★ HARDWARE ★ LES PC D'AMSTRAD ★ AMSTRAD PC 1512 : THE CLONE OF CONTENTION|Popular Computing Weekly) ★ |
| Amstrad PC 1512 : The clone of contention | Hardware Les Pc D'amstrad |
The new Amstrad machine, says John Lettice, is up and running Amstrad has traditionally made larger and larger piles of money not by stating the obvious so much as by doing it. Obviously there was big money to be made in the home computer market, so the CPC464 was launched. Obviously serious users wanted a complete system that they could use rather than puzzle over, hence the PCW8256 and 8512. The latest move, the launch of the PC1512 series, is probably the most obvious of the lot IBM has dominated the business market for the last five years and has sold stacks and stacks of its PCs simply by virtue of the fact that it is IBM. Other business manufacturers have followed the IBM standard, and until recently, when a lot of small companies decided they could put together IBM clones, sell them for half the price of an IBM PC. and still make a profit, the bigger companies were all doing very well for themselves. Now the obvious bit here is that it needn't actually cost any more to produce a business machine than it does to make any other machine, and that if a company were to produce a PC clone in volume it could sell it at a price low enough to make the business manufacturers lose interest in the PC standard fairly rapidly. That's what Amstrad has done with its PC. and the initial intention is to carve out a large slice of the world market. On first impressions the new machines might just be neat enough and cheap enough to do it. "The monitor is neatly designed and mounted on a tilt and swivel stand on the top plate" The machine is simple in construction. It's smaller and lighter than the IBM PC. but the need for 5¼ inch disc drives and IBM standard expansion slots has kept its desktop footprint up to around 15 x 15 inches. The entry-level machine has a single drive plus monochrome monitor, and the series goes up to single drive plus 20Mb I/O pons are on the left hand side and around the back. On the left beside the volume control (zero to horrible racket) is the keyboard plug and mouse port. I take it the latter's placing was dictated by circuit board layout, but while I'm happy to meet my first left-handed mouse I'm not sure how the majority of users, who are I believe right-handed, will take to it. Parallel and serial pons are at the rear, with video output and power input (like other Amstrad machines the power supply goes through the monitor) just along from them. On most PC compatibles the expansion slots are accessed by unscrewing the casing, generally a fiddly task on a crowded desk, but the Amstrad PC uses a hatch to the rear of the top of the casing plus one on the side for access to the cards interfaces. Both these are easily snapped in and out.
The monitor is again neatly designed, and is mounted on a tilt and swivel stand that fits into a well on the top plate Unlike standard IBMs the monochrome and colour versions use the same video output, with the mono simply showing shades of grey instead of colour. IBMs also have severe limitations on the number of colours that can be displayed at once - which is why PC games generally have odd colour combinations - but the Arnstrad can handle 16 in 80 column mode. It's also compatible with two of the modes available on IBM's EGA (Enhanced Graphics Adaptor), which is more than you can say for most software packages. Screen quality is quite good, although not superb, and this leads on to a major disadvantage. Because the power supply is in the monitor you can't fit third party monitors to the machine without fitting a new power supply or running two monitors. You'd also better be sure of the monitor you want when you buy the machine, because if you upgrade from Amstrad mono to Amstrad colour you'll wind up with a useless mono monitor. The machine's keyboard is basically IBM format, although there's a separate Enter key on the numeric keypad (operation being similar to the one on the PCW), and the All. Control , Caps lock and PrtSc (print screen) keys have been moved to slightly more sensible locations. The feel of the keys is fine, although I've seen better on machines four or five times the price of the Amstrads. The keyboard also includes a joystick socket, but this apparently emulates the cursor keys rather than being compatible with the standard IBM joystick, so games software will need some amendment. If you look inside the machine you see what Amstrad really does best. The original IBM machines have sprawling circuit boards populated by large quantities of low-tech chips. The Amstrad on the other hand has its chip set boiled right down, and rather than being socketed (which is cheaper for small runs, but costs more for volume production) most of the chips are surface mounted. The board takes up around two thirds of the machine's base. The 512K Ram is made up of 256K chips, while the 128K upgrade will consist of 64K chips fitted into sockets alongside. These extend right under drive A, which would have to be removed