Quazar

(1/2) This month Retro Gamer magazine had a tiny picture of a SAM Coupe on the cover, as a tie in with their 'Legacy of the ZX Spectrum' feature article. So I bought it, to see what was said. 43 words. Sheesh!

Of course the gist of that extensive coverage was that it "Offered a (limited) Spectrum compatibility mode".

Can't even get that right! The SAM didn't have Spectrum compatibility on power up. An emulator had to be used, and with a copy of the actual ZX ROM then practically perfect 48K compatibility was there. A few hundred 128K games were hacked to use SAM's different memory paging style, plus AY->SAA soundchip translation routines to get the music playing via SAM's soundchip.

No mention of the SAM's own capabilities either. This is one major problem that persists to this day, articles/videos just treat it as a "Super Spectrum", ignoring the advanced specifications it offered and the vibrant scene in the 1990s that supported it.

#samcoupe #retrogaming #retrocomputing

Feb 25 at 9:23pmWeb
Show threadQuazarFeb 25

(2/2) Although just about every other team and company gave up at the tail end of the 1990s I continued on increasing what I do for this wonderful system.

33 years - still going! Everything I do (Hardware, Software, 'SAM Revival' magazine) -> https://www.samcoupe.com

I've big projects in the work, including new system using the original custom SAM chips.

www.samcoupe.com - The SAM Coupe site from Quazar - Hardware, Software, Magazines and more for the SAM Coupe...

Quazar - a SAM Coupe developer - New hardware, software and SAM Revival magazine for the SAM Coupe. Celebrating 32 years of supporting the SAM Coupe.

Show threadQuazatron Feb 26

@quazarsamcoupe I lusted after one of these machines for a long time, but never had the chance to see one up close until I visited the Load ZX Spectrum Museum, in Portugal.

I hope one of these days I manage to get a Sam core for my Speccy Next to try it out.