111144
RETRO
JJAANNUUAARRYY 2202200 |COMPUTERSHOPPER|IISSSUUEE 38833
blamedon thecompany’smovefrom
Cambridge to Swansea, but it also transpired
there was an issue with the supplier of the
ASIC chip,sothe computer didn’t become
available until December 1989.Even then,
orders were limited to mail order,and it
appeared to make amockery of plans to sell
250,000 models by 1991.
It certainly leftvery little time for
consumers to pick one up in time for
Christmas and, in the end, just 200 were sold
in that festive period. Buyers also had to shell
out alittle more,since the computer retailed
at £170. This was forthe basic model and,
while it was possible to add one or two disk
drives, an extra 256K of memoryRS 232
andparallel interfaces, amouse
more,the situation
effectively poured cold
water on the claims that the
SAM Coupé was the less
expensive option when
compared to rivals for
anyone wanting to spec it up.
Still, MGT ploughed on.
The company planned to go
slow and create2,000
machines each week before
reaching amanufacturing
capacity of 20,000. It was
assisted by assemblers A&A
Electronics in Glamorgan, PCB
makers Kamicircuits in
Wiltshire,Plastic Injection
Mouldings in Hereford and
metalworkers Altar Engineering
in Cardiff, but the problems
continued to mount.
Slight delays to the drives,
which were made by Citizen,
added to the headaches suffere
by MGT,madeworse by the
company needing to send outa
ROM chip upgrade to 8,000
customers in order to fix aDOS booting bug.
Addtothat an issue with the much-promoted
Spectrum compatibility (as fewas50% of
Spectrum games would actually work on the
SAM Coupé) and the shine was beginning to
wear off.
“The SAM used amix of hardware and
software to achieve the ZX Spectrum
backward compatibility,with agraphics
mode ideal to the ZX Spectrum and all
necessary signals forthe likes of keyboard
andother ZX ULAfunctions appearing on
the same I/O ports,”explains Piggot of the
problems with compatibility.
“The limiting factor at launch was that
Amstrad owned the ZX Spectrum ROM
code,sothis could not be included in the
emulator.MGT had to writeacompatible
ZX Spectrum ROM forthe emulator from
scratch, so this did result in less than
spectacular compatibility,leadingtothe
press criticising the functionality without
making the reason why clear.”
It didn’t help that there was also aprice
rise to £180 (or £250 with adisk drive). On
11th June 1990, MGT went intoadministration
withdebts amounting to £1.7m.
MIS REBORN
Tlooked forabuyer and, ironically,
Sugar,bossofAmstrad, was
arently sounded out but passed on
opportunity since his firm was on
verge of launchingenhanced 8-bit
mputers of itsown:the 464 Plus and
8 Plus (and GX4000 console).
Instead, Sugar and Gordon created
ew company,SAM Computers,
edging to support the SAM Coupé
dhonour their obligations to 8,000
wners. What’s more,there wasa
omise of technical support and
heissue of Spectrum compatibility
asbeing resolved.
“Instructions fortransferring the
ROM code via tape from the ZX
Spectrum to the SAM were given to
get around the copyright situation,
and both public domain and
commercial emulators, which
included the ZX ROM code,
appeared very quickly,” Piggotsays.
“Both of these options then
allowed the SAM to be virtually
100 percent compatible with
48K software.”
At the same time,SAM
Computers vowed that it would
fix the problem of adistinct lack
of software. This had been tried
bl d h ’ f ⬆There were many expansion ports at the rear of d h f i i
the computer including Midi in/out, which made
it handy formusicians
ry,RS 232
eand
g
ed
a
withd
SAM
MGT
Alan
appa
theo
the
com
6128
an
ple
and
ow
pr
th
wa
R S g a c i
➡Manufacturer Miles Gordon
Technology soon ran intoproblemss
and had to find away of ensuringtth
SAM Coupé didn’t die an early deatth
