Amstrad CPC Story (Part 2) | Nostalgia Nerd

The Amstrad CPC story concludes with part 2. Detailing the Amstrad story from the mid 80s up until the current day whilst exploring, the Amstrad CPC464, Amstrad CPC6128, Amstrad CPC664, Amstrad 464 Plus, Amstrad 6128 Plus, GX4000 and a host of other gems. We look at Alan Sugar's role and the company as it grew and expanded into other parts of Europe, with the help of Indescomp in Spain and it's distribution arm in France, as well as mentions of other products in the Amstrad line before it would up as a mass producer of electronics.
Watch Part 1 at • Amstrad CPC Story | No...
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♜Resources♜
Some images sources from Wikipedia/Wikimedia
Reference;
cpcrulez.fr/peo... - Images, Adverts, Amstrad in France information
Music;
00:10 Night Drive Turbo by Rad Universe
03:53 Hybris (Amstrad CPC)
11:14 Navy Seals
14:12 Sram 1
16:50 Batman the Movie
18:27 Bye bye dreamer (demo)
22:31 Song for Alien (demo)
24:42 A Flight (demo)
26:42 Prehistorik (Plus version)
Night Drive Turbo available at / night-drive-turbo / www.raduniverse...
If you believe I have forgotten to attribute anything in this video, please let me know, so I can add the source in. It takes time to make these videos and therefore it can be easy to forget things or make a mistake.

[@Nostalgianerd]

FIRST #Winner

[@ilexgarodan]

Dang it!

[@JessHull]

me too

[@RetroComputers]

me too

[@RossTheNinja]

The winner is you

[@arvizturotukorfurogep6235]

Youre winer! *Big Rigs over the Road theme plays*

[@Techmoan]

Really enjoyed this...thanks.

[@GozuTenno962]

whoooa the legendary techmoan

[@kjamison5951]

“Praise from Caesar is praise indeed.”

[@jason_a_smith_gb]

Me too. Still think they were foolish to drop the cassette port on the 6128 Plus. Good documentary...

[@mhoppy6639]

whoa! we are not worthy (to be entered as a comment below the legendary techmoan) The only observation from an otherwise excellent video is the reference to the French head of amstrad falling pregnant at an [unfortunate] time. Shows Sugar's rather medieval attitudes which wouldn't have been out of place in those days but are now, as I think he's had similar "problems" with staff / colleagues in more contemporary times. still, really really excellent historical context - thank you NN.

[@doomandgloom2478]

You and Stuart? Wow

[@raytracemusic]

great video thanks - and your constant use of vectors whenever possible pleases me greatly :)

[@durrcodurr]

Thanks for the story! :) I loved my CPC-464, it was the second full-featured computer that I owned (after the VIC-20 and before the Amiga). I was a teen during those years, I wish I could have afforded a color monitor version or one of the succeeding models. :) Locomotive BASIC is the best BASIC I've seen so far. I loved its interrupt capabilities using the EVERY ... GOTO/GOSUB command. Once I even programmed a GUI simulator for it. I sold the machine off to a friend, which in retrospect, might have been a bad move. I had a Vortex 5 ¼ " floppy drive (704K per side) and a Maxam (IIRC) module (the one with the integrated editor, assembler / disassembler / monitor). At one point, I tested CP/M on it, but I didn't see much use for it for me. (I also ran CP/M 68K on a rare Apple II clone that had a 68K chip as a coprocessor, but generally I found CP/M to be very user unfriendly) I didn't own a PC until 1994! :D As soon as I was given my first Amiga back in 1986, I followed down that path and didn't look back. But all of these machines helped me to learn computer programming and even be ahead of other programmers in some cases (like the Amiga, which made me learn multithread programming long before preemptive multitasking was a thing in the PC world).

[@DadgeCity]

Although as a kid I'd had a ZX81 and Spectrum, when I went to university I got an Amstrad PCW. Totally incompatible with anything but a great machine for doing work on.

[@chickenbites8877]

Great vid - I really learnt a lot! Non of my mates had the Amstrad CPC so I never got to try it. It was all Amiga's and Atari ST's where I live!

[@tahustvedt]

I think I know who the character "Douglas Reynholm" was based on now.

[@sumosushi7571]

The C5 the most overclocked vehicle of all time?

[@bytemaniak8328]

Does anyone know the name of the intro theme? All i know is that it's certainly an Atari 8-bit tune.

[@pauljohnson7548]

I'm not from the U.K., and everything I know about the British micro wars has been learned through KZbin videos. Still, it seems clear to me that Clive Sinclair was extraordinary in the sense that his main goal was to benefit society. It doesn't make him the best businessman, but it does make him an admirable human being.

[@willwarden2603]

But just imagine if Sinclair had ran a profitable company he might be like SpaceX today

[@SIPEROTH]

@Brittania Saying it wasn't a force in the Uk is kind of deceiving. I bought a NES on a trip in the UK in a store full of NES games etc. It was still a force, just not the only name in the mind.

[@pqrstzxerty1296]

But alot of the story is missing and some told is incorrect.

