I worked with Alan at Amstrad for 25 years and was project designer / manager for things like NC100/150, PDA600, PCW16 and many other things and I think you're wrong about the number of CPC we sold. First remember that 464 was followed by 664 and then swiftly after that (some might argue too swiftly!) the CPC6128 so I think if you are counting CPC sales you have to count all 3 together (the latter two were really just 464+disk then 464+disk+2xRAM). Oh and even 464+/6128+ which were just ASICd models with better graphics (sprites even). So the combined number is far more than 2m. The second thing is you have to consider exactly what market you are talking about. Is it just UK or across Europe (even a small number via Sears in the US). We either sold direct (or with partners like Schneider in Germany) in Germany, Spain, Italy but most especially France where I believe we sold almost double that sold in UK). So I think the total is more like 5m-6m. Personally I don't remember Alan ever claiming we'd reach 20m but he was full of bullshit and I could well believe that if some journo cornered him and asked "how many ya gonna sell?" a typical, off the cuff reply could well have been "oh, I don't know, 20 million?". Do remember that Amstrad was a listed plc and while Alan did have a touch of the Elon Musk's about him you had to be wary of share price and shareholder backlash and you couldn't make wild, unsubstantiated claims. (though Alan did sometimes anyway! ;-)
Thanks for commenting and wow!… what an amazing history! The 2m sales came from that fountain of truth - Wikipedia and referred to the 464 only if memory serves. If you don’t mind, drop us an email as I’d love to talk further!
We still love the CPC in Australia Cliff! I've got two Plus machines that I've adjusted the links on so I can pretend they were "Awa" (sic ... should be AWA) machines ;) /Brett
6128 was a great micro. All-in-one with a proper keyboard, Basic for humans, no colour limitations, 80 columns, CP/M and a low price with great quality. No competition.
I got one eventually... just absolutely loved it. I did a lot of hacking with the Disk drive. Made Alien Encounter turbo load in 3-4 seconds by entering the |CPM command. I formatted the disk with one sector per track.
@@TheRetroShack I got my 6128 after several broken Spectrum 128s had gone back to the shop, and my dad decided to splash out a bit more to get (and I quote) a "proper computer" :D I loved that machine, first time I ever had a monitor too!
I loved my 464 when I was a kid, all my mates had Spectrum and C64 but I preferred Amstrad as I thought it had better graphics. I loved the fact the games were only £1.99 and £2.99 each and was able to get a new game each week, some of the games had amstrad versions on one side and spectrum on the other so was able to lend and borrow games with my mates Loved Roland on the ropes, rocky horror show, wriggler and head over heels Would love it if someone made a CPC464 mini version
Being American, we never saw the CPC-464, but over the years I've grown to love this machine and it's 16 color med res mode. It's a little bit like an 8-bit Atari ST. I'm and ST fan, so this is a good thing, Your mileage may vary =) Having a whole computer all to yourself as a kid was AMAZING, wasn't it? Music wise, with the AY, on both the CPC and ST, people whole knew how to modulate the square wave in software started to create marvelous tunes with the chip.
Absolutely! I went from the Amstrad to the ST and out of the box on day one I was very disappointed - It didn't boot straight to anything useful like BASIC (you couldn't do ANYTHING in the basic GEM desktop) and the Atari BASIC that did ship with the machine was atrocious. I got GFA basic as soon as it came out and eventually ended up with STOS, and then AMOS on the Amiga :)
I bought one so my dad could watch "Pot Black" without interruption. I remember being impressed by the tape buttons looking like all the other keys, even if they were clearly just traditional mechanical tape buttons.
ah the good old cpc .. my first own computer. used it till early 90's. extended ram to 512k, dual 5 1/4 floppy (never owned a 3" one). cp/m with all the software that came with it. i learned pascal, modula-2 and C with this little computer. even my first resume i wrote with "wordstar" with it. i really can say my life wouldnt be the same without my cpc464.
