Amstrad Cpc

AmstradCpc. An 8bit micro from the UK made by Amstrad, launched in 1984.

Variants:

  CPC464 - 64k RAM, 32k ROM. Built-in cassette player.
  CPC664 - 64k RAM, 32k ROM. Built-in disk drive.
  CPC6128 - 128k RAM, 32k ROM. Built-in disk drive.
  CPC464+ - 64k RAM, 32k ROM. Built-in cassette player and cartridge port.
  CPC6128+ - 64k RAM, 32k ROM. Built-in disk drive and cartridge port.
  GX4000 - 64k RAM, 32k ROM. Built-in cartridge port, but no keyboard or monitor.

Each with a choice of colour or monochrome screens which had the power supply built-in. Display modes ranged from 160x200 pixels in 16 colours for games to a monochrome 640x200 display for business software similar to the BbcMicro which used the same display controller, although no low-memory TeleText mode was featured in the CPC.

The CPC was envisaged as being a hybrid games/business machine, but eventually ended up as a games machine in competition with the SinclairSpectrum and the CommodoreSixtyFour. It was slightly more robust due to the fewer number of system components and also ran the then-common CPM operating system, but used 3-inch disk drives making data-interchange rather difficult and the disks themselves were always in short supply and expensive. In addition the machine was a late entry into the market and took some years to gain developer acceptance and they were always more expensive than the rivals.

Taking a cue from the BbcMicro, they could be extended by adding ROM software although the range of peripherals never matched that of the BBC.

Little known fact: Acorn (makers of the BbcMicro) ported their business software (View, Viewsheet etc.) to the CPC (I know 'cos I was one of the two who did the port - the other was their original author, the late Mark Colton). If it had ever come out it might have prolonged their life a bit, but eventually Acorn's management woke up and realized it was a damn silly idea for their hardware business to make their competitors's hardware more attractive, and canned the project -- PaulHudson

Amstrad eventually bought out Sinclair, but it didn't save them. The Plus machines arrived at a time when the market was moving strongly to 16bit machines - the AtariST and the CommodoreAmiga?. The games-console-styled GX4000 never took off, the cartridge format was too expensive to produce software in. The killer blow was in making the advanced graphics features (hardware sprites, for example) of the plus machines available ONLY to cartridge games developers.

The + features were actually available to any format, as there was a game released on tape by CodeMasters? that used them. I believe this was discovered too late as even the plus machines were many years old by then.

Amstrad currently sells a combination phone/answermachine/SMS/emailer system. which runs Sinclair Spectrum games.

{And , we discover, crashes if you send it email with attachments totalling >64k...}

-- KatieLucas