So... Anyone Remember The Pandora From Sinclair?


Dunny

Dunny

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This was an interesting find - the Pandora portable computer was first designed by Rick Dickinson back in the late 1980s.

It's completely true, too - Rick, having designed what was possibly the most iconic home computer of the 1980s (design-wise, before pipes up about actual hardware specs!), the Sinclair Spectrum, was commissioned to design a portable computer for Sinclair, which was at first named "Pandora".

This went on to become the z88 portable computer, but Rick has posted on his flickr set the original designs:

CODE

http://www.flickr.com/photos/9574086@N02/sets/72157600856913881/



It has a full keyboard and clamshell design... No gaming controls though :)

That keyboard looks suspiciously like a QL, too. Ahead of their time, that lot - shame pretty much everything they touched after the Speccy was a pile of crap, even if they were extremely nicely designed piles of crap :)

D.
 
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Wow... Eerie resemblance.

You'd almost think you could fold back the bar the says "Mobile" and find gaming controls.
 
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'Izolo' said:
Wow... Eerie resemblance.

You'd almost think you could fold back the bar the says "Mobile" and find gaming controls.
Click to expand...
You're not kidding :)

I consider myself something of a Sinclair expert - but I had absolutely no idea that this even existed! Mr Dickinson has of course put his designs up on Flickr before now, with the complete set of Speccy design prototypes and all, but this really was quite the find...

And he called it a Pandora, too! Just a freaky coincidence, I suppose...

Hope that CraigIX and friends don't end up the same way Sinclair did though :)

D.
 
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I love old electronics. I still have 3 Matell Electronics Intellivisions (2 work, I think). Emulators just don't do those justice because of their very weird controllers.
 
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'David Bowman' said:
I love old electronics. I still have 3 Matell Electronics Intellivisions (2 work, I think). Emulators just don't do those justice because of their very weird controllers.
Click to expand...
What about USB conversion?
 
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The new Pandora might have a lot more to offer but you cant beat the keyboard on the old one.
It is a pretty freaky resemblance. I guess those guys had the right idea, at the wrong time :)

Nice find Dunny.

EDIT: The Janus reminds me of a Wii.
 
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'Megatog615' said:
''David Bowman'' said:
I love old electronics. I still have 3 Matell Electronics Intellivisions (2 work, I think). Emulators just don''''t do those justice because of their very weird controllers.
Click to expand...
What about USB conversion?


I suppose it's conceivable. The controllers were hard-wired into the console though. I haven't ever looked into it, really.

Edit: Hell, I could do this. It couldn't be harder than wiring my MAME cabinet.
CODE
http://www.raphnet.net/electronique/intellivusb/index_en.php
Click to expand...
 
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That's really eerie. Not only is it a similar design and same name, but it's the same price!
 
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I remember the (sinclair) pandora and lusting after one during my childhood. Only from the tantilising rumours in 'Your Sinclair' and 'Sinclair User'! Evil Alan Sugar destroyed it though.

Hopefully soon my dream of a pocket spectrum with full keyboard and gaming controls will be a reality! Bwahahahaha!
 
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QUOTE
Evil Alan Sugar destroyed it though.


"Evil Alan Sugar" actually increased the lifespan of the Spectrum. If it weren't for Amstrad it is unlikely that there would ever have been any further models after the Spectrum+ - Sinclar was in financial ruins.

I remember reading about the Sinclair Pandora, both at the time and later when it was briefly mentioned in RetroGamer.
 
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Oh my god. I have a horrible obsession with old computer hardware, especially portables, and I think you've just ruined my life by finding something so beautiful I can't get hold of. Its the black and yellow one - it looks so nice. Oh no.
 
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'iprice' said:
QUOTE
Evil Alan Sugar destroyed it though.


"Evil Alan Sugar" actually increased the lifespan of the Spectrum. If it weren't for Amstrad it is unlikely that there would ever have been any further models after the Spectrum+ - Sinclar was in financial ruins.
Click to expand...
Indeed - The 128k models were so bug ridden that the first thing Amstrad did was to release a new ROM in the +2 that addressed these software problems - it was so bad that I had to abandon 128k support in BASin in favour of a ROM image that actually worked...