I feel the same - it was the first machine that really showed me the power of programming. I’d written a ton of stuff on the Speccy, but Locomotive BASIC is on another level :)
Amen hermano, mi profesion y en definitiva mi forma de ver la vida, quedo marcada por esta pequeña maquina ;). Y ademas, es una gozada ver el resurgimiento de software y de pasion que hay por el CPC.
Surely got to be worth getting that out for a play session :). Just make sure you set a good amount of time aside, those cassettes take a long time to load! :)
Seeing the bare edge-connector "ports" instantly brought lots of nostalgia. On my side of the pond, our first family computer was the venerable TRS-80. It was lots of fun, especially after my dad and I built a "system expansion" kit that allowed more peripherals. The somewhat dodgy plating on the edge connectors required frequent cleaning to keep them reliable, especially the parallel printer port. Wow, parallel ports, who would've thought back then that serial ports would far outpace parallel interfaces!
We had one in the house when I was growing up. Dad bought it with the monochrome monitor, but we could hook it up to the family tv to use in colour. My Dad also soldered up a long 3.5mm to Din cable to feed the amstrad’s audio output into his hi-fi amp - this transformed the sound experience. The first game I remember was Amsoft’s Harrier Jump Jet. Codename Matt was tricky - but we finished it. Gauntlet was great for multiplayer. And Way of the exploding fist and Ye Ar Kung Fu were the best beat ‘em up’s. Green beret was hard but fun. Wec Le Mans was the best optio for a racing driving game. Loved the soundtrack and graphics from Sorcery. Ahh good memories. It’s still all in my Dad’s loft. The caps probably need replacing and the tape drive would need a new belt. If only I had the time and space to get it all out again…. The biggest downside for me was the lack of good hobbyist I/o. You could use the printer port and joystick ports for basic things… but the expansion port was too hard for me at say 12 years old to tinker with. The bbc micro (which we had at school) was easier to connect simple electronic projects to. Happy memories!
A very underrated computer IMHO. I had a green screen CPC664 which was very good with its built in 3” drive. Amstrad BASIC was probably the best dialect on any 8 bit micro including the BBC. The CPC6128 was great although the Plus models were too late to market. I also used the PCW range extensively which were outstanding workhorses although looking back, it is a shame they did not base them on the CPC so you could use its software library. Yes, the screen resolution would have been lower but it would have been fun. Imagine a CPC512+! 😉
@@talideon Hi Keith, Indeed this was a good feature of the BBC BASIC environment (used both extensively back in the day) but in pure BaSIC terms, the Amstrad dialect was ahead of BBC BASIC although both were excellent. I admit we are splitting hairs and it comes down to personal preference in most cases. However, value for money, the CPC was streets ahead.
The CPC464 my parents bought for Christmas started me on an IT tech journey that continues today. 30yrs plus as a high end software dev or more realistically as an old school nerd.
Locomotive were geniuses; out of all the 80s micros, the CPC-464 & 6128 had the only BASICs with re-writable vector addresses for many low-level BASIC commands. If you were handy with Z-80 assembler, and had the BASIC Technical Manuals and a copy of Arnor's Protext word processor ROM expansion (which allowed you to compile & test machine code direct from your document, a bit like a BBC Micro), then you could intercept calls to, say, the DRAW command to implement your own quick-n-dirty version loaded in RAM that ignored a lot of the niceties in order to draw lines at many times normal speed. I once wrote a butchered version of PRINT that was approximately 10 times faster by ignoring the current WINDOW restrictions (among other things). With several such hacks loaded in RAM, say from a floppy, you could speed up standard, uncompiled BASIC programs by several hundred percent. God, I loved that machine.
I never owned 1 of these back in the day, but was always intrigued by it. So 1 day a few years back I bought a CPC with the colour monitor & a bunch of games from eBay, just to try it out. The CPC is a nice spec. & well-built computer. It's game library, imo, is probably weaker overall compared to the C64 & Spectrum though, due to a lot of poor Spectrum ports and many games running slower than on the C64 or Spectrum. But when developers took full advantage of the hardware, it really did shine. I love the 80-column mode too, it's great for CP/M software.
