With more competing machines appearing on the market, by 1985 Sinclair had to upgrade the Spectrum yet again. This time, the memory was upgraded to 128k and an improved sound chip was added (the ever popular Yamaha chip used in a number of other machines at the time).
To take advantage of the extra facilities and still keep compatability with existing software, the machine had two modes: original 48k mode and the enhanced 128k mode.