Author Topic: Clive Sinclair - what a cheap skate!  (Read 6232 times)

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Online wraper

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Re: Clive Sinclair - what a cheap skate!
« Reply #25 on: September 05, 2020, 01:47:03 pm »
Some flash silicon come off the manufacturing line so bad that the actual manufacturers like Micron, Samsung..etc don't want to bother with it. So there are companies out there that make it a business of buying the crap flash dies from the big players on the cheep. Putting them trough more extensive testing to patch up the bad memory areas, packaging them into chips and selling it.
Not true, NAND is used as is. Controller deals with bad blocks of memory. Crappiest tier NAND usually goes into cheap memory cards or toys. Micron has their own division called Spectek which deals with dodgy Micron NAND and DRAM. Usually you can find S logo placed over original marking. They even sell chips with 3 lines on them for especially dodgy stuff.



« Last Edit: September 05, 2020, 01:50:58 pm by wraper »
 

Offline Berni

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Re: Clive Sinclair - what a cheap skate!
« Reply #26 on: September 05, 2020, 02:19:01 pm »
Some flash silicon come off the manufacturing line so bad that the actual manufacturers like Micron, Samsung..etc don't want to bother with it. So there are companies out there that make it a business of buying the crap flash dies from the big players on the cheep. Putting them trough more extensive testing to patch up the bad memory areas, packaging them into chips and selling it.
Not true, NAND is used as is. Controller deals with bad blocks of memory. Crappiest tier NAND usually goes into cheap memory cards or toys. Micron has their own division called Spectek which deals with dodgy Micron NAND and DRAM. Usually you can find S logo placed over original marking. They even sell chips with 3 lines on them for especially dodgy stuff.





Yes later on flash manufacturers started doing it themselves since it provides profit out of junk.

And yes its the controllers job to fix bad blocks, but the bad block information is stored in areas of the flash chip itself and the manufacturer might grantee an area of error free blocks for holding bootloader code (This is more for embedded systems, not SSDs). For example from the datasheet of a random Micron flash chip of MT29F8G08FACWP:
 

Offline Andie

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Re: Clive Sinclair - what a cheap skate!
« Reply #27 on: September 05, 2020, 02:40:21 pm »
[...]
Now if you want really dodgy, Amstrad (I think it was Amstrad) fitted completely fake ram and circuit board onto their computer to sell it into, I think Spain, or Portugal, which had a minimum memory requirement, the ram they fitted was completely bogus not connected in any meaningful way to the computer electrically!

Here is some further read in the eevblog forum:

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/vintage-computing/the-dodgiest-computer-ever-!/msg3109666/#msg3109666
 

Online wraper

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Re: Clive Sinclair - what a cheap skate!
« Reply #28 on: September 05, 2020, 02:55:23 pm »
Yes later on flash manufacturers started doing it themselves since it provides profit out of junk.

And yes its the controllers job to fix bad blocks, but the bad block information is stored in areas of the flash chip itself and the manufacturer might grantee an area of error free blocks for holding bootloader code (This is more for embedded systems, not SSDs). For example from the datasheet of a random Micron flash chip of MT29F8G08FACWP:
So how storing bad block information qualifies as "to patch up the bad memory areas"?  :-//. Factory may sell crap with no or little testing and testing done later by 3rd party but NAND chip still is as is with nothing bad hidden or fixed.
 

Offline Berni

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Re: Clive Sinclair - what a cheap skate!
« Reply #29 on: September 05, 2020, 03:10:10 pm »
Yes later on flash manufacturers started doing it themselves since it provides profit out of junk.

And yes its the controllers job to fix bad blocks, but the bad block information is stored in areas of the flash chip itself and the manufacturer might grantee an area of error free blocks for holding bootloader code (This is more for embedded systems, not SSDs). For example from the datasheet of a random Micron flash chip of MT29F8G08FACWP:
So how storing bad block information qualifies as "to patch up the bad memory areas"?  :-//. Factory may sell crap with no or little testing and testing done later by 3rd party but NAND chip still is as is with nothing bad hidden or fixed.

Because the bad block information lets the controller know not to use those blocks, so if they are not used it does not matter that they are broken, so the flash chips works as intended where anything not marked as bad works. So "patching up bad memory areas" refers to marking them to not be used, not somehow magically fixing them to work again under a microscope or something.

