These last years several expansions allows you to use mass storage (USB or sd...) on Amstrad CPC, each needing a ROM to use it correctly.

And if you use two of these expansions, you will need to load two ROMs, so less RAM for your Amstrad CPC.

So Offset did write UniDOS and drivers to be able to use another expansion, needing only one ROM with features being the same whatever the expansion. Unidos can manage actually :

• Albireo by PulkoTronics
• M4 Board by Duke
• X-Mass by Tot0
• Symbiface II by Dr.Zed
• Nova by PulkoTronics

Offset also wrote UniDOS Cartridge Creator (v1.4) which is an utility to create Amstrad Plus cartridges equipped with a patched firmware which allows to add UniDOS and its DOS nodes. You can furthermore configure up to 30 additional tool ROMs (such as Utopia, Maxam, Protext..) in the cartridges (compatible with ParaDOS and Burnin' Rubber) without requiring a real ROM board. The tool also let you automatically download the latest UniDOS ROMs from the official web site.

Unidos v1.50 is a major release with a lot of visible and invisible modifications. All DOS nodes were also updated. For the end user, the most notable update is the full time and date support as well as new RSX. For the developers, new BIOS and node API came up.

Also, since the release of the ACE Amstrad CPC emulator in v1.25, several plugins were upgraded : DK'Tronics speech synthesizer, Techni-Musique and SSA-1 speech, Willy, Nova, Amdrum, Mirage Image, MultiPlay and the PlayCity, Albireo.

CPCEC GTK by NoRecess is an Amstrad CPC(+) emulator under linux, a fork of CPCEC by CNGSoft. Its features are turned especially for people who develop Amstrad CPC software under linux.

Longshot has released version 1.3 of the Amstrad CPC CRTC Compendium (beware, the english version isn't definitive, only the french one is actually) which is a documentation about the CRTC 6845 (and some others circuits). Note that the CRTC is a generic component used in several computers including the IBM PC.

As seen on CPCRulez, the AMSpiriT emulator by Dmanu78 is respecting by a great margin the SHAKER tests by Longshot than other emulators. SHAKER is a program designed to run on CPC machines produced by AMSTRAD in the 80s-90s. The objective of this program is to carry out extensive tests on the video circuits of this machine. These video circuits are the GATE ARRAY and the CRTC 6845. AMSTRAD produced several series of GATE ARRAY and used CRTC models produced by different manufacturers (HITACHI, MOTOROLA, UMC, AMSTRAD). This has been causing compatibility problems on operations that exceed the functional specifications of these circuits. The identified CRTCs are numbered from 0 to 4.

So AMSpiriT is better especially if you like to see Amstrad CPC demos, and can't be bad either for games. I don't have the time to test extensively all Amstrad CPC games, but for sure I will take time during the Benediction Coding Party #2 to use it.

A new version of Amspirit, an Amstrad CPC emulator by Dmanu78 is available on the System.CFG forum for windows. There is a 32 and 64bit version. Reading all the thread is a good idea if you didnt read it already as it's a complete genesis of this emulator.

The thread on CPCWiki is here.

After having released a new version of his Amstrad Notepad NC100, NC150 and NC200 emulator, Russell Marks has just released a new version of his version of CP/M for these same machines : ZCN 1.4, the new features are :

• NC150 support, with a custom zcn150.bin kernel. As with the NC200, this is not as complete as the NC100 support. Also, it has only been tested under emulation
• Internal ramdisk support on NC200 and NC150, so you can use ZCN on them without a memory card (to some limited degree). This is really only intended to be used if you lack a memory card - you switch between memory card mode and ramdisk mode using the "ramd" command
• Improved keyboard layout support via keyb, supporting Danish, French, German, Italian, Swedish, and US keyboard layouts, in addition to the old UK and Dvorak. All supported keyboard layouts can be used on any NC model
• Preinstalled memory card images for NC100/NC150/NC200. These are intended for use with emulators like nc100em/MAME/RC2014, but they should also work on the real thing if you have the means to write them correctly. (Serial link installs are still supported, of course.)
• Support for booting from floppy disk on the NC200 - this uses David Given's floppy-boot code from FUZIX, almost unchanged. ZCN itself does not support the floppy disk, so this just loads ZCN and a small ramdisk image then boots it
• Support for displaying some non-ASCII characters, specifically some from the old DOS code pages 437 and 850 like in the ROM software, as well as the euro sign character from 858. Only a few dozen characters are supported (!) and you need to run keyb beforehand (i.e. since boot) for this to work
• NC200 time-reading and time-setting support, meaning that e.g. time and timeset work
• The man command now uses ZX0 compression - the data file is smaller, man.com is smaller, and man pages load faster
• Certain .com files in the support directory, like QTERM, are now also provided in versions using ZX0 compression. So for example, the ZX0-using version of QTERM is 5k smaller. ZCN comes with a "zx0com.bin" file you can prepend to a .zx0 file to run it in this way (limited to .zx0 files of 16k or less)

A new version of the Caprice32 emulator maintained by Colin Pitrat is available.

