LGR - Amstrad CPC 464 Computer System Review
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- Опубликовано: 5 сен 2024
- An overview of the history, hardware, and software of the CPC464 from the perspective of a vintage computer collector. How do the pros and cons stack up, what games can you play on it, and is it worth getting a 464 over others like the 6128?
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My parents bought me one when they first came out. All my mates were into commodores, but I liked the look of the CPC 464. I'll never forget walking into the kitchen on my birthday and it was all set up on the kitchen table. I was totally engrossed. Happy days and happy memories 🙂
ok
same story here too
Almost same story as how I got mine when I was a kid.
I had both a Commodore C64 & Amstrad CPC 464 thanks to my grandad so grew up with them. Nothing came close to spending 10 minutes of loading times to play Paperboy, Count Duckula, Roland on the Ropes, Stunt Car Racer and my fave Dizzy games. Brings back a lot of memories or late 80's, early 90's gaming :)
I found one in the trash many years ago while raining. That broke my heart and I picked him up, two years ago I repaired him. I even made a wooden bottom part for him cause it was broken. Now it is working great. I have a yt video about it. Nice review as always my friend.
found it in the trash?! ... that is a crime! well done for giving it a home restoring it! The CPC was (and still is I assume) big in some countries. sygxaritiria :)
Euxaristw
Vincent GR where is your restauration vidéo ? I don't find it.
Sad how people throw these things away. Myself included. I have seen the light after watching many LGR. So far I’ve cleaned up and restored my ZX Spectrum 128 +2 (grey), Atari STFM 1MB ram, and a 486DX2 with original case and keyboard. I also have 2 x TI-99/4a but not power supply. One day I’ll find one! I’m loving it! ✨✨✨👍🏻
The Amstrad CPC was a brilliant machine, the 464 in particular. The numpad can be reprogrammed from BASIC to run programs at the tap of a button. I used to use mine with 3 programs in them at all times: one to change the mode to 80-column text mode and the on-screen colours to easy to read white-on-black, one to list any program I was coding, and one to tell me how much memory was still available. It was so useful.
I had the colour version of the CPC464 in the UK and spent ages writing programs on it. I got one of them published in a magazine which people had to then laboriously type out! It was what got me into tech and eventually teaching kids to program. Amazing nostalgia. Thanks.
Nostalgia overload... A CPC464 was my best friend during the 1980s. Always had a pile of comics to my side to read during loading times, and I would have given my left hand for a color monitor rather than the green one. Still like to start up an emulator now and then and play "Wec Le Mans" or "Yie Ar Kung-Fu" for a while.
The Amstrad had clearly the best color palette of the 8-bit micros (AT LEAST OF THE uk MICROS), too bad it was plagued with a lot of horrible direct speccy ports, and lazy coders who didn't know the hardware
Matchday II and Jet Set Willy FTW
the time I spent on this machine. My parents got me the colour version. How lucky I felt, especially when a lad I knew had the green monitor.
i had the green monitor back in 1984 being young at 12 it didnt bother me i loved it my best game was robin hood lol
I had this Amstrad as my very first computer . Always remember the fun i had with Harrier attack and especially Sorcery. That theme music still sticks in my head.
You can play these with an emulator but somehow it is not quite the same though Sorcery still holds up today as a great game.
Thanks for showing spin dizzy , that was another amazing game at the time but so frustrating when you went off the edge :)
Love the Red Baron and IBM XT in the background on stage left/right at the end. Great review as always!
Yes! These are my favorite videos of yours - obviously I like all of them, but knowing as little about technology and its history as I do, I find these really interesting. Really glad to know Patreon helped you do this.
Thanks, glad you appreciate them! And yes, everyone's support on Patreon has been a great thing, and the future of LGR is looking quite bright.
Awesome hardware with a special nostalgia place in my heart. Being the first computer I ever owned.
Snap! :)
Still think about reviving that damn site sometimes. But you know why I then don't bother going ahead with it Novabug.
pm me. ?
The Amstrad CPC 6128 was my first computer, I still have it and shall always be in my heart. There are people who still code for the CPC today! Also you can find a new type of add-on that replaces the floppy drive (or tape recorder?) with an xD card reader (Google "Amstrad SDCard HxC Floppy"). Kudos for showing faith in the CPC, congrats for your channel I have been watching you for years now!
Nice lighting and camera work, my friend. I also appreciated the Red Baron box ;)
Thanks! And yeah, it earned its spot :D
Funny to see that the keyboard and the top sticker are in french, but all the other texts are in spanish and english.
I never had an Amstrand in Spain, but one of my friends have this CPC464 and I always loved the integrated tape deck, on multiload games the tape deck starts and stops automatically.
