cheb wrote: ↑Fri Nov 01, 2024 10:56 am
Not in that format, mt grandfather bought a couple of them and they were horrible things to use, quite easy to roll when cornering. Two wheels at the front would have been much better.
And a roof, maybe. I remember filtering through London one typical rainy day and seeing a bloke driving a Renault Twizzy which, although it had a roof, possessed no doors. With the sideways rain and spray from the road, he looked like he'd just jumped in the Thames and did not seem to appreciate the various comments being directed at him from a passing builder's van.
The irony is that with new battery/motor technology, they could be viable nowadays!
Agreed and coincidentally, we was talking about this at work the other day, saying he was head of the game in many ways. Imagine the C5 with todays battery and motor tech and it'd probably be very good in a recumbent leccy bike kind of way.
Back when they were released I was working in a local car dealership and the boss bought one to stick in the showroom window as a attraction, conversation piece type of thing. Despite having the optional extra of the visibility flag (and rain cover) there was no way it was safe to go on the roads obvs, but i went into town on it via the paths. Hilarious fun and it got laughs from everyone. Who knew then, what lie ahead...
cheb wrote: ↑Fri Nov 01, 2024 10:56 am
Not in that format, mt grandfather bought a couple of them and they were horrible things to use, quite easy to roll when cornering. Two wheels at the front would have been much better.
The Sinclair C5 has been designed to meet the new regulations which eased the legal operating requirements for electrically assisted pedal bicycles and tricycles. The present report discusses an assessment of the likely accident rate for the C5 on public roads and attempts to relate this to the rate for pedal cycles. It is not yet possible to reliably assess the rate from actual accidents and so factors contributing to the most important accident situations are studied. Conspicuity during daylight seems to be comparable to that of pedal cycles when there is a clear view of the C5, but problems arise from its low height. Braking is good once the brakes are bedded-in. Stability and handling appear to be adequate and the consequences of rolling it over are probably less serious than from falling off a pedal cycle. Operating considerations and the protection offered by the C5 are both briefly discussed. It is concluded that the accident rate of C5's might be similar to that for pedal cycles, although accident and injury circumstances may be very different.
Cousin Jack wrote: ↑Thu Oct 31, 2024 10:23 am
Going back in time, CPM. I had a desktop running concurrent CPM with 4 windows aeon ago, then DOS took over the world and eventually after abut 30 years we got Windows with a capital W.
I’m sure the very first amstrad computers had cpm. Was it a acronym for computer processors for microcomputer ? Did it run under the zilog z80?
No idea what it stood for, it was an operating system that competed with ( and IMO outperformed) early DOS. Then IBM jumped in with their desktop and bundled DOS into it. The rest is history.
I had it running on a Compaq, others had Rair machines, probably Amstrads too.
I bought an Amstrad amplifier as part of a budget package 'hifi' deal in the early 70s. The amp was shite. It was the first part of the package to be replaced.
Cousin Jack wrote: ↑Thu Oct 31, 2024 10:23 am
Going back in time, CPM. I had a desktop running concurrent CPM with 4 windows aeon ago, then DOS took over the world and eventually after abut 30 years we got Windows with a capital W.
I’m sure the very first amstrad computers had cpm. Was it a acronym for computer processors for microcomputer ? Did it run under the zilog z80?
No idea what it stood for, it was an operating system that competed with ( and IMO outperformed) early DOS. Then IBM jumped in with their desktop and bundled DOS into it. The rest is history.
I had it running on a Compaq, others had Rair machines, probably Amstrads too.
The legend goes that CP/M was so successful that Gary Kildall was always off surfing or skiing whenever IBM wanted to talk to him about using it for the PC. So IBM took the hump and gave the job to Gates and co. who didn't even have a complete OS at that point and had to work around the clock to finish it.
I used CP/M on Data Generals I quite liked it, it was better than early DOS
gremlin wrote: ↑Thu Oct 31, 2024 9:55 am
Ditto the craze of the Internet of Things, such as kettles you could switch on via your phone, notwithstanding that you have to fill the thing anyway, and by the time you've grabbed a spoon and a teabag, a normal kettle would have boiled anyway.
One of the regular gripes among expats in the US is the amount of time an electric kettle takes to boil to make a cuppa. Apparently down to them being 110v instead of 240v/13A.