Version 4.6.0 was released the 2th October 2022.

ACE v1.25 by Offset is available. It is available in french, english, german and spanish (thanks to the translators). New features since v1.24 are :

• Added a splash screen to deal with plugins which are slow to initialize or activate/deactivate
• Added MagicBeacon notification support when making a screen grab
• Improved plugins API (v7) regarding mice and joysticks events (better plugins portability and efficiency)
• Clean up in plugins SDK (better documentation)
• Added analog joysticks support to plugins API (Amstrad Plus only)
• Upgraded mice and joysticks plugins to use the new plugin API
• Added info bulle to inform the user about mouse events being captured/released by a plugin
• Improved joysticks internal management to natively support Playstation, Xbox and generic gamepads layouts
• Improved joysticks plugins to handle combined (use one gamepad to control both CPC joysticks) and analog modes
• Minor fix in CRTC 0 and 2 emulation
• Minor fix in Gate Array emulation
• Updated Multiface Two plugin's icon (thanks to Christophe 'Highlander' Delorme)
• All plugins but joysticks are now automatically deactivated when selecting a quick prefs preset

A SDK exists if you want to program your own plugin for the ACE emulator.

The original Amstrad notepad NC100 emulator was written by Russell Marks. He just released a new version : v1.3 whose main features are :

• new SDL2-based version
• NC150 support
• NC200 floppy disk support (using John Elliott's lib765)
• everyone being 21 years older than the last time he did a release

You can of course use the native ROM of a notepad or use ZCN also by Russell Marks at v1.3 (with a fix if you use the format command). It should also be possible to use CP/Mish by David Given thanks to the NC200 floppy drive emulation.

The v1.2 has been modified by Nilquader and Gnarz.

Longshot has released version 1.2 of the Amstrad CPC CRTC Compendium (July 2022) which is a documentation about the CRTC 6845 (and some others circuits). Note that the CRTC is a generic component used in several computers including the IBM PC.

This version has 226 pages, whereas v1.1 has only 173.

A new version of Amspirit, an Amstrad CPC emulator by Dmanu78 is available on the System.CFG forum for windows. There is a 32 and 64bit version. Reading all the thread is a good idea if you didnt read it already as it's a complete genesis of this emulator.

The thread on CPCWiki is here.

Rainer has released CPCemu v2.5. It's available for MacOS, Android, iOS, Linux (x86_64 and ARM, included Raspberry Pi) and Windows.

This new version is available on the author's web site or on the Google Play store for the Android version.

This new version features :

• Floppy LED (visible only with virtual keyboard)
• Virtual keyboard : adjustable (position, size, transparency), persistent (saves position, size, transparency automatically, separately for portrait and landscape on Android and iOS), visual and acoustic (switchable) feedback
• Virtual joystick in two different sizes
• Virtual mouse (selectable instead of joystick): AMX, Reisware/Gerdes or Symbiface II (PS/2)
• Original sounds of disk drive, cassette relay and keyboard (can be switched on and off)
• Zoom function (display without border), alternating with and without full screen; persistent (separately for portrait and landscape on Android and iOS)
• Audio emulation deeply revised; output quality significantly improved (you can select from 4 output frequencies)
• Vortex memory extension SP64-SP512
• Jarek memory extension 576-4096 Kb
• Bank-switching speed dramatically improved; correct emulation of C3 mode
• IPv6-enabled web server similar to M4 board (upload and download into/from the emulator via web interface)
• Autostart behaviour improved (automatic file selection and deactivation)
• Minimal audio latency on Android (Oboe)
• User interface improved on Android/iOS
• Setup settings are saved immediately
• First preparations for new user interface
• Adjusted to SDL version 2.0.22 (which needs to be installed manually on Linux)
• Fixed bugs: background-foreground-changing behaviour on Android, real-time speed, video output speed (in particular on Android, iOS and MacOS, I think also on the Raspberry Pi), memory leaks, M4 sockets, file access on Android and iOS

The last version of the Amstrad CPC emulator CPCEC by César Nicolas Gonzalez, was released the 15th June 2022.

I saw this new windows emulator on theSystem.CFG months ago but I forgot to write about it... Dmanu78 did document all the genesis of his emulator, a very interesting reading in french that I invite you to read.

The thread on CPCWiki is here.

A new version of the desktop JavaCPC is available. It's an Amstrad CPC(+) emulator written in Java by Markus Hohmann (DevilMarkus).

A bit old information, but RVGM is the theme for the linux emulation distribution Batocera. It has at least 600 Amstrad CPC games.

On the Darknior's github there is also an interesting Barbarian for OpenBor WIP project.