One neat feature I never saw advertised, even in the manual, was that the 27 colours in the palette actually formed a nice grey-scale when displayed numerically on a monochrome screen. Contrast the Electron, where many of the 8 colours were indistinguishable from each other on a B/W TV.
They got that trick from the ZX Spectrum. Indeed the whole Amstrad CPC series (especially the plus model) can be seen as a kind of "Super Spectrum."
just come across ur video and I still have my original amstrad 464 cpc many fond memory's playing that thing and it's still in perfect working order glad to c there is still people out there that apreciate these old computers
As a French, I remember that in our country, Amstrad was far ahead from other trades in terms of sales, while in UK, Sinclair was ahead if I'm not wrong. As a first computer I had the 6128 when I was 10yo and I remember how hard it was for me to understand all this stuff, but now I miss that computer ^^
Definitely one of the best videos you've done lately. Really missed the computer and console reviews.
Thanks! Hope to make another couple this year as well, instead of one every two years :P
Look at that beast! Nice in-depth review!
I like the infinite white background you have going on in this video. It looks nice and professional.
@@lolnjeoglondajmejejplejlis3365 6 years ago comment and the background is white.
@@lolnjeoglondajmejejplejlis3365 it’s white
@@lolnjeoglondajmejejplejlis3365 it was black for me too
@@lolnjeoglondajmejejplejlis3365 either you are trolling or sth fecky is going on
Man, nostalgia. I had a 464 with a green screen when I was a kid. The countless hours spent playing Danger Mouse, Jack the Nipper and Dizzy games.
Awesome review man, with amazing camera work, really well done!
I grew up on the C64, so have very limited experience with any Amstrad machines. I do own a GX4000, but that's about it really. Never really went after the actual computer systems, as they are rather big. Plus, the 8 bit Commodore and Atari offerings have so much goodness to offer already. There's only so much space to fill with computer stuff ;).
please do unboxing of red Baron pitza
ruclips.net/video/wd_gE9ryj5k/видео.html
good video thanks
That was fantastic lol.
Pizza doesn't have a T in it
@@scottbreon9448 sure it does, in crust and toppings..
Awesome! The Amstrad CPC 464 video is finally up!
I never expected to say that, but I never expected to find someone like LGR who makes these things so darn interesting.
I enjoy these year ago I was really into emulators, and I think I probably had one the biggest collection of them in town ( of course I live in very small town.) That said, the CPC had some great games, and for some time was one of my favoriet emulators, beside the C=64) I began my exploration of computers when my son talked me into buying a Commodore C=128 with CD Drive and the works. I found that when he was at school, I could use it myself, and quickly learned basic so I could actually do things with the machine. I became quite skilled with basic and even sold some software, and programed machines for several businesses in our town so they could improve their bookeeping. Made a few bucks on the side that way, and I think I paid for that machine several times over, and when it came time to upgrade to an IBM compatable, I made my money back selling the 128 and all accessories for just a few bucks less then I paid for it. Later I sold the other commodore machines I had ended up with in trades including a 64SX and several other 64's that I picked up so I could still play my commodore games.
This is my first ever computer! An Amstrad CPC 464 with colour monitor for my 11th birthday back in 1985! :-D
Still got the system unit, now hooked up to my Samsung TV with a Retro Computer Shack PSU and SCART cable set through a SCART switch box.
Conspiracy theory: Sugar may have pinched the colour styling from the much delayed Elan Enterprise (eventually launched far too late as the Enterprise 64 and 128). The Enterprise can be expanded up to 4MB RAM; Sugar built the CPC to do the same, though it requires a lot more external logic so I'd be surprised if anyone actually did that.
I spotted a CPC on the floor in the patio of someone's house, along with the colour monitor and a printer. It had an abanonded look to it, so I knocked on the door, asked if it was being thrown away, the lady said yes, so voila I got the unit for free. Also had lots of games, some books, etc. It had been the family's main machine in earlier times.
Years later I obtained an Enterprise 128 with numerous peripherals. I don't let it get too close to the CPC in case they start fighting. :D
I had two of these growing up, and my 464 came with the TV modulator. The only sad thing was the sound still came out of the computer. What the kids at my school did was buy a cheap amplifier and hook it up to the stereo jack, it sounded way better. Despite all the playground bullying from Speccy & C64 owners ;-) it was a fine computer to own largely due to the high resolution modes that didn't make your eyes bleed when you wanted to use it for not-games. The Locomotive basic Amstrad shipped it with was actually arguably better than BBC basic and allowed really good access to the machine without POKE commands. Awesome video BTW Clint, you have a great knowledge of our strange UK 8-bit machines.
fun fact: Amstrad are still around, they make the satellite tv boxes Sky plc use
Yup. He had been with British Satellite Broadcasting but switched sides and became a Murdoch stooge.
