Born Dead #0F 08 февраля 2000

История

Cult pro light - the story itself, the best-8-bit computer - Sam Coupe.

                    Cult pro light



                           Sam Coupe

In mid-1988 among users of the Spectrum was
hearing about some Himself-better-8mi-bit computer, which
among other amazing advantages could download and run
programs for the Spectrum. However, the excitement
soon faded away, as have been similar rumors that
no later than not confirmed. Let's remember Loki,
Sinclair QL and ZX-84. The latter is very little known, as it
has not been released despite the almost full completion of 
experimental machine, which has very interesting features (but 
this is another story).


However, much to the surprise of many, a few months
rumor has been officially confirmed. In magazines,
Spectrum began to appear rather optimistic article. As
it turned out, the developer of this fantastic machine was
fairly well known in the development of several hardware
devices intended for use with
Spectrum, the firm Miles Gordon Technologies. Perhaps the most
known product of this company became a disk interface DISCiPLE
which is in a relatively short time has gained popularity, and
after the release of a simplified and therefore cheaper
option called Plus D and does become a standard.

It's hard enough to find someone who has not heard anything
of MGT. Seriously intrigued fans with the hope of the Spectrum
waiting for any news about the new car. Their interest is 
understandable. Amstrad, releasing several "new" models of the 
Spectrum, the most notable difference which was only increased

incompatibility makes it clear that more is not going to
develop. After that, the company producing the game started
gradually move to other, more promising platform.
And so, when, in March 1989 the articles appeared in journals of
computer, which could use all that has been created
for the Spectrum, many users have decided to move to
him and began to save money.

Meanwhile, it became clear details about the new computer.
Of course, the very first details became the name - SAM.
A little later the name was changed to the Sam Coupe. Why is
strange at first glance, the title? The whole point is that the 
firm Nick Holland Design Group, to which the advice of Design 
Council MGT requested for the design of future housing

computer designed enclosure, the silhouette is slightly 
reminiscent car with a body compartment.


 The firm then MGT published last technical details Sam'a:

 Processor: Zilog Z80B
 Clock Speed: 6Mhz
 ROM: 32k includes an interpreter BASIC

                   developed by Andrew Uraytom (thus,

                   who wrote a Beta Basic for Spectrum)
 RAM: 256k or 512k, expandable to 4.5Mb
 Sound: Music coprocessor Philips SAA 1099;

                   6 stereo channels, 8 octaves, 2 generators

                   white noise, 2 envelope generators, 4 4-x

                   bit DACs
 Keyboard: Full-featured 72 button keypad

                   with 10 additional features

                   buttons
 Input / Output: Built-in MIDI interface, mouse, joystick,

                   light pen, RS232, LAN (compatible with

                   Interface I to ZX), and parallel

                   serial port, a read

                   with tape (to work with Spectrum

                   PO), Port of external drive. In addition to 
all 

                   in this special processor I / O "ASIC" is

                   the possibility of a conflict-free 
connection to the 

                   10.000 peripherals
 Storage: One or two inside the super-thin 3.5 "

                   floppy disk, produced by Citizen

                   (The thickness of the drive a little more

                   thickness of two stacked 3.5 "diskettes)

                   plus one or two external drives at 780

                   kilobytes each
 Graphics: The graphics coprocessor Motorola MC 1377P;

                   ASIC and MC1377P allow you to select one of 
the 

                   4 video modes:


                    1 - 256x192 points, 2 colors on the block 
8x8 

                        pixels, 16 colors from a palette of 128 
colors 

                        (The only difference from the Spectrum

                        where the palette is not at all)

                    2 - 256x192 points, 2 colors on the block 
8x1 

                        pixels, 16 colors from a palette of 128 
colors 

                    3 - 512x192 points, 80 familiarity, each

                        point is painted a different color, but 
in one                         Noah horizontal line can not


                        be used for more than 4 colors;

                        palette of 128 colors

                    4 - 256x192 points, each point of its CEE
                        is a maximum of 16 colors in a 
horizontal                         Noah bar, the palette 128 
colors 

 Price: 169.95 pounds without drives or

                   £ 259.90 with one disk drive

What is your impression of this miracle? Do not be scared
price, while the Amiga 500 was worth 370 pounds sterling, Atari
ST about 280 pounds, and more than a year ago, was released last
Model Spectrum +3 "still being sold at a price of 250 pounds.
So, value for money was all but perfect.
Of course, Sam Coupe slightly inferior in its ability to
some other systems, but ... all of these systems were no longer
8, and 16-bit.

