Amstrad CPC6128 Donation 

There are some spectacular games in the CPC homebrew scene, which is still very much alive. There are plenty of tools and tutorials around as well, and programming the CPC is a lot of fun.

Thanks again mate! No doubt I'll end up falling down another rabbit hole and getting into all things Amstrad, but that's not such a bad thing. I'll be sure to share the journey with everyone

One thing I do like about the Amstrads (From a collector's perspective) is that they use the same video solutions as the Acorn 8 bits, so once you have a cable that runs on the Beeb or Electron, it runs on the Amstrad. One less cable needed 😀

@Mr Lurch's Things I used an Amstrad CPC6128 With a mono monitor connected to a Nikon F4 to produce all of the publicity stills for Full Metal Jacket. Stanley was very impressed. I wrote my own software which bypassed the firmware imposed one second restriction on using the external cassete relay. Over the various projects I did for Stanley I wore out three Nikon f4s but the CPC just kept going.

Excellent video and collection. Very nice of you to donate it to your friend!

I had one of these in the "pre-www" days. The drive belt went slack. I tried an elastic band to get it up and running again and it actually worked! You could hear the disk speed up and down as the band stretched when it started but it settled down and read disks fine.

Yet another good video - And We Do Love our #Amstrad The number of times I forgot to pluck in a cable ... well ... I just clame I'm old and tend to forget LOL

I’ve been repairing those 3” drives for about a decade and I did exactly the same mistake last week. Those cables are easily forgotten.

I had the same floppy drive belt issue with my Amstrad PCW 8256 drive. That seems to be the major fail point for these drives. Also, very cool you have Beach-Head for the machine. I played the heck out of that game on my Commodore 64 back in the day. Such a fun game.

Yaay, Sunday morning in Central Europe is saved from boredom!!

I think you were trying to load a Tatung Einstein game that's why the disk drive seemed faulty;) Einstein also used 3 inch disk drives. Keep up the good work.

Nice. Same happened to mine. btw There's a little read/write pin that just falls out of the drive easily on disassembly, so if you see it, now you know where it came from :)

Still Love the CPC. You never Forget your first love :D Started to code on my first computer the CPC464...

I used to have one of those after I sold my Speccy. Ah, the memories!

Last machine I had before the Amiga. Pretty good :)

Yet inevitably, as I clicked on this video to watch it, I knew by the end of it that another computer was going to be added to my top 10 wish list. Great video as always Jason!

Congratulations on the donation, and on the retro computer fair! Can't wait to see what Mark does with the CPC.

Lucky Mark! Although he definitely needs a powered SCART video cable for some RGB goodness. Nobody likes green.

Well done!

I remember when the Amstrad's came out in the early 1980s in Australia - I had a mate who had one. Unfortunately they couldn't compete with the Commodore 64 which were far superior in every sense of the word.

Love my 464.. Would love to get a 6128 one day too.

Nice! I have the same setup, although I don’t use the GT65 much. A Gotek eliminates the need for 12V, making the use of external power supply easier. There is also a small adapter called 5VCPC that enables the use of the original disk drive with just 5V.

I'm actually about to build a CPC 6128, as they seem very hard to find these days (at least here in Canada where I live now :D). It has a lot of nostalgia for me from when I was a kid. Guess if I want one, I have to move to... Australia?

{6128 owners strut in} ... "Who's 464 is this?" ... "Nerd! Your keyboard has coloured keys!" LOL But excellent save from scrapping ... a powerhouse CP/M machine, especially with the green screen. I personally prefer the 464 as well - the machine I grew up with and has a built-in Datasette ... replace the ROM with BASIC 1.1 and add a DDI5 and you've got a better machine than the 6128 ... and it's "boring" grey keyboard ;) /Brett

awww brings back memories of 1988 when i had a 6128 :) great days

Great channel! I did the same thing but to a C128D forgott to put in the power to the disk. So we all do mistakes :) have a nice day

Never seen this Amstrad before and that monitor that powers it is neat. My Amstrad PCW has one of those terrible drives and the disks are pretty lousy too (although definitely interesting)... I ended up just moving mine to a secondary drive and put the gotek (with a 3d printed mount) in instead. That main drive is just a showpiece now with a disk sticking out of it 😃

If that Beachhead is like the C-64 version, you are defending the beach against military invaders. It's a great game, but not trivial.

Good old 6128, sadly too few games would use the extra 64ko as it was plagued by poor (english) Speccy48 ports. Shame to have a monocolour monitor as it is supposed to be a Colour Personal computer. The melted drive belt is a classique, but those 3" disks were quite reliable (and expensive at the time). Many modern productions (Démos, homebrew games) may make very good use of those 128ko RAM.

I took part in a pupil's / school exchange with France. At the partner family in France "my" exchange-student had this computer. We played some games on it. And I found the type of 3” disks interesting.

Great! When I read your teaser on Facebook or Twitter I immediately knew who would get it in the end. ;-)

24:24: There actually _is_ a texture-mapping C64 FPS. It's called MOOD, it's somewhat incomplete, but it's the game with the best claim to being "the DOOM clone" (or the W3D clone, rather) for the C64. There is another (Hungarian but generally playable) game called BOOM, but that one omits the whole raycasting thing and is in some ways more comparable to Eye of the Beholder. MOOD is very lo-fi, but it's basically the limit of what's possible on ye olde bread bin.

So, what is the size of the belt for a 3 inch drive?

When my drive failed, i put a 3.5" drive in there, so that means I cut the case to make it fit, i did a very nice job of it, but that was a very long time ago before retro machines became popular and nobody thought about preservation. I also have the TV modulator box which i added an RGB scart connector to and the image is incredibly sharp with no noise or bars, the best image ive ever seen from an 8 bit micro.

Turning the 6128 on with a disc in the drive runs a pretty good chance of corrupting it, so maybe don't do that.

Are they Tatung Einstein disks?

Only two weeks from the UK? When I order stuff from the UK in the states, the Royal Mail takes at least a month. Trying to make a statement to the former colonies?

Any way of copying games to the original Amstrad disks ? How was is done back in the day ?

The original game disks are not easy to find.

14:43: Did you say cap-STONE?

Silly question, why does the computer take a 12v and 5v in, rather than just one?

Ah yes the CPC. I got one because my parents were too poor to buy a DOS PC. 'CPC' = complete pile of crap :D

Will it run the Batman demo? I had to change the CRTC for a friend to get theirs working, mine was OK.

You can play Sid Meiers Pirates! now, my CPC464 with DDI5 can´t run it. The only one so far where the DDI5 failed.