I guess the apprentice contestants had to be working on getting a job doing *something*
Amstrad had been sold to Sky few years ago .
Loved the vid. I used to own a 6128 when growing up. It was an amazing machine and the games were just fantastic. No relation to 464 in competence and durability. I used mine all the time for more than a decade before it died (the monitor went out like a candle ). Great value for money back then !
5 year old me thought the floppy drive of our cpc 128 was the best place to hide the wrappers from the candies I stole....
And I'll bet your parents wondered why it jammed all the time.
Wow, really impressed with this review! The over view is very much improved than before with the white back drop, looks super professional!
Thanks, glad you appreciated it!
Agreed, great shots of the hardware
I like the Red Baron box in the background. XD a tad self-referential, but it's a funny little reminder of that video. :D
I have a early 80s Apple computer,has 12 volt battery.. I have all the manuals, the original mouse and a lot of games. ITs AMAZING..I LOVE IT..I CLEANED AND POLISHED EVERY INCH OF THE MACHINE, THE CAPS LOOK BRAND NEW..THANKS FOR GREAT VIDEO..
The requirement of an original Amstrad monitor is a real pain in the arse. Amstrad eventually recognised this and released a separate modulator for the computer (MP1 for the 464 and MP2 for the 6128). These are not entirely easy to find at a sensible price, and having only an RF output, don't entirely work well with modern TVs. (All of this has probably been said already, but I'm far too lazy to check) :D
See, while I fully agree that BACK THEN it was a huge issue. These days you can (and Clint Lazy Game Reviews had one) buy cables for hooking up to modern TVs as well as pick up a separate power supply for very little. So it's all good in the end :)
Good point :)
***** ***** Aye, it's not a huge issue now, but it's still a pain to have to convert those SCART cables over to HDMI for us Americans. Unless there's some kind of composite output that I'm not ware of!
Lazy Game Reviews I tend to forget that SCART is a European connector that most other countries have never seen. It's a fairly easy job to convert SCART to composite and in fact, the guy you bought that cable from (lives about 9 miles away from me) should be able to sell you one :)
Lazy Game Reviews
Do a review on the Micomsoft Xrgb Mini! That machine does wonders with all kinds of rgb signals and can convert almost any PAL signal to NTSC and vice versa!
I completely agree with your closing thoughts. I've held off on tracking down a Tandy TRS-80 CoCo with similar reservations...
I love the creative stuff you're doing with your macro lens too. Top shelf stuff man.
My first computer ♥♥♥
Hi LGR and all readers. The CPC is really easy to plug because the video signal is a standard RGB + CSync 50Hz video signal. Any TV set with a SCART will do the job. Talking about power, a 5V regulated power supply is enough. For the story, when I went to the military, there was a room with some old computers, and there was an AMSTRAD. At that time I had an Amiga, so I asked the sergeant "may I bring it" and he said yes. So I soldered a DB23 -> Din6 cable and I was able to plug my Amiga500 into the Amstrad monitor, and it worked. Converting RGB + CSync to YUV is also straitforward for the timings are the same and it only costs a bunch of resistors and transistors. And the AZERTY keyboard is really "strange" for non french speaking natives, I must admit as a French computer fan.
I love how you have the Red Baron pizza box in the background LGR, was it that delicious?
At 3:22 that cricket reference was awesome 🤣🤣
Very naughty of Mr Sugar not putting in a TV signal output . Making sure he sold monitors. The TV signal generator is a very small box. If you could fit it in a Spectrum then there was no excuse.
+David Johnson I bought one when it came out, With monitor, My brother bought one as well without monitor, In that case you got the RF modulator shipped with the computer.
There is a version that uses RF to connect to the telly. That's the version I have. Looks very fuzzy now tough obviously.
Not so much being naughty as being an all-in-one. Kinda like his hi-fi stero systems and everything else. Everything was about being as accessible as possible, so having it all in the same box was a good thing in his eyes.
Yes, the CPC was aimed at users, who wanted to have a complete, CP/M compatible, quite modern home computer (that because of the num pad and cursors, which on the 6128 are even there where you know them from todays keyboards, pressed between the keys and the numpad :D). And we must remember, how shitty the RF signal on most computers was, for example on the Sinclair Spectrum, so many loved the CPC for the clear cut monitor, which really had a good monitor, good colors or good readable green scales.
spinnerpete. Thanks for putting me straight on that.
