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from Wikipedia:

The Amstrad PC1512 was Amstrad’s mostly IBM PC-compatible home computer system, first manufactured in 1986. It was later succeeded by the PC1640.

It launched for £499 and sold very well, as it was one of the first cheap PCs in Europe. It significantly helped open up the European PC market to consumers as well as businesses, and Amstrad’s advertising of the PC1512 was aimed at homes rather than offices. The 1512’s influence was such that the UK PC magazine PC Plus originally targeted itself at the “Amstrad PC 1512 and compatibles”, since home ownership of other PCs at the time was rare.

The PC1512 shipped with 512K of RAM; it could be upgraded to 640K of RAM with an expansion pack. Video output was compatible with the CGA standard, with an extension allowing all 16 colours to be used in the 640×200 graphics mode. The CPU of both the PC1512 and the later PC1640 was an 8 MHz Intel 8086, which was sufficient for playing The Secret of Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion and Prince of Persia. The power supply was located in the monitor, which made upgrading difficult.

source: wikipedia

My homebrew Powersupply adaptor for Amstrad CPC 6128 with a External Floppy Drive 3½.

source: cpcwiki.eu jrp king homepage kjthacker.f2s.com

Parados Installation Photo Gallery:

ParaDOS is 16kB ROM that replaces the AmsDOS. Allows to use double-sided floppy disks and some more disk formats.

source: grimware.org

Foto review of 3½ Floppy adapter:

Thanks to B.C for the Floppy adapter.

source: ebay retro-zone.org amstrad hack page

My homebrew Powersupply adaptor & RGB/Audio Scart cable for Amstrad CPC 464/6128.

source: cpcwiki.eu jrp king homepage kjthacker.f2s.com

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from Wikipedia:

The Amstrad CPC (short for ‘Colour Personal Computer’) is a series of 8 bit home computers produced by Amstrad between 1984 and 1990. It was designed to compete in the mid-1980s home computer market dominated by the Commodore 64 and the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, where it successfully established itself, especially in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, and the German-speaking parts of Europe.

The series spawned a total of six distinct models: The CPC464, CPC664, and CPC6128 were highly successful competitors in the home computer market. The later plus models, 464plus and 6128plus, efforts to prolong the system’s lifecycle with hardware updates, were considerably less successful, as was the attempt to repackage the 464plus hardware into a game console as the GX4000.

The CPC models’ hardware was based on the Zilog Z80A CPU, complemented with either 64 or 128 kilobytes of memory. Their computer-in-a-keyboard design prominently featured an integrated data drive (compact cassette or 3″ floppy disk). The main units were only sold bundled with a color or monochrome monitor that doubled as the main unit’s power supply. Additionally, a wide range of first- and third-party hardware extensions such as disk drives (for the CPC464), printers, and memory extensions, was available.

The CPC series was pitched against other home computers primarily used to play video games and enjoyed a strong supply of first-party (Amsoft) and third-party game software. The comparatively low price for a complete computer system with dedicated monitor, its high resolution monochrome text and graphic capabilities and the possibility to run CP/M software also rendered the system attractive for business users, which was reflected by a wide selection of application software.

During its lifetime, the CPC series sold approximately 3 million units.

source: wikipedia cpcwiki.eu

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from Wikipedia:

The Amstrad CPC is a series of 8 bit home computers produced by Amstrad during the 1980s and early 1990s. “CPC” stands for ‘Colour Personal Computer’, although it was possible to purchase a CPC with a green screen (GT64/65) as well as with the standard colour screen (CTM640/644).

The Amstrad CPC’s main competitors were the Commodore 64 and the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, though the CPC was bundled with a monitor unlike the Commodore and the Spectrum. The Amstrad CPC 464 sold approximately over 2 million units.

The first machine, the CPC 464, introduced in 1984, was designed as a direct competitor to the Commodore 64 system. Packaged as a “complete system” the CPC 464 came with its own monitor and built-in cassette tape deck. The CPC 664, with its own built-in floppy disk drive, arrived early in 1985, to be replaced itself later that same year by the CPC 6128.

The original CPC range was successful, especially in Europe, with three million units sold. Following this, Amstrad launched the Amstrad PCW word-processor range, which sold eight million units. Variations and clones of the CPC range were also released in Germany and Spain. The Plus range failed to find a market amongst the higher spec 16-bit Atari ST and Commodore Amiga systems.

source: wikipedia

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from Wikipedia:

The ZX Spectrum +3 looked similar to the +2 but featured a built-in 3-inch floppy disk drive (like the Amstrad CPC 6128) instead of the tape drive, and was in a black case. It was launched in 1987, initially retailed for £249 and then later £199 and was the only Spectrum capable of running the CP/M operating system without additional hardware.

The +3 saw the addition of two more 16 KB ROMs. One was home to the second part of the reorganised 128 ROM and the other hosted the +3’s disk operating system. This was a modified version of Amstrad’s AMSDOS, called +3DOS. These two new 16 KB ROMs and the original two 16 KB ROMs were now physically implemented together as two 32 KB chips. To be able to run CP/M, which requires RAM at the bottom of the address space, the bank-switching was further improved, allowing the ROM to be paged out for another 16 KB of RAM.

Such core changes brought incompatibilities:

• Removal of several lines on the expansion bus edge connector (video, power, and IORQGE); caused many external devices problems; some such as the VTX5000 modem could be used via the “FixIt” device
• Dividing ROMCS into 2 lines, to disable both ROMs
• Reading a non-existent I/O port no longer returned the last attribute; caused some games such as Arkanoid to be unplayable
• Memory timing changes; some of the RAM banks were now contended causing high-speed colour-changing effects to fail
• The keypad scanning routines from the ROM were removed
• move 1 byte address in ROM

Some older 48K, and a few older 128K, games were incompatible with the machine.

The +3 was the final official model of the Spectrum to be manufactured, remaining in production until December 1990. Although still accounting for one third of all home computer sales in the UK at the time, production of the model was ceased by Amstrad at that point.

source: wikipedia divide homepage divide forum

Autopsy:

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from Wikipedia:

The Amstrad CPC is a series of 8 bit home computers produced by Amstrad during the 1980s and early 1990s. “CPC” stands for ‘Colour Personal Computer’, although it was possible to purchase a CPC with a green screen (GT64/65) as well as with the standard colour screen (CTM640/644).

In 1990 Amstrad introduced the “Plus” series, 464 and 6128 Plus, which tweaked the hardware and added a cartridge slot to the system. Improvements were made to the video display which saw an increase in palette to 4096 colours and gained a capacity for hardware sprites.

Splitting the display into separate modes and pixel scrolling both became fully supported hardware features. The former was reasonably easy on the non-”Plus” machines, and the latter possible to some degree using clever programming of the existing Motorola 6845.

source: wikipedia