Sinclair's main
contributions to the vast market for Spectrum
peripherals, apart from the Microdrive, were the
imaginatively-titled Interface One and Interface
Two. Interface One was a well-designed
communications port for the Spectrum, which
allowed it to be connected to Microdrives, local
area networks and standard RS232 printers.
Interface Two (right) was a combination
of joystick and ROM cartridge ports. It
disappeared without trace inside a year. The
cartridges were simply too expensive (at £19.95
each), especially when compared to tapes which
sold at only a third or a quarter of that price,
and less than a dozen titles ever appeared on
ROMs.
Sinclair
also produced a joystick, in tasteful matt white,
to plug into the Interface Two's non-standard
ports; despite Kempston having set the most
widely-used standard, Amstrad incorporated
Sinclair joystick ports into its later Spectrum
Plus 2 and Plus 3 machines.
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