I don't know why, but I just can't get enough of hearing about old computers. Its been that way ever since I was a child, and it still that way today.
Somebody needs to send this to Ashens.
He goes nuts for these things. XD
*****
Don't we all?
didn't he prefer the spectrum?
*****
Ashens hates everything a little. That's why we love him
I'm guessing it would be a lot easier for Ashens to get a hold of one of those than LGR, since it's a machine made in the UK.
Ross Mitchell he was a spectrum 128 guy, the spectrum 128 was made by amstrad though.
I came across one of these and picked one up complete with a colour monitor for £30. So was really happy :) The integration of it make it very good and easy to connect up. No wires anywhere as the cables from the monitor plug straight into the keyboard unit with no mess. It was one of the older ones with a much larger motherboard. The tape deck didn't work properly but there is an easy hack to add a sound input, so you can load games off external sources which worked well. I too found the machine a bit souless, but it was pretty good. It would have been nice to add a memory card interface to it to run software, but its actually quite difficult on the 464, as you have to also get a DDI1 interface. Despite having a port for disk drive, it doesnt actually have a disk drive controller built in. So you need one of those before adding any other storage. Glad to have it in my collection though!
you just had to put that pizza in the background, now I have to go buy a red baron pepperoni pizza D:
Continuing with my back viewing of classic LGR videos Clint! Another epic review of classic hardware! Really liked that tape slot on the right side of the keyboard! Looking forward to the next one! More power and God bless from the Philippines!
7:31 I think I would have had a nerdgasm if I had this setup in the 80s.
I had an Amstrad 6128 plus back in the day. It was a heap of plastic junk, but that didn't stop me spending hours on it, especially Outrun! Would love to get one again.
I like the look of this computer and the saturated color graphics.
Thanks
This brought back some memories! I used to spend DAYS & DAYS writing programs in BASIC just for my Mum to come into the bedroom when I wasn't in there and turn it off!
My Dad got sick of me stealing his cassette tapes to save my programs on.
As a result I NEVER USED TO HAVE ANYTHING TO SAVE MY OWN CREATIONS ON!
I had the green screen and ALWAYS Wanted the colour screen!
My grandfather used to own an electronics company and I think that they did some work for Amstrad and that's how they ended up with the computer.
I was one of the only people I knew who had a TV Tuner for the monitor.
It was an Amstrad unit too and plugged straight into the monitors connector. You could use it with the colour monitor too but seeing as though we never had one I used to get to watch TV all in different shades of GREEN!
Again the TV tuner is something that I think my Grandad got for free while doing some work for Amstrad.
The company my Grandad owned (Manby Park Electronics think they sold the company in 1998 to their business partner) used to do a lot of step down transformers. When Sky TV first came out in the UK the receiver boxes were made by Amstrad and we got one of those for free too, I know that they did the transformers for the Sky boxes so maybe that's the connection on all or the products my Grandad got for free for me.
I can remember driving down to Bradford and delivering 10's of thousands of power supply units (Step down transformers) for Amstrad to a company called PACE. Who then did the next part in the process before shipping everything back to another company for assembly.
After they sold Manby Park Electronics they bought a pub I can remember being 18 and getting absolutely slaughtered in there totally for free, and working in the kitchen with my grandmother every single weekend washing the pots and doing whatever needed doing!
So I've got so many memories relating to this little CPC464 it's unreal.
Mainly playing games and writing my own games but not always.
You need to try playing Outrun, OH Mummy there's more in my head somewhere but the memories are over 30 years old now some of them so it'll take me time to access them! I'll be asleep and I'll wake up in the middle of the night with another game title!
If I do I'll Reply to this comment and people can check them out...
Why do I want computers to have that heavy plastic and rubberized everything nowadays? There's something cute about the black coat and rubber tips that I haven't seen since I had toys like that in the late 90's
This was technically my first computer (the CPC6128). Initially bought for educational purposes (I remember the French 5th Grade Maths program called "La Bosse des Maths", about a dromedary that lost his hump, that can only be regained if you solve the maths problems), but quickly used to play on it. It did not last more than a year, thanks to the fault 3"DD, but it had the cool TV Tuner you could connect the monitor to, becoming a cheap TV set with RF and SCART (we name it "La prise PERITEL", certainly the best feature we had in France!). From my knowledge, it was very popular in France, UK and Spain. Germany seems they had much more interests in Commodore C64 (it is funny but you had geographical preferences in terms of computer and videogames systems back in the days, at least between France and Germany).
Oh boy, such a nostalgia.
