LGR - Amstrad CPC 464 Computer System Review
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Date: 2022-04-14
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Comments and reviews: 10
rootbeer666
Let's cover a few simple facts: RGB output and a monitor with RGB input provide you with a very sharp picture. You get nice crisp 80 column text, which is a no-go with most other 8-bit machines of the era. Oh, and did I mention that lovely palette that goes with that RGB output? It's brilliant! I don't own one and even I know that!
The better of the titles have this look. More colorful than C64, like more MSX-like, but with C64 chunkiness.
There are a number of titles where the CPC version is -the version- to have, for example, Donkey Kong, which is very widely accepted as the best arcade adaptation.
And then there's the fact that CPC scene is very active right now, perhaps even more active than C64/VIC-20 scene, and they manage to pump out games that easily rival what is possible on C64. Discovering CPC was a big eye-opener. I knew of the machine, but I never knew just how competitive it was against C64 and that its appeal had endured. I highly recommend checking more games to see what the machine can do.
As for serviceability, I think this machine does well. It was very wise to put the power supply in the monitor, this way the computer case contains no high voltage components, meaning the end user can service it or upgrade it (not sure what mods there are for it) without worrying about electric shock hazard. As for having to use their monitor for the sake of the power supply, look at it this way, there were no cheap consumer RGB monitors at the time, and TVs did not have RGB inputs, and you didn't want composite because you wanted a clear picture for 80 column text. Amstrad gave it all to you on the cheap, it's just too bad they didn't really widely market them in the states, which is why you had a hard time substituting the monitor. It could have easily been something that Radio Shack sold, had there not been the TRS-80 line.
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Let's cover a few simple facts: RGB output and a monitor with RGB input provide you with a very sharp picture. You get nice crisp 80 column text, which is a no-go with most other 8-bit machines of the era. Oh, and did I mention that lovely palette that goes with that RGB output? It's brilliant! I don't own one and even I know that!
The better of the titles have this look. More colorful than C64, like more MSX-like, but with C64 chunkiness.
There are a number of titles where the CPC version is -the version- to have, for example, Donkey Kong, which is very widely accepted as the best arcade adaptation.
And then there's the fact that CPC scene is very active right now, perhaps even more active than C64/VIC-20 scene, and they manage to pump out games that easily rival what is possible on C64. Discovering CPC was a big eye-opener. I knew of the machine, but I never knew just how competitive it was against C64 and that its appeal had endured. I highly recommend checking more games to see what the machine can do.
As for serviceability, I think this machine does well. It was very wise to put the power supply in the monitor, this way the computer case contains no high voltage components, meaning the end user can service it or upgrade it (not sure what mods there are for it) without worrying about electric shock hazard. As for having to use their monitor for the sake of the power supply, look at it this way, there were no cheap consumer RGB monitors at the time, and TVs did not have RGB inputs, and you didn't want composite because you wanted a clear picture for 80 column text. Amstrad gave it all to you on the cheap, it's just too bad they didn't really widely market them in the states, which is why you had a hard time substituting the monitor. It could have easily been something that Radio Shack sold, had there not been the TRS-80 line.
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Ekkehard
It was an awesome machine for its time. I disagree with some things that you said like the tape drive being unreliable -- that's not true: You can adjust the tape head with a screwdriver through the hole above the tape head. Of course, when the head is maladjusted, things don't work properly, and some programs had been recorded somewhat off, so that the screw had to be readjusted for them. Lord, the patience we had in those days! :D -- CP/M was a big thing on the CPC, and could be obtained with any Amstrad 3- floppy drive (or 3rd party floppy drives -- I had a Vortex 5 1/4 - drive with 704K per disk side capacity. I also had the Maxam module which provided an assembler/disassembler/text editor/monitor in ROM, which was great for programming. I'm sad that I sold it after I had an Amiga. I only had the CPC-464 with green monitor. The Z80A processor (despite its almost 4 MHz clock) was incredibly slow at times. :D I didn't know many of the programming tricks, as I didn't have the original developer kit (which required the 3- floppy drive, IIRC. Anyway, I liked it a lot. Locomotive BASIC was one of the best BASICs there is, it had software interrupt programming for one-shot and recurring timers (just as in Javascript today, and an exemplary support of the hardware (like palettes and sound, and also was easy to extend with your own commands (using assembly language.