Parents saved the CPC for after all the other presents Christmas '84. Brought it out unwrapped in a, "just one more thing" moment. I almost fainted when I saw it.
I've still got the older "Tall Key" version, manufactured December 1984, which I got for my 11th birthday from my local Dixons back in June of 1985. Originally, it was complete with a colour monitor and a joystick, along with it's Amsoft Software Pack. It was pretty easy to convert type-in games meant for other computers like the BBC Micro and Sinclair Spectrum with such books that I could get from the library, thanks to it's decent User Manual featuring loads of information on it's Locomotive BASIC and how it's sound and graphics worked, while similar books for the Amstrad specifically came along a little later. It was, and still is, my very first computer! :-)
The 'trit' colour system is explained by looking at the schematics for the CPC. The RGB outputs are cleverly arranged as one pin each for R,G and B that can be high, low or tri-state. This saves hardware cost. Using an external potential divider coupled with the correct resistor in the monitor, each level could be made and the colours mixed for the pallette of 27. This means that the colours are voltages but you can't get the right ones just by outputting a voltage but by matching the impedance. They can be converted, which is what I hope the SCART cable does rather than just connect and hope. I don't know what the termination resistance of the RGB in SCART is (maybe 75 ohms), but it's 100 ohms in the Amstrad monitor, so care must be taken to get the driving right.
I could almost guarantee it was going to power up fine when you flipped the switch. Every CPC in every restoration video I've ever seen is the same. Mine is still working nicely. I've never known one to die. They are extremely robust and at nearly 40 years old will still run happily all day long. Full credit to Alan Sugar - the CPC might just be the most reliable home computer of the 1980s, or possibly ever.
Good to hear. I just bought one on Ebay that looks mint, but it was sold as "untested". Hope it will just work, or at least after cleaning switch contacts.
I worked on a CPC-464 many moons ago. Faulty cassette deck which simply required a few replacement bits and pieces. Just using it for a day made me realise I wanted one. I never did get one though. I love all the hidden features that the machine had and it's strange use of hardware. They did so much to make it a good machine.
@@TheRetroShack I 100% agree. For the home user it was perfectly suited for learning, messing around and creating "stuff!" It was also VERY easy to learn to use.
Would love to own a cpc-464 again. It was my first homecomputer back in the day. We had the Schneider version with the green screen. My parents gave it away to my nephew. But they don’t have it anymore.
@@TheRetroShack i managed to find the next best thing. Years ago i found a amstrad gx-4000 boxed for only 10 euro. Together with c4cpc it is a nice combo.
As a kid I LOVED the look of the CPC464 and lusted after one...... until I saw/heard one and then experienced the C64 - whilst the CPC keyboard and monitor combination looked great, its fairly primitive hardware paled in comparison to the C64 in the only area that I cared about - games. Shortly afterward I acquired a C64 and my close friend who at the same time received a CPC6128 for Chrimbo was so jealous, especially as the years went on and games like Last Ninja, Wizball etc were released. Still, the CPC had a few gems - we used to play a lot of Ikari Warriors on the ole' CPC as it was a fantastic conversion.
Back then I shared your fascination for the C64, but today, that is all gone. Can't care about the C64 any longer. The CPC on the other hand is marvelous. That PCB, such a beauty in its simplicity. Back then we never had SCART TV's, but now they are easy to get, and o boy a C64 is putting garbage on the CRT tube... The C64 may have had the best playing games of home computers, but now I have a NES and PC Engine from the same era, and to be honest, I won't spend more than 1 minute on a C64 game now. Strange enough I do enjoy a run of Chuckie Egg II on a Speccy, or Ghosthunt on a P2000T (in 78x72 "pixels"! in 8 colours). So long 64.... May them nerds be happy in continuing to make demo's and such, but I'll stick to the good memories of Commando in 1985. If I turn on Commando today, I think "was this making me jealous back then?" I can't get it. The machine we had, the Philips P2000T, and at times I thought my dad made a really bad buy, is in my current perspective a piece of art and one of the greatest machines ever made. And so is the CPC.