All in one design? Hard to replace parts? System is screwed if something goes wrong? Oh god, Amstrad is Apple!
Well, not really. Yes, when the monitor went broken, you were scrapped, but most of them didn't stopped working until the end of the 90s, they were well produced, not the modern crap.
The same with the disc drive: Mostly it's only the mechanics, that fail and they are repairable by the CPC hacks
With the chips: Well, they are mostly sockeled. So when your Z80a is broken? Just replace it. Ok, nowadays it's more difficult to get one, but in the 80s it was not a problem to change broken chips, all but the graphics chip were industry standards, unlike the C64, which used mostly MOS-chips, which you only got from Commodore.
And because of the Expansion Port it was possible to use an external Disk drive in 5 1/4" or 3 1/2", which most had, because it was awful to even get this 3" discs :D
The reliability of the CPC was marvelous. Best Amstrad product for build quality - I've not yet heard of a completely dead CPC system.
But, yes, many people compare Alan Sugar to Steve Jobs. Ruthless, successful visionary.
Amstrad launched a console nobody wanted, a tablet PC nobody wanted and a notebook nobody wanted. They're like Apple, only far too early to manage to get anyone to buy their stuff.
From my experience using an Amstrad as a kid, the only parts prone to need replacement are the cables themselves, and that's after much use by the kids me and my brothers were. I still have a whole unit working perfectly! (after video and power cable replacements at some point).
BilisNegra That’s very much true of the 464, it’s a hardy machine. The 664 and 6128 models both use a keyboard membrane that rots away and will need replacement. If you find one being sold on eBay and it says it’s faulty or the keyboard doesn’t work, it’s always a membrane issue and they can be fixed in about 5 minutes.
i usually dont know what your talking about but i love your voice and how you explain things, keep up the great reviews!
17 year old pizza is watching!
I like Pizza! :D
I wasn't around for the 80s-- I was born in the 90s, but man, you sure know how to make old tech sound interesting even to a simpleton like myself who prefers newer technology.
That's great to hear, it's certainly my goal :)
Could run crysis 3 max settings no problem
Great video. You're right about the display and power issues, as they're the hurdles that prevent collectors even in the U.K. from using these systems nowadays.
Back in the 80s, however, it was the other way round, as others mention, as the monitor meant that there was no messing around tuning in the TV after plugging cables in and out of the back of it, and asking or waiting for access to the main TV of the house.
It also made serious computing tasks very easy to undertake, as the image quality from the monitors was very clear, readable and usable for long periods compared to many flickers and fuzzy 80s PAL TVs connected over RF to other systems.
Also, yes, the 6128 is a great buy for the expanded RAM and disk interface. It's extremely easy to connect a 3.5" floppy drive or Gotek, and then copy across the .dsk images of any game, reducing the load times to just a few short seconds.
It's all possible on the 464, but needs yet more additional hardware - the memory expansion and the disk interface as well as the drives and additional power. It all starts getting pretty crazy in terms of the kit hanging off of the thing.
Still - a great system. Check out the best 8-bit versions of certain games. Prince of Persia is one, Chase HQ is another, and there are many more. Very capable system.
The Red Baron box mad me laugh so hard.
I had a 6128 just as I was starting to get into computers (early 1990's).
Their design was by designers i.e. they kind of went away from the beiges and blacks of the time and came out with a grey. The 6128 went further into this direction.
I ran into a guy who had apparently been on the team developing them back in the 80's. He'd said that the 664 was a mocked up machine that an interviewer had gotten a photo of. Essentially it was 464 with a disk drive. You'll notice the keyboard isn't HUGELY different from the 464. Since the photo was out there, they ended up releasing it. You'll notice there was less than 6 months between the release date of the 664 and the 6128.
I've also got a friend who was into these things in a HUGE way. He had a 664 but had brought the memory upgrade, effectively making it a 6128. He added a 5.25" floppy drive (3" disks were a PAIN). He also had a "Multiface 2" which was a device that you could use to pause a game, change running code, and then resume it again. In terms of gaming this allowed you to cheat. He's only recently got his hands on an Amstrad CPC again. We were discussing the power supply. An ATX PSU could do the job. He managed to find a monitor in the end (I think he used an Amiga monitor) though we were discussing using an EGA to VGA adapter to get the graphics to a monitor.
Proper rebel machines these. I'm sure I knew at least a single person who owned one. But they were bought exclusively by people who knew nothing about computers, didn't have the inclination to do much with it once they owned it, and never became part of a circle of friends who shared the same model of computer. If you were an Amstrad guy, you were alone on a dusty abandoned plain, with only a howling dog for company.
+97channel : I guess it depends on where you lived back then.
