The Amstrad PC 1512 Computer with Tom Scott

YouTuber Tom Scott and Jason Fitzpatrick take a nostalgic look at the classic Amstrad PC 1512 computer.

[delatroy]

This was also our first family pc. Single 5.25”, 20MB HD, EVGA. They are said to be poorly made machines but we never said a single thing go wrong. My dad used it for about 15 years. Still have it to this day.

[dtvfan]

seeing the rainbow of floppies at 4:33 gave me a flashback to when i used the Amstrad. My first ever PC. I too used the C Prompt and first learned to use CLI on the Amstrad

[qubex]

My family’s first computer in 1986 or 1987 was an Amstrad 1512, exactly this model with the CGA colour screen and the dual floppy drives and no hard drive. Deep memories.

[offrails]

I spent many years a kid with this machine - we had the model with the CGA monitor and the 20MB hard drive occupying the left drive bay. Lots of games and apps too - the original pre-VGA Sierra AGI/SCI games, a few Sesame street games, Blockout, Tetris, Sokoban, Rockford, Conquest (a clone of Joust), Microsoft Paintbrush (a rebranded version of ZSoft Paintbrush and the predecessor to Paintbrush in Windows 3.1, which later became MS Paint), Test Drive, the Goldengate office suite, and various others. Never used GEM - ours booted straight into a DOS-based menu program (Direct Access)

Other memories included the volume knob on the left side (by the keyboard/mouse ports), and playing with the sync knob on the back of the monitor to make the picture go crazy.

Ultimately we gave it to my cousin when we got a brand new 486/50 machine, but we never saw it again after that.

[Jonathansyoutube]

I always wanted one of these as a kid but couldn't afford it. Marvelous peice of kit.

[mavgr]

My first PC with a color monitor and 20HDD. Few months after getting it my father purchased me a memory upgrade to 640K. One of the few pc compatibles of the time featuring an 8Mhz 8086 it was quite capable. And guess what.. it still works in 2018.

[GadgetUK]

Repaired and upgraded an absolute tonne of these back in the day! STK IC's used to fail for fun in the EGA monitors.

[nihonam]

In 1990 there was a computer club in my location, and there were two Amstrads there, just like this in video. It was my first PC I ever touched. And I couldn't even distinguish different kinds of computers back then. I had no idea about processor or software or anything. We just played GAMES. =) Karateka, Digger, Xonix, Badstreet, Paratrooper....
Later this computers were replaced with Spectrum clones.

[klmn]

This was my first pc too with the hard drive and spent way to much time on alleycat and digger. I'm amazed these things still work after all this time!

[scottlarocca]

5:04 The save icon is a 3.5" floppy disk, not a 5.25" floppy disk.

[Ndlanding]

Respect! After using the BBC, this was the first ever PC-compatible I used, and this time at work. I learned a ton of stuff on it, apart from just using Wordstar. e.g. Writing an extensive, multi-windowed database (in DOS). Never ever used Gem or the mouse. Played several games to death: LS larry, Police Quest, thon 3-D tumbling-down version of Tetris, and several more that were free on Spanish mags. Took me a year or two to convince the boss we should get a hard drive card and a mem expansion (to 640k). ****The most important program of all was Norton Commander.**** I mean, fuck all that typing into DOS.

[scottlarocca]

8:58 IIRC, the first Gem prompt didn't actually require you to change disks. You just clicked "OK" to let it finish loading disk one, then prompted for disk two.

[TVRCreators]

I remember my Dad having one of them. Loved it. :)

[garyburchgb]

i also created a program for a french project using batch files. would display images and information from text tiles.

[CaptApril]

Good lord it's been awhile.. that was my first PC too.. GEM I remeber very well, eventually got a sound blaster card and 10meg hard drive.. Modem and early BBS's back then..IRC..so on and so forth. Explaining the internet to people I just got blank stares..

[AntonyTCurtis]

I've reparied a lot of Amstrads back in the day...
The Amstrad 2386 was the best 80386. It shipped with cache RAM so it ended up a lot faster than all other shipping 386 machines.

[danielbarlow]

my amstrad used 4 AA batteries for the system clock. Stored right under the montior, in the cut out made for the base of the monitor... i still trip out on that and often tell my students about it. it was the weirdest thing, ever.

[timking]

Seen the 1512 not long ago last 10 years I think but those colour disks that brought back some memories 30 plus years ago as swaping disks went when the 20hhd was installed. Time spent playing Double Dragon on the family's first PC 😉

[Spacecookie-]

That was really expensive. Home computers were like the ZX Spectrum. The PC 1512 was only found in businesses or extremely rich people's homes. I remember using one back then, on a training course I was on to help create a presentation.

[GaryEasonFlightArtworks]

Yep, my first computer. 16 shades of grey, twin floppies, MS-DOS only. No hard disk. Extraordinary. £499 was *a lot*.