[@nebularain3338]

@Brittania Not "as" popular isn't the same as not popular. The NES had a solid ground here in the UK, but it wasn't as big as the Micros or the 16-Bit home computers.

[@akkudakkupl]

Nope, he wanted to benefit himself through competitive prices for rock bottom hardware.

[@wabbit234]

Sometimes I wish a French crocodile would rap into my face.

[@Spudcore]

I think we all want that, deep down.

[@arvizturotukorfurogep6235]

GIMME

[@LordmonkeyTRM]

VERYLOL(TM)

[@SomeOrangeCat]

A rapping French alligator puppet. Goddamn. That's amazing.

[@lactobacillusprime]

Very well done two part documentary on the history of the Amstrad CPC.

[@endrightwinglunacy]

Sinclair vs Sugar. Talk about a clash of personalities! :)

[@Sighman]

My first real job was selling Amstrad PCs in Western Australia, back in '89 or '90. I still have a letter from Amstrad congratulating me on the highest number of sales in a single month right across Australia ;-)

[@Juanguar]

ugh just as i finished my tea i find the second episode oh well another one it is

[@hellfire6112]

i miss my 464 & games at £2.99 ,., but the loading times will never be missed

[@mjarbar3204]

I can still see the message after waiting an eternity for the games to load "Read Error A" or "Read Error B" :\

[@Wizbit-x]

@@mjarbar3204 Often you could just rewind back to that loading block error and play from there and it would reload it and carry on, but not always :(

[@AndySmallbone]

great video as usual.. loved my time at amstrad in the 90s. defo the best days of my working life.. early morning and late night sessions on doom over the company network what a blast!!

[@bulletproofblouse]

The Amstrad CPC6128 got this awkward girl through some tough teenage years

[@Becka_Harper]

Ditto, though for me it was Turrican, and Elite.

[@LordmonkeyTRM]

My CPC464 was my only friend growing up and it introduced me to all of it's friends such as Footballer of the year, Elite, Rama Rana.

[@darianmccants]

bulletproofblouse Terraria is also on my list of favorite games, its so fun

[@MegaWayneD]

Spindizzy is awesome! I showed my 10 year old Daughter it and she described it as "8-bit Minecraft gaming".

[@kjamison5951]

For me it was Cauldron and Elite. Good times, good times.

[@zylbad7265]

My first ever computer was an Amstrad CPC464, I was late to the party with it but hey it got me into programming at a very young age, making a computer do what I want? Amazing! 18 years or so later and here I am as a Software Developer, I'll always have a real soft spot for the CPC464 for that reason

[@richardedwards9389]

Same :o)

[@Neodude991]

Also same. Xmas 1991 we got one. It was handed down form my sisters to me in 1992 and I loved it but, hated loading games on tape being a huge hit or miss if they'll work.

[@RoamingAdhocrat]

The CPC464 was my first computer. Much nostalgia and happy times. Thanks for the video!

[@GameHammerCG]

I love my CPC (and miss my Mega-PC. A lightning strike took it too young. :'( )

[@NorthernStar1982]

Not often i comment on vids these days but i had to as a proud and happy 6128 owner. I remember the christmas i got it. I was a very lucky lad, even got the lightgun too! I remember my dad being smug about the fact "It's got a disk drive son, that'll be quicker than your mates, none of that tape rubbish". Oh how i lorded it over my C64 mates when their games failed to load. Sadly it did not do what my parents wanted it to do and somehow improve my maths and English. since i spent all the time playing games on it. But i remember my mum actually got some software for it for writing and doing accounting. Don't recall her ever using the dot matrix printer but i had to show her how to save onto disks bless her. I still felt like the odd one out owning one though, sadly me and my cousin who lived two doors down couldnt share games as he had the tape version. And yes its easy to see nowadays how dire some of the ports were. It was pretty much consigned to the loft the minute we got our Packard Hell in 95. That was a really fun bit of catching up though. It's still in the loft too.....

[@hpbifta]

Good job Nerd, quality doc as always. I bet the retro hour boys are glued ;)

[@steveskipper6473]

If you took all the marketing talent of Sugar and technological vision of Sinclair and mixed them together I wonder who that person would be?......

[@gregbaker6103]

Man, after watching this and part one, I feel so ripped off having a Commodore 64 back then. :p

[@risvegliato]

no, the c64 was much better as far as programming and sound are concerned. much better for music, which is what i used it for at the time, not games.

[@Jayce_Alexander]

Don’t, they were both great machines. The CPC was capable of gorgeous graphics, thanks in no small part due to its vibrant color palette, but the C64 had better sound, generally a better framerate, and a MUCH larger game library.

[@nebularain3338]

@@risvegliato That's bullshit. 6502 wasn't any easier to learn than Z80, and given that the SID chip and the AY-3-8910 both had 3 voices, the sound quality is matter of taste.

[@Twirlyhead]

And the Amstrad Spectrum straight out of the starting blocks had a decent keyboard. Sir Clive never could get his head around the need for such a bloody obvious thing.

