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Sinclair Interface 2

In September 1983 Sinclair launched a new interface, named 'Interface Two'. It provided two joystick ports which mapped to keyboard keys 1 to 5 and 6 to 0, and a slot for ROM cartridges. The ZX Spectrum's expansion port was passed through to the rear side, but only with ZX81 width, provided only for to the zx printer.

Sinclair issued an advertising campaign for the IF2 and games on ROM cartridges, but with so little succes, that the whole thing was dropped within a year without trace. Only 10 titles were ever produced as IF2 cartridges, selling at £14.95.

How to make a good idea a complete failure

Though Sinclair said that a main advantage of the IF2 was that games, formerly only available for the 48K model, could now be released for 16K machines too, all initial releases were formerly released 16K titles. This fact combined with a price much higher than for the same game on tape, which were sold for approx. £5.95, was probably the main reason for this complete failure.

One other was the complete cheapo crippling of the cartridge slot: It was designed to connect one-to-one to the ROM chip. No 'superfluxous' signals provided. This way it was near impossible to put something else than a 16K ROM into a IF2 cartridge, neither more ROM nor additional RAM nor other hardware. And also highly limiting was the fact that you could not use the interface 1 ROM from a program running from the interface 2.

Today these ROM cartridges are rare and hard looked-for collector's items.

The later ZX Spectrum +2 and +3 used the same addresses for their built-in joystick ports.

Complete list of commercially sold titles

• Backgammon (Psion)
  
• Chess (Psion)
  
• Cookie (Ultimate)
  
• Horace and the Spiders (Melbourne House)
  
• Hungry Horace (Melbourne House)
  
• Jetpac (Ultimate)
  
• Planetoids (Psion)
  
• Pssst (Ultimate)
  
• Space Raiders (Psion)
  
• Tranz Am (Ultimate)

In addition, there exist some system test roms and hobbyists compilations.

Archive

	Name		Letzte Änderung		Länge
	Current Selling Prices/		2019-08-20 05:24		25
	Images/		2019-08-20 05:24		17
	Manual/		2019-08-20 05:24		3
	Tech Specs/		2020-08-27 14:08		4
	ZX Interface 2 Manual.html		2005-12-01 11:06		5450
	fruitcake.plus.com				130

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