News about Amstrad CPC, PCW, Notepad NC100 NC150 NC200, PDA600 and also Amstrad PC






Powergraph Light Rev 2 with built-in adapter for Amstrad CPC to connect with an Amsdap

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I am late as today is the last day to order a V9990 Powergraph Light Rev 2 with built-in adapter by Tecnobytes. It's a MSX cartridge for MSX or Amstrad CPC which you can connect with the Amsdap (a MX4 card with a MSX cartridge slot), see Prodatron's video in 2018.



Tribute to Michael Collins (Apollo XI), an Amstrad CPC+ slideshow by Nemo59

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Nemo has created a slideshow in turbo pascal for Amstrad CPC+ including astronaut quotes : Michael Collins (Apollo XI) tribute which you can see on Youtube on his channel. The screenshots has been converted with ConvImgCPC by Ludovic Deplanque.



An Amstrad PPC 512 operated by Noël Llopis (repairing, upgrading, screen changing) in 5 videos

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Noel Llopis did start 4 months ago a serie of videos about an Amstrad PPC 512 whose screen has suffered just a little bit... The videos are very interesting and my resume below cant show how interesting these videos are. Take the time to see them from start to end as I did.

  • first video in which he will open the beast and trying to replace the broken screen with another screen from a PPC donor. Then he will use the CGA2SCART PRO made by Retro Erik. The CGA2SCART Pro permits to replace a CGA/EGA screen with a television using a SCART cable (RGB signal). Then he is running two of his msdos programs he wrote mayn years ago : Return of Frankenstein (3D isometric game) and Bouncing Ball
  • second video where the screen will be repaired after many tests, a real work of a police investigagor but in electronics
  • third video, it's time for upgrading (adding and testing a Gotek, adding and testing more RAM to get 640 Kb) and some reparations (the handle and the protection hatch at the back) to finish by dumping the spanish ROM of the PPC which wasnt available on internet, to be used with an emulator (MAME or PCEM)
  • fourth video, the screen has been repaired but it's not perfect. So the original screen will be changed, two solutions being tested : MCE2VGA (which I use with my own PPC 640) and the GBS 8200
  • fifth video, it's the part two of the fourth video where he is using a third solution to replace the original screen with a Raspberry Pi zero and the HAT RGB to HDMI which allows the use the HDMI output of the Pi (bare metal emulation, no raspbian OS used)


Amstrad PPC 640 replica running RetroPie by Bill Kar

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You have a dead Amstrad PPC and you heart is too heave to throw it inside the bin ? Then why dont you use a magic wand to transform it into a retro console or better to use PCEM to emulate an Amstrad PPC ? It's what Bill Kar did with its PPC 640.



Music of Ghosts'N Goblins played on piano by art88tum

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Ghosts'N Goblins is a classic arcade game by Capcom in 1985 and released by Elite in 1986 on Amstrad CPC.

On art88tum's youtube channel, you can listen him playing Ghosts'N Goblins on piano.

Yes, it's another JB le Daron, but no singing though !



Amstrad Diagnostics ROM v1.10 by Noël Llopis

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Noel Llopis has written an Amstrad CPC diagnostic ROM which is already at version 1.10 and whose sources are available on Github.

Changes since v0.91 :

  • New main menu and summary screen
  • Checking for 464 vs 664 models
  • Fixed crash on DSK build
  • Fix: Upper RAM test on Plus and GX4000 working again
  • Improved keyboard layout in keyboard test
  • Support for 464/664, 6128, and matrix keyboard layout (use TAB to cycle through them)
  • Tries to autodetects Amstrad model and pick correct keyboard layout automatically
  • Tries to autodetect ROM language and picks Spanish or French keyboard layout if necessary
  • Fix: Upper RAM test doesn't trigger FDC


SugarPI v1.2.0, a bare metal emulator for Raspberry PI 3/4 by Sugarbox

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Sugarbox has already written two Amstrad CPC emulators, after Sugarbox v1 and v2, it's now SugarPI v1.2.0 which is working on a Rapsberry Pi 3 ou 4 wihtout raspbian : it's a bare metal emulator.



dMagnetic v0.30, a Magnetic Scrolls emulator by Dettus for various BSD and Linux distributions

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dMagnetic v0.30 by Dettus is available for several versions of Unix (BSD, Ubuntu, Debian, Gentoo) with ANSI drawing in a terminal. This utility lets you play adventure games by Magnetic Scrolls. This version adds support for extended DSK.

The emulator is using the original files of the games for Amstrad CPC, C64, msdos, windows (1991 compilation), .MAG et .GFX files on the magnetic scrolls memorial.



CPCEPower v2104, an Amstrad CPC emulator by Megachur (linux, windows, MAC, PI)

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The last version of the Amstrad CPC emulator CPCEPower by Megachur is available on cpcwiki.

The goal of this emulator is to emulates as best is possible the Amstrad CPC, like ACE.



ACE v1.23, an Amstrad CPC(+) emulator for MorphOS/Haiku by Philippe Rimauro

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ACE v1.23 is available. Since v1.22, this emulator can use plugins which emulates :

  • Amdrum (Cheetah) sound card which lets play 8bit samples, seen in ads a percussion synthesis
  • X-Mass IDE interface
  • Albireo card by PulkoTronics

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