I had this one with a tapedeck, colour monitor and the colourfull keys which was exceptional in Belgium since normally the German ones with the grey keys where distributed over here. It was a fabulous machine and i tossed in my zx spectrum in a blank. I had afterwards the same machine with a built in floppy disk and the last one was a pc clone, the 1512 with if i remember well 2 floppy disks. All of these machines performed flawlessly and i had a lot of fun with them
Loved my 464 (sold them in Adelaide South Australia in the late 80's) I created a AD&D 2nd edition PC Dice roll program with all my inhouse rules!... ahh I miss it.
I guess there is no denying that it was good value for money and had it arrived a bit earlier in the game things may have been a lot different but both Sinclair and Commodore had got a good head start.
08:55 27 colours but no brown so dirt and wood was either bright orange or dark red. Ikari Warriors is a nice example of red mud that looks pretty good.
This was a time when a CPU or auxiliary chips still had a comforting simplicity that one person could grasp and understand quite easily. Fast forward to today and CPUs or say, GPUs, are so complex that one has to rely on a huge databook just to keep pace with one subfunction at a time.
Never heard of this machine back in the day (in Canada). Really nice machine! I’m still impressed at how many 8 bit machines there were in the early to mid 80s that I’ve never seen. Good video. Enjoyed seeing the insides. Looking forward to the follow up.
I loved my Amstrad CPC 464 I had the colour monitor...... Had so many memories loved playing Gauntlet, Rampage, Bubble Bobble, Friday the 13th and Thanatos to name a few lol
Oddly, the game I remember playing most on the CPC was Technician Ted! It had absolutely no Amstrad bells and whistles and was a straight Spectrum port :) Also loved Sorcery :)
The big plus point about the CPC464 as far as we were concerned is that it would run CP/M and therefore real software like Word Star, dBase and SuperCalc. It wasn't just for games.
@@timoheinonen9570 Thanks Tim - I think the point being made is that the CPC was built with that in mind - especially the later models, whereas I think you’d struggle to find anyone saying the Spectrum was ever considered a business machine :) :) But hey, looking at some of the stuff that people have gotten out of the Spectrum over the years I’m pretty convinced there’s nothing it can’t do given the right programmer :)
Back in the 1980s and on the German counterpart of this computer, the Schneider CPC464, I learned programming BASIC, Z80 assembler, Forth, Logo and other languages. Of course, I also played Sorcery, Tau Ceti, Ghostbusters, Terraqueous and so many other fun games. Great times. Cheers!
Mine had a custom paint job and I lined the cassette deck inside with yellow fur. The monitor had iridescent vinyl wrap all over and bezel painted silver. Looked wicked.
I had a CPC6128 (colour). I must say I was disappointed with many aspects of it. No hardware sprites was a big disadvantage when it came to gaming, as was the fact that 16 colours were only available at a very low resolution (160x200 or Mode 0), whereas competitors had a smaller palette, but could mostly use 320x200, which looked a lot better. The supposedly huge CP/M library was really hampered by the 3" drive, which also made for very expensive floppy disks. Advantages were the fact that you did not have to use a TV to use your home computer, and that you did have an 80 character mode, which could be useful for programming, word processing or spreadsheets, and also the decent keyboard of course. With all the benefit of hindsight if I had to relive this episode, I would have probably played my games console (Colecovision) a bit longer, bought more stuff for it, then maybe a C64, to go to an Amiga, and hop on the PC once the SVGA cards arrived. If the CPC6128 would have had a 3.5" drive, hardware sprites, and 16 colours at 320x200, the situation would have been totally different.
We finally persuaded my dad to get us a computer, I remember playing Roland in the caves at the sellers house on the green screen monitor. A year later he bought us the colour monitor-glorious! It was really great playing the old games in colour and gave them a second wind. Thanks for the video!
