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Sinclair ZX Microdrive
ZX Microdrive unit The ZX Microdrive is a magnetic-tape data storage system launched in July 1983 by Sinclair Research for its ZX Spectrum home computer. It was proposed as a faster-loading alternative to the cassette and cheaper than a floppy disk, but it suffered from poor reliability and lower speed. Microdrives used tiny cartridges containing a endless loop of magnetic tape, which held a minimum of 85 KB and performed a complete circuit in approximately eight seconds. The Microdrive technology was later also used in the Sinclair QL and ICL One Per Desk personal computers. Development It is claimed the Microdrive concept was originally suggested by Andrew Grillet at an interview with Sinclair Research in 1974. Grillet was offered a better-paying job at Xerox, and never worked for Sinclair Research. Development of the ZX Microdrive hardware by Sinclair engineers Jim Westwood, David Southward and Ben Cheese started in 1982. Products Opened microdrive cart ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Microdrive
The Microdrive was a miniature, 1-inch hard disk drive released in 1998 by IBM. The idea was originally created in 1992 by duTimothy J. RileyanThomas R. Albrechtat the Almaden Research Center in San Jose. A team of engineers and designers at IBM's Fujisawa, Japan facility helped make the creation of the drive possible. Due to the failure of the Kittyhawk, a 1.3-inch hard disk drive also created in 1992 by Hewlett Packard, initial support for it was reluctant. Despite that, development persisted. The Microdrive caused the creation of and used the CompactFlash Type II format which became the ''de facto'' standard for devices utilizing the technology at the time. Because of this, and its advantages over flash technology, the Microdrive ended up being a success. Although a niche for a short time, the Microdrive market later became very competitive. Many companies began producing miniature hard disk drives also referred to as Microdrives. Some offered more storage capacity or w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jim Westwood
Jim Westwood is the former chief engineer who worked at Sinclair Research Ltd in the 1980s, starting at the company in 1963. Westwood was the technical mastermind behind many of Sinclair's products and worked there for more than twenty years. Sir Clive Sinclair and Westwood shared a connection even before they met when Westwood had previously worked at an electronics store in London which was owned by Bernard Babani, Sinclair's publisher. This gave Westwood a good degree of familiarity with Sinclair's designs, which prompted him to join Sinclair's fledgling company, Sinclair Radionics. Westwood subsequently had a hand in most of the company's products, including the calculators, audio equipment, ZX Spectrum computers and TV80 The Sinclair TV80, also known as the Flat Screen Pocket TV or FTV1, was a pocket television released by Sinclair Research in September 1983. Unlike Sinclair's earlier attempts at a portable television, the TV80 used a flat CRT with a side-mount .... He ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sinclair QL Internal Microdrives
Sinclair may refer to: Places * Lake Sinclair, near Milledgeville, Georgia * Mount Sinclair, Canada * Sinclair, Iowa * Sinclair, West Virginia * Sinclair, Wyoming * Sinclair Mills, British Columbia * Sinclair Township, Minnesota * Sinclair, Manitoba * Sinclair, Western Australia, a locality of the Shire of Esperance People * Sinclair (surname), list of people with this surname * Clan Sinclair, Scottish family * Lord Sinclair, a title in the Peerage of Scotland * Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951), Nobel Prize–winning American writer * Sinclair (singer), stage name of French singer-songwriter Mathieu Blanc-Francard (born 1970) * Sir Clive Sinclair, an English entrepreneur and inventor, most commonly known for his work in consumer electronics in the late 1970s and early 1980s—including ZX Spectrum computers. Companies * Sinclair Broadcast Group, operator of American television stations * Sinclair Oil Corporation, American petroleum company * Sinclair Radionics Ltd, Briti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Daisy Chain (electrical Engineering)
In electrical and electronic engineering, a daisy chain is a wiring scheme in which multiple devices are wired together in sequence or in a ring, similar to a Daisy garland, garland of daisy flowers. Daisy chains may be used for power, analog signals, digital data, or a combination thereof. The term ''daisy chain'' may refer either to large scale devices connected in series, such as a series of power strips plugged into each other to form a single long line of strips, or to the wiring patterns embedded inside of devices. Other examples of devices which can be used to form daisy chains are those based on Universal Serial Bus (USB), FireWire, Thunderbolt (interface), Thunderbolt and Ethernet cables. Signal transmission For analog signals, connections usually consist of a simple Bus (computing), electrical bus and, especially in the case of a Signal chain (signal processing chain), chain of many devices, may require the use of one or more repeaters or amplifiers within the ch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kilobit Per Second
In telecommunications, data transfer rate is the average number of bits (bitrate), characters or symbols ( baudrate), or data blocks per unit time passing through a communication link in a data-transmission system. Common data rate units are multiples of bits per second (bit/s) and bytes per second (B/s). For example, the data rates of modern residential high-speed Internet connections are commonly expressed in megabits per second (Mbit/s). Standards for unit symbols and prefixes Unit symbol The ISQ symbols for the bit and byte are ''bit'' and ''B'', respectively. In the context of data-rate units, one byte consists of 8 bits, and is synonymous with the unit octet. The abbreviation bps is often used to mean bit/s, so that when a ''1 Mbps'' connection is advertised, it usually means that the maximum achievable bandwidth is 1 Mbit/s (one million bits per second), which is 0.125 MB/s ( megabyte per second), or about 0.1192 MiB/s ( mebibyte per second). Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bad Sector
