Starting with Amstrad

CPC and PCW technology
Hover
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Starting with Amstrad

Post by Hover »

30 years ago I destroyed my eyes in front of the green monitor. But I wrote my diploma thesis for a technical school (from a completely different industry), on an editor I wrote, I counted on a spreadsheet I wrote, I drew in ArtStudio with an Amiga mouse connected to the joy port through an interface I made. I used a light pen from a ballpoint pen, omitting CRTC because I had no documentation, I printed my diploma on Star LC20, in graphic and text mode, after loading Polish fonts from a program I had written for their design. It was a beautiful time when all the control codes were described in the manual. I also used a mouse to control a single character arrow in mode 1 with an accuracy of 1 pixel.

Of course, there was a Covox with resistors, an A / D converter on the edge connector and 7 seconds of sampled sound in 80kB of 5 RAM banks

I had org instructions. to Amstrad, Bajtki, Iksa and reverse inginiering. from programs and games only what I got with the computer, i.e. something 6-7 floppy disks.
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SanderoCaro
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Starting with Amstrad

Post by SanderoCaro »


I had 6128 from 92 to 96, of which 2 years a green monitor, then TV via RGB, and last year still a large station. It was my first computer and then I switched to A1200 with hard and turbo. So I missed the tape recorders, and I missed the 16 bit tough guys.
I have described my adventures a few times here on the forum, you could find the oldest threads in the Amstrad section. I had a collection of Bajtki and IKS before I bought a computer, I was able to translate Bejziki from Spectrum, or from GFA to CPC. I made a tape / cable for this large drive myself, but I was unable to connect the small 3.5, although I tried. I had the mouse from ST according to the interface from the German newspaper.

At first I had little software, a few disks, 3 games, Tasword, Discology, and some crap under CPM that I didn't understand, but a week after I bought it, I saw an advertisement for another 6128, and I called, a nice guy had 40 drives full of super software, and I didn't I had so much to lose. Then I met 3 consecutive owners of this computer and as I got floppy disks I was losing more. Then I also visited one type from Pozna� and another from Warsaw, whom I met from the advertisement in Bajtek. And only 4 tape recorders responded from the advertisement in the local teletext. I also knew a guy what the LOGO course in the club did on a few 6128. After 4 years I had 100 soft disks, including 400 games and software for everything. Mainly, I was picking Bejziki or pixel. I did Covox too but I wasn't thrilled with the effect, DigiTracker on AY played just as well.

I wrote Sokoban with 40 boards in 7KB. A program for convenient launching and displaying files, which I wrote again after many years and put it on the forum here. Slide show which he was able to find and display pictures from a floppy disk in several formats. I figured out how to display the letters 4x8 pixels in 4 colors, which gave cool possibilities. And in the code it's just something that displayed 1/4 screen animations from ramdisk, which gave a total of 24 frames. But, for example, how to do Overscany did it only a few years ago. I only had 2 German and 2 English Amstrada magazines (borrowed). And there were more tricks and honey in each of them than in the entire Bajtek yearbooks. You had to be able to combine to impress the Atarians and Commodorers with something. ;)

I tried to write PushOver on CPC because I liked it on Amie. But I ended up drawing the sprites, and I sold my computer.

Apart from the two of us, there is only one real Amstrada player on the Piotr forum. Real, i.e. the one that had CPC in the era, and the rest are collectors who bought them only today.
Sandero is good car :!:
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BigAndSmallHills
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Starting with Amstrad

Post by BigAndSmallHills »


I think, however, that more forum members could have had them in the era.
But they probably didn't do things on them that could be proud of now;)

Mine, for example, was only on loan, so I ended up playing the software I got with it.
Run for the hills, run for you life.
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Iknownothingatall
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Starting with Amstrad

Post by Iknownothingatall »


I can not rule out that I missed someone, but rather I had a habit of asking every new forum member who at times showed interest in Amstrada, and I asked what made him do it, and there were probably 3-4 people who touched it at the club, school or at some uncle's, or not even this, because they only saw it at the commission or only in the newspaper.
Apparently, a small percentage of Polish amstraders are sentimental, or are bold enough to speak on the forum, or smart enough to find this forum in Google. At PPA, also two of them admitted that they had seen or touched one once. On the English amstrada forum, there were 3 Polish amstraders, but after receiving answers to a few questions, they disappeared, and when I mentioned them about the Polish forum, they said that they knew so, but they did not respond. Similarly, on the English CPC fan group on FB. One is Atarowiec, which he wanted to do Amstrada demonstrations to his colleagues, and the rest of them Polish name and surname and they did not want to write in Polish.
I once found two guys in google because they had a CPC entry on their blogs, but they did not respond to invitations. Yet another one has several entries on his blog about CPC, and he invited to the blog here, but he also recently bought his first CPC.
i know that i know nothing at all.
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MovieDirector@
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Starting with Amstrad

Post by MovieDirector@ »


First of all, respect for your commitment :)
You did a good investigation;)
Maybe the failure really comes from a lack of sentiment?
The community was not big because we had little equipment available.

