Amstrad CPC Story | Nostalgia Nerd

The Amstrad CPC Story begins way back in 1947, with the birth of Alan Michael Sugar. We then meander through Alan Sugar's early working career, the start of his trading business, AMS Trading, and then the formation of Amstrad. From there, between stereos and CB radios we land with the fabulous Amstrad CPC464 in 1984. A machine often cast aside as an "also ran", but in reality, anything but. Selling some 2 million machines, it comes in third place behind the Sinclair Spectrum and Commodore 64, but dominated in parts of Europe. So, let us delve in to the Amstrad and Amstrad CPC story concentrating mainly on the early days of Amstrad and the launch of the Amstrad CPC464 Home Computer...

With thanks to my fellow Youtubers;

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★Equipment★
Lumix G6 with Vario 14-42mm Lens
Nikon D3200 with 40mm Macro
Corel Video Studio Ultimate X9
Corel Paint Shop Pro X6
Blue Snowball Microphone

♜Resources♜

Music
00:14 Robocop (CPC464)
01:08 Invisible Pieces (YT Library)
02:40 Good to Go (YT Library)
05:03 Strange Stuff (YT Library)
06:41 First in Line (YT)
08:59 Prog Climation (YT)
10:53 Cassette Loader (CPC)
14:38 Savage (CPC)
19:39 Shufflepuck Cafe (CPC)
21:27 Tensions (CPC)
22:37 L'Aigle D'or (CPC)
24:30 Short Circuit (CPC)
27:25 Sapiens (CPC)
28:08 Battle Squadron (CPC)
31:00 Bubble Bobble (CPC)

Images
Various images under CC from Wikipedia/Wikimedia

Videos

If you believe I have forgotten to attribute anything in this video, please let me know, so I can add the source in. It takes time to make these videos and therefore it can be easy to forget things or make a mistake.

[adz]

The Pharmacy that my mum worked part-time in was using a CPC464 to run the printer that printed the medicine labels as late as 2010. They had to load the software from tape every morning when they opened! The owner retired and sold the business - or I'd have absolutely no doubt they'd still be using it.

[shayneoneill]

Great series! And subbed. This was the computer my grandfather (A computing pioneer who worked on early valve machines and was my hero, RIP) brought me, and spent the next year patiently teaching me basic and then assembler as an eager teenager. And now I'm a 40something programmer. Thanks amstrad. Thanks grandpa. And thankyou Nostalgia nerd.

[LesPeterGuitarJam]

Man, I'm getting all nostalgic. I use to have an Amstrad CPC 464 as a kid in the 80s... And I also had a zx-spectrum.
I remember programming my own games in basic and then send them into SOFT, SINCLAIR USER, AMSTRAD MAGAZINE and so on.
Great video... Thanks for the walk down memory lane...

[psychowsky]

Robocop theme ***goosebumps*** ... So many memories!

[joshuakovacs]

I'm shocked this only has 58K views. The production value of your videos is remarkable. Please keep it up, look forward to further stories.

[lunsj]

A big thanks to NN for this video. I am from the US so this machine was never on my radar. But it exemplifies what's so great about those 8-bit machines. And it must have taken a huge amount of work to put this together so thanks so much for doing it!

[dedeegal]

The CPC-464 changed my life for the better!
I was just a year into my training as an electronics engineer when I bought a CPC-464. Almost three years later, I completely understood this device (including the gate array [for video] - only the floating point part in the ROM was magic for me).
I learned to program on the 464, first BASIC, then Z80 assembler. With three programms sold, programmed in BASIC (boring but lucrative) I had enough money again to develop myself further.
Because ... then, at some point, home computers were obviously dead.
That's why I bought a PC (80286 with 512 KB RAM and two floppy drives) with MS/DOS, learned C, programmed a few games, sold seven of them, made good money with it, wanted to be able to do more and that's why I studied computer science.
After graduation I got a lot more money for my work - and since then it's enough for everything I enjoy.
THANK YOU Amstrad/Schneider ... for the CPC-464!
THANK YOU Zilog ... for the Z80 ... and Rodney Zaks for his bible!

BTW: if you have never programmed complex things in assembler, you will never understand how BEAUTIFUL computers are.
It's not the youth's fault, because it's no longer necessary nowadays. Nevertheless, they will never be able to grasp the true beauty.
There is only one and zero.
A few registers, a program counter, a stack pointer (both also just registers).
Actually, they are all just LOAD operations.
Even in Doom or Battlefield, that's all that happens!

[SeanTheMac]

This my 2nd video of yours I've watched tonight. Your research is impeccable and your manner is incredibly endearing.
You sir, are a pro.

[Exigentable]

These are all well researched, well delivered, well scripted and well edited. I look forward to your future content, I've gone and binged all of yours over the past couple days.

[KillerBill]

I bought one of the first CPC464s available in Chesterfield on Pre-order. Never regretted it. In my opinion, the best 8 bit system produced. It may have been superseded by the later disk drive versions but I had moved on to the Amiga 500 by then. Thanks for the video. I admire Alan Sugar, who started from nothing, far more than the likes of Branson and Sinclair.

[reavrtm]

I really like this "Story" series. BBC documentary level quality right there!

[regbarclay]

Great video. The 464 was my first computer as a kid. Still remember the sound of those tapes loading.

[DirkHillbrecht]

A very well made documentation about this important piece of European computer history. I learned programming computers in the 1980ies with my CPC 6128 using its Basic, Assembler and Turbo Pascal 3.0 on CP/M. Thanks for bringing back memories of that time!

[PikaStu]

Excellent video! Brings back fond memories of playing my grandad's 464 with green screen. The Roland games, Harrier Attack and Oh Mummy! Great times!

[moiquiregardevideo]

I just realized the quality of your documentaries. You reveal many details about the engineering of complicated devices. You present the important features such as the exact processor model used showing emphasis on how these machine really work instead of repeating the usual marketing creative speech.

[SomeOrangeCat]

*basks in some UK Gaming history* You know, whether someone likes Sugar or not. You gotta admit, the man started at the bottom, and climbed his way to the top. Respect.

[gailspooner]

HUGE fan of the CPC 464, which my Dad brought for the family in 1987. Really led me to appreciate computers and spawned a love for programming in BASIC. The Amstrad CPC 464 is why I love computers today.

[SFJPMoonGames]

This is me and my brother's first computer, not sure of model version. But my Uncle gave it too us prior to receiving a second hand Master System. I might need to DM you as have so many questions, your the only one I've seen writing on this subject properly. Thanks dude 👍🏻

[jasejj]

Kinda ironic that Sugar had the CPC and Spectrum, machines that suffered the most from the tape-to-tape piracy he helped to create in the first place by marketing machines with the Japanese dual-tape mechanisms. The other big cassette-based system, the C64, with its dedicated tape deck with on-board ADC, really didn't get along with copied tapes; at least, the cheap decks my friends had would never successfully make copies. They all had to come round my house where my dad had separate tape decks where we could alter the recording level (and, IIRC alter the biasing to effectively up the treble response) to make usable copied tapes. I'd learned this trick with the VIC-20 which had the same setup.

[JohnnyOrgan]

This was a brilliant, informative watch. Can't wait for part 2.