THE CPC 464

The history:

In 1982, Alan Michael Sugar was already well established. Amstrad was a major player on the CB market, then an important one. Yes, but still, Sugar was sure of the fact that one has to quit a sector when on the climax (and more important when the competition enters).

1982 is also the year of the explosion of domestic computing in Britain with brands like Oric or Sinclair, with his best selling Spectrum after having revolutionized the sector with its ZX80 and ZX81. Even IBM, the major reference, was in it. Sugar then thought "Why not ?" And he analyzed. And he sees that people are crazy, that miles of wires don't disturb them, neither does one PSU per device or peripheral, that there are hundreds of standard each one different from the other.

Alan Sugar proudly presenting his CPC 464 (666 Kb)

Amstrad is the manufacturer who vulgarized integrated Hi-Fi systems. Not for the love of innovation but simply by looking to reduce costs. So, rather than selling each element separately, why not selling them under one whole element ? The number of PSU is reduced, only one mold is necessary and all this represents less pounds for the buyer and more pounds for Amstrad. And Sugar thinks that he could do the same thing with a computer. The buyer has to think that it was money well spent. So he decides to propose a complete system. This system will include the monitor and mass media device. So was born the project in 1982. Bob Watkins was in charge of all this, even though Sugar was behind all this.

But on the contrary of the Hi-Fi where one has only to apply already existing technologies and simply duplicating them, creating a computer is slightly different. One has to create it from the beginning (using already proven technologies). Therefore, two Amstrad engineers were given the responsibility of creating the machine. Time passes by and in August 83, Sugar discovers that the two engineers have vanished, not bearing out such a task. Amstrad even tried to find them back, Watkins saying that he even went to one of them to get back the computer plans. Watkins called Ambit, a company which had already worked for Amstrad for the CBs business. Roland Perry (here he is...) and William Poel (Amsoft future founder) enter the story. For the anecdote, R. Perry even met one of the engineers. The meeting was in a pub and during the conversation, he figured out that it was the engineer son who had done the major work. It was the kid who was answering !!! It was also after this "meeting" that he decided to start it all over again.

First the machine : it was first equipped with a 6502 processor. After all, it was the processor of Commodore's Vic-20 and Apple's Apple II. 32K of RAM would have been enough. Plus, a huge number of software had been created for Motorola's processor. And here comes software. Particularly the Basic. The most famous one was Microsoft's (yes, already). But Sugar, always trying to save some money, decided to create an Amstrad dedicated Basic. Perry then contacts Locomotive Software to create this Basic. When Amstrad asks Richard Clayton and Chris Hall how many time it would take, the answer is pitiless : "eight months". But Amstrad needed it before that time. Locomotive Software told them that it could be faster if the computer was based on Zilog's Z80 (having already written Acorn's Basic). And here enters our dear Z80. This was the best solution for everyone, especially MEJ electronics, created by Mark-Eric Jones, a college friend from Perry who was in charge of the hardware part. MEJ knew this processor by heart.

And so, Arnold (CPC code name) was on its way to its presentation. Just to know, Arnold (Roland's anagram) is for Sir Arnold Weinstock, GEC boss so that everyone thinks that it was this company who was behind all that, and not Amstrad.

This product had to represent Amstrad products philosophy. You plug it, it works. And that was the case. Let's just talk about one important thing. When talking about IBM's PC, everybody say how great it was to do it within a year. What about Amstrad who did its computer within 15 days (from Perry's approval to Amstrad fax including the computer's plans).

The end of the story is well known... the CPC 464 was a best seller. Well, its price was well under the most optimistic figure. Let's compare :

There was no comparison possible. Amstrad was really the best choice. The CPC was a major hit in Britain as well as in France, Spain or Germany (sold under Schneider's name). It's still quite easy to find one and still has its charm.

Technics :

As always with Amstrad, one has to understand the product characteristics under a marketing and selling point of view. Because often, it was Sugar's analysis which "made" the product. Let's take the 464 example.

