The SAM Coupé is an 8-bit British home computer first released in late 1989. Marketed as a logical upgrade for the ZX Spectrum it had 16 colors and high-res graphics, networking, MIDI and 6MhZ Z80 processor. It was the first computer I owned and where I really started to learn to code. There is still an active community on Facebook.
2021
The Basic 10 Liner contest has been running for 11 years. This year (2021) the 10th competition, and the first time I've heard of it, thanks to Dean Belfield.
The competition is simple: write a game in some BASIC language in 10 lines of code. Like the arcade games for …
The Basic 10 Liner contest has been running for 11 years. This year (2021) the 10th competition, and the first time I've heard of it, thanks to Dean Belfield.
The competition is simple: write a game in some BASIC language in 10 lines of code. Like the arcade games for …
The SAM Coupé was a British 8 bit home computer that was pitched as a successor to the ZX Spectrum, featuring improved graphics and sound and higher processor speed.
The SAM Coupé's high-color MODE4 could manage 256x192 resolution graphics, with 16 colors from a choice of 128. Each pixel can …
Preserving the FRED disk magazine's text by decoding the Entropy Reader
Writing a SAM Coupé Reader parser in Python
FRED was the most popular disk magazine for the SAM Coupé 8 bit home computer.Published by Colin MacDonald out of sunny Monifieth, Scotland, the magazine ran from it's first issue in 1990 through to it's last (82) in 1998.
For the SAM networking project I was hoping there might …
2020
In the first part we looked at the information about the SAM Coupe network available in the user manual, technical manual and other examples of networking systems that may have influenced the design on the SAM Coupe. Next I'm going to look at the electrical design of the SAM Coupe …
The SAM Coupé was a British 8 bit home computer that was pitched as a successor to the ZX Spectrum, alongside improved graphics and sound and higher processor speed it also had in built support for MIDI and networking. The manual talked up how the SAM was ready to expand …
1996
Originally published in Vol.9 No12 (August, 1996) edition of Format Magazine, this is a short tutorial I wrote based on SAM C, intended for people currently writing programs in BASIC -- I never actually wrote part II.
This is the first in a series of articles on SAM C, helping …
This small demo was written in SAM C as an advert for the SAM PD / F9 Software library from Derek Morgan -- where I released all my games.
The demo has a Christmas theme with a snowman & trees with falling snow. The snow lands and rolls off the tops of things …
1995
Blastamac is an asteroids clone I wrote using SCADS on the Sam Coupe. In place of asteroids it uses the heads of people from the SAM scene -- with photos taken from the previous SAM & Spectrum show in Gloucester. The name Blastamac is because one of the heads is Colin MacDonald …
This is a simple upwards scroller written in SAM BASIC and included on FRED 59. There had been an upward scroller demo in a previous magazine, but I couldn't figure out how it worked so implemented my own. It generates double-height, double thickness characters scrolling up the screen.
Upscroller appeared …
Small code-search utility released on FRED 55 Bits & Bobs. We didn't have IDEs back in those days so I wrote this little utility to find strings (methods, text) in code files on disk -- useful when you forget where you left something.
Firstly is a code searcher program by Martin 'Duhh' …
UFO Alien Massacre is a little SCADS game I wrote, which appeared on Fred 53. It's a little shooter, where you control a UFO over a planet and must destroy the other UFOs without hitting the ground bases.
You can only drop bombs, while other UFOs can fire missiles sideways …
1994
Safari Sam was released from the Sam Coupé sometime in 1994, a collaboration with Derek Morgan (of SAM PD) who provided the theme and level ideas. It was developed in SCADs
Safari Sam is a platform game I developed for the Sam Coupé, sometime in 1994 — I didn't have the …
Established 1980