[@Turnbull50]

I taught computing in the late 80's and early 90's using the IBM compatible Amstrad PC1512 it was a great machine for teaching and it had the GEM software over the DOS which the students loved.

[@fssofdeath]

That Video Phone add was....... Not very appropriate..... Oh, how times have changed.

[@aitchpea6011]

I love how Sugar went from cheap tat audio to cheaper but better computers to cheap old tech in cheap new forms. I don't personally like the man, but can't deny his business acumen made a big difference in the computer scene in the UK and Europe. Sinclair tried to build down to a price, but Sugar was all "For a few quid more, we can do a LOT better." Well played, sir, very well played.

[@Foebane72]

Are you going to cover the Atari 8-Bit series at some point? They deserve attention.

[@jon-paulfilkins7820]

It is a good system that suffers from poor ports. Technicly there is little between it and the C64. I have a few of them but mostly use my XEGS with an SIO2SD device for games.

[@Foebane72]

Jon-Paul Filkins The early 80s Atari games were far superior to the C64, and they should be covered too. I prefer the lovely rainbow effects and solid Atari funky-style sound, too. I'm just bothered by the Nostalgia Nerd's apparent ignorance of the system, where he said in the first Amiga Story video that the Atari could only display 40 colours at once. I don't have the slightest clue where he got that information from, but he's definitely flat wrong, it can display the entire palette of 256 colours at ONCE.

[@Julthor]

Foebane72 the Atari 8 bit machines were the most fun and advanced for their time. i hope we'll see more reviews!

[@jrherita]

The BEST 8-bit! 1979 design that held up against all later machines including the 1985 NES :)

[@jrherita]

Yeah the NES definitely had better sprite hardware, although if you want to see a neat trick on A8 - check out the fan made "Ridiculous Reality"... Seperately - 3D Games like Elite, Mercenary, though would be pretty much exactly the same on both platforms due to equal (and faster than apple ii/C64) CPU speeds.. A8 also could do the pallete per line change trick like Amiga..

[@zzbodybuilding8867]

The 464 was our first computer in 1988 I believe. My older sister had got it for school and I spent so many hours from the age of 5 playing Harrier Attack. Years later and now a software developer and still loving the 464.

[@joeytavora1270]

fantastic content you're making here. I wish I could find documentaries more often of this kind of quality. Honestly I am blown away by the storytelling and information dense style.

[@SirRobertDole2]

is that Ashens doing the vo at 5:50?

[@einherrjar]

GovernorVentura that's what i thought too. a colab would be awesome. and throw in Guru Larry as well for good measure.

[@ILoveWomen]

GovernorVentura in the first part Larry, Ashens and Slopes Game Room did voice overs

[@defense200x]

was about to ask the same question

[@ChristopherSobieniak]

GovernorVentura Too bad they only used him in France.

[@dullorb]

This all happened during my formative years, but I was in the states and had no exposure to the UK micro-computing world. I was never able to fully appreciate Newton Pulsifer's background story until now.

[@AlsGeekLab]

What an absolutely underrated platform the CPC was. If Sugar actually gave a S#!* about computing then I have no doubt that this machine would have been more successful than the C64. The 6128 was the cream of the crop in my opinion. It beat every other 8 bit micro out there at the time. Amsoft's titles were great, 128k memory, a sturdy, reliable 3" disk drive, CP/M if you wanted it, business and pleasure for 1/4 of the price of an IBM PC. My mate had one and I envied him. It was great.

[@star_man]

I loved my CPC6128, it got me though my Computer Studies GCSE as I wrote my final project on it, an Othello (Reversi) game you played against the computer.

[@Spudcore]

Man, the Plus range was bloody impressive for 8 bit technology. The technical improvements really pushed it to a new level, it looks and sounds more like 12 bit or something like that. Crazy good.

[@jkholtgreve]

Harry Warburg Pretty sure chipset bits have to be exponents of 2 since it’s a binary system but I get what he means.

[@markpenrice6253]