So same thing as Clives RAM chips that arrive with defects. Its perhaps even possible that he got the manufacturer to separately bin the chips with the high or low half failing into separate boxes. In that case the "bad block table" is written on a label on the box of chips.

Or is there a requirement for this bad block correction to be hidden from the end user? Like for example modern HDDs that do bad block remapping inside the HDD controller chip while showing a perfectly linear array of always good sectors on the SATA interface.
 

Online wraper

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Re: Clive Sinclair - what a cheap skate!
« Reply #30 on: September 05, 2020, 03:14:17 pm »
Because the bad block information lets the controller know not to use those blocks, so if they are not used it does not matter that they are broken, so the flash chips works as intended where anything not marked as bad works. So "patching up bad memory areas" refers to marking them to not be used, not somehow magically fixing them to work again under a microscope or something.
Then every NAND chip that comes out of the factory through normal means is "patched up" even though it is not  :palm:.
Quote
In that case the "bad block table" is written on a label on the box of chips.
Simply dumb speculation. Chips come in grades and factory does not want to put their own label onto trash grades but bad block table written on the package is something new. Yeah, good luck printing thousands of bad block locations for each chip there  :palm:.
Quote
Or is there a requirement for this bad block correction to be hidden from the end user?
No, it is about calling things what they are. You writing they are "patching up" is misinformation. People who read it will think about something very different from what actually happens.
« Last Edit: September 05, 2020, 03:29:40 pm by wraper »
 

Offline rsjsouza

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Re: Clive Sinclair - what a cheap skate!
« Reply #31 on: September 05, 2020, 03:18:53 pm »
Well, a lot has been said about the fab and inherent defects of parts, including modern ones.

My bit is that Engineering is all about making the best thing you can within the boundary conditions you have. With all its problems, Sinclair, Peddle, Tramiel, Wozniak, Mensch, West, Noyce, Kilby, and so many other pioneers were solving issues within the constraints they had.

When I was a teen and started to get involved with the PC world and its "imperfect" hard drives, memories, etc. I also scoffed at the manufacturers for "putting out such garbage" - of course, I quickly realized how naïve I was.

I personally liked two books that talked about these early computing days: Soul of a New Machine (about DEC) and On the Edge (about Commodore).
« Last Edit: September 05, 2020, 03:23:34 pm by rsjsouza »
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Offline T3sl4co1l

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Re: Clive Sinclair - what a cheap skate!
« Reply #32 on: September 05, 2020, 03:23:06 pm »
Also may be of interest.  I was reading about the latest high density Flash tech that Samsung I think is working with.  It's a stack of layers built up, a terraced hill, allowing them to achieve just a little bit more areal density.  Well, the paper noted how defects can get into that stack, and they can actually tolerate it in some cases as the layers just spread out over it.  Defects might be from dust particles in the fab chamber, for example.  So the layers take on some "princess and the pea" form.  Defects in just the wrong place might cause broken or shorted connections, leaky paths or faulty transistors, sure, but they can actually get an error rate less than one per defect, which makes for a notable improvement to overall yield!

It's like picking up a potato and maybe it's just oddly shaped, or maybe it's got a black spot when you cut into it, or maybe it's a rotten lump.  Sometimes it's fine, sometimes you can cut around it, sometimes it's a total loss.  Whatever works.

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Online Fraser

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Re: Clive Sinclair - what a cheap skate!
« Reply #33 on: September 05, 2020, 03:30:02 pm »
I think we also need to consider the market that Sinclair and others were supplying......not NASA with mission critical systems. The consumer market could not afford CBM PET’s for home use but Sinclair found a way to provide something useful at an affordable cost to many. If people start becoming fussy about chip specifications then they also have to accept a higher cost product will result. It is simple maths and we cannot take away from Sinclair that, even though I dislike it, the ZX Spectrum was a commercial success that also helped many people of my age to enter the world of computers and programming when otherwise we would have remained excluded by cost.

My parents bought me a Dragon 32 and I loved it. I learnt all about its chipset, how to program and how to modify the hardware to suit my needs. Invaluable knowledge to me but I was fortunate that my parents could afford such a computer for me. I could not have afforded a Sharp MZ80 or other more advanced platforms.

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« Last Edit: September 05, 2020, 04:02:38 pm by Fraser »
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Offline Berni

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Re: Clive Sinclair - what a cheap skate!
« Reply #34 on: September 05, 2020, 03:33:46 pm »
Because the bad block information lets the controller know not to use those blocks, so if they are not used it does not matter that they are broken, so the flash chips works as intended where anything not marked as bad works. So "patching up bad memory areas" refers to marking them to not be used, not somehow magically fixing them to work again under a microscope or something.
Then every NAND chip that comes out of the factory through normal means is "patched up" even though it is not  :palm:.

