Amstrad CPC

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An Amstrad CPC 464.

The Amstrad CPC (short for Colour Personal Computer) is a series of home computers developed by Amstrad and sold from 1984-1992. The computers were designed to compete with the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum in Europe, and it did a fairly good job in the UK, France, Spain, and Germany, selling around 3,000,000 units, but it, like most other computers, was eventually displaced by computers that could run MS-DOS.

Like most European 8-bit computers, the Amstrad CPCs used the Zilog Z80A and a AY-3-8912 sound chip.

Personal

As it was primarily a European home computer, I have even seen an Amstrad CPC. It wasn't until I became interested in researching video games in the 2000s that I started seeing it on MobyGames. I eventually got an emulator and tried out some of the games made for it, but never really found any I liked, and I didn't see much interest in the hardware either.

Status

I've never used an Amstrad CPC.

Models

  • CPC 464 - 64 KB RAM, cassette recorder. The most popular model, designed primarily for games.
  • CPC664 - 64 KB RAM, disk drive. More of a business line, discontinued after only a few months.
  • CPC6128 - 128 KB RAM, disk drive, CP/M compatible.
  • 464plus - Redesign of the CPC 464.
  • 6128plus - Redesign of the CPC6128.
  • GX4000 - A dedicated gaming console version of the CPC.

Software

The Amstrad CPC used its own dialect of BASIC called Locomotive BASIC. It could also run CP/M.

Games

See all Amstrad CPC Games.

A lot of games made for the CPC were ported from the ZX Spectrum which used the same CPU, and the porters didn't take advantage of the Amstrad's superior graphics hardware, resulting in inferior games.

Review

I don't know enough about the computer to write a review.

Links

Link-Wikipedia.png  Link-MobyGames.png