Yes, 12 bit architectures do exist, as well as 18 bit, 36 bit and even more esoteric ones besides including 14-bit. There's no law saying they have to be powers of 2, and in fact for the longest time multiples of 6 were more favoured as they were more flexible for packing multiple characters of different lengths within a single memory word. It's just that nowadays we have instead standardised mainly on multiples of the 8-bit byte, particularly direct powers of 2, for various reasons. Largely IBM, Intel, the use of computers for accounting and other financial control, the blurring of the lines between computers and calculators as a result can all be thanked for that. If the well known ASCII alphanumeric coding had become the earliest dominant influential force in the saving of textual information in digital files, we might these days be using even odder multiple-of-7 systems, because ASCII started out as a 7-bit representation (expanded from the 6-bit FIELDATA representation which only had room for capitals, numbers and a few punctuations marks, itself derived from 5-bit baudot / teletype / telegram / paper tickertape encoding which had to switch between two different character sets to provide both letters and numbers/symbols and ended up being used with computers because the equipment already existed and was convenient to interface for use as a combined printer and input terminal...) and only later expanded into the now widely used 8-bit Extended ASCII (having been further extended to 9 bits in some places along the way, an augmentation whose loss pretty much prompted the development of Unicode because 256 chars just aren't enough for a lot of languages and other uses)... and, well, why waste money storing an entire bit that's completely blank? But, IBM were the market leader in that type of computer for the longest time, and their preferred character encoding, developed in the mid-1960s, was a much reviled little horror called EBCDIC... which although it often didn't offer even as many different characters as ASCII, still employed an 8-bit encoding in order to be extensible and to keep numbers, capital letters, lower case letters, punctuation marks, special symbols, control codes etc each parcelled up into their own distinct, modular, hard to confuse subranges, a bit like modern UTF-16 or -32. The 8-bit character was a useful midway point in the spread of power-of-two bit parcels, being useful for rich-text encoding, fitting two, three or four neatly into a 16, 24 (which was a thing for a short while) or 32 bit word memory structure, and itself being dividable into 4-bit nibbles, or binary coded decimal digits (the BCD of EBCDIC) that could represent financial data with absolute quantised accuracy across a 0000... to 9999.... range with no worries about strange floating point rounding effects or rollovers happening at some weird binary value, and pack in 4, 6 or 8 digits to a single memory word. Or the even smaller 2-bit "crumb" (or, ugh... "tayste"), and then of course the single-bit flag. IBM's thing, after all, had always mainly been in calculating accounts and in tabulating things like census data, where you mainly deal with decimal representations with a certain limited precision (often you're not bothered about anything less than a cent / penny, or at the very most a hundredth of one) and a certain practical limit on the upper value that varies depending on whether you're running a corner shop or a global empire, but typically might demand a minimum of 8 digits of precision but certainly no more than 16, meaning 4-bit digits within a power-of-two (or possibly 12 / 20 / 24 bit) word length allow you to make the most efficient and economic use of the available storage whilst also being scrupulously accurate in your record keeping. And where IBM led, others followed, even if they weren't using the actual same character encoding style. As their machines went from being big mainframes that filled a whole floor, to smaller ones that filled a room, to large minis that fit along a single wall, they (and their main rivals, such as DEC's PDP minicomputer, that also used 8-bit characters, and a 16-bit word) became ever more pervasive in a number of smaller, everyday, often text-heavy roles, the influence of that decision spread, and the older multiple-of-6 word length standard became increasingly isolated to crusty, proprietary old dinosaur machines that were much more concerned with heavyweight floating-point scientific number crunching and other such things where absolute exact fixed-decimal-point precision wasn't as much of a concern and neither was the storage of very much text.

[@markpenrice6253]

