyal the Spectrum userbase was and still is.

From my 'circle of friends' at that era, the Speccy owner never bought another computer or console after that, all of us C64 owners, well 6 of us went to the ST (one later comer bought an STe) purely based on it being £100 cheaper than the Amiga and we knew people who had St's, very few had Amigas at that time and 1 went to the PC but he was getting into serious computing, rest of us wanted 16 Bit Games machines.We knew the Amiga had superior specs, but it never seemed to matter, the ST had 'proven' itself with likes of Dungeon Master, Oids, superior IK+ (to our C64 versions), Carrier Command, Midwinter, Starglider etc etc.

Loyalty as such to us then meant very little if anything, my own personal route had seen me start off with a ZX81, then i jumped to the Atari 2600, stayed with ATARI with the 800XL, but lack of games caused me to jump over to the C64, from there back to Atari with the ST.

It purely came down to going for the cheapest entry to getting the games you wanted.

So a Super Speccy would have had to had the games the St/Amiga offered, plus killer-apps of it's own, plus been cheaper than the ST to appeal.

Could Sinclair of gotten the support from publishers the way Atari and CBM had, at that time?

Plus recal Zzap C64 doing a mailbag piece on the mythical C65, but cannot recal much on claimed specs at present.

[Rogue Trooper]

So, if i'm reading this right, Loki would have been a very fast, (but not as fast as Amiga or ST) 8 Bit micro, with advanced custom chips and Speccy B.C?.

So in reality, where as Amiga/St games very easy to port from one to another, sharing the same 6800, coders would have had to put extra resources into coding for the Loki version? given how in early days at least Amiga got ST ports and we've seen in recent years PS2 ports to Xbox not take advantage or PS3/360-Wii U games not be optimised for differing hardware, i'm left wondering just what the 'incentive' would have been for coders to do Loki specific games?.

Old chicken/egg situ-not going to buy Loki unless the games that use it's features are there, not going to see those games until user base reaches sufficient levels.

Plus the Speccy B.C could be it's fatal flaw, just as Wii had to have G.C B.C and thus slower CPU, looks like Loki was being throttled back somewhat by plans here.

Plus after the hype-reality void of QL, Sinclair had a lot of bridge building to do.

[Rogue Trooper]

Commodore C65 details:

http://www.floodgap.com/retrobits/ckb/secret/65.html

[TL]

So, if i'm reading this right, Loki would have been a very fast, (but not as fast as Amiga or ST) 8 Bit micro, with advanced custom chips and Speccy B.C?.

So in reality, where as Amiga/St games very easy to port from one to another, sharing the same 6800, coders would have had to put extra resources into coding for the Loki version? given how in early days at least Amiga got ST ports and we've seen in recent years PS2 ports to Xbox not take advantage or PS3/360-Wii U games not be optimised for differing hardware, i'm left wondering just what the 'incentive' would have been for coders to do Loki specific games?.

Old chicken/egg situ-not going to buy Loki unless the games that use it's features are there, not going to see those games until user base reaches sufficient levels.

Plus the Speccy B.C could be it's fatal flaw, just as Wii had to have G.C B.C and thus slower CPU, looks like Loki was being throttled back somewhat by plans here.

Plus after the hype-reality void of QL, Sinclair had a lot of bridge building to do.

Something like the Sam Coupe or CPC Plus and we all know how they turned out . . . .

[TL]

I just found this great article from Your Sinclair magazine on the "Super Spectrum"