SAM Coupé

The SAM Coupé was an 8-bit British home computer made by Miles Gordon Technology, a company based in Swansea, and released in December 1989. It was conceived as a logical upgrade for owners of the ZX Spectrum 48K, with a compatibility mode for Spectrum software plus more memory, better graphics and sound, and built-in support for floppy disks, MIDI, joysticks, light pens and a proprietary mouse. The hardware was designed by Bruce Gordon around a Z80B processor running at 6 MHz and a custom gate array that handled display, memory and input and output, playing the role that the ULA plays in the Spectrum. The basic model had 256 KiB of RAM that could be expanded substantially, and four display modes drawing on a palette of 128 colours, including an 80-column text presentation that allowed CP/M applications to run with extra software. Because it relied on 8-bit technology just as 16-bit home computers were becoming common, and had few commercial software titles, it was a commercial failure. Miles Gordon Technology went into receivership in June 1990, and two later attempts to revive the machine, first by SAM Computers Limited and then from November 1992 by West Coast Computers, continued until that company was liquidated in 2005.