Intel come into the frame with the birth of the high-end desk calculator, which in the late 60s/early 70s were starting to incorporate some of the functions that had previously been the preserve of mainframe computers and professional accounts tabulating machines. They had been pioneers in the field of integrated circuits, including CPU precursor chips like discrete ALUs and register files, and various companies looking to make such semi programmable, interfaceable caculators (and even the occasional mainframe terminal) started contracting them to create suitable chipsets to condense the required circuitry down from several transistor-strewn boards to a single board with a few ICs on it. Not all of those contracts fully panned out; companies fold, or change their mind about what they want to make, or dislike what's presented, or have a cashflow problem etc, but then Intel is left with significant IP and R&D investment to try and monetise and get a return on their investment from. One such sour deal was for a calculator following what was known as the bit-slice model (other 4-bit examples of which co-contend for the "actual first identifiable CPU" crown), needing four particular components - a keypad and multi-segment fluorescent display driver, a ROM with a few hundred bytes of code, a RAM chip just about large enough to store all the working data for calculations and the user's "memory" space, and a 4-bit CPU to coordinate everything - that became the first four members of the MCS4, or 4xxx range... the 4001, 4002, 4003... and 4004. Someone at Intel realised that actually, within all that, especially if they tweaked the 4001 a bit to make it a general purpose I/O device, they had the rudiments of a full general purpose computer, contained entirely within a quartet of microchips that could be held in one hand, and that such a thing might be a highly valuable product to sell to anyone who wanted a basic-level computer or electronic control system but didn't want to go to the trouble and expense of buying or building a typical mini (which was still composed of multiple circuit boards with dozens of simple ICs and hundreds of discrete transistors, where the most complicated thing might be a 256-bit RAM chip, so heavy on the budget and the power bill), much less a mainframe. So, the MCS4 range, based around the i4004 was born, and the rest is history. From there it was a fairly natural extension, after a short and largely abortive foray into extending and streamlining the 4004 in the guise of the 4040, and turning it into a microcontroller (the 8041) by further integrating the CPU, ROM/RAM and I/O into a single chip, to extend the data bus width and operating word bit length to 8 bits, with the 8008 and then 8080 (which is the core architecture that still sits at the heart of the Z80 to this day, and which the 8086 is a direct descendant via the 8085). After all, the instructions and many processed data types even in the 4004 were already 8 bits anyway (it's just that BCDs were the main primitive focussed on by that originally calculator-derived design, working on a single pair of one-digit operands per machine cycle), simply transferred in and out of memory, and run through the internal ALU, in 4-bit slices. After which each successive step upwards has been a doubling, as the extended width is often accompanied by some new instructions that let you work on two of the previously largest individual words in a single memory transfer, which is much more convenient for immediately improving throughput than a 1.5x increase which means you can work on three, rather than two, of the second-largest old set of sizes. Other manufacturers got in on the CPU making game quite quickly after that of course, chiefly Motorola (with the 8-bit 6800 and its derivatives, then later the 16-bit 68000 which was strongly rumoured to be heavily based on the instruction sets from the PDP-8 and PDP-11 16-bit minis), and then Zilog and MOS who somewhat ripped off Intel and Moto then stole their market from under them by selling mostly-compatible processors. Some of their earliest attempts were 4-bit, but typically, seeing how Intel had rapidly moved to downplaying the 4004 and 4040 as not really useful for anything other than the embedded applications that would soon be shifted to the 8041 and its children, they got straight in at the door with 8-bit designs instead. After all, hardly any "serious" computers of the previous generation had buses even as small as 8-bit, let alone 4-bit; most were at least 12, if not 16 or larger, so why artificially bottleneck your architecture in comparison to those for the sake of just four extra legs on the package? The data bus took up relatively little space in those terms vs the address bus, anyway, if you wanted to be able to access any meaningful amount of memory (at least 4kwords, thus needing at least 12 bits of address), and indeed Intel, in the era when memory speeds were still far slower than even the quite low frequency early CPUs, took the space-saving step of multiplexing the data and address onto the same pins. Within a typical memory cycle there was plenty of time to assert first the target address (possibly even broken up into sequential assertion of row, then column, on successive ticks) on the shared bus, then either the data to be written, or wait for the read-out data to arrive on the same pins, without overloading the processor or spending any time waiting that you wouldn't have done anyway with fully separate buses... of course, that came back to haunt them with the 8086, when memory had got a lot faster and sending everything in and out on the same pins became a serious botteneck even with the full 16-bit version never mind the 8088, but it made a lot of sense at first and certainly aided the rapid production and takeup of second-gen 8-bit chips after the initial 4-bit generation proved there was a market for the taking. Even inamongst all that, by the way, there were a few CPUs with odd word lengths. I can't recall them off the top of my head, but if you do a bit of wikipedia trawling you'll certainly find some early game console and home computer CPUs - also-rans to a fault, pretty much establishing 8-bit as the way to go as a side effect - that have something other than 4, 8 or 16. There's definitely a 12 in there, and a 14 as well I think. Not sure about others. There might even be a real oddball like a 9 or 11... Thing is, it's actually address range that's more explicitly bounded by powers of two rather than bus width; ie, how many words you can store, rather than how long they are. Usually the former is determined by the physical properties of the individual memory chips in use, whilst the latter is a mix of other chip properties (whether they hold arrays of single bits, 2 bits, 4 bits etc) and more importantly how many chips are installed. You can quite happily, make a 5-bit width computer simply by using 1-bit chips installed in groups of 5 - but the number of 5-bit words will almost certainly be a power of 2 (if indeed not a power of 4), because the addressing limit of each chip's internal array is bounded by how many unique signal combinations can be placed on its address pins (if it has separate row and column pins then it can be an "odd" power of 2; if the same pins are shared for row then column, it'll be an even power of 2, ie a power of 4), and it makes the most sense (and is easier from a system building perspective) to provide the largest possible array internally for a given input address width.

[@markpenrice6253]

Anyway, tl;dr sidenote - you could argue it _is_ sort of 12-bit in a way. The Plus palette is 4096 colours, formed from 16 levels (4 bits) each of Red, Green and Blue... possibly also the audio, the AY has 4-bit volume for each channel (meaning in simple terms that a sample replayed by setting a stationary wave on one channel then varying the volume can only have 4-bit resolution), and the DMA sample channel has 8-bit resolution... and probably a few other features besides :) The cherry would be finding that the graphical coprocessor is actually a 4-bit machine, then you could add it to the CPU...

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

@@markpenrice6253 Why did they not match the 8 MHz of the 16bit computers by using a Z80H ? Also a doubled VRAM speed would make those pixel less blocky ( new video mode ). And of course I want 1px = 1 byte graphics mode with paging.

[@robinr6744]

Excellent work as ever 👍

[@9899013543]

I see.. so apple is going the amstrad way

[@kjamison5951]

