lighthouse-of-doom VS zx-sizif-512

> This was the swan song for the 8 bit machine

This is a common statement. It's not true. As pointed out down the comments, it was pretty much only the last 8-bit in the US market.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33925871

The rest of the world carried on making 8-bits for another decade or more.

New 8-bit machines and ranges of machines launched after in or after 1985:

• Sinclair Spectrum +2

• Sinclair Spectrum +3

• Acorn BBC Master range

• MGT SAM Coupé

• Amstrad CPC Plus range

• Amstrad PCW series

• MSX 2

• MSX 2+

• MSX Turbo-R

That's not counting 21st century reboots, of which there are hundreds.

Notably, after the collapse of Communism in Europe, the West found out about legions of enhanced ZX Spectrum clones and the like from the Warsaw Pact countries. Amazing machines with built-in floppy drives, hard disk controllers, stereo sound, improved graphics, lots more RAM (megabytes of it) and so on.

http://rk.nvg.ntnu.no/sinclair/computers/clones/russian.htm

<- pay attention to the dates column.

Some are still being made.

https://www.hackster.io/news/css-electronics-zx-nucleon-is-a...

Note this is real hardware, not FPGA emulation or anything, although some of those are amazing too.

https://github.com/UzixLS/zx-sizif-512

I know that the USA thinks that the C128 was the last new 8-bit machine, but in fact it was only about the half way point of the evolution of 8-bit home computers, and some of the more interesting machines were yet to come. Entire families of native CP/M computers that sold in the millions of units in multiple countries. Capable home games computers with amazing graphics. Powerful educational/laboratory machines that gave rise to the ARM chip.

But they weren't American, and so everyone in the USA doesn't even know that most of them existed.