Yep that is exactly what i was trying to say in my first post: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/clive-sinclair-what-a-cheap-skate!/msg3219324/#msg3219324

You can't buy a off the shelf a large capacity raw NAND flash chip that has all blocks working. They exist, but are not binned for it. And if you do get what seemingly looks a perfect array of memory then there is a controller in the mix fixing the bad blocks, such as SD cards where its not uncommon to make 8GB cards out of the bad 16GB flash that don't have enough working blocks to make up a full 16 + enough spare, but don't want to make a 15.9GB card.

Quote
In that case the "bad block table" is written on a label on the box of chips.
Simply dumb speculation. Chips come in grades and factory does not want to put their own label onto trash grades but bad block table written on the package is something new. Yeah, good luck printing thousands of bad block locations there  :palm:.

And this is why the NAND chips store the bad block table inside the flash memory itself. The table is very big.

Since Sir Clives "memory controller" could only disable 32KB blocks of memory meant that the bad block table was only 1 bit large, pretty easy to fit on a label, and it was easy to tell this information to the "memory controller" via a simple jumper setting.

EDIT:
Just noticed your addition in your edited post, so il add a response

Quote
Or is there a requirement for this bad block correction to be hidden from the end user?
No, it is about calling things what they are. You writing they are "patching up" is misinformation. People who read it will think about something very different from what actually happens.
Noted. Will add clarification to my post.
« Last Edit: September 05, 2020, 03:37:47 pm by Berni »
 
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Online SiliconWizard

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Re: Clive Sinclair - what a cheap skate!
« Reply #35 on: September 05, 2020, 05:07:35 pm »
Basically all modern DRAM, NAND and camera sensors have faults in them. One in a thousand of chips might have no defects at all. DRAM defects are hidden on the chip level by using spare rows/columns. Or even half of the chip may be disabled and sold as smaller size. NAND defects usually are managed on controller level. Camera defects are dealt with in image processing software. CPUs/GPUs often have parts of them disabled to increase yield and sold as lower tier parts. Some have some part disabled even in the top tier chip. Say PS3 CPU has 8 cores physically but one of them is always disabled to increase yield.

Yes we still do that these days.

I absolutely don't see what the problem is with what the OP mentioned. As long as the RAM chips were tested GOOD for the intended purpose, who cares? That's almost a detail. The design of the ZX Spectrum could not accomodate 64KBytes of RAM anyway (IIRC), so what's the problem. As mentioned, Sinclair probably got those parts for cheaper than the equivalent with 16KB parts, and with fewer parts in the end.

This example is not even a good example of the cheap choices Sinclair kept making. There are tons of others, a lot more problematic for the users, as some would hinder reliability a lot. But sure, Sinclair's motto was to design the cheapest stuff possible. The idea was to give as many people as possible access to new technology that was not accessible before. Personal computers tended to be pretty expensive before Sinclair. Then of course, others followed, some making better stuff  for not much more money, but that was just natural competition then. When the Spectrum got released, you needed to shell out at least twice the price to get something remotely close in specs. Of course the more expensive stuff you'd get then would usually be more reliable and better finished, but the whole point IMO was to release products with the highest specs-to-price ratio possible.

Sinclair's business model was definitely not sustainable, but it was unique at the time, and I believe it kind of started a revolution of its own. Oh, and by the way, Clive Sinclair himself did not design Sinclair products. He had a bunch of pretty talented engineers, who did what they could given the constraints they were given.

Amstrad (that kind ot took over) managed to release objectively better stuff for cheap. Sure the guy himself probably had a bit more industrial experience, but that was also a different era already. Components' prices had already dropped a lot, and the market was a bit more "mature" - meaning the average joes were starting to see the benefits of personal computers - so you could sell people stuff for more money, but with everything they needed to get started. A ZX Spectrum needed at least a TV set - and a tape recorder. Amstrad products were usable without anything extra to buy. Sinclair did not take this approach, because (I think) at the time, most people (at least in the general population) were still not convinced of the interest of a personal computer, and thus would buy only if the investment was really low (to minimize the risk so to speak), even if, in the end, the cost of ownership would usually end up much higher.