21:31 INPUT magazine… I still have all of mine!!! I still have my 6128 as well. I adapted quite a few programs from INPUT and saved them to 3” disks... I bought a 3.5” floppy drive for my 6128 so that I could archive my 3” disks. One 3.5” floppy could store the contents of two full 3” disks - 3” disks only held 178k per side. I named my 6128 (only time I ever named a computer) Madeline, in homage to Maddie Hayes (Moonlighting) and Madeline from Electric Dreams which was a favourite movie of mine from that time. Being a nerdy person, “Madeline” was an acronym for Microprocessor Accessed Data Entry Logical Input Number Equipment. I can’t believe I still remember that! I learned all of my skills on my 6128. Hacking as well as WP and Desktop Publishing. I had bought a DMP2000 (still have that too) and I turned out all sorts of stuff. All of my University assignments and projects were carried out on the 6128 and printer. I even purchased a ROM chip that allowed me to read and write to PC formatted (FAT12) floppy disks. I had originally made my own ROM board for two chips but later sprung the cash for a 6-socket ROM board. Then I went the PC way with an Olivetti Quaderno notebook (still have that too!) And then began the long descent into MS-DOS and Windows eventually leading to Apple. But my 6128 is still my first computer. Back when I was able to get a £400 loan from my bank and pay it off monthly with my part-time job in BHS… Apart from replacing the belts in the disk drive, the 6128 never needed any maintenance. Of course, if I was to set it up today, I’d like to check the state of the belts - it’s been about 15 years since it was last switched on and I’d like to check the capacitors in the monitor/PSU. Not too shabby for something that is 33 years old.

[@wildbilltexas]

Great story! I didn't know the CPC existed until a few years ago. Commodore had such a big grip on the USA low end PC market. And a lot of computer users here might have treated it as a cheap toy computer - as if Electrophonic, Soundesign or Emerson-Symphonic (aka Funai) who made cheap Korean stereos and TV's were trying to sell us a computer.

[@ByteSizeThoughts]

Just watched both parts. What an excellently researched, beautifully delivered & compelling documentary :)

[@leecalladine]

I don't know how you can make such good content. Please keep up this channel. Were does all this knowledge come from.

[@tedf1471]

I fitted out an I.T. room at school with 15 CPC 6128s and DMP 2000 printers. They functioned faultlessly and with software like Protext, Supercalc & Rembrandt offered a great introduction to Computing. I even sold them for a reasonable price after 5 years use.

[@AMindInOverdrive]

My friend in Ireland had one of these color model CPC 464 in the 80's. We spent many hours playing games, and typing in code from the back pages of Amstrad Action magazine. A few years later I bought a green screen model of the CPC 464 - Great computers. My cousins had a 6128 that I thought was amazing because it had a disc drive! LOL

[@Carewolf]

Ended pretty much as my history with CPC464, dumped it when I could afford an Amiga 500. Not much you could do about that, the Amiga was a brutal competition in 1987-1991.

[@kingcrimson1631]

Animal vegetable mineral was epic

[@markpenrice6253]

0:17 >Dragon Data and Torch Hold on hold on, who the hell were Torch? Did they even make anything we'd have heard of?! Literally a new name on me, and I'm not exactly green when it comes to old computer companies.

[@Scalpaxos]

I used to play Barbarian and Bombjack on Amstrad CPC: insert the cassette tape, wait half an hour for the game to load then enjoy, in those days playing a video games was something you earned and enjoyed even on a tiny green and white screen!

[@bearmatic]

Excellent coverage of the CPC. Much appreciated.

[@natgrant1364]

That 464 Plus is a nice looking machine. I might have to look into the cost of importing some of these old British computers as they look like they'd be fun to mess with.

[@jorgecalero6325]

Thank you for such a comprehensive history of the CPC family and the ecosystem in which it developed. I lived the microcomputer explosion of the 80´s in Spain. I played with friends´Spectrums and finally purchased a second hand Amstrad PCW512 as my first computer. Fond memories!

[@volo870]

I own all three playground argument computers of the 80s: C64, Specy +2 and CPC 464. While cool and all, CPC 464 is just... unlovable. It's cool and all, but unmistakably derivative.

[@perchst]

15:33 please does anyone know what this game is called? I’ve been searching for it for years. Thank you! @nostalgianerd @Nostaligia Nerd

[@robertgreen7593]

Lol, that Sorcery+ footage is from my video. You're very welcome.

[@robertgreen7593]

I'm just glad someone finds it useful.

[@lovemadeinjapan]

This was nice. Now make pt 3 on why the machine was so great. Dive into the hardware. As I can see it now, it is a really simple design, which is 180° different than the overly complex C64, and combined with a higher clock speed, it allowed much nicer games to be made. Even the BASIC deserves a special episode, as it wipes the floor with most other BASIC implementations at the time.

[@Sinn0100]

Okay....which machine was better in the hardware department? You talked about the Zilog Z-80 microprocessor but which machine was faster? Which one had the most RAM? What about the RAM clock speed? What about the Acorn was it comparable in internals to the Spectrum? Was there any compatibility with all of these machines? If not, could you mod these things? I grew up in the 1990's in the US. I had a Commodore 128 but I rarel used it. I like most Americans were far to enamored with the Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega Master System (I had them both). Like you guys across the pond, I always preferred Sega. I got a Sega Genesis in 1989, Snes in 1991, and a Sega CD in 1992. There was a time when I thought I would never pick up a computer again....that was until I saw my precious...Doom in 1993. After chasing a perfect port of Doom for iver a year he helped me build a clone 486DX2. At that point, I became a huge fan of both consoles and PC's. Although I wouldn't build another PC by hand until Doom 3's launch in 2004 and I went all out. From day one I had Doom 3 running at its max setting...man I loved 6800 GTX video cards. I haven't built a gaming PC since 2016 and with the new consoles on the horizon it might be awhile. Again with a Master System lightgun in 1985....how?