I for one grew up in France in a region where these machines were ubiquitous.
I had heard of C64 and ZX spectrum, mostly from magazines, but all my friends either had a 8 bit consoles or an Amstrad CPC.
I almost got a Thomson M06 (bad. very bad.).
But since my frends had a cpc I decided on getting one myself (the better 6128 version).
Yeah apart from the people who owned them and had friends with them. Strangely i never knew anyone with a c64 but also had friends with spectrums
My grandmother had a CPC 664 at the time in the 80s when it was unusual for anyone to have a computer, let alone a woman of 60+. She gave up computing after the PCs with Windows came out and got common because she couldn't program them like she could a machine running basic. I did get a few emails from her at university in 2001 or so though -- from my 'cyber-granny'
My grandad died in 1999 and she sold up and moved to a block of flats with a warden. We went over to see her when she was packing up, and we had one last game of Trivial Pursuit on the CPC before it got packed away. 24 years on I have no idea what happened to it but may it rest in pieces wherever it is :).
So you've moved to the Matrix for staging your videos? Nice.
The Construct seemed like the perfect place for hardware reviews.
The CPC-464 you are showing in the video is the one with low keys. First models used taller keys and the keyboard was very comfortable to use.
DAMMIT YOU BEAT ME TO THE PUNCH WITH THIS VIDEO!!!
Div.
Your reviews are ahead of their time man good job!!
you pronounced Schneider like a real german
indeed. Clint always seems like he's trying to pronounce non-english names as well as possible
Floconbob ***** I try my best!
and you succeed !
Thanks for all of the awesome hours of videos :)
My friend had a CPC 464. I was so jelly :D
They don't use SCART in the USA? That's new to me. Well you guys have a reputation for doing stuff different from the rest from the world without clear reasons. :P
Nice profile pic u have
I got the green screen model for Christmas when I was a kid and had no idea there was a color model for some time. I loved it though and have many fond memories of it. The system is long gone but I still have some of my boxed games on display in my man cave. Great video!
I actually have an amstrad GX4000 console in my attic
If your interested I could send it to you if you want
or if I can find it among all that crap!
Shoot me an email if you'd like to!
Clint@lazygamereviews.com
Well this sounds stupid but can I have it if you didn't send it yet. I have an idea to make 64k computer to a 512 MB. I have part ideas.
+Azure Gaming how much are you offering?
? Offering for?
Azure Gaming the console, you said you had part Ideas and i assumed it was your intention to break it down and harvest what you wanted?
As a original CPC owner from 1985 (Green Screen £199.00, the colour model was £299.00) I have to say thank you for a nice review.I still use my 1985 CPC from time to time :)
Why does a French machine have a "User Port" label in what appears to be Spanish?
i guess you don't understand how languages work
can you explain to me how languages work and especially why there are spanish labels on a french machine?
bepowerification both language had the latin as base, like the portuguese and the italian
Still, it's weird and not consistant : You have French and Spanish, Spanish and English, English only, or French only on the cassette deck.
I wouldn't expect a product to be purposely built like that. Seems most likely shoddy manufacturing to me.
I had one of these as a kid. It was my first computer after I’d had a Collecovision console. You could actually get hold of tv adapters back then too.
I always thought of the CPC as a glorified ZX Spectrum.
I was a C64 owner after all, so my views are pretty bias.
Alan Suger bought the Spectrum name, that's why the 128k Speccie is so similar looking to the 464. Fire up a 128k Speccie and you'll see an Amstrad copyright on the screen.
The CPC computers had a higher spec than the Speccy or the C64. The CPC did have the same processor as the Speccy, some Speccy games were ported to the CPC which was very annoying as often they didn't take advantage of the better hardware in the Amstrad. I always knew I had the best computer, no matter what anyone said ;-)
I never had a 464 but I loved playing it at my mate's house. He had the green screen version. At the time I think you were looking at at least £100 more for the colour screen pack. I remember it came with a great starter bundle with wonderful games like Roland on the Ropes and Roland in the Caves. My favourite of the free games was Harrier Attack.
Given that the 3 graphics modes were basically the same as the BBC Micro's top 3 modes but with a better palette, and given the dialect of BASIC included, I thought of it as an improved BBC Micro or Electron (without the BBC Micros expandability, of course). It was like having a BBC Micro where the graphics actually fitted on the screen and you didn't run out of RAM just by breathing on it.
I had the 6128 with disk, never seen a tape one.
The monitor coming with the machine was good with a handle. The keyboard sturdy. It feels good. Perfect machine to learn Basic.
