QL



The Sinclair QL (Quantum Leap) was supposed to be the successor to the hugely successful ZX Spectrum computer. It was a rather powerful and advanced machine for its day, especially at its price range. However, Sinclair completely fucked up its release. They announced it to be going into production and took orders when there was not even a finished prototype; rushed into production, the original firmware was full of bugs, and the much-touted Microdrive had serious reliability issues. So when Amstrad bought near-bankrupt Sinclair, they kept producing the ZX, but promptly killed the QL.

Curiously, this failure led to a great creation: a young nerd from Finland made the mistake of buying a QL, and due to the lack of support, he had to learn how to write his own software. Many years later, he wanted to get Unix on his PC, but it was quite expensive, so he decided to write his own clone... Linus' Unix.