[@jrherita]

It sounds like the Amstrad CPC died rather suddenly in 1990?

[@geofftottenperthcoys9944]

Wow, loved my CPC 464, writing my own proggys for my AD&D games!

[@epiendless1128]

I was contemptuous of the CPC464 when it came out, but when I got the CPC6128 I realised my error. When I think of my old Dragon 32 and Acorn Electron, and even the Atari ST I bought after the CPC, I think of what they did wrong, and why I shouldn't have bought them. When I think of my old CPC6128, I think of what it did right. Everything just seemed to fit. It's the only one I miss. It had a decent BASIC like the BBC and Electron. Its graphics resolution was equivalent to the BBC's top 3 modes, but sensibly reduced to a vertical resolution that actually fitted on the screen. 27 colour palette against the BBC's 8 colours, which even formed a greyscale on a monochrome screen. Bundled monitor allowing clear screen at all resolutions. And critically, most of the RAM still available for code without compromising the graphics.

[@Odessia-ij5ys]

Amstrad bought Sinclair .,....the same year acron was bought by Olivetti ....

[@phar2010]

Thank for you this. A well researched and presented trip down memory lane. I really enjoyed it.

[@mbr5742]

Actually the Motorola 68000 CPU was a 32bit CPU, they just had a 16bit data and 24 bit adress bus. Internaly they had 32bit registers for data and adress. So calling an Atari ST a 16bit computer is not correct

[@1000sofusernames]

The Amstrad sort of sat in nowhere land for me. Had a 2600, then BBC, then Speccy. Then my mate got a Master system in 87 and we all held off and stuck with the Speccy as we'd read the Megadrive was on the way. My brother then got an Amiga and anything less than 16 bit seemed like a real backwards step. I got my imported Japanese Megadrive and that was it for home computers for me for a while.

[@onearmdaddy]

"Alan makes products to make money whereas I make money to make products." -Sinclair Oy vey

[@martinvegas1327]

You can play 464 games on the 664.. I had the 664 growing up. Sorcery + was my favourite game. Showed you what the CPC could do😎

[@slipknotboy555]

I liked that lo-fi, industrial sounding percussion I heard in some of those CPC games!

[@EnjoySynthSounds]

I had a 48k +. A really nice machine. Still needed a joystick interface. If you've still got one of these models, you can buy a Kempston interface/sd card solution for loading games and playing them.

[@Jammer858]

The C64 is the best ever 8 bit. no disrespect to Amstrad. Still have the first C64 i ever bought. still Works as a wizz. I modifyed it with GEOS turbo at some time. So it runs fast from disk

[@mrdorf2784]

6128+ was rubbish. I got sold on the Burnin’ Rubber game and really should have bought an Amiga 500 instead.

[@SfjpMoon]

I never saw my Amstrad with colour graphics like that or too Master System / Nintendo graphics. What Amstrad was that lol.

[@wulfherecyning1282]

This kind of market is wonderful. Fast paced competition driving everything in a way that is actually good for the consumer. Contrast with this past decade where everything feels stagnant, and the biggest push any company makes is to change its branding design. Still, this level of competition can never be indefinite, it'll come around again someday.

[@TheFokker03]

Sugar was and is imo a bloody bighead.but boy he deserves to be called that.Never owned anything by Amstrad,but people i know who have,say the quality was top notch.

[@giulianogaia]

I still have the very rare 664 with the compact disk. Unfortunately the keyboard and the disk don't work any more. Does anyone know where I could have it repaired?

[@mjp29]

Given the choice between the Acorn, Spectrum, or Commodore, I would have to honestly say that the Atari had the best 8 bit computers! Smiles!

[@LaatiMafia]

24:18 Would not be possible in the ads nowadays.

[@ianlacey]

I had a friend with a 6128, I'll never forget the first time I saw Dragon's Lair. Blew my mind.

[@nchcroy3877]

All this video does is to confirm that Alan Sugar has always just been a lucky wide boy...

[@tonymccann1978]

I used to think mates parents were cheap, an Amstrad, not a C64…ugh…but now with my dad hat on, the CPC looks like a better deal….

[@BlackDragon-xn2ww]

I think you are a good historian and make great video's on subject matter I learned alot about computer lines thru the years here in the USA computers were way under powered for many years I took classes in the late 80's but soon come to idea that computers here were going to need more power to run anything meaningful here 3.1 started that then 95 was sure footing on barely able to run hardware my college days gave me insight to the stuff in computers once computers got fast enough the old ones were dumped I grabbed as many as possible to referb and give away to toddlers to learn there abc's on it was my son idea at age 2 to make them and give them to kids when I gave him his first pc

[@john9paul638]

You should cut out the background noise/music, it's too distracting, so I have had to stop watching your videos.

[@theeggman4806]

Great video..any chance on a vid on the Sam Coupe ?