The only 8-bit computers, which could
boast of many colors, was Enterprise,
having the opportunity to display on the screen as much as 256 
colors. However, their value in the resolution of 160x100 very, 
very questionable. Commodore 64 significantly more flexible

use your graphics co-processor and choose more
number of screen resolutions, but lost to Sam Coup'u in
everything else. In fact, Sam Coupe almost or no way inferior, 
and in sound superior to a 16-bit Atari ST in which

used musical coprocessor Yamaha 2149f (this is the same
AY, but produced by Yamaha). And the cost Sam Coupe and Atari
ST is almost the same.

Impressed by the machine features many well-known manufacturers
and distributors of software products to declare themselves
willingness to support the Sam Coupe. No less than impressed 
with the owners Spectrum even began to send money in advance in 
spite of the MGT that the machine itself has not yet gone on 
sale and before the official date of its release remained over 
two months. And the volume of such pre-orders, quickly 
increasing, reaching the level of a few hundred orders a week 
and not decrease going. MGT, teaming up with several smaller 
companies, participated in the development of Sam Coupe, formed 
a firm called SAMCo and fairly regularly informs

concerned about their success in the process of registration 
Sam Coupe. 

After some time, began to appear even implicit allusions to the
that Sam Coupe - this is only the first model in a series of
computers. Delighted a huge number of pre-
orders, and by the time they were already a few thousand, SAMCo
decides to no longer spend money on advertising in
Non-Spectrum periodicals. And how will future
It was one of the very serious mistakes of the company. SAMCo
contracts with one of the largest manufacturers
special processor in Japan - Fujitsu on the production of ASIC 
and by Citizen of supplying super-thin drives.


Everything went just fine, however, in May 1989 year (this
officially announced release date) Sam Coupe for sale is not
entered. By midsummer it was clear that it does not work
mail, and it is with the project itself that something is 
wrong. Flow pre-order is rapidly reduced to a few

pieces per week. But in the journal editors and the company 
went SAMCo powerful stream of emails asking to explain what the 
same thing. 

The reason for the delay was fun - a program for distribution
PCBs, which have chosen to work the chief engineer Bruce
Gordon could not do what was demanded of her. Sam
Coupe has been very easy to assemble, adjust and repair as
inside it was only 7 chips. Naturally almost all of them
were special processor, containing within itself simpler to
functionality of the elements (as well as Spectrum ULA).
For example ASIC contained a 139 chipset!

According to the basic idea of ​​the unique PCB Sam Coupe should
was to be a T-shaped (the top bracket are all
connectors, on the basis of all the chips, and the right and 
left base is a place for two 3.5 "drives), but

PCB layout program could give the template a rectangular
form. Bruce Gordon was forced to raise fees by hand, on what
the firm has lost a lot of time, as well as trust
customers.

Many firms have suspended fine-tuning of almost ready to go
programs for the Sam Coupe indefinitely. Do not be surprised
the fact that the computer is not already available, and 
programs for it already created - it is common practice. First, 
firm-developer publishes the technical details of the new 
machine and then monitors response program producers. In the 
case where there is interest in the new car, a developer 
associated with the most interested in them and offer them a 
working prototype for studying and designing programs. Thus, by 
the time computer already has a number of software products.


It took more than six months prior to the moment when finally 
SAMCo announced that the computer is ready and the company 
proceeds with the proliferation. This statement was made in 
December 1989 year. Let's asked about his impressions of one of

those who are waiting for the Sam Coupe from the very first 
mention of it (and even sold its Spectrum)?.