 
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Offline tooki

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Re: Clive Sinclair - what a cheap skate!
« Reply #36 on: September 06, 2020, 02:52:44 pm »
I've just discovered that Sinclair DELIBERATELY bought in FAULTY RAM stock for the ZX Spectrum, where only half the RAM capacity worked, all to save a few pence... WHAT A CHEAP SKATE!

I absolutely couldn't live with myself, knowing I'd skimped on the BOM, just to make more money! Okay, so you save a few pence, but then, in the future, people like me will still be discussing what a skimper you are - UGH! I'd have that thought gnawing away at me, I couldn't let a designed product get into people's hands like that - and I don't care if it worked perfectly or not - YUCK!
Wait till you find out that that's how nearly all semiconductors are made: they're tested and graded. In some cases, like CPUs and memory, it includes testing each core and then disabling the bad ones. So a single-core CPU could be a dual-core CPU with one defective core, or a 4-core is a 6-core with one or two defective cores. In memory, it's bad banks or blocks which get disabled in testing and substituted by the spare blocks that are designed into the product for this purpose.

In many semiconductors (including the above), speed grading is also done: only some will manage the highest speeds.

So your 2GHz CPU might in "reality" be a "failed" 2.5GHz CPU.

There's nothing wrong with this. Do you expect a butcher to discard the whole hog if one leg happens to be scrawny? Of course not.   Do you expect a glass company to discard a whole lot of glass because of the parts with bubbles, even though it'll be cut into smaller sheets later, and they can cut around the imperfections? The world would be (even more insanely) wasteful than it is if we didn't do stuff like that.
 

Offline T3sl4co1l

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Re: Clive Sinclair - what a cheap skate!
« Reply #37 on: September 06, 2020, 06:29:12 pm »
Wait till you find out that that's how nearly all semiconductors are made: they're tested and graded. In some cases, like CPUs and memory, it includes testing each core and then disabling the bad ones. So a single-core CPU could be a dual-core CPU with one defective core, or a 4-core is a 6-core with one or two defective cores. In memory, it's bad banks or blocks which get disabled in testing and substituted by the spare blocks that are designed into the product for this purpose.

In many semiconductors (including the above), speed grading is also done: only some will manage the highest speeds.

So your 2GHz CPU might in "reality" be a "failed" 2.5GHz CPU.

It used to be a huge pain point / point of confusion / joke in the semi industry: "you can't test quality into a product!"

Well, when your statistical model shows that, sometimes the article works just absolutely perfectly, and sometimes it fails, and when it fails, it fails hard, in very specific, localized ways; well, yes, all you need to do is test to weed out the failed parts, and voila, quality.

Early fabs often suffered from truly embarrassing yield rates -- under 1% for example.  I recall reading this about early Japanese transistor production I think it was; Intel and I assume others suffered from similar issues many times through history, as they brought up new fab lines.  Everything from Intel's famously first DRAMs, to newer CPUs (I want to say the Pentium was one of them? or is that more just true of any chips ran through whatever the new fab process is?). 

And the principle still applies to natural variation in process parameters, even as tightly controlled as they are.  Doping levels usually being the biggest variance (isn't it?), affecting everything from voltage rating (hence the multiple grades of TIP31/A/B/C) to gain (hFE grades of 2SC1815O/Y/GR/BL, and everything (Vpo, gm, Rds(on)) of JFETs), to switching speed (hence clock ratings of CPUs).  Why dispose of a part that runs a little slower but is otherwise perfectly serviceable?

Or I could equally well ask -- why not dispose of the parts that exceed the spec?  Surely you feel just as strongly about being oversold, as undersold? ;D

But overspec can be a problem too: typical example, fast modern epitaxial 2N3055s singing in old circuits that strung them up on wiring harnesses, or should I say resonant tank circuits -- yikes!


Quote
There's nothing wrong with this. Do you expect a butcher to discard the whole hog if one leg happens to be scrawny? Of course not.   Do you expect a glass company to discard a whole lot of glass because of the parts with bubbles, even though it'll be cut into smaller sheets later, and they can cut around the imperfections? The world would be (even more insanely) wasteful than it is if we didn't do stuff like that.

