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| Clive Sinclair - what a cheap skate! |
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| eti:
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! |
| sleemanj:
They only needed 32k and used 64k of ram in which half was faulty arranged so that the full 32k required was present. It's not like the other half was advertised or supposed to be available, it wasn't, just unused. They also sometimes found a machine that the 32k they needed didn't work, in which case they rebadged it as a 16k machine. Not really any different to, for example, hard drive, SSD, flash memory where bad areas are marked off in firmware. Reduce, reuse, recycle. 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! |
| IanB:
I've got to ask, were you a potential buyer of a Spectrum when they were first on the market? If you had a choice between buying a computer or not buying a computer, would you have passed up on the Spectrum because you would rather save up for more expensive options? And be sure to understand that if you bought a computer with 16 K of RAM, you would get 16 K of working RAM. If you only got 8 K when 16 K was promised, the consumer protection people would have been upon on them like a ton of bricks. The UK has always had strong consumer protection laws. |
| eti:
--- Quote from: IanB on September 05, 2020, 01:45:14 am ---I've got to ask, were you a potential buyer of a Spectrum when they were first on the market? If you had a choice between buying a computer or not buying a computer, would you have passed up on the Spectrum because you would rather save up for more expensive options? And be sure to understand that if you bought a computer with 16 K of RAM, you would get 16 K of working RAM. If you only got 8 K when 16 K was promised, the consumer protection people would have been upon on them like a ton of bricks. The UK has always had strong consumer protection laws. --- End quote --- "The UK has always had strong consumer protection laws." Yes, I know, I am English ;) |
| Ian.M:
It led to interesting mods like this one that created an 80K RAM rubber key speccy! http://blog.tynemouthsoftware.co.uk/2020/03/a-zx-spectrum-with-80k-of-ram.html |
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