SAM Coupé

In the last quarter of 1989 MGT launched the Sam Coupé. MGT was already known in the ZX Spectrum world for a range of hardware that they sold. The Sam was their pride and joy, and unfortunately to be their downfall.

The SAM name comes from a working name in the early design phases of ‘Some Amazing Machine’ (or ‘Some Amazing Micro’ or even ‘Spectrum Advanced Machine’ depending on who you talk to) and the ‘Coupé’ was a nickname because the machine resembles a fastback car in profile.

The SAM appeared at a time when launching an 8-bit microcomputer would be foolish, but MGT did it anyway. It also attempted ZX Spectrum 48K compatibility but wasn’t all that good at it.