to gain access to them. What price field upgrades? The 8086 processor is fairly central, with a socket for the 8087 maths coprocessor alongside it, other major points of interest being several custom chips labelled Amstrad. Developing these will have a cost a packet, but when economies of scale take over they'll make Amstrad's production costs difficult to match. Operation Amstrad claims that the machine is spectacularly fast, outrunning all but the Pinnacle, a little-known PC compatible machine. The claims are true, as far as running Basic programs are concerned, but don't really hold water for normal operation. Disc access for a standard Wordstar document is marginally faster on the Amstrad than the Bondwell PC. but then again as the Amstrad has the superior 0006 chip running at 8MHz, and the Bondwell has an 8088 running at 4-7MHz, it ought to be a lot faster. The Screen handling is also an impediment to the Amstrad's speed. As far as text display is concerned it's faster than the IBM. but seems lower than the Olivetti M24. which also runs an 8086 at 8MHz. Graphic screens are more significantly slower. The lest used here, which I hereby patent, involves F15 Strike Eagle software (see last week's issue for review) and time taken to run out of fuel. With afterburners engaged the Amstrad took just under three minutes, wile the Olivetti turned into a brick at just over two The Amstrad, however, is probably still faster than the IBM in terms of graphics. The spectacular differences in Basic speeds (over twice the speed of the M24) can incidentally be ascribed in pan to Locomotive's Basic 2. which is very fast indeed. It also runs under Gem, and together Gem and Basic 2 suck up over 470K of the machine's 512K Ram. but that's another story. System software This is probably the most valuable, and unnerving, area of the whole machine. The standard IBM operating system is Microsoft's MSDOS. and this is included. It is, however, also possible to use the machine with a second system, Digital Research's Dos Plus, which is also bundled. and finally it can be run under Gem, DR's windowing front end for the PC. Gem isn't strictly an operating system, but has been pre-installed on a third disc which also includes Dos Plus. Working out which you'll use is problem enough, but the confusion is heightened by various bits and pieces that squirt out of the discs as you chug along. Dos Plus allows a measure of multitasking, and the disc includes a couple of little programs, including an alarm and background printing utility, that take advantage of this. These, however, can only be accessed through Dos Plus, not through MSDOS or Gem. Considering DR wrote both Dos Plus and Gem I'm sure there must be a way to put the two together, but initial phone calls didn't enlighten me. Dos Plus and Gem in fact, although worthwile independently, don't seem to add up to more than the sum of their parts. Exit to Dos from Gem and you can't gel back to Gem Desktop. Instead you've got to put the Gem Startup disc back into A, type autoexec or gem (although the latter appears not to work if you've run a program in the meantime) then reload the Desktop disc. It seems to me that DR ought to be able to make the two systems a lot more integrated than this. Compatibility The way to make a machine totally compatible is to make it as slow and horrible as the original IBM. Amstrad to its credit hasn't done this, but the machine is still almost 100 per cent compatible. Lotus 1-2-3. dBase. Flight Simulator and Open Access all run. and I had no trouble with a fairly wide range of other programs, apart fom Sargon 3 chess, which seemed reluctant to return to a text screen after going to a graphics display The latter also, however, gives trouble on the Olivetti, where it crashes whenever it seems to be losing . . . Hardware compatibility is more difficult to judge, but the machine is likely to be able to take most IBM expansion cards, with a few exceptions. It won't take an EGA because it can't patch out its own graphics, and extra serial and parallel cards may cause problems depending on which areas of memory they use The advice here is try before you buy. Verdict There are a few disadvantages to the Amstrad machines in absolute terms. If you want a fast, non-compromise machine at the cutting edge of technology you'd probably look elsewhere, but the Amstrads make no pretence to being this kind of machine. What they are is cheap, relatively fast machines that run more different software packages than any other micro. At the moment this software is mainly business, but as the support market goes crazy it's inevitable that software of all kinds will be launched for the PC. So the message is, if you want it for business it's a good buy now (although bear in mind you'll have to buy extra applications software and a printer) while if you are an enthusiast it may be worth your while waiting until the support starts coming through. Either way. at the price it's hard to go wrong. Machine : Amstrad PC 1512 Prices (all including VAT) 512K machine plus:
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