ZX Spectrum 128

The ZX Spectrum 128 gave Sinclair's best-seller a serious upgrade, and finally fixed its most-mocked weakness. Alongside a generous jump to 128K of memory came a proper sound chip, so the Spectrum could at last produce rich, multi-channel music rather than the thin, single-voice beeps of old.

Developed partly with Sinclair's Spanish distributor and launched there first, it reached Britain in 1985. The extra memory let games grow more ambitious, while the new sound hardware transformed their soundtracks, opening the door to tunes that earlier Spectrums could only dream of.

It marked the start of the Spectrum's more grown-up later years, a platform maturing rather than standing still. That story would soon continue under new ownership at Amstrad, but the 128 was the machine that proved there was plenty of life, and plenty of music, left in Sinclair's rubber-keyed wonder.