"I, like many of the more than 8-thousand people, very
been waiting for the moment, but when I finally delivered
long been booked and paid Sam Coupe. They promised
deliver it by December 25, and I spent the day in vain,
hanging out at home waiting for ... Only on January 22 it was 
brought. I very well remember this day. Open the box. Over

PC is a small note about the next
read:


  Dear customer! In szyazi unforeseen

  Your difficulties Sam Coupe can not work with the system

  SamDOS. So you can not run programs

  diskettes, despite the fact that your computer comes with a

  built-in floppy drive.

Amazing. Well, okay, let's start the connection itself
computer. What an interesting design of this machine, no
I can get used to - the drive is mounted under the keyboard. 
Oops! Block Power publishes a funny sound. Strangely, you can 
not even normally get a picture on the TV, too much

distortion. Well this is nonsense. Insert the cassette with
demonstration program ... Loading error! Hmm ... I obviously do
something wrong, try a different way ... Loading error! How 
does it ?? Again. Loading error! Loading error! LOADING ERROR!! 
For a few seconds to a nervous breakdown I can not load

program without interruption.

Oops ... Ugh ... The entire program is based on a small robot -
character for comic books. Okay, this is also nonsense. Now 
listen sound. They say even the Amiga owners will be envious! 
After all, they all four channels, but I have as many as six! 
Bip ... What?? Bip, beep ... Can not be!?? Beep! Yes, my 
Spectrum could publish similar sounds many times better and 
cleaner! Calm, only calm. Let's see what it's like playing the 
Sam Coupe, so they it should show all the possibilities of this 
machine! Several times rummaged through the whole box, but no 
one game is not found. Well, okay, Go to your local store and 
ask the seller. 

 - Sam what?
 - Sam Coupe, - terpetivo repeat myself. - It's a computer.
 - Sorry buddy, the first time I heard about this.

Wow ... What to do? E! I also still have games for
Speccy! How nice that I could not sell them! Run with
accompanies the cassette Spectrum emulator and load the game .. 
Not work?? And this? Too? What, no game does not work??

So I paid £ 250 for the computer, which has
drive, but it can not work with him and could not
start with the tapes?? After a while I managed to find
one will come ... a good man, who has agreed to buy Sam
for the same amount, how much it cost me. A little later I
bought Amiga. What was not sorry. "

Of course, we should not judge the machine according to just one
rights. Even if we assume absolutely incredible thing - that
100% of the owners of Sam Coupe immediately sell them, it will 
be only mean one thing - it just changed the host computer:)



  the developments after January 1990? It is not
ended it all resale to each other Sam Coup'ov! A case
seem to improve. After two or three months for all those who had
put the machine to drive, but without his
use, a letter arrived from SAMCo. In the letter stated
that the "unforeseen circumstance" and finally allowed
Now the only thing that separates the owner of the 
Non-Transferable pleasure derived from using this drive

need to send a letter to the firm for further
instructions. Sending a letter and a week later to receive a 
response, user with the surprise of discovering that his Sam

Coupe just need to replace ROMs. The truth is not in vain.

We had to send several dozen pounds to address the firm with
indicating modification of the computer. The letter also
said that the attempt to discover their own computer and
replace the ROM will void your warranty. This can be avoided
There were two ways:


  - Simply send your computer manufacturer,

    enclosing a check for the price paid for ROM chips and

    cost of work on its replacement (approximately equal to what

    40% of the cost of chips). All postage costs are reimbursed

    firm.


  - To acquire a chip ROM and ask for help from any

    company provides warranty repairs Sam Coupe

    (Which is also a gift will do nothing). True,

    the nearest shop warranty may be on

    a few hundred miles away.

It goes without saying that all new versions released already
with the new ROM. Here's a third way - to sell this, and Sam 
Coupe buy an new one.


The situation with programs for Sam Coupe was rapidly improving.
Many firms (though not all) have resumed work on
writing programs. In magazines there are more and more
articles with reviews of games and software programs, some 
journals even took a few dozen pages under headings devoted

Sam Coupe. There were magazines devoted entirely to this
computer.