Ronald in the Caves loved that game with Oh Mummy lol. Sultans Maze was another one I sometimes played. But it was Gauntlet, Rampage and Bubble Bobble were some of my big favs lol.
My first computer at 9 years old was a hand me down CPC464 from my brother who had got a C128 for Christmas. It was a real effort getting games to load on that crappy tape deck but i did love it. I recently bought a CPC6128 and after adding a gotek its brilliant, i never played most of the good games on it and im impressed at its graphical capabilities.
I used to sell these and the software when working in a computer shop around 1985/1986 I myself owned a C64, but I was very impressed with the vibrance and sharpness of the CPC's colour monitor, and the bright colours which looked much nicer than the drab C64 PAL palette. Some of the games looked seriously impressive compared to the C64 and Spectrum equivalents, though as mentioned in the video were not as smooth. Ikari Warriors I remember particually being a fantastic conversion. Overall it was a really nice machine and great value, but the Spectrum and C64 had so much market dominance so it struggled by comparison. (Though obviously did far better than other early contenders like the Dragon 32 and Oric.). The biggest let down was Amstrad using 3" instead of 3.5" discs for the 664, as these were harder to get hold of and more expensive because only Amstrad used them.
I think it is really nice to see this machine from a 2024 perspective. I had a bunch of machines on my table lately, and the CPC is coming soon, and I am really excited about what it seems to be. I think for a good retro experience of an 8-bit home computer, you need to hookup to a TV with SCART, no lousy Amstrad monitor, nor a Made-in-Taiwan half junk Commodore 1084 at scalper prices, but a decent mid-nineties Trinitron. Which rules out a lot of models. You can keep the BBC Micro, Spectrum 2+, CPC series and Philips MSX/P2000T. The C64 delivers the worst IQ out of its connector of all machines, even worse than a speccy on RF. Then we want to use the machine. Which one has decent BASIC and good readable text. Not many surprisingly. P2000T and CPC are 2 with decent BASIC implementations and great readability, both with on the fly 80-column mode for surfing a BBS, writing code or just typing some text. Especially hooking up to some Viewdata system in 2024 is really cool, which brings the BBC Micro in the picture again, if it just wasn't such an ugly piece of kit. So right now my top 3 is P2000T, because it looks awesome, is highly reliable, tweakable and has the coolest built in tape mechanism, it even had some great Teletext graphics games, and comes from my city, the CPC 464 (+1 point surpassing the 6128 for having such a cool colour scheme), and third the Spectrum +, whose tiled colour is so unique, it is art of its own. I will sell my C64, it is a dull box, delivering dull looking games, and I had a SID bubble overdose. I'll keep the C128 for now, as it is near mint in box, but it is a real pain to use, and even worse than a breadbin when it comes to TV output.
It is a pity that its real possibilities were not discovered many years earlier. I don't agree much with the title about firing, but the fact is that this computer spoke a lot into the Spectrum, C64 and potentially Atari XE rivalry. The 4MHz clock is just a paper twig, the graphics is slower than on the Spectrum due to more colours and larger resolutions and the CPU is slowed down. Lack of hardware sprites makes almost all games movement jerky and unplayable. There are exceptions, of course, like Chase H.Q. which is excellent but I personally prefer the Spectrum version just for its cuteness. The Amstrad acts against the Spectrum as a heavy army vehicle. But all in all, nice review of a machine that deserves it!