I was lucky that the one I borrowed stayed with me for some time. And he made an impression on me. It has really great possibilities (and therefore also potential). I had it before the C64 and from today's perspective, I believe that they could have started an equal fight for the consumer market. It's a pity it didn't work out.
I'm gonna direct a movie someday...
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Valdor
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Starting with Amstrad

Post by Valdor »


However, I will not fully agree that only a few (3), I had an Amstrad CPC464 somehow from September / October 1985, complete with a green monitor and a French MP1 module with a EURO plug instead of an RF modulator (but I did not have a suitable TV yet).
Anyway, I described it a few years ago ...
And it was not a computer only for games, because at the very beginning, probably for the first 1.5 years, I had only a few games that I got in the set and which I quickly got bored of.
Unfortunately, these were times when this platform was quite exotic in our market and there was no software.
Only after a long wait did I come across a man from the University of Silesia in Katowice and a few people in Wawa where there was a chance to exchange any software.
I used that time to get to know this computer from a more useful side, getting to know its construction and programming first in Basic, then beginnings in Assembler, not having a compiler yet and writing programs
on paper, then translating them by hand with the help of a paper Z80 order list;)
At that time, there were also created several hardware accessories, such as the i / o i8255 port connected to the system rail, a cooperating EPROM programmer, AD and DA converters for various experiments, and a little later a light pen connected to the system connector using the LPEN signal of the 6845 system and the mouse interface AMX made on TTL chips to connect a mouse from BBCmicro. I also tried to build a floppy disk controller for my Amstrad, but due to the lack of available components and sufficiently readable documentation, it did not come to fruition at that time. :(
I also wrote a program for my own needs for designing printed circuit boards which could be printed on my only Star LC-10 printer at that time.

In the meantime, around 1988, I bought a ZX81 from my friend, but Amstrad was my basic computer until 1990, when I got the BBC Master 128 computer, but that's a completely different story
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Doggeboy0A
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Starting with Amstrad

Post by Doggeboy0A »

What's the investigation? I was just looking for someone with similar vibrations and experiences. And was there little equipment? It depends where and when. At the beginning, the price and weight of the monitor were overwhelming for us. But after '91 there were more CPC purchases in Bajtek than about selling. Just when state institutions were selling 6128 at prices that Komodziar could only dream of. And in '96, right after I hardly found a buyer for my penny and switched to the A1200, my friend's father asked if I would like to get six CPC 6128 for free, because they are functional and it is a pity for them to use the stove. I thanked him, I wouldn't have anywhere to keep it, even if I wanted to. (At least one I could take). :about

I do not know how it was with us with the CPC soft in the 80s, but when I had my own, the pirates announced themselves in Bajtek, just like the 8go bit or the station interface up to 464, but they did not want to record for cassettes because too long and too often there were complaints , and if you wanted to 3 ", sometimes they wrote that you have to send yours because in the nearest Baltonie they have just ended, but for big ones, I will record them today and send them tomorrow. :)

No wonder that in a provincial town like Toru� (200,000 people), after a few years, they only had a few games (I suppose it could have been better in the table), and C64 owners bought one cassette and already had 20 games.

And in Bajtek, they wondered whether the CPC clan should be like other clans for those who treat CPC as entertainment / hobby and at most they would like something in Basic, or only for those who only CPM and Pascal, and already have a PC at work. I suspect that there were a lot of the latter, and I would explain why they have no sentiments, because I do not feel sentimental about tools such as a hammer or an anvil. And those who had magnets were not the proud owners but jealous that others had something to play. :(

And as for competition with other 8bit. From what I read on the English forum, in Germany, Australia and Greece, the C64 went head-to-head. In France and Spain, as soon as they appeared, Spectrums and other 8bit were taken to the second division. Only in England they failed, in the best year of '88 it was like this: ZX 36%, C64 30%, CPC 20%. Alan was not worried, but the Amstraders got crap games from local companies.
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PanzerGeneral
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Starting with Amstrad

Post by PanzerGeneral »


However, some sentiment towards Amstrad remained with me;) my dislike for it was mainly due to the lack of software and low popularity of this hardware in 1985-88 in our country.

Then it was easier to get anything to him when most people were already buying Amigas or Atari STs, but I was actually more drawn to the Sinclair stable due to the general availability of hardware and software at the time.
However, this does not change the fact that I was / am Amstradler since the time when others knew these computers only from foreign magazines or articles in Bajtek: P

In the attachment a photo of my CPC that I found in a private archive from the mid-1980s
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Laudguy
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Starting with Amstrad

Post by Laudguy »


All right, you Amstrada traitor. ;)

But a group of friends is not the majority.
according to Bajtek, in '93 the Atari ST had a record 6%, and the Amiga 21%, while the C64 and PC were 30% each.
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Valdor
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Starting with Amstrad

Post by Valdor »


In '93 I was already an old PC, where a few C64s had been molding in my basement for a long time; D

My second Schneider CPC 464, which I had when I was working for the service, was stolen from my basement around 2000 :(

Currently I have only Schneider CPC 464 and 2 pcs. 6128 and PCW 8256 with upgrade to 512K RAM + Serial / Parallel IF.
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