- Complete System

When Sugar analyses the market in 82, he just does not understand customers. How can they spend hundreds of pounds to get these crappy systems ? For a complete system, you need a TV set (1 PSU, 1 video cable), a tape device (1 PSU, 1 linking cable) and the computer itself (1 PSU). Sugar then decides to give the costumer what he paid for. And that will be the case. The CPC 464 has one monitor (including the PSU) and two cables coming from the monitor to the computer. It looks like a professional computer.

- Integrated Tape recorder

No need for further cables and PSU. And PSU are certainly the most costly item to produce. The price already being set, they had to reduce all non-needed costs.

Internal view of the tape recorder(239 Kb)

It's one of the most spectacular achievement of the CPC, thanks to Mark-Eric Jones. Once again, it was the cost reduction need that allowed such an achievement. They needed to reduce the components number and therefore the cost of the machine. The Gate Array made it possible. This chip was created to use only with the CPCs (on the + series, its functions were included in the ASIC). It is responsible of :

video with the CRTC
commutation of Roms
commutation of additional RAM pages (6128)
Screen mode selection
Color display
Interrupt generation

Click here if you wanna learn more

The motherboard :

The motherboard seems "denuded". It's only because it's much longer than the other ones (Atari 800XL for example). And with the Gate Array, no need for more chips. Still, it looks strong and solid. And so it was. This will be one the major asset of the CPC. While Sinclair and the rest sufffered over 20% warranty returns, the CPC was under 4%. Big difference !

CPC 464 motherboard (127 Kb)

I've also got another kind of motherboard, intended for the Spanish market. It is smaller and chips are located differently. Some of the connectors are on the left side (sound, joystick) and the PSU and video connector are now between the centronics and expansion connector. The Gate Array is also on the lower part of the PCB and the memory chips are set in a row and not side by side.

Other motherboard configuration (231 Kb)

The keyboard:

As far as I'm concerned it's one of the best thing about this computer. Let's compare:

The CPC 464 keyboard is one of the best I've ever worked with. Nice and complete. The numeric pad was a real bonus, whatever other people may have thought. And indeed, nowadays, who could work without it ? Anyway, it was now easy to enter a basic programm full of DATAs (poor C64 or Atari users).

The keyboard - Upper view (105 Kb) - bottom view (93 Kb)
membrane (127 Kb)

The CPC was equiped with the most famous Z80, star of the 80s. It was sold with 64 Kb of RAM, which is the limit for this processor which cannot take care of more. Or at least, not naturally. With the CPC 6128 we will see how Locomotive managed to do that.

Graphics:

There are 3 graphic modes on the CPC:

Mode 0 : 160*200 with 16 simultaneous colors on 27 possible - 20 characters per line
Mode 1 : 320*200 with 4 simultaneous colors on 27 possible - 40 characters per line
Mode 2 : 640*200 with 2 simultaneous colors on 27 possible - 80 characters per line

Mixing the modes was possibles and largely used from 1985 on.

What is really missing is hardware sprites. It makes the CPC harder to programm. Still, it does not have any influence on games quality. A simple test can prove that. When compared to C64 versions, CPC ones were just as good, if not better.

Mode 0 (100 Kb) - Mode 1 (215 Kb) - Mode 2 (96.9 Kb)

es différents modèles :

Amstrad CPC 464 - Schneider CPC 464

There are different models... CPC 464 :

Amstrad :
- CPC 464 QWERTY
- CPC 464 AZERTY
- CPC 464 QWERTY with ñ key (spanish keyboard)

There is also a not well know model: theCPC 472. It's a model exclusive to the Spanish market, realeased to avoid a Spanish Tax for any computer with 64 Kb or less memory that didn't include a Spanish keyboard. This way Indescomp (Spanish importer) released a enhanced CPC with a memory of 72kb and without a specific Spanish keyboard version.

Schneider :
- CPC 464 QWERTY
- CPC 464 QWERTZ

BACK

(c) Charles da Silva - 2003

Sources : David Thomas "Alan Sugar"
François Quentin "Ces ordinateurs sont dangeureux"
William Poël, Richard Clayton.
Site "old-computers.com"