With incredible speed steel appear remarks variety
Electronic publishing and small companies to disseminate PD
programs. These most PD programs have appeared in large
quantities to be useful and worthless. Each owner
considered it his duty to create something "big" in Basic and
distribute "it" as widely as possible. Neither the first nor 
the second is not particular difficulty, since the built-in 
BASIC Sam Coupe was very, very powerful and superior to other 
interpreters computers as the speed of programs, and on

flexibility, and supplied with the computer graphics
Editor FLASH! Opportunity can be compared with
editors for the Atari ST or Amiga!

The only miscalculation was that there was no any
music editor, fully using all the tremendous
features music co-processor. But in the spring of 1992
it has corrected all of us perfectly known group ESI, which
almost at full strength turned to Sam Coupe and namuchavshis in
the process of creating demos Surprise player with alteration 
of Sound Tracker'a for Sam Coure, released her to this day no 
one surpassed Editor - E-Tracker. Distribution rights

which immediately became the most famous edition
the electronic edition at Sam Coure - FRED Disk magazine.

Thus, the number of programs increases with each passing day, 
their quality is getting better right before our eyes. There is 
growing with new hardware add-ons such as a 16-bit

sound card Quazar. Rumors about that somewhere someone
began to develop the accelerator on the microprocessor Z80H. But
revealed a small-vermillion nuance - the number of sold
machines had virtually ceased to grow, barely passed for 10000. 
Here as said the decision to not to advertise in the Sam Coure

Non-periodical publications Spectrum. What's the connection? 
And all very simple - the sheer number of owners of the 
Spectrum was decrease at an incredible rate!


Magazines ceased to exist, all the major manufacturers
and distributors of programs ZX left before the start of 1992,
year. More and more people crossed over to the Spectrum
other platforms such as Amiga and Atari. Yes still very PC
plummeted in value after the release of models i80486 ... Again
to begin an advertising campaign was too late. And the new 
model Sam Coure named Sam Elite could hardly anyone

interest because differed little from the previous one.

And in September of 1992, SAMCo officially terminated
existence, although a small branch of it will still be
sell unsold Sam Coure and carry a warranty
repair. Disappears after a while and it ... Firms
manufacturers and distributors will take long before that.
Owners Sam Coure perked up a bit after the April
Of 1993 it was announced that the company is West Coast
Computers bought all rights to manufacture and modernization
Sam Coure. However, this company is not something radically new
did not. A hyped as something totally new
Model Sam Elite edition which took place in the middle of 1994
differed only enhanced the printer port, but drive
to 1Mb, but sold at a ridiculously high price of 200 pounds.

The latest electronic edition that fled the Sam Coupe, was a 
magazine FRED, appearing literally in the early days of mass

propagation Sam Coure. Enthusiasts will long continue to try to
revive the Sam Coupe, letting the program and various hardware
devices such as the controller HDD, but it will not bring 
tangible result.


Do you think this was the end? Certainly not! Do you
dared to think that I withhold from you my impressions of
working with Sam Coupe? No, I did not buy the Sam Coupe. But I
found an emulator:) A few tens of megabytes of programs to him 
and a couple of people who still have Sam Coure. But everything

in order.

At the beginning of the 1997 in my head the thought came to 
search for Internet anything about Sam Coure. Pretty soon I 
found a few sites with some information on it, but

Almost all sites were in Italian, Spanish or German
languages. Accordingly sense from them was a bit since then
I'm not one of these languages ​​do not know. But there were
photos, and something that could be considered as short
technical data that I was very impressed.

Along the way, I managed to find the site of ESI, the existence 
of which seem so far (and three years have passed), nobody 
except I do not suspect. Then I came to the site with a very 
large amount of information, where I first saw the title Sim 
Coure. As it turned out, this is nothing like an emulator Sam 
Coure! True, to start it needed a machine with UNIX ...


