clive was made by Timex Corporation in 1983 based on the ZX Spectrum, a design so Thatcher Era Britain it was damn near anachronistic even when new. out of the box (let's not worry our little heads about how "protogen as a product" [PaaP] works) he was essentially useless and could not run any desirable software, then after just a couple years timex gave up on the product line and abandoned it entirely. he's now pretty much adrift, and spends a lot of his time coping with his own decay.
a lot of his flexible parts are made out of not the best plastics of 1983™ - neoprene that's rotting, PVC that's losing its elasticity, that kind of thing. it could be worse; at least he doesn't have bromine syndrome, so he doesn't have to consider getting retrobrited just to go out in public. but still, he has to do just about everything pretty gingerly because he doesn't want to strip any hard-to-replace plastic gears.
3d printing has been a godsend, so at least there's that, but what do you do about replacing molded flexible vinyl sleeving? and the ears and paws are a decent kinda gore-texy stuff so they've held up well, but they have layers of foam rubber underneath and well, that's gonna have to get replaced sooner or later. oof. ugh. what a process. i know everyone wants to hug him and he appreciates it but be gentle, and be prepared to brush some flecks of black neoprene off your shirt. maybe a lot of them
he'd probably worry more about all this stuff if he had the cycles for it, but he's not the brightest bulb; a 3.5MHz Z80 will do that to ya. he'd like to run some programs though, someday. hope springs eternal. his original parts were so useless (cartridge slot? for all those cartridges, right) that he's kitbashed himself with some... slightly less detestable hardware, hence the color-mismatched tape deck from a +2 (he'd much rather be a +2.) it doesn't work, of course, and even if it did nothing he could load would run right, but... he's getting there. maybe someday he'll get a crystal swap and a new ULA.
clive has a lot of ebay saved searches.