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It was an awesome machine for its time. I disagree with some things that you said like the tape drive being unreliable -- that's not true: You can adjust the tape head with a screwdriver through the hole above the tape head. Of course, when the head is maladjusted, things don't work properly, and some programs had been recorded somewhat off, so that the screw had to be readjusted for them. Lord, the patience we had in those days! :D -- CP/M was a big thing on the CPC, and could be obtained with any Amstrad 3- floppy drive (or 3rd party floppy drives -- I had a Vortex 5 1/4 - drive with 704K per disk side capacity. I also had the Maxam module which provided an assembler/disassembler/text editor/monitor in ROM, which was great for programming. I'm sad that I sold it after I had an Amiga. I only had the CPC-464 with green monitor. The Z80A processor (despite its almost 4 MHz clock) was incredibly slow at times. :D I didn't know many of the programming tricks, as I didn't have the original developer kit (which required the 3- floppy drive, IIRC. Anyway, I liked it a lot. Locomotive BASIC was one of the best BASICs there is, it had software interrupt programming for one-shot and recurring timers (just as in Javascript today, and an exemplary support of the hardware (like palettes and sound, and also was easy to extend with your own commands (using assembly language.
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Maciej
Back in early 90's I had CPC6128 - from teenager perspective, who was looking for some games and simple basic programs, 6128 wasn't that much different. Same graphics (based on 6485 - I think the same chip used in CGA graphic cards, same sound - AY3something - 3 generators with envelopes and noise generator. Yes - floppy drive - maybe not so floppy those 3 inch inventions - was really nice. I don't think there were much games using fact it has 128kb of RAM. I was to young and didn't have access to books about CPM system available on that machine and not much interest in programming which you could do on that. However it had much better look. Bit 'colder' and pro.
Cheers
reply
Back in early 90's I had CPC6128 - from teenager perspective, who was looking for some games and simple basic programs, 6128 wasn't that much different. Same graphics (based on 6485 - I think the same chip used in CGA graphic cards, same sound - AY3something - 3 generators with envelopes and noise generator. Yes - floppy drive - maybe not so floppy those 3 inch inventions - was really nice. I don't think there were much games using fact it has 128kb of RAM. I was to young and didn't have access to books about CPM system available on that machine and not much interest in programming which you could do on that. However it had much better look. Bit 'colder' and pro.
Cheers
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Two
I loved my CPC 464. The biggest problem was: I only knew 2 other people who had one (almost everyone else had the rubber-keyed Speccy or the Swiss Roll (I mean C64, so swapping games was rather limited. Also, some of the ports were dreadful - I'm looking at you Green Beret. There were a few games I 'reckon' played best on the 464 e. g. Head Over Heels, Dan Dare, Gauntlet 1&2, Bombjack and Gryzor (Contra. I gave it to a friend who was amassing a system collection in 1999. It was still working fine, aside from the tape counter reset key didn't work (annoying, but no biggie.
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I loved my CPC 464. The biggest problem was: I only knew 2 other people who had one (almost everyone else had the rubber-keyed Speccy or the Swiss Roll (I mean C64, so swapping games was rather limited. Also, some of the ports were dreadful - I'm looking at you Green Beret. There were a few games I 'reckon' played best on the 464 e. g. Head Over Heels, Dan Dare, Gauntlet 1&2, Bombjack and Gryzor (Contra. I gave it to a friend who was amassing a system collection in 1999. It was still working fine, aside from the tape counter reset key didn't work (annoying, but no biggie.
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David
The scart or euro-scart (also was standard in U. K) is actually just a bunch of thin cables carrying analog audio & vision, just like the RCA phonos.
It was convenient but cramming all those cords into a single bundle leads to potential cross over interference, and a weak design-not very robust! I used scart and phonos in U. K. and my final conclusion is-. you were right not to adopt scart in USA-. the convenience aspect isn-t worth the fragile design and slightly lower quality (caused by scaling down all those cores in a tight space.
