Sinclair QL

home/personal computer system launched by Sinclair Research in 1984. A successor to the ZX Spectrum, the QL was designed with the hobbyist and small business market in mind.

The computer used a Motorola 68008 processor, came with 128 KB of RAM, and could be connected to a monitor or TV for display. It used a multitasking operating system (OS), Sinclair QDOS, and was bundled with an office applications suite (wordprocessor, spreadsheet, database and graphics) written by Psion. It had a built-in advanced BASIC Interpreter.

The QL was plagued by a number of problems from release, particularly bugs in the QDOS operating system ROM, which lead to multiple releases of the firmware. The machine also suffered from reliability problems of its built-in "Microdrive" tape-loop storage systems (first seen as add-ons for the ZX Spectrum). Although the computer was rather advanced for its time, and relatively cheap, it failed to sell well and was eventually discontinued.

The QL was also available for a short period of time in the guise of ICL's 'One Per Desk' (OPD). Based around the same platform as the QL, but with a different case and keyboard, the OPD had the intruiging addition of a telephone handset on one end of the keyboard, and rudimentary Computer-Telephony Integration (CTI) software. The OPD was in turn marketed by British Telecom as the BT Merlin, with limited success.

It is a little known fact that Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, owned a Sinclair QL in his youth.