A little later, managed to find a "special" version of Sim 
Coure, which could run on those machines where there was UNIX. 
For required to download this huge file and unpack it,

write two received. td0 file on a floppy disk. Then
should load the car with one of those floppy disks. With this
no problems have arisen and the emulator, though slowly, but
run, and here's what to do next?

No programs for Sam Coure while the open did not lie,
so we had to temporarily postpone the introduction to the 
emulator Sam Coure and Activities search for those who could 
stay program him, but at the same time to wait for the promises 
of DOS version of the emulator. "At the same time" lasted more 
than half a year, for which I do managed to find a 
half-hundred. td0 files with electronic magazines for Sam 
Coure. DOS version of Sim Coure not emulated the sound was very 
unhurried (or should I say "thoughtful"), but and the real 
floppy refused to work. Had to convert. td0 in. dsk by writing. 
td0 image on the real disk and read it back, but in. dsk file. 
This process It takes about 15 minutes for each disc! Oh yeah, 
except for magazines I found a few demos, applications and 
system programs: 

 - Star (demo, ESI)
 - Surprise (demo, ESI)
 - Lyra III (Demonstration, ESI)
 - E-Tracker (music editor, ESI)
 - E-Mon (debugger, ESI)
 - Sam demo disk (came with Sam Coure)
 - Screens (collection of images, converted from the Atari ST)
 - TurboMON (debugger)

Had finished converting the c drive, I have a few days
Streak watched demonstrations, play games and read magazines on 
the Sam Coure. I especially liked the two magazines - Sam Paper 
(which produced a group of ESI) and Sam Amateur Programming and 
Electronics, to have enough detail how to program

Sam Coupe. The first magazine was in the Polish second on
English. I am a long time to recover after reading
these articles on programming. Want to know why? Well then
see:

 - Sam Coure all memory is divided into 16 KB pages

 - Any page of the memory of the first 512 kilobytes may be

   used as graphics memory

 - 64KB address space Z80 is divided into 4 parts (A, B, C

   and D) in each of the parts you can connect any of the 16

   KB pages. But with one restriction, if you

   plug in a memory area A or C page with the number N,

   then into the adjacent part of the memory (they are grouped 
together for two - A, B and 

   C, D) is connected with the page number N +1

 - ROM can be connected at # 0000, # C000, or disable

   completely freeing the entire address space for RAM

 - You can disable the hardware entry in Part A if there is no 
ROM 

   (This is being done to emulate the Speccy 48)

 - Have the ability to track the current coordinates of the ray 
at 

   screen monitor or TV

 - You can even turn off the image

 - Hardware interrupt upon reaching the beam you some

   lines on the screen

And it's not all! For example, nothing prevents to change a few
screen resolutions and change paliru in one video frame. And
All this can be done even from BASIC. By the way, the program
in BASIC can contain up to 65535 lines, not 9999, as
Spectrum.

You wonder how Sam Coure Speccy emulates 48? As I have
said above - the program simply disables the ROM emulator, put
pre-read from disk ROM Spectrum in Part A, prohibits
her record and ... slows the Z80 with 6Mhz to 3.78! Here are 
just a Some games may appear flickering sprites, since

Sam Coure interrupt does not mean the beginning of the video 
frame. Catch Home video frames in two ways:


 - Check the status of a particular discharge in port state

   system immediately after the start of the procedure

   Interrupt
 - Set a hardware interrupt at zero drain screen

Is it possible that Sam Coure no shortage? Yes, there's of 
course! It seems that the Z80 there is clocked at 6Mhz only mode

Suppresses the display image on the screen. In other modes
Z80 running at a frequency slightly higher than 5Mhz.

What then, is time to finish the story about the-better-8mi-bit
computer, its history and 12 thousand users. I told
not everything I know about him. Not told about sound cards
Coure for Sam, the strange device, which allows
"Hardware" to emulate as 48k and 128k Spectrum about how I
wrote a demonstration for Sam Coure, the system software and 
games and demonstrations at Sam Coure, as well as that now

after three years from the output of the first version of the 
emulator there is finally a sound output! :)



           (C) Mac Buster ^ XTM ... 28-Jan-2000 16:42:48