Talk:SAM Coupé/Archive 1

Archive 1

SAM Elite

I believe there was another (virtually identical?) version released called the SAM Elite. There seems to be some inconsistency in the article with capitalisation: SAM vs. Sam. I think the screen modes would be better described in the format 256x192 16 colours, rather than 256x192x16. Perhaps mention it was apparently called the "Coupe" because it looked like the boot of a car, and that it had a little cutsie robot mascot called Sam.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.167.171.80 (talk) 02:32, 24 December 2004 (UTC)

Personally, I thought the memory paging system was the machine's biggest drawback (I found it a problem for programming).—Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.167.171.98 (talk) 10:56, 2 January 2005 (UTC)

I believe West Coast Computers annouced the SAM Elite, but did they ever actually produce any?—Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.151.219.233 (talk) 00:14, 14 June 2005 (UTC)

SAMs name was because of the car-like shape, and also because of an ice-cream called the "Coupe" ... (Information from Alan Miles, ZAT magazine interview) West Coast used "repaired" components from original SAM Coupe manufacturer in their "Elite" system. Samster69 (talk) 10:40, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I've fixed the differences in capitalisation. I've changed them all to Sam as per the MOS:TM guidelines on how to format trademarks in Wikipedia. - X201 (talk) 13:57, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

And I've fixed the capitalisation back. The computer is called SAM and not Sam. (As confirmed personally with the founder of the company) Samster69 (talk) 18:48, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

"As confirmed personally with the founder of the company" carries no weight whatsoever in Wikipedia. Everything in Wikipedia has to be verifiable (WP:VERIFY). Thanks for signing your posts but could you please sign them at the end of the text and not at the beginning. Thanks. - X201 (talk) 19:46, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

While I agree with X021 in general, Samster is correct in the actual naming as evident in [1] --Frodet (talk) 20:04, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

The Wikipedia guidelines X201 quotes state:

Follow standard English text formatting and capitalization practices, even if the trademark owner considers nonstandard formatting "official", as long as this is a style already in widespread use, rather than inventing a new one

A quick Internet search suggests to me that "SAM" and "Sam" are both in widespread use. (I think "SAM" appears to be more common, but this has no relevance for the guidelines.) As to what qualifies as standard English practice, the guidelines continue:

avoid: TIME, KISS, ASUS, The PLAYERS Championship

instead, use: Time, Kiss, Asus, The Players Championship (Capitalize IBM, IKEA, as initialisms.)

I believe "SAM" was considered an acronym during development (not an initialism, because it's pronounced as a word, not separate letters), but by the time of launch this was dropped. An advertising section in Crash issue 72 (1990) states (next to a picture of the robot mascot):

SAM

No, the computer's not called SAM. It's called the Coupe. This is SAM - he's the character who will guide you through the manual.

Finally, from the guidelines:

Using all-caps is preferred if the letters are pronounced individually, even if they don't (or no longer) stand for anything. For instance, use SAT for the testing system (formerly the Scholastic Assessment Test) and KFC for the fast-food restaurant (formerly Kentucky Fried Chicken). Using all-lowercase letters may likewise be acceptable if it is done universally by sources, such as with the webcomic xkcd.

This doesn't apply, because the letters aren't pronounced individually. My conclusion would be that the guidelines suggest "Sam" rather than "SAM".--James-gnz (talk) 01:26, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

Kaleidoscope

I actually have one of these. So it did ship. Morwen - Talk 16:18, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Disc versus Disk

I've quite probably used "disc" in edits I've made to this article numerous times, but with respect to 82.118.116.45's edit "(it's disK as in disKETTE not disC as in a flat circular object (which a compact disc is hence it's a compact "disc"). nothing to do with "american" english language differences.)", original advertising material does indeed talk about disks with a k so that seems to be correct. Although I don't see why they couldn't prima facie be discs given that the bit you see and hold also isn't floppy. ThomasHarte 13:13, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Further to refute 82.118.116.45's explanation, Image:ElectronMagazineAd.jpg clearly shows reference to "floppy discs" (sic) in a British publication of the early 80s in the top left corner. So I guess the question is how consistent were MGT/SamCo/West Coast in their spelling? ThomasHarte 19:05, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

BOOT with no disk results in the message: "55 Missing Disk, 0:1"... but I think this is the real question: "Is disc currently the British spelling?" - IMO, it's not. StuartBrady 22:02, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

I remember the amstrad allowing both disk and disc fwiw. Secretlondon 20:25, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Ooh. SAM BASIC did some similar things, e.g. DELETE/ERASE, PEN/INK, etc. but nothing quite like that. BTW, ISTR seeing that both GDOS and G+DOS for the DISCiPLE and PlusD (two of MGT's earlier products) used inconsist spellings for disk/disc in their error and status messages. StuartBrady 20:45, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

If I remember correctly, this was a one-man Bob Brenchley crusade back in the day, although I can't remember what side he was on. Morwen - Talk 00:50, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

I've had a quick dig into my SAM software collection, and Bob Brenchley seems to have been a disc man as I possess "Format's Demo Disc 1", copyright 1991. There does seem to have been variation in the spelling from the MGT/SAMCo folks as my original (MGT) copy of Flash!/etc is titled "Dr. Wright's DEMO. *DOS DISC*" but every issue of The Sam[Co] Newsdisk is spelt with a k. As is the "Blank Disk" provided with The Sound Machine. ThomasHarte 01:48, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

FWIW, in the disk article, it's mentioned that the 'k' spelling dates back to the 19th century for gramophone records, and that yes, there was once a British/American divide over this. StuartBrady 21:34, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

US Gold

We probably need a reference for the US Gold comment[2]. I'm sure I remember hearing something like this, though. --StuartBrady (Talk) 15:52, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

• http://www.mobygames.com/game/strider/trivia
• http://www.old-computers.com/museum/doc.asp?c=545

The mobygames comment certainly predates the wikipedia edit. I'd like to know where the quote was originally printed, though. --StuartBrady (Talk) 16:03, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Oh, it seems to have been taken from the scrapbook: http://www.sadsnail.freeserve.co.uk/Coupe/Info/about.html --StuartBrady (Talk) 16:07, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

This is a misquote of a comment by US Gold's development manager, David Baxter, published in Your Sinclair magazine issue 51, March 1990, page 50. What he said was:

We’re getting a very experienced programmer at Tiertex called Chris Brunning to produce a SAM version of Strider for us. Supposedly it’ll only take two weeks using our existing Speccy code and ST graphics, but we’ll have to see. In my mind I picture it looking a bit like a Konix console game - lots of colours, but without the resolution of the ST, so it’ll all look a bit duller and flatter. It’s a bit of a try-out for us - if it does really well we’ll be happy to continue to support it, but we could still come across any number of problems

You can read the magazine issue at http://archive.org/details/your-sinclair-51

The US Gold dev manager is clearly not confident that two weeks are enough, as indicated by supposedly, but we'll have to see and anticipating any number of problems. Therefore I have removed the misquote from this WP article. Guffydrawers (talk) 11:30, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Name

I was always under the impression that "Spectrum Advanced Machine" was an unofficial name... so should the introduction use this name, or should it just say "SAM"? --StuartBrady (Talk) 19:44, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

I'd say it's a myth. Accoring to [3] the official (backronym ?) was "Some Amazing Machine". However, I'm not sure if it is significant enought to be in the title. --Frodet 23:48, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

The name stands for "Some Amazing Micro" - reference Alan Miles, ZAT Interview. Samster69 (talk) 10:42, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:SAM Coupé startup screen.png

Image:SAM Coupé startup screen.png is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

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