Amstrad went on further to produce the +2a and +3 which not only added much more flexible paging hardware, but also fixed known bugs in the hardware such as the floating bus/port $FF bug (which caused quite a few incompatibilities with older software that used this "feature" as a method of synching the screen update.

Unfortunately the +2a/+3 failed to revive interest in the sinclair line, as people were already moving to the 16bit systems such as the Atari ST, Amiga and Mac, which were becoming much more affordable.

D.
 
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'iprice' said:
I remember reading about the Sinclair Pandora, both at the time and later when it was briefly mentioned in RetroGamer.
Click to expand...
As I was reading this thread I couldn't work out where I had (relatively recently) read about the original Pandora. But you have put me out my misery - the fantastic Retro Gamer :D

And I'm another of those sad, sad people that are looking forward to the 'new' Pandora mainly so I can play Speccy games on the go *with* keyboard. The DS is better than the gp2x in that respect with the second screen for the keyboard, but real buttons is the holy grail.

PS No discussion of the downfall of Sir Clive should be allowed without a mention of the C5.. :p
 
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Yeah count me as one who is interested mostly in having all the great old 8-bit machines in his pocket, with a real keyboard available for hacking .. for sure its going to be fun to get some Oric love on!
 
'Dunny' said:
This was an interesting find - the Pandora portable computer was first designed by Rick Dickinson back in the late 1980s.

It's completely true, too - Rick, having designed what was possibly the most iconic home computer of the 1980s (design-wise, before pipes up about actual hardware specs!), the Sinclair Spectrum, was commissioned to design a portable computer for Sinclair, which was at first named "Pandora".

This went on to become the z88 portable computer, but Rick has posted on his flickr set the original designs:

CODE

http://www.flickr.com/photos/9574086@N02/sets/72157600856913881/
Click to expand...
It has a full keyboard and clamshell design... No gaming controls though :)

That keyboard looks suspiciously like a QL, too. Ahead of their time, that lot - shame pretty much everything they touched after the Speccy was a pile of crap, even if they were extremely nicely designed piles of crap :)

D.

Wow! I had a QL, they are so the same keys. Very good keys actually. Get them in our Pandora! I kid I kid.
 
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'Dunny' said:
'iprice' said:
QUOTE
Evil Alan Sugar destroyed it though.


"Evil Alan Sugar" actually increased the lifespan of the Spectrum. If it weren't for Amstrad it is unlikely that there would ever have been any further models after the Spectrum+ - Sinclar was in financial ruins.
Click to expand...
Indeed - The 128k models were so bug ridden that the first thing Amstrad did was to release a new ROM in the +2 that addressed these software problems - it was so bad that I had to abandon 128k support in BASin in favour of a ROM image that actually worked...

Amstrad went on further to produce the +2a and +3 which not only added much more flexible paging hardware, but also fixed known bugs in the hardware such as the floating bus/port $FF bug (which caused quite a few incompatibilities with older software that used this "feature" as a method of synching the screen update.

Unfortunately the +2a/+3 failed to revive interest in the sinclair line, as people were already moving to the 16bit systems such as the Atari ST, Amiga and Mac, which were becoming much more affordable.

D.


You are probably right... I just remember thinking he was evil at the time - he had control over my beloved speccy! That was my first set of 'games machine' wars in the playground... Speccy VS C64 vs Amstrad CPC. The first time I saw '© 1982 Amstrad' instead of '© 1982 Sinclair Research Ltd' on start up I actually got quite upset. I was young at the time. (or was it 86 on the amstrad one? - Can't rememeber)

I suppose the equivalent these days would be Microsoft taking over Nintendo. The horror!

He did seem to market them as a budget alternative to his CPC range, rather than kill it off as competition, but the amstrad designs just didn't look like spectrums.

Nice nostalgia link... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfCdNrRNS4g
Click to expand...
 
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