Yup, exactly.  Actually on the subject of meat, I wonder if standards could/should be updated to accommodate more kinds of defects.  It's my understanding (at least over here; food laws do vary quite a bit around the world), finding a neoplasm or tumor is grounds to reject the carcass.  Well, that might be warranted, but also what are the chances that the defect is benign?  We remove benign tumors from humans all the time, and don't cull them. :P  The even less appetizing question also follows: even if it's cancerous to the animal, can it 1. cause illness in humans, under any conditions (i.e., if eaten raw, or worse), and 2. what about when safely cooked?

A valid counter-argument is, with how messy the meat industry is over here, it's probably not a good idea to give them this much leeway (i.e. to judge whether a defect is benign).  A good counter-counter-argument being, well can't we just regulate them like normal countries?  But, ah, the USA can't have nice things.. :( (and so I won't go any more political here).

Tim
« Last Edit: September 06, 2020, 06:37:44 pm by T3sl4co1l »
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Online tggzzz

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Re: Clive Sinclair - what a cheap skate!
« Reply #38 on: September 06, 2020, 06:37:59 pm »
Wait till you find out that that's how nearly all semiconductors are made: they're tested and graded. In some cases, like CPUs and memory, it includes testing each core and then disabling the bad ones. So a single-core CPU could be a dual-core CPU with one defective core, or a 4-core is a 6-core with one or two defective cores. In memory, it's bad banks or blocks which get disabled in testing and substituted by the spare blocks that are designed into the product for this purpose.

In many semiconductors (including the above), speed grading is also done: only some will manage the highest speeds.

So your 2GHz CPU might in "reality" be a "failed" 2.5GHz CPU.

There's nothing wrong with this. Do you expect a butcher to discard the whole hog if one leg happens to be scrawny? Of course not.   Do you expect a glass company to discard a whole lot of glass because of the parts with bubbles, even though it'll be cut into smaller sheets later, and they can cut around the imperfections? The world would be (even more insanely) wasteful than it is if we didn't do stuff like that.

It used to be a huge pain point / point of confusion / joke in the semi industry: "you can't test quality into a product!"

That used to be a widespread engineering aphorism, not just hardware/software.

Software weenies cannot believe the aphorism, because they are taught that test driven development is sufficient, and that if the "traffic light indicator" is green then the product works.

Two concepts that have never entered their consciousness... Tests cannot show the absence of faults, and if your tests are crap (which they usually are) then the green light means very little.

Yes, I exaggerate, but not too much.
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
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Offline T3sl4co1l

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Re: Clive Sinclair - what a cheap skate!
« Reply #39 on: September 06, 2020, 06:52:20 pm »
There are plenty of stories of that in the hardware domain; a combination of insufficient (or an unanticipated need for) testing, and the application of Hyrum's law (over time, given enough users, the implementation becomes the interface).

Example that comes to mind, think it was a Pease article?  Delco was abusing their regulators, runing them just on the bleeding edge of operation in their radios.  Because, you know, can't be spending precious cents on heatsinks.  They were thermally cycling, and blowing up.  They weren't expected to operate that way, it's a protective measure not an operating mode.  But, being the big ugly customer that they are, they got the testing and process improvements, which makes for a better part in the end, but it's rather unsatisfying to see the abusers win, y'know?

Now, in the wider sphere of engineering, or materials science, or whatever -- you can test what you can measure, but if you can't test it, you obviously aren't going to get any quality out of it.  That's one thing you can't "test into" a product.  I suppose microcracks in metal parts would be such an example: a thick enough part can't even be x-rayed.  Parts can't be stress-tested if it spends precious fatigue life (most things aren't nearly so critical, but rocket engine parts might be an example?).  That also struck with early metal-can transistors, where the bondwires, and weld spatter inside the metal can, could fatigue during extensive vibration tests, indeed receiving testing was testing quality out of them.   Maybe, impurities in bulk chemicals?  Chemical tests are lengthy and expensive (and, a lot of mechanical tests too), you're only going to test for common impurities.

So you often have situations where, not so much that you can't test some things, but it's a very real question of economy, how much time and money will be spent testing versus how much the material cost, and what revenue the finished product will generate.  And implicit in that testing is, how much incoming material, or outgoing production, will you reject -- how much production time and handling labor will be wasted -- when the tests fail?

That's where you "can't test quality" into your process, you need a different method.  Engaging suppliers in a more involved process, auditing, random inspections, 3rd party testing, etc.  They may raise their costs in response, but when that's less than the above cost, there you go.  Engage with your labor suppliers just as much, i.e., employees.  Make sure they're happy, comfortable, have all the tools and procedures in place to produce quality parts, and that their managers are doing the same.