I adored the Amstrad even though I never had one. I also loved my C64 more than anything. My dad brought back the Amstrad from work complete with the glorious green screen and I was able to spend time poorly programming it. The defining thing is with the integrated machine and tape style along with the the green screen right there in front of you was that it felt like you had been sucked into another world altogether and I just adored those memories. A physically gorgeous machine certainly when compared to the admittedly ugly C64 aesthetics and while it took a while initially to get used to the vividly garish colour scheme which, I just love the feel from the atmosphere you get both using the machine and it's games But then I can also say that I loved all the machines back then because they all had their own character. The C64 was a very dull almost soulless or just very muted and realistic feel which was amazing, the Speccy had an almost hell like feel which was eerily thrilling, the Atari with it's pinnacle of physical design in all their computers but also a beautiful colour palette in games, and then the Amstrad which just felt very vibrant to the extent your eyes might bleed. Back when machines had character and I look very fondly back at being part of it all Excellent vid cheers and look forward to more to come
You could not have asked for a better home computer for a kid to learn programming in the mid-1980s. I have a career in the game industry today because my parents bought a CPC464 in 1985, no doubt.
Well, didn't expect it to switch on and perform well so that was a bonus. Looking forward to more on this. The explanation of the motherboard was really interesting, and it does look like a really clean layout.
@@TheRetroShack I have never owned one myself, had limited time playing it in the 1980s and 1990s. But been enjoying the recent homebrew and the CPCRetroDev2021 competition.
The CPC is incredibly robust and I think there's only one electrolytic capacitor on the board. Usually if it doesn't work it's the power switch itself oxidised, or bad memory.
Well put together video, I enjoyed it. Former CPC 464 with Colour monitor owner here, and I loved it as a kid. Think about getting one again now and again, but the issue is, I have no real interest in playing it any more as the games run too slow. My retro desires are sated by playing Mega Drive games.
Glad you enjoyed it and thanks for watching :). I might actually do a bit of a diversion into some retro consoles at some point :). How far back is considered Retro considering the first XBOX is now over twenty years old! :) :)
@@TheRetroShack Yeah, even though XBox doesn't feel old or reteo to me, many adults had that as their first gaming device and it means a lot to them, like an Amstrad or Mega Drive means to me.
Nice video! Though I'd like to add that the CPC has indeed hardware scrolling, even though it wasn't used much back in the day because companies rushed to publish games. Please take a look at the astonishing Pinball Dreams on the CPC by Batman Group! :D
Thanks for the info! I thought it was only the plus models that introduced hardware scrolling and hardware sprites - I wonder why more games didn't utilise this feature?
@@TheRetroShack The MC6845 has some scrolling capabilities, but it's up to the programmer to take advantage of them. Only the Plus range has also hardware sprites. If you check Orion Prime's intro, you'll see another fine example of multidirectional hardware scrolling.
Sorcery! I had forgotten all about that! Profanity was my other favorite game...kept me busy for ages...ooh...and obsidian...can't forget that one...and alien...aargh, so many good memories...rebel planet...interdictor pilot...it's all coming back to me
0:21 I'd forgotten underground public toilets existed. ;) Marmite keyboard? Oh, of course, you either love it or hate it! Yep. :) Now I'm starting to see the appeal of the Enterprise's keys. The 464's are not styled beyond simply being colorful, and the fairly traditional key shape is actually kind-of loud on its own. Schneider's color scheme does look better with these keys. It's good to see a CPC running after all these years. I kind-of wanted a CPC6128 for the monitor and built-in disk drive, but I was mostly happy with my Atari despite the impossible price of Atari disk drives.
The CPC was a success. For 1984, it couldn't really be much more for that price. The Spectrum was already embedded in the UK market, and the Amiga was out next year, but nobody knew what it was capable of, nor could they afford it until the 500 came years later. That the CPC sold so many units, despite the Atari ST coming the next year as well - it was a success. Amstrad carried on and made the PCWs, then low cost PCs. If the CPC was significantly more powerful, then I expect it would price itself out as an 8-bit, versus the competition. If it was 16-bit, then - again - they'd have to compete against the Atari ST on price. It only lacked hardware sprites and scrolling for games. It could still punch way above its weight if programmed correctly, so I really can't complain. The Spectrum was it's biggest weakness, because of the installed base. Too much software was directly ported from the Spectrum, and that affected the quality. The Spectrum ports generally didn't run well or look impressive.
