★ HARDWARE ★ LE CPC 464 ★ Value for money|Popular Computing Weekly) ★ |
| CPC 464 (Popular Computing Weekly) | Hardware Le Cpc 464 |
Andy Pennell looks at the new Amstrad micro which could challenge the dominance of Sinclair, Commodore and Acorn As revealed exclusively in PCW January 5-11, Amstrad have launched a computer that looks as if it could beat Sinclair, among others, at its own game. Amstrad has for some years been producing cheap hi-fi equipment and, more recently televisions and videos. Its new range of micros extends their philosophy.
Amstrad was the first to package hi-fi separates together in one box, and its micros use a similar idea that packages a monitor and a cassette deck along with the main unit, starting at the ridiculous pnce of £229. There are two models at the moment, both consisting of the CPC 464 main console with inbuilt cassette unit, one supplied with a green screen monitor, for £229, and the other supplied with a colour RGB monitor, for only £329. The machine itself comes with 64K of Ram and 32K of Rom. with high-res colour graphics and sound. At the heart of the machine is a Z80A processor, as used in many other machines including the Spectrum, which has the advantage over other processors in that it can run CP/M. Of the 64K Ram. 16K is dedicated to the screen display, leaving around 42K available to the user, just a bit more than in the Spectrum. The screen has three modes — in mode 0. there are 16 colours selectable from a pallette of 27, with a resolution of 160x200, which is not bad. In mode 1, four colours can be displayed at one time, again from a pallette of 27, with a resolution of 320x200, which is good. Finally, mode 2 is the highest resolution, with two colours available at a resolution of 640x200, which is excellent. The number of characters per line in these modes are 20,40 and 80, respectively. This latter figure is most important for business applications, and in particular CP/M. The sound on the Amstrad is very good, using the ubiquitous AY-3-8912, giving three channels. The channels are mixed to give a mono output on the internal loudspeaker. via a volume control, and there is also a mini-jack socket that gives 'sterio' sound output. The stereo is obtained by mixing the channels together differently, to obtain pseudo left and right sound. So much for the insides of the machine, what of the outside? The keyboard consists of 74 keys in all, in three groups. The main group is the QWERTY section, along with a nice long space bar, and massive Enter key. The keys themselves are very nice to type on, and are as good as on any home micro with a proper keyboard. There is also a numeric pad to the right of the main cluster, and a small duster above it consisting of the cursor keys and a Copy key. for editing. Personally. I would have preferred the cursor keys to be part of the main group, as they really are too far away. To the right of all the keys is the inbuilt cassette unit, or ‘datacorder' as Amstrad like to call it. which consists of a bog-standard cassette recorder, with most of the audio electronics removed. Although all connections are internal, so there are no external leads to worry about, the computer does not actually control the recorder. The operator still has to press the relevant keys when required. Thoughtfully, a tape counter is included, along with a Pause button— would someone please tell me what use Pause is on a computer tape recorder? Directly above the keys is a little coloured drawing, which serves no useful purpose, other than to fill up what would otherwise be an empty space on the facia. Amstrad's hi-fis all have little graphs on their facias, presumably for a similar reason. The monitors supplied with either system are a necessary part of it, as they contain the power supply for the main console. The colour monitor is based on an Amstrad tv with most of the electronics removed, requiring RGB input. The picture obtained is very nice indeed, certainly better than is possible on a domestic tv, but not quite as good as the better class of monitors available separately. However, the monitors that do give a better picture are more expensive than the Amstrad monitor and the computer together, so many people may feel that for £329 they can get a good RGB monitor, together with a ‘free' computer, and a good one at that! Eighty columns can be displayed clearly in colour, though for extensive work I would prefer a good quality b/w monitor, such as the one supplied with the cheaper model , which gives a nice picture, with true grey-scale. For those that buy the cheaper system, for about £30 a modulator is available so that it can be hooked up to the domestic colour tv, with the unavoidable loss in picture quality. The Basic occupies 16K of the Rom, and was written by a company called Locomotive Software. This name is particularly apt, as it is one of the fastest Basics I have seen, and is based very much on Microsoft. Thankfully, Amstrad has more thought for the user than companies such as Commodore, and have extended the Basic to cover all the hardware aspects of the machine, as well as being able to call the operating system. Apparently, the Amstrad used the BBC micro as its model, but unfortunately the Basic does not have many of the structured features of the Beeb. However, it does have a function similar to the Beeb's *FX command. for accessing the operating system, as well as a command for using any of the sideways Roms, up to 240 of which may be fitted. The Basic gives the user windows, to a fashion, for printing text and graphics, but they are not up to concurrent CP/M or QL standards. There are lots of easy to use graphics commands, for both absolute and relative plotting, and colour is controlled by sensible Ink, Paper and Pen commands. As with the Spectrum and others, streams are used for input/output, and on the standard machine these are eight streams for the screen windows, one for the printer (via the parallel port), and one for the cassette unit. If a peripheral such as a serial port or disc drive is added, other streams can be defined for them. The Amstrad's Basic also has an almost original feature — that of controlling interrupts. It has the After and Every commands, that wait a defined time, then do the equivalent of a Gosub. The difference between them is that Every occurs regularly, but After triggers the routine once only The only other Basic to come near this is Basic-G. available as an extra for the CGL/Sord M5. which extends the idea further to include interrupts triggered by key presses and joystick movements. When entering Basic programs, the editor used is a cross between the much maligned Microsoft line editor, and the BBC method of using Copy to read characters from other parts of the screen, and Locomotive have used the best features of both. Detail of numeric keypad, cursor controls and built-in cassette unit >> If all goes to plan, and there seems little that could stop it. the Amstrad machines should be in the shops by June, in four selected retailers only — namely Rumbe-lows. Comet and Boots. Although not available quite as soon. CP/M will be available, and was demonstrated at the launch. The design is finished, but production has not been started, and the first drive and interface will be about £190. with a second drive available at £150. Instead of the more usual 5W drives, Amstrad have opted for the Hitachi 3" format, though in theory at least other drives could be used. The CPC 464 with b/w monitor and single drive will be a ridiculous £429. with a colour version for £529, making the Amstrad the cheapest CP/M machine to my knowledge. Also shown at the launch was just some of the software that Am so ft, the software side of Amstrad, will be releasing. Much of it originally came out on the Spectrum, such as Harrier Attack, Boogaboo the Flea, and Hisoft's Pascal. The machine itself and its firmware has been finished for a couple of months now, so there should be none of the QL-type delays while bugs are ironed out of it. The forthought of Amsoft supplying machines to certain software houses in advance must be applauded, a feat few other companies in the market have matched. How does it compare with the competition? Well, I think Amstrad are the first people to offer better value for money than Sinclair — for around the price of a QL. you will be able to get a CPC 464, disc drive and b/w monitor in a shop, without the delay of ordering by mail order, and with CP/M you have (theoretically at least) access to practically any piece of business software, instead of waiting for everyone to create from scratch programs to run under QDOS. and duplicate them on Microdrive. I think the Amstrad will give a lot of sleepless nights to Sinclair, Acorn and Commodore, and nightmares to Memotech and Enterprise/Elan. I think it could turn out to be what the QL could, and should, have been — a terrific home micro, with an awful lot of potential as a business machine. It's just a shame that a machine conceived and designed in Britain has. because of import duty, to be manufactured in Korea. Those, myself included, who said that QL was going to be the micro of the year could prove to be rather short-sighted. Andy Pennell , Popular Computing_Weekly
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