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by pjmlp
35 days ago
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Ah, the SAM Coupé, it was such a bad luck coming at the end of 8 bit home computers. I used to do window shopping at computer store that had them in display, but they weren't worth the investment, most of my friends were slowly moving into the Amiga already, and I eventually got a PC. I would say a bit of its ideas lives on Spectrum Next. |
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You're right. I feel it should have had a much faster Z80 as stock, but it was probably too expensive at the time.
The very next year, the MSX Turbo R machines shipped with an R800 CPU that was twice the speed and could run 16-bit code:
https://www.msx.org/wiki/ASCII_R800
This is more or less a Z280:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zilog_Z280
> I used to do window shopping at computer store that had them in display, but they weren't worth the investment
I had one. I sold it to a friend about 20Y ago for £30. I bitterly regret that; a decade later it was worth 10x that, and now, I could get £1000 easily. I had some addons and extras.
> I would say a bit of its ideas lives on Spectrum Next.
I have one of those too. :-)
In some ways more ambitious, in some ways less, but the SAM had a better BASIC and a better DOS, and felt more like a thoughtful considered extension, while the Next feels like a clone Spectrum with a fibreglass body kit stuck on with spoiler and airdam, turbocharger, nitrous oxide injection, and pulsing coloured lights underneath. ;-)