[@SE09uk]

Amstrad lying to Spain about ram and kids today think that Nvidia and Microsoft don't nobble the software to slow older hardware kids today are too trusting

[@mr.y.mysterious.video1]

These videos give me a great nostalgia for a past time even though I know we’ve never had it so good for technology and wouldn’t want those items back

[@chrisbtoo]

Somehow I have absolutely no memory of the Plus models. They actually seem pretty cool.

[@shifty2755]

Subbed

[@jonathantillian6528]

Is Mr. Sweet being voiced by Larry Bundy?

[@trip2themoon]

I've always wondered if the 464 and the ST have the same sound chip? The music and sound on the 464 sounds very similar to the ST. Odd move bringing out an 8bit console when the MD was already available and the SNES was on the horizon. The Christmas I got the Master System (1990) my mate Paul got the GX4000. I felt quite bad for him because all he had to play was Burnin' Rubber, which turned out to be one of the easiest driving games ever and because no one else had a GX he had no one to borrow games from. When I got back to school after that Christmas holiday loads of us got consoles for Christmas but I don't remember a single other person who got the GX. One guy in my class got the 464 Plus so he could at least go out and buy cheap tape games.

[@jasejj]

AMSTRAD CPC: the machine so, errrm, interesting that the 'CPC story' only has about half dedicated to the computer in question!

[@lotsarats]

i felt the story about the other stuff seemed necessary and relevant to tell the full CPC story. its like "little red riding hood" when the wolf went to grandmas house - it was pretty important to the storyline but excluded the main character too

[@kjamison5951]

But it’s so-o much more interesting with the context.

[@willrobinson7599]

Excellent insight into the company and the c464

[@robintst]

If I had been born in the UK, I think I would have leaned on my parents for that CPC package with the TV tuner, radio, and desk. Everything about that just sounds fantastic for a young computer gamer of the day.

[@darrencarle77]

Great work. Thanks for doing this.

[@leeh3568]

I wished speccy was more like the cpc ie. Speccy attribute clash aarrghhh.

[@ZEUSDAZ]

Yeah but SLOOOOOOOOOOW and jerky as f**k,...thank god speccy wasn't.

[@Wildmutationblu]

I didn't think I could take 2 spoonfuls of Suga in one go, but here I am back for Park 2. Great videos, well edited and put together. When I find a job I enjoy and is more than minimum wage I will become a Patron.

[@jeremyusbourne6289]

Brilliant video. Keep up the great work 😃

[@tappel01]

I had an Amstrad 2386 PC. An awful expensive machine. With an awful 65mb RLL harddisk... The screen was always electrical charged and you got always an electrical hit when touched... I loved it....

[@markpenrice6253]

Hmm, it is maybe a shame they didn't try for a full 16-bit upgrade, perhaps using a Z8000 CPU to retain backwards compatibility. It could have been the birth of a whole extended family of computers that, who knows, might have outlasted Atari and Commodore. But perhaps the whole-scale reengineering that it would have entailed would have been just a step too far. Still, it does sort of sound like the Plus models took an alternative path of building two separate 8-bit buses into the computer instead of a single 16-bit one. There's definitely graphics there which look like they're 320x200 in at least 8 if not 16 colours, alongside the 160x200 32-colour ones, which suggest an upswing in overall video bandwidth, as well as the additional sprites and scrolling abilities. And was that DMA audio channel actually PCM sample playback, like the Amiga and STe, rather than simply a direct line into the AY? Even if it was just a single voice, low rate (maybe 15khz?) 8-bit mono affair, that'd be quite fancy for an 8-bit micro ... and demand an unusual amount of memory to feed it with, too. Also, what the heck was that racing game being shown off for the "Nueva Spectrum" (ie the Spanish +2)? It really doesn't look like a Speccy game. The colour palette, lack of clashing, resolution and font are all wrong. It looks rather more like a CPC game, or maybe even a BBC one (revs?) with dithering that's been mushed into midtones by the blurry recording. Someone might justifiably claim to have been missold on the system if they bought it thinking they'd get to play that. Or was there some intent during the Amstrad redesign to incorporate improved video modes (possibly quite simply along CPC lines, reducing resolution to increase per-pixel colour depth and widening the palette) that was then dropped at the prototype stage and never made it to market? Oh, and the CPC (plus?) game where you seem to be playing as a witch, where there's decidedly more than four colours on screen but the score and info text is definitely 40-column mode, and I can't quite tell if the graphics area is 20 or 40 column ... mixing multiple resolutions within the same frame scan isn't an unknown technique amongst the older micros, but is it something the CPC could actually do / was known for? My understanding was that its CRTC was a fairly simple generic one which might not have taken kindly to that kind of treatment...

[@mindphaserxy]

Living in the USA we never got to see these kinds of machines....it was the C64, Atari 800 in the early days and then IBM compatibles swooped in and mopped the floor with everything else. The Atari ST and Amiga didn't stand a chance.... All for the better I suppose. So glad I spent the early 90s with DOS and VGA graphics instead of weaker machines like the A500 or 520ST

[@itsaPIXELthing]

Astonishing work! Thank you!! Cheers!