Why Europe Couldn't get enough of the Amstrad PC1512/PC1640

[RockTo]

I had the 1640 after my grandad upgraded to a 386.

Mine had a 20MB hard disk mounted directly on an ISA card. I remember before powering off the computer, I had to type "wdpark" to park the hard drive heads.

[blackterminal]

I have one of these with the hard drive. I hope to get around to turning it on again

[vince]

Never had an Amstrad PC, but enjoyed looking at your video. A bit of nostalgia. Thanks

[wembley]

I Had I 1640, and in the UK it came with 1 floppy disk but the left drive was blanked, for the HD, for me was 10mb however you never got this as HD were not perfected and as such you got bad sectors. I am not sure what the monitor I had but I worked out through configuration I I could get EGA in the AutoExec file. Later I did get a 3.5 floppy disk that connected via a ribbon to the PC.
Gem I remember and I preferred this to Windows 1 & 2.
One thing we don't do now is swtich on the PC through the Monitor!

[fattomandeibu]

School had a few of these. Never saw the Gem desktop on those, but it's something I'd seen plenty of times on my friends' Atari ST systems, which sold with a version of Gem called TOS, which was stored in the BIOS ROM. Pretty much looks exactly like this, but in monochrome for some reason, as the Atari ST supported 32 onscreen colours.

[Baoran]

Isn't getting a 8086 in 1989 a bit late. I bought my first pc in 1988 and it was 12Mhz 286 with 40MB hard drive, 1MB ram and vga? I thought I was late because 386 PCs were already around when I bought it.

[SomePotato]

I must have that chess game on a floppy somewhere, but I've only ever played it on a green screen.

[supersolenoid]

was it mentioned that GEM was Atari ST series' default GUI?

[javiergonzalez]

Those ones with the ECD monitor are difficult to find in Spain. Even in PC1640s MM and CM monitors are much more common. A few weeks ago a quite nice one came out for sale nearby, he was asking €300. It was a temptation but I already own a couple of PC1512 and I don't have that much space. It didn't last many days listed, obviously.

[lordterra]

I love the build quality of these old machine's.

[Lilithe]

Does Space Station Oblivion take advantage of an FPU? I've downloaded it because I built a Micro8088 and I have an FPU in it (8087) and I wanted to try it out. I've heard the FPU is nigh useless for most stuff of the era as nobody was expected to have one so nobody coded for it.

[Wormetti]

I would've loved the EGA version. The 1512 with CGA monitor was my first PC. I upgraded to 640KB RAM and a 20MB hard drive. At the time I never knew a CPU upgrade was an option.

[DrYak]

07:44 > you have twice as much data to put into video memory
Wait, what, no. That's the whole point of the planar structure of EGA frame buffer: you can affect multiple lanes with a single write.
Did the programmers of Grand Prix Circuits forgot to correctly use the planes?

(What I mean:
- A single CGA byte write 4 pixels at a time.
- A single byte in the older "nibble oriented" modes (e.g.: 16 colors on PC jr and Tandy) is only 2 pixels indeed. The spread-across-memory 16 colors (e.g.: on Plantronic RG and BI bits are on two separate memory addresses) modifies 4 pixels with 2 bytes, so it averages again 2 pixels per byte. Those cards are indeed twice slower for the same amount of pixels.
- An EGA/VGA card always modifies 8 pixels per byte (like in monochrome modes, except that each of the for R, G, B, and I plane can be written simultaneously). So by leveraging the various write modes, masks, latches, etc. it's possible to do fast fills and fast copy from off-screen regions. Those cards are thus twice *faster* than CGA for the same amount of pixels)

[deano]

I had Driller on the C64. It ran at an abysmal <3fps most of the time but still strangely playable. I never quite figured it out either but it was still pretty amazing to see filled 3D graphics at any speed on the old 64.

I actually had no idea there was a PC version!

[taichitortoise]

From memory, you missed the most hilarious feature of GEM
Somewhere in the settings menu there was an on/off option ...
Floppy disk clunk

I nearly fell off my chair realising that the familiar clunk, clunk, clunk
of a floppy drive is just a conceit to reassure you something is
happening. Never seen it as an explicit option since.

[enschedegabber]

My first PC was also an Amstrad. with Grand Prix Circuit :D

[pmsrodrigues]

This is the exact configuration I had in the late eighties. 🤩

[PikaStu]

Awesome! I remember my parents buying a 1512 with a monochrome CGA display. I played Speedball on it and it was impossible to tell the difference between the two teams! I had more luck running Defender of the Crown 🥰

[lrochfort]

I had a PC 1512 with a monochrome monitor. It was great, but I really wanted a 1640 with a hard drive

[kuro]

I had a 1512 which only had "CGA" graphics, but GEM was in 16 colours. It must have been some custom extension.