Bad Sector is an ambient/noise project formed in 1992 in Tuscany, Italy by Massimo Magrini. While working at the Computer Art Lab of ISTI in Pisa (one of the CNR institutes), he developed original gesture interfaces that he uses in live performances: 'Aerial Painting Hand' (a device that tracks the position of the musician's hands in gloves of two different colors), 'UV-Stick' (an ultraviolet-illuminated stick that the musician moves in front of the camera—a computer reads its position and angle and makes changes to music generation algorithms accordingly), and others. Bad Sector's music is considered a mixture of ambient, noise, industrial music, minimal and experimental music. Magrini himself describes it as "deeply emotional dark ambient noise". Common themes (as reflected in album and track titles) include microbiology, algorithms, physics, and space exploration. See also *List of ambient music artists References External links Bad Sector official websiteF ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Second
The second (symbol: s) is a unit of time derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes, and finally to 60 seconds each (24 × 60 × 60 = 86400). The current and formal definition in the International System of Units (SI) is more precise: The second ..is defined by taking the fixed numerical value of the caesium frequency, Δ''ν''Cs, the unperturbed ground-state hyperfine transition frequency of the caesium 133 atom, to be when expressed in the unit Hz, which is equal to s−1. This current definition was adopted in 1967 when it became feasible to define the second based on fundamental properties of nature with caesium clocks. As the speed of Earth's rotation varies and is slowing ever so slightly, a leap second is added at irregular intervals to civil time to keep clocks in sync with Earth's rotation. The definition that is based on of a rotation of the earth is still used by the Universal Time 1 (UT1) system. Etymology "Minute" ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ant Attack
''Ant Attack'' is an action game written for the ZX Spectrum by Sandy White and published by Quicksilva in 1983. A Commodore 64 version was released in 1984. While ''Zaxxon'' and ''Q*bert'' previously used isometric projection, ''Ant Attack'' added an extra degree of freedom (ability to go up and down instead of just north, south, east and west), and it may be the first isometric game for personal computers. The same type of isometric projection was used in Sandy White's later '' Zombie Zombie''. It was also one of the first games to allow players to choose their gender. Gameplay The player chooses whether to control the character of "Girl" or "Boy", who then enters the walled city of Antescher to rescue the other, who has been captured and immobilised somewhere in the city. The city is inhabited by giant ants which chase and attempt to bite the player. The player can defend themselves by throwing grenades at the ants, but these can also harm the humans. Once the hostage is re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quicksilva
Quicksilva was a British games software publisher active during the early 1980s. Quicksilva was founded by Nick Lambert in 1980. The name Quicksilva was inspired by a particular guitar solo in a track on the album Happy Trails by Quicksilver Messenger Service. Quicksilva mainly released games for the ZX81, Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum, but also did conversions and some original games for the VIC-20, Dragon 32/64, Oric-1/ Atmos, BBC Micro and Acorn Electron home computers. One of their earliest titles was ''QS Defenda'' (originally ''QS Defender''), a clone of the ''Defender'' arcade game for the ZX80 and ZX81 home computers. Greater success followed with later releases, including a ''Star Raiders''-style game entitled ''Time-Gate'' which reached the top of the ZX Spectrum charts in December 1982. Amongst the company's other successes were Jeff Minter's '' Gridrunner'' (1983), '' Bugaboo'' (1983, a.k.a. ''La Pulga'') and ''Fred'' (1983, titled " ''Roland on the Ropes'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Database
In computing, a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and analyze the data. The DBMS additionally encompasses the core facilities provided to administer the database. The sum total of the database, the DBMS and the associated applications can be referred to as a database system. Often the term "database" is also used loosely to refer to any of the DBMS, the database system or an application associated with the database. Before digital storage and retrieval of data have become widespread, index cards were used for data storage in a wide range of applications and environments: in the home to record and store recipes, shopping lists, contact information and other organizational data; in business to record presentation notes, project research and notes, and contact information; in schools as flash c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Word Processor
A word processor (WP) is a device or computer program that provides for input, editing, formatting, and output of text, often with some additional features. Early word processors were stand-alone devices dedicated to the function, but current word processors are word processor programs running on general purpose computers, including smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktop computers. The functions of a word processor program are typically between those of a simple text editor and a desktop publishing program; Many word processing programs have gained advanced features over time providing similar functionality to desktop publishing programs. Common word processor programs include LibreOffice Writer, Google Docs and Microsoft Word. Background Word processors developed from mechanical machines, later merging with computer technology. The history of word processing is the story of the gradual automation of the physical aspects of writing and editing, and then to the refinement ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tasword
''Tasword'' is a word processor for microcomputers developed by Tasman Software. The first version was released for the ZX81 in 1982 and spawned two major revisions in addition to several add-ons and, later, tailored versions for the +2 and +3 Spectrum models, the SAM Coupé, the MSX, the Timex Sinclair 2068 and the Amstrad CPC range. Many of the features of modern word processors were included, such as justification, word wrap and page header. Features such as bold text and italic type were achieved through sending special escape sequences to a printer. It featured the ability to use a 64 characters per line font in the standard ZX Spectrum screen. Add-on products included TasMerge for mail merge functionality (which was later included in Tasword III and later versions) and TasSpell for spell checker. Releases ZX81 * Tasword - 1982 ZX Spectrum * Tasword Two "The Word Processor" - 1983https://archive.org/download/World_of_Spectrum_June_2017_Mirror/World%20of%20Spectrum%20June% ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
