Windows on an 80s Word Processor?! | Amstrad PCW GUI!

RECIPE INGREDIENTS*

CHEERS TO
• Prodatron aka Jorn Mika
• chir chir
• Gardenside Prods. & Clue Detectives & Paradise Radio
• Special thanks to Ladyfractic & Puppyfractic:

SAUCES USED WITH THANKS
• Wikipedia & Wikimedia Commons
• The Internet Archive
• Every attempt was made to contact copyright owners before including content. Very occasionally things can get forgotten in the excitement to release a video so please don't hesitate to let me know if that is the case & I'll put it right. All other media featured is marked as public domain on Google Images or used with written permission or shown under fair use law.

SOME INGREDIENTS BY

©️ All music & content copyright Perifractic's Retro Recipes/Bideas LLC 1988-2020. All rights reserved.

*Some links may offer some peanuts to support this retrochannel but all opinions are 100% unbiased.

#retrogaming #retrocomputing

[davidwallin]

I used a PCW8256 when, whilst still at school, I wrote magazine articles on telecommunications in the mid 1980s - mainly for Popular Computing Weekly.

[JorgeDo]

At 3:17, that's a Talent MSX2, an Argentinian version of the korean Daewoo! So much memories, my first contact with a computer was in a Talent MSX.

[RafaelS]

I am blown away by:

A) how awesome this interface is.
B) how awesomely well made and fun and informative this video is.
C) how awesome this channel is.
D) all the alternatives above.

I am choosing option D and subscribing to this channel. REALLY GREAT CONTENT!

[RobTheSquire]

Very clever of the guys who made SymbOS I couldn't imagine a GUI on an Amstrad machine from back then.

[diogenesesenna]

I still use a PCW8512 with CP/M ProText for a lot of my Word Processing. It's just an enjoyable machine to use. (Just to put it in context, for Christmas my wife gave me an Alienware M51m to work alongside my MSI GT72 6QD Dominator G).

And yet my old CPC6128 and PCW8512 are still a lot more fun to use.

[mytechnotalent]

Love how creative you two are great work! CP/M I mean I feel like a kid again!

[hagen-p]

Happy to see Jörn "Prodatron" Mika getting the coverage he truly deserves. Great guy! He designed a RISC-processor to drive a menu system on the CPC-T-REX (CPC hardware emulation in a Cyclone-I FPGA), and he also wrote the nice menu system. Which keeps running in parallel to the hardware-emulated CPC464/664/6128 with all SymbOS bells and whistles. I learned a lot about FPGA and circuit development from this system.

[freddiejohnson]

SymbOS is arguably the most impressive OS for any 8-bit micro computer since it so closely mimics something like Windows 95 it's multitasking is also impressive and the version for the MSX is even more mind blowing seeing it it full colour.

[eskey]

Yep am a Dip Chipper haha, great video guys and that green screen back in the day was the bee's knees would of been even more so with that GUI. An the poor puppys face when he was doing his business had me in stitches bless. Looking forward to your next video as always so until then you guys take care :-)

[heathwellsNZ]

Wow, that is an impressive piece of software. Well done Jorn!

[bitwize]

This is arguably the most impressive bit of programming I'd seen since 8088MPH.

[electricdreams]

I had a 464 myself, but to think it having a GUI would of been amazing back in the day. I've seen graphics demos done on a standard 464 and they are just amazing. Probably equal to what an Amiga could of done. Give somebody a little time to get used to the hardware and they can create something which is pretty mind-blowing. Great stuff.

[arthurdanielles]

Good to see you guys are staying safe ! Ah memory lane with the old PCW that I used with supercalc for my early day accounting.. Damm that was a work of art.. Great vid as always thumbs up guys and continue staying safe !! 👀👍

[merlyworm]

What's impressive is back in around 90 or so, I ran bbs software that technically multi tasked. If someone was online, you could do various things in the sysop control panel and the user online wouldn't know you were doing it. Like look at their account, stats, enable or disable parts of the board, and type out "pages" to send to the user "page from Sysop : hi"... And it ran in basic... Like I had to be super careful to not hit runstop, or it was all over. Commodore 64, btw.

Iirc, it was Image BBS software. Easily the best software I ever used for a bbs. (I ran a board for almost 8 yrs. and used 4 different software's.)

[geekwithsocialskills]

The SymbOS is freaking so cool! I'm going to load it up on my Amstrad PCW 8256 straight away. I have upgraded mine to 512KB, so it will be interesting to see how things run with more memory. Bonus points for playing Pac-Man on the Amstrad PCW as well. I'm a huge Pac-Man fan. Waka Waka :-)

[andydurbin]

I love it That's a great video
Awesome to see a GUI running on that old word processor. 😃

[LoftBits]

I have such a soft spot for the PCW (8xxx series, naturally!), to this day remember how I watched with awe its 'perfect black with tiny letters' screen when I was a kid, blown away by its resolution (being myself stuck to ZX81). It now has prominent place in my collection, have always been looking for extensions like the light pen you've just showed, the printer2scanner conversion (now have them both) or any software that went beyond its 'wordprocessing' capability ('mindblowing' games like Batman or Tomahawk).
Never understood how did it NOT become a worldwide hit with what it offered for the price...
I'll definitly get the SymbOS now, but will try a 'purist approach' (i.e. on a floppy) :-)

[SevenDeMagnus]

The green CRT low resolution (high resolution for that time) has it's own charm.

God bless, Rev. 21:4

[MacchiStrauss]

Jesus christ man, don't ever do that spill joke again. I jumped from my chair when it fell and the sparks flew!

[antonyhorner]

There was a GUI for the PCW8256 called the AMX Desktop which came with the AMX mouse there was also a desk top publishing package called stop press.