I've still got the CPC464 green screen I nagged my parents for when I was 11 years old and the 6128 and colour screen computer I bought when I was nearer 16 years old. Looking forward to seeing what can be added to these machines to make them more usable in modern times.
Delighted to see this video - the CPC was my first computer so really looking forward to the refurb. Also remember Ghostbusters as a game, hope you get it working!
I always found the Amstrad CPC very attractive and did lust after one back in the day, especially with the color monitor option, even though I already had a C64. Just a shame so many of the games released for the CPC were lazy ZX Spectrum ports.
I like your videos very informative and clearly explained. 👍 I never gave the CPC-464 the time of day had I known it used the same Z80 chip as the Spectrum, I may of give it some thought in regards to programming.🤔
My Cousin had this, I had the C64. I wouldn't have swapped for the world. His cassette deck started eating tapes and you couldn't just replace the cassette player like with a C64 because it was built in, so he had to bin it and buy a whole new computer. Someone else in the family dallied with the Acorn Electron. It went back twice to Dixons before he gave up and bought a radio controlled car instead :)
No need to have binned it. Could of hooked up a 3.5 inch disc drive to play copied games on. Multiple games on disc and no loading. Just needed a multi face device from Romantik Robot
@@TheRetroShack Tamiya Grasshopper. It was going great guns till he lent it to a kid down the street who crashed it pretty hard and broke the front left suspension. Few years later I had the Tamiya Hornet. Not learning my lesson from the previous Grasshopper story, I leant it to my uncle in exchange for a lend of his Zenith Data Systems 286 PC. I had lots of fun with his 286, but he brought my Hornet back with damaged servos and a bulged overcharged battery pack. I think he tried to charge it with a car battery charger (so my dad said) instead of the trickle charger I gave him...
@@caeserromero3013 Can't remember what year the multi face and 3.5 inch drive were purchased but they could be bought in period. The multi face was from a company called Romantik Robot and ordered via mail order from an advert probably in Amstrad Action magazine. You could copy games to disc which meant multiple games in one place and no loading. You could take screen shots and add pokes ( cheats ) like the Game Genie cartridge on the Megadrive. Cool little device
My old maths teacher was pleased with his green-screen 464. I remember lusting after a 6128 to replace my 48K Spectrum, too. Batman (the isometric one, like Knight Lore) looked fantastic (four colours and sharp!). I even bought several copies of Amtix (the Crash! and Zzap 64 sister mag.). But I ended up getting a C64 and 1541 instead - the sheer quantity of games tipped the balance.
I just remember feeling a bit more ‘grown up’ when we got the CPC - it felt like it was a real step-up from the Spectrum (especially programming in BASIC) and I loved it :)
I've always been a spectrum fan but the 464 is certainly a computer i would like to try out. Nice to know that it can be run from scart quite easily though. Having a Spectrum 128+2 i appreciated the Amstrad design element.
If I'd have had one of those scart cables 10 years ago, I might still have mine. I had the green screen monitor version, and the CRT was very dim, It had obvisously had a lot of use before I got it.
My second computer. I bought the green version when I was 9 with all my "savings". I've typed tens of thousands lines of code on it. It's probably still in my parent's attic. I've never dared to power it on again because of the CRT. With a cable for a modern screen, I might.
Amstrad hoped to sell 200 000 CPC 464s, so they were surprised and very happy with 2 million CPC 464s. In total they sold over 20 million computers, 12 million PCs, 8 million PCWs, 3 million CPCs and even some Spectrums. I am unsure how many of the 5 million Spectrums sold were by Amstrad and Sinclair. To those of you living in a country were people were buying Spectrums, what were your impression?
The 464+ was a nice machine, but too little too late. The original was also a nice machine, but really could've done with some additional oomph for push all that screen memory about.
