SAM Coupe

The SAM Coupé was a British attempt to build a "super Spectrum": a more powerful machine, from the small firm Miles Gordon Technology, that offered enhanced graphics and sound while keeping a degree of compatibility with the Spectrum that so many people already owned.

It was a genuinely capable and likeable design, full of good ideas. The trouble was the calendar. It arrived in 1989, by which point buyers had firmly set their sights on the 16-bit Amiga and Atari ST, and a souped-up 8-bit machine, however clever, was fighting a battle it could not win.

Only a modest number were sold before the venture quietly faded. The SAM survives as a poignant last hurrah for the British 8-bit home computer, the final flowering of a tradition that ran from the ZX80 onwards. It deserved better timing, and its small band of devotees has never forgotten it.