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The scart or euro-scart (also was standard in U. K) is actually just a bunch of thin cables carrying analog audio & vision, just like the RCA phonos.
It was convenient but cramming all those cords into a single bundle leads to potential cross over interference, and a weak design-not very robust! I used scart and phonos in U. K. and my final conclusion is-. you were right not to adopt scart in USA-. the convenience aspect isn-t worth the fragile design and slightly lower quality (caused by scaling down all those cores in a tight space.
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fattomandeibu
I found with these things, the games tended to look better than C64 games(and of course, Spectrum, but you could do better looking than Spectrum with a crayon and flip book) but the sound and gameplay were always sorely lacking compared to Commodore. Of course, it depended the programmer, I've played some godawful C64 ports that were okay on Amstrad, but yeah.
Keep in mind, this is from my experience at the time. Whether time agrees with me, I dunno.
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I found with these things, the games tended to look better than C64 games(and of course, Spectrum, but you could do better looking than Spectrum with a crayon and flip book) but the sound and gameplay were always sorely lacking compared to Commodore. Of course, it depended the programmer, I've played some godawful C64 ports that were okay on Amstrad, but yeah.
Keep in mind, this is from my experience at the time. Whether time agrees with me, I dunno.
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TheSulross
One thing I'm learning from my binge watching of retro computing videos is to steer away from computer models that integrated storage devices like floppy disk drives and tape drives. Things with mechanical moving parts are eventually going to wear out and 30 to 40 years of time takes its toll even when these things just sit in storage. Audiophiles build their systems out of best-of-breed components - this looks like a wise approach to retro computers too.
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One thing I'm learning from my binge watching of retro computing videos is to steer away from computer models that integrated storage devices like floppy disk drives and tape drives. Things with mechanical moving parts are eventually going to wear out and 30 to 40 years of time takes its toll even when these things just sit in storage. Audiophiles build their systems out of best-of-breed components - this looks like a wise approach to retro computers too.
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diecast
That AY sound chip must have been hecka cheap because it wasn't much of a sound chip, it seemed every computer had it in the 80's even the spectrum got it in the end, compared the sound chip in the C64 or Amiga it was a total POS. I worked in a computer store in the UK from 1982 to 1989 and each system had it's game that we thought was it's killer app, like MSX Konami Ping Pong cart, on the CPC it was it's version of Commando, that was the dogs danglies.
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That AY sound chip must have been hecka cheap because it wasn't much of a sound chip, it seemed every computer had it in the 80's even the spectrum got it in the end, compared the sound chip in the C64 or Amiga it was a total POS. I worked in a computer store in the UK from 1982 to 1989 and each system had it's game that we thought was it's killer app, like MSX Konami Ping Pong cart, on the CPC it was it's version of Commando, that was the dogs danglies.
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Citylife2050
The Amstrad CPC did have a TV modulator. My CPC464 came in a bundle with the green screen and TV Modulator to I could hook it up to the colour TV. The originals are a bit harder to get they weren't as reliable as the actual computer. Mine sort of died about 18 months after I got the machine, although I was programming the hell out of the machine, so didn't really use it.
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The Amstrad CPC did have a TV modulator. My CPC464 came in a bundle with the green screen and TV Modulator to I could hook it up to the colour TV. The originals are a bit harder to get they weren't as reliable as the actual computer. Mine sort of died about 18 months after I got the machine, although I was programming the hell out of the machine, so didn't really use it.
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BRIDGEBURNERDU94
Well, that's strange. I got two Amstrad CPC 464s as my first computers, here in France, and they were QWERTY (with an english front panel) instead of AZERTY and french. I don't think they were straight-up imports from the UK (my grand-father bought them and he's not around anymore so I can ask him. Amstrad might have sold both in France at some point.
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Well, that's strange. I got two Amstrad CPC 464s as my first computers, here in France, and they were QWERTY (with an english front panel) instead of AZERTY and french. I don't think they were straight-up imports from the UK (my grand-father bought them and he's not around anymore so I can ask him. Amstrad might have sold both in France at some point.
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