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They Bought computing to the masses, when Sinclair released the ZX81 onto an unsuspecting British public he started a revolution. The Spectrum really solidified his place in the market, but eventually the rest caught up and left him behind. I never met anyone who owned a QL! | ||||
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The 1984 Spectrum+ was an attempt to solve the problems of the Spectrum's peculiar keyboard, which was replaced by "injection-moulded plastic" keys resting on the familiar rubber membrane. There were no other changes to the basic Spectrum hardware. It sold adequately, but it was soon overtaken by the first genuine developments of the Spectrum. |
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The Spectrum 128, first launched in Spain in 1985, looked exactly the same as the Spectrum+ save for the addition of a large (and very hot) heat sink on the left-hand side. Inside the casing, though, were some genuine changes. Most obvious was the 128K of memory, of which you could use about 104K (the rest being used to hold a copy of the ROM). A new three-channel sound chip, very similar to that used later on the Atari ST, was also included, as was a new implementation of Sinclair BASIC and a variety of sockets. The Spanish version included a separate numeric keypad, which was not sold elsewhere, making it a very rare item today. |
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The Spectrum +2, released in 1987, was the first of Amstrad's three products under the Sinclair label and was the first Sinclair machine to be built outside Britain (being manufactured in Taiwan). It was relatively un-innovative, being a Spectrum 128 with a proper typewriter keyboard, plus a built-in tape recorder and twin joystick ports - in other words, just like Amstrad's own CPC464 machine. It was released in two versions - the +2 in battleship grey and the +2A in dark grey with a slightly different ROM. Unlike Sinclair, Amstrad did not attempt to market the Spectrum as anything other than a games machine and sold it in bundled packages such as the "James Bond 007 Action Pack" (with light gun). Amstrad's greater emphasis on marketing and quality control made the +2 far more reliable than Sinclair's Spectrums and, after the original 48K, the +2 became the best-selling version. (I got one from eBay!!!) |
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Amstrad's final Sinclair product, released at the same time as the unsuccessful PC200, was the Spectrum +3. It was easily the best-looking and most advanced Spectrum, boasting a proper floppy disk drive, a new ROM and a parallel printer port. The circuit design is radically different to that of any other Spectrum and has far fewer chips on the board. Like its predecessor, the +3 was sold in "Action Packs" with light guns and games included. However, it was not as successful as the +2 and had a number of serious flaws. The new ROMs were incompatible with a lot of old Spectrum software; the disk drive used Amstrad's own peculiar 3-inch format, the disks for which hold only about 350K and cost up to five times more than their 3.5-inch equivalents (that is, when you could find them - not easy nowadays); the machine cost an absurd £250 at a time when the far more advanced Atari ST 520 and Commodore Amiga 500 sold for only £400; and, most of all, the 8-bit market was beginning to collapse as the 16-bit machines swept all before them. Had the +3 been launched a couple of years earlier with a standard 3.5-inch drive, it might have made greater headway against the ST and Amiga. - All above information was found at www.planetspectrum.com |
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