Games might be not good in scrolling than C64 due to limitations and big videoram (that gave more colors 16 simultaneously)
But it was more oriented to also be used for work. It provided the high res at the time 640*200 with 2 colors. Perfect for more text on your screen, for word processors, compilers, etc.
And the 160*200 with 16 good colors look good graphically (but again you had usually jerky scrolling).
I am still so in love with my CPCs.
Man, your comments could be correct if you had used one back in the day or read up on some of the details, but... "the tape recorder inevitably giving up"? "unreliable"? "one of the built-in components failing"? Erm, no. the CPC was the most reliable of the major (at least) 8-bitters of the day, and failures were very few and far between... All my tape recorders work just fine 30 years on and the only "inevitable" failure is the 6128 drive belt (which is very cheap to replace even now).
I've used these extensively over the years, and the first one I had? Dead tape deck, and with similar machines I could just easily replace it whereas here I couldn't. Which is why I mention it :)
Lazy Game Reviews I believe you, but you must have been extremely unlucky :) Amstrad had by far the lowest returns for failures, and it's definitely not "inevitable" :)
I don't doubt that at all, they seem to be quite hardy compared to, say, my Commodore equipment! But in my experience, hardware failures are very much inevitable, especially when you're talking about a device with moving parts that's ~30 years old.
Whether it's today or another 10 years, things eventually cease functioning, and having something mechanical integrated into the unit is a potential issue to be aware of when looking to collect! That's the only point I wanted to make, not that these are pieces of crap or anything :)
Sorry, I missed your reply. And apologies, I didn't get the spirit of those comments!
Lazy Game Reviews I couldn't agree more, Things after so much time especially after ten or more years start to cease functioning, especially buttons. Buttons fail mechanically and old CPU chips can also fail. I have a Game Boy with fully working buttons but I recon it was hardly used or maybe the owner looked after it very well.
I also think that the C64 and the ZX had more legacy than the Amstrad/Schneider. But it's really a must have for people who love this old times. The Amstrad had a very nice colour palette and some games are surprisingly good like Rainbow Island, Gryzor/Contra and even Turrican.
A lot has changed for you in eight years, hasn't it?
Sure has!
I loved playing Rick Dangerous on my Amstrad as a kid and it took me what seems like forever to complete it since I died a lot by not knowing where all the traps were.
The first PC I had was an Amstrad 6128+ and I learned a bit of Basic coding with it, mostly playing various sounds and changing ink colours to make different coloured shapes appear or make a coloured square move around the screen (back when if you wanted animation, you had to change the colour of pixels on the screen to simulate something moving). I didn't have a lot of games/software for the Amstrad at the time.
I only had: Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Back to the Future 2, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, Capcom Collection on 3 floppy disks (Forgotten Worlds, Strider, Strider 2, UN Squadron, Forgotten Worlds, Last Duel, LED Storm, Ghouls 'N' Ghosts and Dynasty Wars), Starglider, Mini Office II (Word processor, Database, Spreadsheet, Graphics, Communications and Label Printer software) and some sort of trivia/puzzle game I don't remember the name of.
Granted many of the games didn't look or perform as well as they did on one or two other systems of the time, many were still pretty good on the Amstrad.
You got yours from France ? Great, around here jt was very popular in the 80s, competing with the locally made Thomson MO-5/TO-7/etc line of 8 bit computers. Not sure if you could grab one in the US as they were sold only in Western Europe, but this computer has quite an history as jt was the "official" computer the French Government put in every school (it bought tens of thousands of Thomsons) for the "Plan Informatique Pour Tous" of 1985, the goal of the plan being that by 2000 every Frenchman was able to program and that France would be the world leader in software and computers.
Did it work ? Well, look at where's the Silicon Valley. It's in San Fransisco, not in Paris...
Also, another reasons the Thomsons were quite weird are that up until the late 80s, they used light pens as a pointing device instead of a mouse, delaying the widespread adoption of the mouse in France. They were also hooked up to the Minitel (a French sort of precursor to the Internet, much like the British Ceefax/Prestel, that was available up until June of 2012 !), this decision delaying the development and adoption of the proper Internet in France. Actually, it was so severe that until the late 90s or early 2000s, the Minitel was much more used than the Internet and a lot of people didn't even know how to use the Internet. Another example of how the French tried to do different and insted f*ck it up.
But I also find it fascinating. My first computer lessons at age 7 were on a Thomson. But it was 1997 and yes, some schools still had them.
Yassine Saïdi that was really interesting, thank you :)
The 464 was my first computer, thanks for this video, got me remembering the good old days!