Which, heh, the converse, I can just imagine what a living hell that would be.  Testing quality into a labor force?  I'm not sure exactly what all that would entail, but it sounds as awful as any low-wage megacorp is.

Tim
« Last Edit: September 06, 2020, 07:00:42 pm by T3sl4co1l »
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Offline floobydust

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Re: Clive Sinclair - what a cheap skate!
« Reply #40 on: September 06, 2020, 07:36:35 pm »
The 1975 Sinclair Black Watch was an early, huge product failure. The batteries going dead, drifting oscillator, money-back guarantee... a loss of USD$3.4M (£2.6M) in 2019 dollars. OUCH.
I'm not sure if Sinclair just didn't listen to the engineers or he pushed them so hard, usually it's that they don't want to poke the bear and tell him flat out it's not ready yet. Dreamers don't worry too much about things not working.

I remember W. Edwards Deming teaching "Inspection is too late. The quality, good or bad, is already in the product.  As Harold F. Dodge said, “You cannot inspect quality into a product.”
 

Offline PlainName

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Re: Clive Sinclair - what a cheap skate!
« Reply #41 on: September 07, 2020, 11:56:56 pm »
Quote
It is not inconceivable to produce a widget which contains out of spec components and still work.

Unless we are talking Aliexpress cheapies, in which case they probably won't continue working even when they work.

Some double-standards going on here, methinks. Surely a product that has failed some test may fail further tests in the future - it is a faulty product, after all. But it's OK for Sinclair and the likes to use these in the name of a cheap BoM, but it's not okay for a hobby guy to use similar from a Alibay vendor.
 

Online vk6zgo

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Re: Clive Sinclair - what a cheap skate!
« Reply #42 on: September 08, 2020, 12:46:00 am »
Quote
It is not inconceivable to produce a widget which contains out of spec components and still work.

Unless we are talking Aliexpress cheapies, in which case they probably won't continue working even when they work.

Some double-standards going on here, methinks. Surely a product that has failed some test may fail further tests in the future - it is a faulty product, after all. But it's OK for Sinclair and the likes to use these in the name of a cheap BoM, but it's not okay for a hobby guy to use similar from a Alibay vendor.

I couldn't locate where you got the quote from, but years ago, we were taught that designs which relied upon strict adherence to component specs were poor engineering.

For instance, that is why amplifiers have negative feedback loops around them.
Whilst it is no doubt possible to design an amplifier using carefully selected components which will meet all required specifications, it is just plain easier to design one that isn't "touchy" about component specs.

The same thing applies to other electronic devices.
Mechanical stuff is not quite as forgiving!
 

Offline Berni

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Re: Clive Sinclair - what a cheap skate!
« Reply #43 on: September 08, 2020, 05:51:52 am »
Quote
It is not inconceivable to produce a widget which contains out of spec components and still work.
Unless we are talking Aliexpress cheapies, in which case they probably won't continue working even when they work.

Some double-standards going on here, methinks. Surely a product that has failed some test may fail further tests in the future - it is a faulty product, after all. But it's OK for Sinclair and the likes to use these in the name of a cheap BoM, but it's not okay for a hobby guy to use similar from a Alibay vendor.

I would guess that the only thing that was likely wrong with these Sinclairs trash picked chips is that one or two bits in those chips ware dead (stuck at 1 or stuck at 0) due to a lithography error that didn't quite connect two transistors properly or shorted something out. The rest of the chip is fine. If there are any other serious faults with the chip such as drawing 2x the supply current than normal then the test would also detect it and toss it out.

Yes no test is 100% guaranteed to find all issues. There might be 'zombie' chips that work fine in the test but then after some field wear an tear for example a bond wire that was just barely holding on lets go. But this is really rare. The tests are typically run at the extremes of the operating range. So the chip might be run below and above the datasheet speced supply voltage spec to make sure it works there too, the chip might be fed slow rise time signals to try coax and metastability faults to show up. The chip might be overclocked and measured at what point it craps out...etc So all this makes sure that the chip operates fine even beyond what the datasheet claims it can work at, so this way they can be pretty darn certain that it also works within the datasheet specs. Some of the fancy more expensive chips for high reliability applications might even be thermal cycled and tested at temperature extremes.

