Noel Llopis presents in his new video how he goes from 64 Kb to 1 Mb of RAM on an Amstrad CPC 464.
The expansion card to be used should have been by Revaldino but some components being hard to get, it's finally the card by Rebobinando which has been used.
Schneider made the Amstrad CPC under licence in Germany. They also did create PC XT like the EuroPC (several models). Retro Erik is presenting an ISA bus extension which he saw in another Youtube video. At the end of the video he is announcing that he is working on an universal ISA bus extension with a friend of the Norway retro community.
mTCP v2023-03-31 by Michael B. Brutman is a set of TCP/IP applications for personal computers running PC-DOS, MS-DOS, FreeDOS, and other flavors of DOS. mTCP needs a 8088 processor (or +), 96 to 256 Kb of system memory depending on the application, ms-dos v2.1 (or +) and a network card (Ethernet adapter, or a device emulating Ethernet) that has a packet driver.
If you go on the mTCP web page, you must know that it's a 39 years old PC Jr which is running mTCP own http server.
Matronica wanted to load programs on his recently bought Amstrad CPC 464 (at the start of 2023). So he did create his ROM emulator using a Raspberry Pico which was announced in April 2023. In June 2023 he added on his card an USB port which let him use either the Albireo or Unidos ROM.
See the initial announcement on CPCWiki about his Amstrad CPC romboard using a Raspberry Pico, the sources are available on Github.
The small compatibility problems for this replacement chip for the Amstrad CPC sound chip have been corrected with more releaxed timings. Instead of buying an original sound chip for too much money, it is more interesting to buy this functional equivalent AY-3-8912 by vRetro.
RetroVirtualMachine v2.1.9 by Juan Carlos González Amestoy was released today. It's an Amstrad CPC emulator for MacOS, Windows and Linux. This version features bug fixes.
You can download 19 MIDI songs by Manfred GROSS which can be read by the Ultimate CPC MIDI Sound and MIDI Interface by LambadMikel for your Amstrad CPC.
The Picomem ISA card created by FreddyV is for all 808x computers and brings additionnal RAM (if you don't have 640 Kb), EMS memory, hard disk and disk drive images support, thanks to a Raspberry Pico (like the PicoGUS sound card). It's still work in progress. Rodrik Studio did two videos about the Picomem, one in english, the other in french :
Seen on CPCWiki, it is possible to replace an AY-3-8912 original sound chip (originals for sell are costly) by a replacement chip created by vRetro Design (better to put the chip in a socket after removing the original) : AY-3-8912 functional equivalent for 25 euros.
There is another replacement chip : AY-3-8912A-TS (Turbo Sound) but contrary to what was thought at the start of the CPCWiki thread, it isn't usable on an Amstrad CPC. It's only for ZX Spectrum and it offers 2 AY instead of one.
The clone had a timing problem but it has been corrected by vRetro on the 12 October 2023 as announced by SerErris.
And one more computer running soon SymbOS by Prodatron : the Amstrad Notepad 200 !
If you wish to try it with an emulator, you can download a version of the 18th July 2023.
Prodatron's notepad NC200 being out of order, it lacks for the moment the possibility to start on a real NC200.
Longshot has released version 1.6 of the Amstrad CPC CRTC Compendium (July 2023) 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.
It is possible to check if an emulator is good with the SHAKER tests by Longshot. 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.
Lee Smiths Workshop has done a video to use a retro keyboard (including an Amstrad CPC 464) as an USB Keyboard thanks to a Raspberry Pico. The code is available on this Github.
First announced in a tweet, the modula Amstrad CPC by Bread80 is presented by himself in the CPCWiki forum with more informations.
Why playing to Amstrad CPC games with a keyboard or a joystick (original or USB) when you can play differently : with an IR remote control ? It's what has done Poulette73 but you will need the RSF3 expansion by TMTLogic. And the programs must be adapted as you will see in two videos :
Poulette73 is presenting the RSF3 on CPCRulez.
Michael Wessel is the author of several hardware expansions for Amstrad CPC which I let you discover on his github and Youtube channel.
His last making is the MegaLambda-x6(++), an Amstrad CPC expansion backplante with no less than 6 slots. You can desactivate individually each connected card. It features :
Several presentation videos are available :
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