Timex Sinclair 2068

The Timex Sinclair 2068 was an American reimagining of the ZX Spectrum, built by Timex, who had been manufacturing Sinclair's machines under licence. On paper it improved on the original in almost every way: more memory, better sound, a cartridge port and a sturdier, more substantial build.

The trouble was that those very improvements broke compatibility with much of the existing Spectrum software, the one thing buyers might most have wanted. Stranded between the machine it was based on and the American computers it hoped to challenge, the 2068 struggled to find a clear audience in a brutally competitive market.

It quietly faded, never the hit Timex had hoped for. But it remains a fascinating "what might have been": a glimpse of how Sinclair's most famous machine could have evolved on the other side of the Atlantic, if only it had carried its software library across with it.