* Posts by rpap

6 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Feb 2014

You’re NOT fired: The story of Amstrad’s amazing CPC 464

rpap

Re: CPC's little secret

All the 464 brand names were ones that might have appeared on a home computer in an electrical store. So "Triumph" is not related to any of the usual guesses, although I don't recall what the correct answer is. My top candidate would be an in-house brand of another UK chain (such as Rumbelows). I just did an eBay search and came up with this collection of Triumph "Vintage hifi separates", http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/hi-fi-separates-/261399503754

rpap

Re: Corners cut

Not quite right. The port (and buffer chip) used for the printer had 8 bits - seven for data and one for the strobe. To have implemented 8-bit data would have meant supplying a whole extra 8 bit port and only using one bit of it.

In other news, the PCW had (including the 24pin capable printer) fewer chips in it than a contemporary 8pin Epson printer.

rpap

Acorn wanted a business BASIC, including the ISAM filing system.

rpap

Re: "a small doohickey comprising 32KB of battery-backed RAM to hold the firmware ..."

Actually, we did use EPROMs (a bank of 4x 8K, as 32K weren't available) for the 50 machines sent to software houses. It was the development prototype at Locomotive which had the battery-backed RAM gadget, mainly because it could go through the erase/reload cycle hours faster than EPROMs.

rpap

Re: Launch

And of course one of the two 'helpers' on The Apprentice.

rpap

Re: I remember those 3" Floppy disks

The "cheap Hitachi" story is completely untrue. All the drives used were manufactured by Matsushita specially for Amstrad.