I upgraded to a 6128 later, I still have it. I have such good memories of those computers, I wrote lots of basic programs and played so many games. Back in the day there were so many great games. I have a speech synth add on, that would speak text you sent to it from basic extension commands, pretty amazing for the time. By the way, the z80 could only address 64k at once, on the 6128 it only used 64k unless the software used memory swapping to address the second 64k bank. You had to understand this stuff back then, these days kids have it easy ;-)
Gettin paid for Red Baron product placement, now, are ya? ;)
Nope, just proud of how that video turned out! I mean c'mon, 100,000 views in like a day, that's pretty awesome :)
This was my first computer and I loved it. The crazy living on the edge with the often-failing tape drive made loading times fun and anxiety-filled. Despite the CPC being completely incapable of scrolling graphics, and iffy with sprites - thus making arcade ports tenuous at best - some of the games were pretty solid. Sorcery was a standout. Somehow the programmers made the machine do things it thought it couldn't - it looked amazing, and was highly playable. They actually managed to sidestep the firmware in order to make the game load at twice the speed - which was pure Sorcery to me. I spent much of my time writing graphic design programs in BASIC, in between load times and copying my friends' games with a twin-cassette stereo. The tape drive was a conundrum - cheap accessible media, although with 50/50 reliability and half-hour load times the norm for relatively modest games. But this was the land before diskettes, at least in my suburban shopping centre. What the CPC could do it did really well, and even threw shade on the C64 once in a while, but oh man that tape drive was conceived in hell.
can i play Crysis 3 on MAX on this PC ?
Yep :) You just must add few gigs of ram, a new processor and new video card :D
Well... no, but you can play Elite on it: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_(video_game)
Better game with better graphics (compared to hardware it runs on and time)
Marcuss2 Amen to that, I cut my sandbox game teeth on a six month play through of Elite. I did get the Elite standing, but to this day I view it as one of my great gaming failures; I only found 2 of the missions.
Had one of these bad boys as a child, with the colour display. Used to love playing dizzy and thrust.
The monthly magazines with the free tape are something I miss about early home computers.
The CPC 464 Plus was one of the first PC's my family owned but it was my younger brothers... I had an Amiga A1200 (Loved the thing).
I had a 464+ back in the day, but it had a Black & White monitor. A friend of mine had sold me his standard 464 because it had a colour monitor, only thing was I couldn't use that monitor on my 464+ because the connector had more pins. No worry though, I took the connector of my old monitor, and wired that in place of my "new" monitor's connector, and it worked like a charm! Wish I still had those computers, I was a fool to get rid of them after I got my first PC.
Nice one Clem! I had the colour monitor. Oddly, the BBC computer worked with it so the RGB port may have tried to be a little bit standard!!
Knuckles the Echidna
Who'd have known that Knuckles had an Amstrad CPC?!
My first computer :-) sweet memories. Thanks for this video.
The Neon green+Black keyboard looks awesome.
Wish there were keyboards with color schemes like this now a days.
Glad to see you do retro computer overviews again LGR!
Nice one dude. When I was 5~7ish years old (1990~1992), the Schneider CPC from my brother was the first Computer I was ever using. That's where it all began. :P I remember playing a jungle themed jump 'n' run all the time, forgot the name. But I do remember the green monochrome screen my brother had. That was a cool time back then. If you wanted to cheat in a game, you didnt just press some keys and become god. You actually modified the game files themselves to get what you wanted. I remember spending my saturday evenings altering game data files after instructions from PC magazines. Not a single line of code... sometimes several PAGES long. lol
In Italy the color version was sold with an external TV tuner to be placed under the monitor to morph it into a TV and both version were sold with 100 games on 10 cassettes (I remember the cassettes were so cheap that were labeled on only one side, and on the game list was written "Side A, this side, side B, the other") ;-D
my dad did a entire computer course in the 90's on one of these. I still have a few of them along with the monitor as well as some spectrums and amigas
Nice review buddy, i had the cpc 6128 back in the day....that's because i'm fantastic...:)
I grew up with this computer and learn programming on it. The thing is that it was so easy to copy any games if you had a double hifi cassette recorder. It worked for years without any problem
I had the cpc464 monochrome when I was a kid and I loved it. The kid across the road from me had one in colour and it blew my mind lol
Big fan of this system, had one as a kid and stuck with it until early 90's. Collect for the GX4000 as I have a strange love for it and the rare range of games for it. Need to re-acquire a cpc as I love the design.
Really interesting info. Very helpful. Loved it. I grew up playing one of the 6128s and good to see the 464 in more detail.
The 80's were pretty cool in the UK. It was a real revolution for computers. Nothing will move as fast or be that new & exciting again. Good times.