Ha ha, brought back memories of playing Sorcery+, when you had to drop down to the door at the bottom of the screen just above the water. A bunch of us would play alternately and everyone would should "SPLASH!" to put the player off. Yeah, we were dicks. Simpler times. Still got my 6128 somewhere (mono, not colour) and my DMP printer, which got me through uni. Also got my "Amstrad Whole Memory Guide" book which takes pride of place next to my "VIC Revealed". :) Cheers for the trip back in time! /edit - although I love it to bits, it still doesn't hold a candle to my beloved Enterprise. ;)
When taking the player section out to change the belts, be aware that you can break the counter reset easily when trying to get the player to slot back in. There are 3d models out there in the event you manage to mangle it.
Usually the triangular shaped piece under the push button that snaps off. The plastic is generally brittle with age and just goes looking at it. I repaired mine by reforming the plastic triangle by using a staple shaped to fit and then held in place by a pair of 1mm drill holes and superglue to tack.
06:12 Ah the tape counter, with its ever so fragile reset button... If you plan to buy a 464, check all the pictures of it and make sure the counter reset button is standing proud of the case and is straight. The belt drives for the datacorder are easily sourced, the reset button is not. There is a friction wheel in them too which ages and fails which will lead to 'lumpy' playing of the tapes if they run at all, making the 'corder pretty much unuseable. There is a mod you can make to the machine though so you can plug in an external sound source such as an MP3 player that you can play TZX tape images (its basicly a recording of the tape) into the 464, bypassing the tape mechanism. 11:00 Another way to get video output, and powe,r into the 464 is the MP1 (Modulator/Powersupply-1). It only produces an RF output, but when this machine was new thats what we had in the UK.
I belonged to another camp and any sympathy for the Amstrad was not done. We called it "Armstad" instead of "Amstrad", "arm" means poor and "stad" means city. Now after so many years past I can look at it as it is, and the Amstrad was not that bad. It was not superfantastic but it could get along. If only back then the manufacturers used a modular system, so that parts of the computer could easily be exchanged for faster or better parts that could be bought later on. The design of the Amstrad was heavily borrowed from others, only one of the video-chips was of their own making. The 6845 was in the Apple II (on a card), the PC and in numerous others. The Z80 is well known too. With CP/M there could have been ten thousands of programmes available. If only they borrowed the bus-system of Apple or MSX then they could have lived a few years longer. The manufacturer of Amstrad did not have a vision for the future, only selling as much boxes as possible. "No Future!" wasn't that a popular song in the eighties?
@@renaudg ...or Edge Grinder, Sub Hunter, Star Sabre, Red Sunset, Corsair, The Abduction of Oscar Z, Alcon 2020, Wonderboy remake, the upcoming Vespertino and Toki.... And even older games like Zap 't' Balls, Savage, Megablasters, Super Cauldron...too many games to list here.
A German workplace standard came into effect in the late 70s that required light-value colours, ( beige, pearl, light grey, etc ), for all office equipment. Hence boring German CPC colour.
Correction - the CPC DOES have hardware scrolling. You can see it in action every time you type LIST. What it doesn't have is per-pixel hardware scrolling, at least not without using some tricky hacks. But those tricky hacks are well-known today, which is leading to something of a renaissance in CPC games (check out some of the shmups that have come out recently). Incidentally, worth noting it can do all kinds of arbitrary screen resolutions, too - including portrait format or even full overscan (another thing you're seeing more and more in recent games). I'm guessing the highest resolution you could physically fit on the screen in full overscan (without interlacing) would be PAL 768x288 with 2 colours. I guess it could do a full interlaced picture too if you have enough memory.
I have the triad in front of me now, and while the Spectrum 48+ wins the beauty contest, the CPC is the best machines. No matter how hard I try, I cannot stand the garbage signal in garbage colours my C64 and C128 put out on the screen. The Spectrum is doing pretty bad as well with its coax-to-composite mod, but the poppy colour-clash aesthetics have more charm then C64 diahrea. But if I pop the Amstrad into my Trinitron, it simply is amazing. I even like the soundchip. Rick Dangerous II looks marvelous on the machine. DO NOT try to hook up a CPC to a flat panel as done in this video. You will greatly benefit from a true CRT.