Its just that back in Clives days the semiconductor industry was not designing in tricks to make the chips more fault tolerant. So if a single transistor was dead the whole chip was considered trash. Back when chips has 10s of thousands of transistors this was perfectly fine. But as they got into the milions of transistors it simply was not possible to keep the yield up. So it started making more financial sense to make the chip slightly larger by adding redundant parts in order to be able to "fix" otherwise dead chips by blowing OTP fuses that disable the broken parts. Clive simply beat them to the idea by a fair few years.
 

Online SiliconWizard

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Re: Clive Sinclair - what a cheap skate!
« Reply #44 on: September 08, 2020, 04:49:30 pm »
The 1975 Sinclair Black Watch was an early, huge product failure. The batteries going dead, drifting oscillator, money-back guarantee... a loss of USD$3.4M (£2.6M) in 2019 dollars. OUCH.
I'm not sure if Sinclair just didn't listen to the engineers or he pushed them so hard, usually it's that they don't want to poke the bear and tell him flat out it's not ready yet. Dreamers don't worry too much about things not working.

I remember W. Edwards Deming teaching "Inspection is too late. The quality, good or bad, is already in the product.  As Harold F. Dodge said, “You cannot inspect quality into a product.”

Yep, this one is a good example of bad engineering.

I've heard stories about the development of the ZX80/81/Spectrum and the QL, but not of this watch, so I can't really tell how things were at Sinclair back then. It's probably a mix of Sinclair pushing too hard and engineers not willing/or unable to step foot and say "this isn't gonna work". What we don't even know is whether Sinclair himself was aware of the limitations BEFORE releasing the product. I frankly can't believe the engineering team DIDN'T. Sure, testing alone is not going to guarantee that the product is reliable, but come on. The two main problems: oscillator drift and power consumption were definitely easy to test, and some basic testing was definitely enough to figure out the product was not going to meet specs. And of course, it was also easy to figure it out from the design itself without any kind of testing. So either engineers LIED, or (more likely) Sinclair's management decided to release the product in spite of its shortcomings (something which Sinclair kept being famous for...), hoping the issues would be solved in time, the market already "hooked", and that they could release fixes later. They kept doing this till their last product (which I believe was the QL but  I'm not sure?) This sounds bad, but hey, do many companies these days not do this? We could go as far as saying that Sinclair was one of the first companies that came up with the "minimum viable product" concept. Now define "viable", but some recent ompanies (like startups) DO often release unfinished/unreliable products as "MVPs", that ultimately also make a net loss, so this isn't that different.

Engineers, even these days, know how hard it can be to step foot against a company's management. Sometimes the only way out is to resign. IME, most engineers won't, and will end up doing what they are asked, and constantly whine about it. More comfortable than losing your job.
 

Offline peter-h

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Re: Clive Sinclair - what a cheap skate!
« Reply #45 on: September 13, 2020, 03:36:03 pm »
I remember Clive's stuff back to the 1960s.

As said by others above, he was always right on the edge of things only just about working. The little radio he did c. 1969 was crap and barely worked at the best of times. The audio modules were also crap, using the cheapest imaginable open carbon trimmers for the level controls.

Then he had the disaster with the watch, which may not have been his fault; it was a failing chip which had a near 100% failure rate, but not right away.

Then the portable TV which was packed with electronics. He got a custom CRT made for it. It didn't go far.

His last adventure was the C5 electric vehicle, assembled by a washing machine company. It was junk too.

But he wasn't bothered. He got his knighthood: Sir Clive.

And everybody thinks he was a genius. Well, he was. I went to one of his presentations, on the design of a digital voltmeter. He decided TTL chips cost too much so he built them with discrete components!
Z80 Z180 Z280 Z8 S8 8031 8051 H8/300 H8/500 80x86 90S1200 32F417
 

Offline Kjelt

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Re: Clive Sinclair - what a cheap skate!
« Reply #46 on: September 14, 2020, 04:15:10 pm »
But he wasn't bothered. He got his knighthood: Sir Clive.
And Tommy Flowers did not, not even post mortem. Shame!
 

Offline floobydust

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Re: Clive Sinclair - what a cheap skate!
« Reply #47 on: September 16, 2020, 08:39:59 pm »
Early, Sinclair did many audio amplifiers (check out their overboard claims).

For the TR750 (germanium 1964) I read:
"The original transistors were selected Plessey devices rescued from landfill, a Sinclair specialty and consequently unobtainable through the usual suppliers." EPE Jake Rothman June 2015.

I guess he did get ahead by being a cheapskate.
 


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