¶ The computer
The SAM Coupé was released in December 1989 by Miles Gordon Technology, a Welsh company based in Swansea that had made its name selling peripherals for the ZX Spectrum — including the DISCiPLE and +D disk interfaces. Its aim was plain: to offer the successor Sinclair never released, with partial compatibility with ZX Spectrum 48K software.
Technically the machine is far more ambitious than its model: a Z80B clocked at 6 MHz, 256 or 512 KB of expandable memory, a custom video chip offering up to 256×192 in 16 colours, and above all a six-channel Philips SAA1099 sound chip, well ahead of the Spectrum's beeper. A 3.5" floppy drive could be fitted directly into the case.
Its timing proved fatal: arriving on a market where the 16-bit Amiga and Atari ST were already established, the SAM Coupé sold only a few tens of thousands of units, and MGT went into receivership as early as 1990. The machine survived thanks to SAM Computers Ltd and then to its community, one of the most devoted in the 8-bit world: the scene still produces games and demos today, alongside period conversions such as Prince of Persia, Lemmings and Defender of the Crown.
| Manufacturer | MGT |
| Year | 1989 |
| Type | Computer |
| Keyboard | Mandatory |
| Controller | Mandatory |
📷 Screenshot coming soon:
system-samcoupe.png
¶ Emulators
The SAM Coupé is emulated by a single core, available on every board:
- SimCoupe — the reference emulator for the machine (simcoupe, GPL-2.0 license).
Netplay is not available on this system and RetroAchievements are not supported. CRT output is handled, and image smoothing follows the START > IN-GAME SETTINGS > SMOOTH GAMES setting. Files produced by the emulator — floppies created or modified, exports — are written to /recalbox/share/saves/samcoupe/.
A keyboard is mandatory on this system: the SAM Coupé boots into its BASIC and expects a typed command to start a floppy. Most games also expect a controller.
¶ BIOS
No BIOS is required for this system.
¶ Roms
Put your games in:
/recalbox/share/roms/samcoupe/
Accepted extensions: .dsk .mgt .sad .sbt
A few pointers on these formats:
.dskand.mgtare the most common floppy images, in raw sector format;.sadis a floppy image format that keeps the disk geometry, useful for non-standard disks;.sbtis a bootable format specific to SimCoupe, presented as a floppy by Recalbox just like the other three.
.ziparchives are not accepted on this system: uncompress your floppy images before copying them over.