ManageDSK v0.18 by Ludovic Deplanque is out. It features :

• create an empty .DSK file,
• add files in a .DSK file,
• extract files from an .DSK file,
• rename files in a .DSK file
• delete files in a .DSK file,

First, you should download the latest firmware of the SDCard HxC floppy emulator, the v1.3.11.0 corrects some timing problems with Asic 3 (CPC+) and 4 (pre-CPC+), and some bugs. It's best to freshly format (FAT32) your SD card, then copy the *.upd and *.cfg to the card. Press Left and Right buttons before power up and keep it pressed at least 1 seconds at power up. Wait some seconds, it's done.

There is now an Amstrad CPC program to directly choose an image. This program (just run"hxc) is in the autoboot.hfe disk image. By pressing the middle button, the autoboot.hfe disk is automatically selected. It has been compiled with Small Device C Compiler and still need to be optimized (slow drawing using system calls). The program has been converted to a ROM by Krusty, but as the original program is changing fast at the moment, it could be a bit early to download it.

Cpcdsdk is a project aiming to collect the various bit of existing sourcecode in one common place for the linux OS relative to the Amstrad CPC, add the missing features, and make life easier for all developpers :

• The Caprice Reloaded emulator, with integrated assembler and debugger, for windows and linux,
• gfx2crtc, a tool to convert pictures to the amstrad sceen format,
• An imporved version of Ramlaid's cpctools, now running under linux, with (limited) support for usb floppy drives
• A special version of STSound from Leonard, modified to emulate an AY3 more accurately (the original emulates the slightly different YM chip used in the Atari ST)
• Hideur Maikeur by Downwater for handling AMSDOS headers
• iDSK from sid for manipulating dsk images and files inside.

SAMdisk v3 by Simon Owen is out, it's a command-line disk image utility for Windows 2000 or later. The utility supports transfers between floppy disks and disk images (DSK/MGT/IMG/HDF), and is designed to work with almost any soft-sectored disk format compatible with the PC floppy controller, including some copy-protected formats. Low-level floppy device access requires the fdrawcmd.sys driver to be installed.

You can use a java GUI written by DevilMarkus : SAMdisk GUI.

This utility requires a floppy drive connected to a standard motherboard connector. USB floppy drives cannot be supported as there is no way to access their embedded floppy controller chip.

DevilMarkus has written another java utility : SAMdisk GUI, a GUI for SAMdisk by Simon Owen : a CLI utility for Windows 2000 and XP, used to transfer between physical SAM Coupé disks (both floppy and IDE) and disk images (DSK/MGT/IMG/HDF).

This utility requires a floppy drive connected to a standard motherboard connector. USB floppy drives cannot be supported as there is no way to access their embedded floppy controller chip.

It can transfer Prehistorik 2 for example.

You can download the latest version of the PC-CPC emulator and of ManageDsk v0.17 (.DSK file handling utility) by Ludovic Deplanque (Demoniak).

This last version of the emulator corrects 2 bugs, one about CLI use (command line interface) and the other about the 2nd joystick handling.

You can download Arkos Tracker v1.0 beta for PC by Targhan.

An update of GrafX (v2.2) is available.

DevilMarkus has written a new utility in java : Cdt2Wav, so you can use it on Windows, Linux and Mac.

For Linux and Mac users, launch the cdt2wav.jar with the following parameters : cdt2wav.jar -Xms512m -Xmx512m -XX:MaxPermSize=512m (or set all to 256 if you want only 256 Mb max. ram usage).

WXCOMMANDER (see CPC Loader) is a general purpose two-panel file manager for windows, but it can read/write .DSK files, others features :

• Create zip and iso files
• Upload files to the Internet using FTP
• Fast file handling using the keyboard
• Built-in viewers handling many file formats
• Advanced built-in text editor
• Create animated gifs
• Create shortcut menus for your USB flash drives
• Portable - a single exe file with no particular dependencies
• Convert mdb files to csv or dbf
• No installation required (self-extracting zip exe provided for convenience)
• No uninstallation required (just delete the folder)
• Free for non-professional home use

An update of GrafX (v2.1) is available.

It's a bitmap paint program that allows to draw in more than 60 video resolutions (from 320x200, including most of the standard Amiga resolutions, provided your videocard knows how to handle them). It was written originally for DOS, but has been modified to use SDL and modern operating systems. Its layout is not very different from Deluxe Paint or Brilliance.

PulkoMandy has released GrafX v2 final.

It's a bitmap paint program that allows to draw in more than 60 video resolutions (from 320x200, including most of the standard Amiga resolutions, provided your videocard knows how to handle them). It was written originally for DOS, but has been modified to use SDL and modern operating systems.

Its layout is not very different from Deluxe Paint or Brilliance, so it will be quite easy to handle it if you know at least one of these programs.

A new version of CPCDiskXP is available on CPC Mania. It's a .DSK file manager for windows XP, version 2.0 is from January 2009.

You will find on Tom & Jerry's site 2 ASM sources (maxam) for compressing Amstrad CPC binaries (better than pucrunch and bitbuster) : Exomizer et Aplib, coming from the PC world. He found them in a forum thread of Amstrad.ESP (spanish site).

SymZilla is a browser for SymbOS, it let you read HTML files. Beware it needs 192 Ko of memory, so on a CPC you need a RAM extension.